Jeremy Greenfield reports on the Digital Book World site that Matteo Berlucchi, CEO of social e-tailer Anobii, is urging publishers to drop DRM restrictions on their e-books as a way to fight Amazon. In a DBW slideshow presentation, Berlucchi argues that the big e-vendors use device choice to lock in consumers, licensing rather than selling e-books and offering inferior functionality to that of paper books. Berlucchi calls attention to the actions of the music industry in recent years, eliminating DRM and permitting ownership of music—you can now even import songs bought on one platform into a competitor’s via cloud...

FutureBook has a post looking at the relevance of Charles Dickens to present-day publishing. Dickens, Martyn Daniels writes, wrote and published many stories in installments in pamphlets prior to publishing them in completed form. The ad revenue from the installments helped to support him while he published the final version, and fueled interest in the final form. (Indeed, there’s a famous story about the ship carrying the next installment of one such work to America being mobbed by readers who wanted to learn if a certain character survived.) We find ourselves again asking why we are...

Baen has rebranded its Webscriptions program, changing the name of the site to BaenEbooks.com, redesigning its look, and renaming the monthly e-book package program to “Monthly Baen Bundles”. All account information and previously purchased bundles will remain the same under the new site, though users who have set up their Kindles to receive e-books by e-mail will have to authorize a new email address. Sadly, with this change Baen is no longer providing OPDS catalog support for downloading e-books directly to Stanza. This is disappointing given that some people (such as me) don’t have iOS devices recent enough to...

I finally broke down and bought the very latest e-ARC of the Honor Harrington series, A Rising Thunder. And while it’s still a dozen or so posts down the road in my series of Honorverse e-book reviews, I will note that while I quite liked the book overall, the ending was…annoying. It didn’t so much end as it just stopped. There wasn’t a build to a climax, then a denouement. There was building toward a climax, and then…finis. It was as if the book had been cut off halfway through. As it turns out, that is exactly what did...

How are digital media changing our buying habits? They are changing them, there’s no question, but we often don’t think about how. But something that’s happened over the last few days has led me to think about it. Of all electronic forms of media, I think that computer games (and other software, true, but I’m focusing on games here) are one of the most closely related to e-books, though perhaps they’re a little closer to digital music. As with books and music, they used to come solely on physical media that we buy not for the physical medium...

Happy Thanksgiving, those of you who celebrate it today! As I’ve done for the last couple of years, I looked back at previous Thanksgiving posts I made to see what I had to be thankful for in the e-book world. It hasn’t changed much lately, Most of the things I’ve mentioned are still going strong. I’ve got an iPod Touch again (and an iPad, and a Kobo) that I like to read books on, Baen and its Meisha Merlin writers are still going strong, and e-readers are getting even cheaper. As I said last year: ...

As I mentioned in my review of Honor Among Enemies, with In Enemy Hands the Honorverse series changes from a pure space navy series to something more politically-based. While there are still plenty of naval battles in the offing, at times the space combat takes a distinct back seat to all the political maneuvering. I suspect that this is why a number of readers seem to feel it “jumped the shark” at this point—they started reading it because they liked space battles, and suddenly it turned into something very different. This book begins a phase of the series expressly...

Remember Bookeen? The company made a line of e-readers called Cybooks. Back in 2007, it was going to make an e-reader for Baen, but it never materialized. In the last few weeks, they’ve made a couple of announcements about an impending new e-ink technology called HSIS (High Speed Ink System) that will be fast enough to allow scrolling and panning around web pages. On GigaOm, Kevin C. Tofel presents a 10-second YouTube video of a demo of the e-ink technology, showing a screen scrolling around on a website. It looks pretty good; comparable to what it looks like to...

Next up, chronologically, in the Honorverse are a pair of short stories. Although they have nothing to do with each other, they both cover events that become important in the next book. And they both involve events of great change to their respective worlds—one not violently, but the other very much so. Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy A Beautiful Friendship Young Honor and Elizabeth Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances On Basilisk Station The Honor of the Queen...

As I continue my series of Honor Harrington reviews, in the hope of eventually reviewing the entire almost-completely-free e-book series from start to finish, I notice some news from David Weber has popped up lately: Weber and an unnamed CGI/3D movie studio are in the process of finalizing negotiations over the movie rights (Baen Bar link; free registration required) to the Honorverse series. Weber is very optimistic over the studio’s intentions to be as faithful to the books as possible (especially since they’re also fans of the series), and has been doing a lot of consultation with them on how best...

Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy A Beautiful Friendship Young Honor and Elizabeth Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances On Basilisk Station The Honor of the Queen The Short Victorious War Irresponsible captain, itinerant noble Field of Dishonor Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order: Flag in Exile by David...

Author Doranna Durgin has several books with Baen, though she seems to have moved on to publish more recent books with other houses. Most of her Baen books make up a series, about a horse who accidentally gets turned into a human being and how she copes with it—and I own most of those books in e-book form. However, the first book in the series, Dun Lady’s Jess, is no longer available through Baen—this can happen if the book has been taken to another publisher so Baen no longer has the rights. (Actually, the other books may not be available for...