Are Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, and Indigo making a wise move by not carrying the books from Amazon’s publishing arm, or are they cutting off their noses to spite their faces? This is the question that Mike Shatzkin addresses in his latest column. He notes that a reporter contacted him, undoubtedly expecting the same sort of attacks on the move posted by some major media outlets, and was rather surprised when Shatzkin said that, from a self-interested point of view, the decision made perfect sense. Shatzkin recapitulates the recent history between Amazon, the Big Six publishers, and...

Technology writer and blogger Robert X. Cringely (the one behind the 1996 TV miniseries Triumph of the Nerds, not the InfoWorld columnists) has announced he is going to be rebooting his written-in-1989, updated-in-1996 history of Silicon Valley, Accidental Empires for the modern Internet age: he is going to blog it. Over the next few months, Cringely will be reposting the entire book to a blog, and inviting reader participation to help him update it for the final e-book form. Like most blogs, this new one will allow reader comments. And it’s those comments I’ll use...

The Sun has an op-ed by “chick-lit writer” Adele Parks—another one of those conversion stories about e-book doubters who become e-book evangelists. In Parks’s case, she became curious enough to buy a Kindle after learning she was selling a huge number of e-books. After buying the Kindle, she discovered she liked it so much she has used it it constantly ever since—though mostly for travel and commuting, where a slim device that can replace a ton of books is most useful. She will “always choose a ‘proper’ book” for reading at home. Parks does not have an...

A couple of weeks ago I blogged a post by author Will Entrekin about why he felt Amazon’s Kindle Select program (in which authors give Amazon exclusivity over their work in return for getting paid for Kindle Prime subscriber e-library checkouts) was a very good deal. Now I see another post, by Christopher Wright on Eviscerati.org, about why self-publishing authors might want to stay far away. Wright compares Kindle Select to Michael Roberts’s MP3.com independent music distribution site, which allowed independent musicians (such as Wright) to upload mp3 tracks to catch the attention of the Internet audience. ...

Apropos of the HarperCollins v. Open Road lawsuit over the backlist e-book title Julie of the Wolves, legal blogger Passive Guy (aka contract lawyer David Vandagriff) has written a fairly lengthy post looking at the question of whether e-book rights are covered in pre-e-book contracts. Passive Guy writes: A fundamental legal question involved in construing a contract is what the parties intended at the time the contract was made. The intent must be manifest in some form in the written agreement. A secret intent by one party that the word tomato also includes avocado won’t bring...

Some blogs are making a big deal out of how the recent 200th-birthday Charles Dickens Google Doodle linked, not to a general Google search for its subject as other such doodles have in the past, but rather to the Google Books search for Charles Dickens. CNet’s Chris Matyszczyk (rather smarmily) calls it a “pure, straight-up piece of commercial communication.” You might not see today's Google Books-pointing doodle as a moneymaking effort. After all, these Dickens e-books are free. And yet, surely, the aim is gravitate your mind and habits over to the Google eBookstore, where money...

Genre fiction represents a weird dichotomy. On the one hand, literary critics absolutely abhor the stuff. On the other hand, the public eats it up. This is why the Guardian piece observing how much of e-book sales genre-fiction makes up is really hilarious from a genre fan’s point of view: snooty Guardian writer Antonia Senior confronts the fact that “downmarket genre fiction” is driving e-book sales. For example: The ebook world is driven by so-called genre fiction, categories such as horror or romance. It's not future classics that push digital sales, but more...

Remember the Humble Indie Bundle, the Humble Indie Bundle 2, and various successors? They applied the pay-what-you-want model to selling sets of popular independently-developed computer games, and have reportedly made a lot of money for the developers, as well as for the charities that they also support. Now a new site, StoryBundle.com, has sprung up that promises to do for e-books what the Humble Bundle does for games: select a few quality independent e-books and allow people to set their own price for the DRM-free bundle. It still seems to be in the planning stages—the site is taking the...

Raspberry Pi has announced that its first batch of $35 computers will be finished manufacturing as of February 20th, and they will be airfreighted to the UK immediately after that; they should be available for purchase by the end of the month. It has also gotten Broadcom to make available a datasheet about the ARM peripherals in the Pi’s CPU chip—useful for those who want to port other operating systems to the device, or are just interested in the tech specs. As I’ve said before, this device could be quite useful in education and for Internet access in places...

Good news for “used digital music” reseller ReDigi: the district court judge handling the case has denied EMI’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the company, which would have shut it down during the trial. Citing the “fascinating” technological and legal issues involved, U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan said he is inclined to let the case go to trial. "We are grateful for the judge's decision in our favor," said John Ossenmacher, ReDigi's CEO, said in a statement. The company added that "ReDigi is breaking down the barriers that have kept consumers from enjoying their intrinsic...

Remember that Amazon retail store rumor from a few days ago? Well, Good E-Reader has heard more from anonymous “Amazon sources close to the situation.” According to their sources, Amazon is going to roll out a retail store in Seattle within the next few months to test the waters and see if a chain of such stores could be profitable. “They intend on going with the small boutique route with the main emphasis on books from their growing line of Amazon Exclusives and selling their e-readers and tablets,” Good E-Reader’s Michael Kozlowski writes. As a small boutique,...

A trio of articles from our sister blog Gamertell bring up an interesting situation with at least a bit of relevance to e-books. The popular BioWare video game series Mass Effect has had a series of spinoff novels, depicting events that take place elsewhere in the game universe simultaneously with the games. The first three of those novels were written by one of the games’ writers, Drew Karpyshyn. I’ve read them, and they told some very interesting stories, part of which formed backstory that was brought up in the first game. But for whatever reason, the most recent...