6 Cool Things Bookstores Do in Addition to Selling Books (Book Riot) Bookstores sell books. We’re all clear on that, right? But lots of stores — the smart ones — are going beyond just selling books to their customers. They’ve branched out into services, experiences, and other intangibles, and they’ve done it without abandoning their fundamental connection to books. --- If You've Got Nothing to Hide, You Actually Have Plenty to Hide (Techdirt) The line "if you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about" is used all too often in defending surveillance overreach. It's been debunked countless times in the past, but...

There’s been lots in the news recently about this issue. The latest article I’ve seen was from All Things D about Google wanting permission to reveal how many FISA requests its received. I think this is a good time for us to be thinking about our information, how it's collected and what can be done with it. It’s our information, after all. Don’t we have some rights here? I think Google has some good points. Two relevant quotes from the article: "And, like so much else that’s considered too secret to discuss in this matter, it’s difficult to have an informed discussion about any...

The literary community is sending off author Iain Banks, who passed away this weekend of cancer at age 59. Banks was known for both mainstream fiction (his final novel, "The Quarry," ironically featured a main character's decline from cancer) and genre SF. A sampling of tributes: Neil Gaiman, in The Guardian: "He was one of us, whatever that meant ... his work was mordant, surreal, and fiercely intelligent. In person, he was funny and cheerful and always easy to talk to. He became a convention bar friend, because we saw each other at conventions, and we would settle down in the bar...

A great write-up at Media Shift asks an important question: Is media becoming too device-dependent? Speaking of the surge in Hearst Media subscriptions following the launch of the purse-sized iPad mini, they concede that "new formats drive new business models," and while this is not necessarily a bad thing, they also admit that retooling is expensive, and publishers "can easily spend too heavily just trying to keep up." And it's not just media companies, either; my write-up on the forthcoming Google Play for Education initiative highlights the same fallacy. Google can build the best 'app store' in the business, but a school like...

Noted GigaOM staff writer Laura Hazard Owen has just run a piece in paidContent on Open Road Media, the pioneering all-digital publishing house founded in 2009, also picked up here in TeleRead. After my previous pieces on the marketing and promotional firepower now being directed at e-publishing, I decided to take a closer look at Open Road. [caption id="attachment_85647" align="alignright" width="180"] Jane Friedman, Open Road's CEO[/caption] First off, Open Road is no woolly, wide-eyed startup. Jane Friedman, co-founder and CEO of Open Road, was formerly “President and Chief Executive Officer of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, one of the world's leading English-language publishers and a subsidiary of...

Amazon Fights to Keep Secrets in eBook Trial (Publisher's Weekly) Amazon attorneys last week filed a letter with the court asking that it be allowed to redact sensitive business information about its Kindle e-book program gathered as evidence for the upcoming Apple price-fixing trial. --- CourseSmart Enhances its eTextbook Offerings (Good e-Reader) With some reports showing that the Android platform currently holds about 68% of the market for applications, digital content creators are taking steps to increase their current offerings to meet these customers where their devices are. CourseSmart, a leading provider of digital educational materials and textbooks, has been available on the Android...

Some of you may remember a post we ran last Wednesday, May 1, about a ridiculous website calling itself Blognix, and which had seemingly cloned TeleRead's entire site—content, design and all. Well, I suppose I was remiss in mentioning that just two days later, and without too much of a hassle, frankly, the head of NAPCO's IT department succeeded in squashing Blognix like the sad and pitiful little project it was. Incredibly though, Blognix morphed like an amoeba almost immediately after ridding itself of its bogus TeleRead cloak; it's now cloning a website called Cheap Tech For Me. Take a look for...

Honestly, I hadn't even heard about this until I woke up this morning and checked my phone, but apparently today—that's Friday, May 3, 2013—is something of a holiday in the digital publishing community. It's the fifth annual International Day Against DRM. Huh. The organization behind the holiday—which in reality is more of an awareness-raising movement—is known as Defective by Design. As the DBD website explains, "We are a participatory and grassroots campaign exposing DRM-encumbered devices and media for what they really are: Defective by Design. We are working together to eliminate DRM as a threat to innovation in media, the privacy of...

Penguin Group’s self-publishing service, Author Solutions, is being sued, Courthouse News Service reported earlier this week. The complaint by three authors states that Author Solutions cheated them out of royalties and charged them for typos that were inserted by the company. There was an interesting passage in the Courthouse News Service article that gave financial and statistical information about Author Solutions. "Author Solutions' revenues are estimated at $100 million per year," the complaint states. "Of the $100 million Author Solutions earns as revenue, approximately one third of that amount, or millions annually, comes from book sales. The rest of its revenue is derived from...

I am four months into my DRM-free year, and so far have spent just a fraction of my usual book budget. In my highest year—the year agency pricing came out, and I binged in preparation—I spent $1,300, for an average of $108 per month. This year, I am down to less than $20 per month, and most of it spent on a handful of Kindle Deals of the Day, and the odd indie read. So, where has my book spending—and my reading time—gone in April? My one book purchase this month was a study guide for a course I'm taking. That...

Adult Hardcover Revenues Down Nearly 7% in 2012 (GalleyCat) Next Time, I'll Self-Publish (The Indie Reader) Add Content From Other Services to your Kobo Library (Kobo Books) 3M Cloud Library Unveils Better Tools, More Titles (Digital Book World) Kindle Daily Deals: The Crown by Nancy Bilyeau (and 3 others)    ...

Yahoo Acquires News-Reading iPhone App Summly (Paid Content) Digg Details Google Reader Replacement Plans (Good e-Reader) What if the Google Readers Just Don't Come Back? (Tech Crunch) Evernote for Android Gets Big Update (GigaOM) Kindle Daily Deals: Burning Man by Alan Russell (and 3 others) ...