Love or hate e-books, so many people at least have an opinion on the topic. Rich Adin at the blog An American Editor writes, "Are eBooks the Death Knell of Authorial Greatness?" Adin is an e-book reader, but he seems worried that authors may never be considered great again because of the physical absence of books. "Part of the problem, I think, is that recalling my library books involves a visual scan of its shelves, something that is easy to do with shelves of hardcover books staring at me and difficult to do with e-books because that casual eyescan is not as readily accomplished. This...

TeleRead was the recipient of a rather flattering honor earlier this week. On Wednesday, we were informed that we'd been featured on the just-published list of 100 Essential Sites for Voracious Readers, which is curated by Masters in English, "a site dedicated to helping students find the right graduate-level English program." "We built this list for our audience of aspiring graduate students in English literature and relevant fields," says MIE's Elizabeth Kelly. "But we think anyone who likes to get lost in a book will find something they love here. The list of 100 Essential Sites is split into five different categories; TeleRead...

I read a lot of news stories as part of my work for TeleRead, and lately, I've noticed that many are dominated by a decidedly gloomy tone. Apple gets sued. Readers get sued. All five of the big publishers get sued. Then there are the copyright squabbles, the fair use disputes, author's rights, reader's rights, corporate overlord rights ... it just goes on and on. And it's all terribly complicated and difficult and cumbersome, and ... well, pointless, really. This is an industry that's under threat from a million competing forms of entertainment, 95 percent of which can be accessed off the...

  British crime and thriller writers are being bumped off by their American counterparts, according to the latest league table of the Most Borrowed Adult Fiction Titles in UK libraries, released today by Public Lending Right on the eve of the UK's National Libraries Day. No less than 17 novels by U.S.-based crime and thriller writers appear in the Top 20 Most Borrowed Adult Fiction Titles list. Nine of them were written—or co-written—by James Patterson, including the Most Borrowed Title of 2011-12, 10th Anniversary. For the sixth year running, James Patterson also retains his crown as the UK’s Most Borrowed Author. In total, 10 U.S.-based authors writing in the...

The infographic embedded below isn't new; I'm pretty sure it was created about six months ago, in fact. But aside from its fantastic art, it always shares a truly important message: The vast majority of Americans don't read. Check out the graphic's first three stats, for instance, if you want to feel instantly depressed. (One-third of high school grads never read another book for the rest of their lives? Really?!) I initially found that statistic pretty hard to believe. And unlike most infographics, this one doesn't list its sources. (Shady!) So I decided to do a little research of my own. A Pew study we've...

Thanks to Nate over at The Digital Reader for pointing me toward Goodread's year-end infographic summary (see below). Some cool stats on there about the most reviewed book of the year (Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn), the most popular author interviews (Michael Chabon, Lois Lowry, Junot Diaz and Anne Lamott) and growth of the site's membership (it doubled in size). But what I found most interesting about the graphic was that it drew my attention to features I didn't even know Goodreads offered. You can 'like' quotes? You can enter giveaways? You can join a book club? Cool features, Goodreads! I had no idea! I've...

"One of the biggest mistakes we as a society in general, and industry in specific make is that we mistake medium for the message. Those who can keep their eye on the message—Amazon and Netflix for example—profit handsomely. On the flip-side you have Flickr." —Om Malik This particular time of year—the stretch between Christmas and, say, the first week or two of January—seems to always result in some sort of consumer-relevant trend story that is repeated over and over again in the media, ad nauseum, until most people simply begin thinking of the story as nothing less than pure...

2012 was a big year for me. Between work, blogging, and setting up home with my Beloved, it was my lightest reading year ever—I've logged just 40 books, with less than a month to go. (I expect to polish off a few more over the Christmas holidays, and I've already loaded up my Kobo Glo with plenty to read for 2013.) I didn't read too many clunkers this year—I have finally realized that life is too short to soldier through a mediocre book when there are so many fabulous ones I have yet to read. I have a handful of series...

By Stephen Silver | for Entertainment Tell I used to read books and magazines. Really, I did. I’ve subscribed to Sports Illustrated for as long as I’ve known how to read, and prided myself for most of my life on how many books I could read, and on how full my bookshelf was. Heck,  I even used to read a newspaper on a semi-regular basis. Thanks to the digital revolution, sadly, those days are over in my house. Downstairs, I’ve got a stack of magazines eight inches high; upstairs, my stack of unread books is taller than both of my children. No, I...

I'll be going mostly DRM-free next year. I've been thinking for awhile about this. I balked because I worried that books would simply not be available without DRM, and that I would be missing out on the good stuff just to make a point. But then I realized that it's been ages since I actually anticipated a book purchase. Sure, I would buy stuff when something interesting came my way and the price was right. But these were impulse buys. It wasn't like there were a ton of new releases I was counting down the days toward. And I realized, too, that...

In any culture, the people look to storytellers to give shape to the experiences of their times. This is the ancient practice of myth-making. It helps us commemorate and come to terms with what we've been through. The greatest writers are often those who manage to capture the quintessence of the zeitgeist around them. Millennials (sometimes also called Generation Y) are usually defined by demographers as the age cohort that was born starting in 1983 ... perhaps a few years earlier, at most. This generation has not yet turned 30, and unlike poets, mathematicians or gymnasts, novelists don't generally flower until after that....

My wife had been a keen customer of the local women's-only gym for several years, so after last Christmas, when they closed down and re-opened as a unisex establishment, I decided to go along, too. Nine months later, I’m still among the regulars, dragging my aging body along four or five times a week to run, walk, cycle, stretch, row and pump iron. What keeps me going, apart from my iron will and rigid determination? Well, a lot of the credit has to go to e-books. Let me explain: The gym, like most public areas these days, is festooned with big...