TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics

Book Review: Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne

Juli Monroe — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:08:07 +0000

Summer is almost here, and it’s time to find some light vacation reading. If you’re a fan of light fantasy and haven’t tried The Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne, I’d suggest you give them a look. The basic premise is that the main character, Atticus O’Sullivan, is the last Druid, and he’s 21 centuries [...]

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Rob Ford, Crack Cocaine, and Editorial Responsibility in the Days of Instant News

Joanna Cabot — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:14:08 +0000

In my grandfather’s day, if you saw it on the front page of the newspaper, it must be true. My, how times have changed! A bizarre story is gripping my city this week, and nobody knows if it’s true or if it isn’t. The fact that somebody told it to somebody else is news enough! [...]

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Stephen King’s latest book will not go digital — for now

Susan Lulgjuraj — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:11:00 +0000

Whenever Stephen King releases a novel, readers line up to grab his latest book. But those looking to download the digital version of Joyland might never get the option. King will not release Joyland as an e-book when it comes out on June 4, according to the Wall Street Journal. King, an e-book pioneer, held [...]

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Calling All Young Adult Publishers!

Lynn Rosen — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:44:34 +0000

I’d like to introduce you to my friend Alexander Christou. Xander, as he likes to be called, is eleven years old and one of the smartest kids I know. He’s a passionate reader, a great soccer player, speaks Greek (his father is from Greece), and is a more engaging, interesting conversationalist than some adults I [...]

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Morning Roundup: Yahoo confirms $1.1B Tumblr acquisition

Dan Eldridge — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:06:03 +0000

Yahoo confirms $1.1 billion Tumblr acquisition (CNET) Yahoo announced the news on Monday, saying that it “promises not to screw [Tumblr] up.” Yahoo paid $1.1 billion for Tumblr, and the company has confirmed that “substantially all of which is payable in cash.” When can a book be digital-only, and when does it need to be print too? [...]

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Literary Agent Names Tiger After Herself: One endangered species helps another?

Paul St John Mackintosh — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:53 +0000

As reported in the San Francisco Appeal, a literary agent, Jillian Manus, paid $47,000 for the privilege of naming a Sumatran tiger cub at San Francisco Zoo “Jillian” — “presumably after herself.” The naming rights were sold off as part of the zoo’s ZooFest fundraiser. Before jumping to conclusions about how much money Jillian Manus [...]

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Rumor: Yahoo Allegedly Acquiring Tumblr

Aggregated Content — Sat, 18 May 2013 17:30:29 +0000

By Christina Jones Rumors are swirling that Yahoo is in talks to acquire Tumblr. Apparently Ken Goldman, Yahoo’s CFO, explained the Internet giant’s concern for its aging users. In an attempt to appeal to the 18-24 year-old-demographic, they’re seriously considering bring Tumblr on board. “One of our challenges is we have an aging demographic,” explained Goldman [...]

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Is anyone still paying attention to the DOJ/ebook antitrust case?

Brian Howard — Sat, 18 May 2013 16:47:07 +0000

I guess I’d forgotten. Now that all the the publishing players have settled, abandoning agency pricing and returning to the wholesale slums, the DOJ/e-book antitrust case, which popped up again in everyone’s news feeds this week, feels a little anticlimactic. The DOJ, perhaps simply because it’s what it found, or perhaps because there’s no one [...]

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Say hey to Paul St John Mackintosh, our newest contributing writer

Paul St John Mackintosh — Sat, 18 May 2013 14:47:06 +0000

My life on the borderland between text and tech started in adolescence as a sci-fi nerd, dreaming of a future that started to come true around the release of the first Star Wars film, and has since been outstripping most fancies from that era year on year, hand over fist. As a writer and editor, [...]

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Weekend Roundup: Lawsuits, Google Glass, Author Appearances and more

Dan Eldridge — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:10:12 +0000

India’s OMICS Publishing Group threatens scholarly critic with $1 billion lawsuit, jail time (Boing Boing) OMICS Publishing Group, an Indian scholarly publisher has threatened to sue one of its critics, Metadata librarian Jeffrey Beall, for $1 billion, and has threatened him with prison time over posts he made to his prominent Scholarly Open Access site. Changes at [...]

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BookLikes, a New Social Reading Platform: Do we really need another?

Juli Monroe — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:37:36 +0000

DBW featured a press release for BookLikes, a new social reading platform that is supposed to combine the features of Tumblr and Goodreads. I consider one of my roles here is to involve trying things out, and potentially wasting my time so you don’t have to waste your. And my reaction to this site? Don’t [...]

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Sony and E Ink are Making a Digital Paper Notepad and it Looks Awesome (Video)

Matthew Marchesano — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:15:11 +0000

I’m an all-day note-taker—my day’s or week’s itinerary, messages to give to someone else, story ideas, ramblings, etc. Unfortunately I’m also a bit of a messy … well, unorganized person, I admit. And as you may guess, those two personality traits usually add up, for me, to lots of unorganized, folded pieces of paper in [...]

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Earl Is the Outdoor Enthusiast’s Dream Survival Tablet

Stanley Goodner — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:19:06 +0000

The best thing about portable digital devices like smartphones and tablets is how they provide such information right at our fingertips. While they excel in cities and urban areas, they don’t always perform the best in extreme outdoor situations. Designed with the outdoor enthusiast in mind, the creator of Earl has engineered a tablet that’s [...]

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App Review: Wunderlist for task management

Juli Monroe — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:23:53 +0000

As soon as I published the post about Astrid being bought by Yahoo and mentioned I was looking for a new app, my in-box started chiming with suggestions. Wunderlist was one of the more interesting ones, and I’ve been checking it out this week. It has some interesting features that make it worth downloading. It’s usable across multiple devices. [...]

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Morning Links: DPLA, Boredom, Web Giants and Digital Kids

Joanna Cabot — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:00:41 +0000

Digital Public Library Raises Questions of Ownership, Permanence, Access (Media Shift) Why would anyone want to attend a party to celebrate the opening of a virtual repository of metadata? A better question might be — what is a virtual repository of metadata? — The Web Giants Are Rising Above Humans and Their Petty Rules, and [...]

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