Yes it is cool.  From Electric Literature: Our single sentence animation for Lynne Tillman’s “The Original Impulse,” featured in Electric Literature No. 5, may haunt your dreams. (Animation by Monica Garrison and music by Andrei Pohorelsky.) The sentence: "She roared here and soared there, dwarfed by three massive white columns as she and her best college friend mugged before a filmless camera." For some reason the embed code won't work, but you can watch it here....

Reuters is carrying a story on publisher Nicholas Callaway, who has been publishing beautiful coffee-table books since 1980, has recently decided that books that used to belong on the coffee table will work better as interactive apps on a tablet. Whereas it used to be that huge pages with detailed pictures were the way to go, now Callaway is more interested in smaller screens. "This is revolutionary," he says, stroking his finger at the iPad's glass surface and prodding to open an app he has developed. "This is the Looking Glass. This is Alice in Wonderland....

Audrey Watters at ReadWriteWeb takes a look at the contentious issue of e-book vs. paper pricing and whether it is likely to promote piracy. Mentioning Random House’s decision to join the agency pricing crowd, and the ongoing anti-trust investigation in Europe, she links to a Reddit thread discussing examples of e-books priced higher than their paperback or hardcover versions. The Reddit thread is kicked off by one person complaining about the prices on these books (“I love the kindle but this pricing stuff right now is making me question all of it. I have a hard time placing...

Raise your hand if you’re surprised. Apple Insider reports that Random House e-book titles have started appearing on the iBooks store, just in time for the launch of the new iPad today. It must have been in the offing for some time before Random House actually announced the change to the agency model. I’ll be watching the liveblogging of the iPad 2 launch event just like anyone, but will probably have to wait for this evening to post my thoughts on it due to my day job. ...

It’s the time of year when people and publications start making lists of things that happened during the rest of it, and Publishing Perspectives is kicking off a series on “the most dramatic events in publishing in 2010.” The first piece in the series is also posted at the website of its writer, publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin of IdeaLog. Shatzkin’s pick for the most dramatic publishing event of 2010 is the confrontation between Amazon and five of the big six publishers early this year over bringing an end to Amazon’s $9.99 e-book pricing scheme. Even in theory, Shatzkin writes,...

From the press release: Random House, Inc., the largest U.S. trade-book publisher, announced today a partnership with digital media agency Smashing Ideas to develop book-based children's Apps for mobile devices. Seattle-based Smashing Ideas is a cutting edge developer of immersive, interactive experiences for all screens, building digital products and destinations around brand characters in the children and youth markets. Random House Children's Books will work in close collaboration with Smashing Ideas' newly formed ePublishing group—led by the co-creator and developer of the smash hit, Alice for iPad—and with key Random House children's books authors, illustrators and brands to produce...

Publishing industry consultant Mike Shatzkin, whose columns are always worth reading even when I don’t mention them here, has a piece looking at new Random House CEO Markus Dohle’s contention that the publishing business (and Random House in particular) will be shifting from a B2B (“Business to Business”) emphasis to a more B2C (“Business to Consumer”) position. Shatzkin writes: Markus replied that he was fine being quoted because he was “convinced that publishers have to become more reader oriented in a marketing and trend finding/setting way rather than in a direct to consumer selling...

Sarah Weinman at Daily Finance has an interesting look at the aftermath of the Random House/Andrew Wylie reconciliation, looking at some oddities around the original publishing deal and the settlement and pondering about what it might mean for the future of e-publishing. As a result of the make-up, 13 out of Odyssey’s 20 books will no longer be published through Amazon, but will instead revert to Random House. While the exact details are unclear, a Random House spokesman said that the deal would not affect the standard e-book author royalty rates of 25 to 40 percent. Weinman...

The following joint statement was reprinted in Publishers Weekly: "We are pleased to announce that The Wylie Agency and Random House have resolved our differences over the disputed Random House titles which have been included in the Odyssey Editions e-book publishing program. These titles are being removed from that program and taken off-sale. We have agreed that Random House shall be the exclusive e-book publisher of these titles for those territories in which Random House U.S. controls their rights. The titles soon will be available for sale on a non-exclusive basis through all of Random House's current e-book customers. Random...

From the press release: For the first time in the publisher’s history, today Random House Children’s Books (www.randomhouse.com/kids) is releasing an e-book original, written by the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Michael Scott and entitled THE DEATH OF JOAN OF ARC: A Lost Story from the Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel (Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers / $0.99). The story is available exclusively in digital format and is the newest addition to Scott’s series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, which has sold more than 1 million copies to date in North America. ... For...

If you needed proof that the earthquake of Andrew Wylie’s Amazon publishing deal continues to send aftershocks through the publishing industry, you need look no further than this post by “Agent Kristin” on her blog “Pub Rants”: Several agent friends have confirmed that Macmillan sent a letter over the weekend asking authors to sign amendments that gave them electronic rights to backlist titles. Kristin points out that these letters went directly to the authors in question—not the agents or agencies that represent them—and reminds authors not to sign them without checking with their...

From the press release: Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, is pleased to announce the publication of its first enhanced e-book, a movie tie-in to Wendelin Van Draanen's highly acclaimed he-said, she-said teen romance FLIPPED, soon to be released nationwide as a major motion picture from Castle Rock Entertainment and Warner Bros. Pictures. On sale August 10th to time with the August 27th nationwide release of the film, the enhanced e-book retails for $14.99. ... The FLIPPED enhanced e-book movie tie-in will include an exclusive video feature about the making of the movie with...