Well, that's quite a bit of news posted below. David has been an icon in the ebook industry and will be a pretty tough act for me to follow. Now on to a few matters you may be concerned about. When discussing the ownership transfer, and my position position as Editor, with NAPCO over the past few weeks, one thing became abundantly clear. NAPCO values the way TeleRead has been written and its journalistic integrity and has no intention of changing this. If I thought they would then it wouldn't be me writing this. I expect...

TeleRead, the oldest English-language site devoted to general e-book news and views, is now owned by the Gadgetell subsidiary of North American Publishing Company (NAPCO). We closed the deal today. I’m leaving as editor-publisher, but Co-Editor Paul Biba (left photo) will remain---as full editor. What’s more, Senior Writer Chris Meadows (right), the second most frequent contributor, will stay. Both Paul and Chris have been e-book-lovers for eons, and publications ranging from the New York Times to the Guardian have quoted Paul over the years. Under Paul, who has supplied most of TeleRead’s posts since September 2008 and managed it...

Especially since 9/11, the FBI has long been interested in being able to check up on the reading habits of ordinary people. In 2002, we covered a librarian's concern about a provision of the Patriot Act that would allow the FBI to request information from libraries. In 2005, we covered an actual use of that provision. In 2008, David Rothman discussed FBI director Robert Mueller suggesting “that the bureau should have a broad ‘omnibus’ authority to conduct monitoring and surveillance of private-sector networks.” Since the Kindle uses wireless networks, David was concerned that it meant the FBI...

That's the title of an article by TeleRead site founder David Rothman which has just appeared in the Huffington Post. David discusses his proposal for a national digital library system, which he has been calling for since 1992.  Take a look at his article, and if you feel it has merit, why not send a copy to your Senator or Representative?  With a new Administration, perhaps we can get the ball rolling....

I guess David and I aren't going to completely see eye-to-eye on this, but I didn't see much that was wrong -- or inaccurate, for that matter -- in the New York Times article on the recent Sony press release. In fact, to me it appeared to be all good news. Upon reading the original article, my first reaction was to celebrate the effective demise of Sony's LRF format; I still think that was the main purpose of the announcement. The Reader's continued support of LRF always allowed the possibility that Sony could be keeping its own proprietary-format...

The Writing Show’s e-book interview with me is now online. Among other things, I reminded Paula Berinstein, the show’s stellar host and producer, that you can’t own DRMed books for real. I’m sorry that Amazon unwittingly vindicated us DRM skeptics---she’s one, too---several weeks after we recorded the show. Just put yourself in the place of students like Justin Gawronski, 17, a high school student in Michigan who lost access to his notes, not just to the Orwell novels that Amazon zapped (1984). Technorati Tags: The Writing Show,Paula Berinstein...

The Solomon Scandals, my Washington novel published by Twilight Times Books as a paperback and e-book, will be discussed 8 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, July 28, a week later than scheduled earlier. Tom Peters, a trained academic librarian, will interview me for  Online Programming for All Libraries and also accept questions from others. Anyone can participate. See a quick description of the book (obsolete date listed) and how-to details for the chat. The latest Scandals review is from Brad’s Reader. If you’d like to mention your own book in the comments section of this post, be my guest. Links welcome, including...

Again and again I’ve warned that Amazon may be poison for publishers. We’re not just talking about brick-and-mortar bookstores like the Trover Shop, the beloved indie in D.C. that’s going out of business partly because of Jeff B. But what about Amazon as a threat to publishers? We already know that Amazon will compete again them to some extent, such as through the AmazonEncore program, which will offer Legacy. And now, from Bloomberg, comes this analysis on Amazon as a threat to publishers’ margins: Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle, which accelerated...

"rise of the ebook session ... hopefully this turns out better for us than rise of the terminators" —@trovebooks on Twitter A full report on the Tools of Change conference will likely have to wait until Paul Biba and David Rothman get back to their computers. But here are a few tidbits I picked up from following #TOC on Twitter: Andrew Savikas (pictured at left, photo by James Duncan Davidson) revealed that the Bookworm on-line ePub reader is now part of O'Reilly Labs. According to Tim O'Reilly, an informal audience poll in the Jeff Jarvis panel indicated that about 10% of the...

In a press release David forwarded me today, OverDrive has announced it is partnering with a number of publishers to sell books in the ePub format. These publishers include Random House, Hachette, Pan MacMillan, Penguin, and others. (The press release in its entirety follows the jump.) While anything that increases the adoption of ePub as an industry standard is a good thing, it should be remembered that OverDrive is the firm that chose to end its partnership to provide books to Fictionwise, leaving many e-book-owning customers high and dry but for Fictionwise's actions in negotiating with publishers to...

Here's a condensed version of an e-mail Q & A that TeleRead conducted with spokespeople for Plastic Logic and LibreDigital. The latter company's tech platform will serve books, magazines and newspapers for the Plastic Logic e-reader. Q. What's meant by "serve"? A. LibreDigital’s focus has been to give publishers one platform to distribute their content in any format to all of the digital content stores, eReaders, mobile devices, search engines and social networks that connect content to consumers. LibrieDigital is already doing this for hundreds of book, magazine and newspaper publishers like HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette, The New York...

This YouTube video is absolutely hysterical. It tells you how a book gets published; from the writing, to the editing, printing and marketing. Done by the Digital Marketing group at Macmillan it is a must see. Found on boingboing and through the medium of an email sent to me by Michael von Glahn. Did you know that a book's editor must read the copy a minimum of 4 times and commit large parts of it to memory? I also learned that the editor often completes every third word of the book and is responsible for choosing...