It's easy to always talk about publishers who get it wrong, and yes, lots of them do. Bookish, anyone? (Where you can get recommendations, but it's all a one way street, and many, if not most, of their articles are aimed at books or authors published by the houses behind the site.) Tor, an imprint of Macmillan, gets it right. About once a week, they send out a newsletter packed full of information about movies, TV shows and books. Because they are a sci-fi/fantasy imprint, most of the news is about those genres, but that's OK. Most of their readers are likely...

When Amazon announced the purchase of Goodreads, many readers were skeptical about the future of the social reading site. Goodreads allowed users to add reviews and keep track of the books they read and interact with others on the site. Some readers are concerned with how the site might change and are looking for an alternative. Here are a couple of sites that you might consider: Library Thing – The site claims to have 1.6 million users and calls itself “the world’s largest book club.” Books are catalogued from Amazon, The Library of Congress and other sites. It should be noted that Amazon is...

While it’s odd to think of an organization backed by the  Penguin, Hachette and Simon & Schuster as a startup, Bookish, the new book-recommendation and -discovery site is essentially that. After two years in development under three CEOs, Bookish is now a reality, a place where users can get recommendations—based on titles or groups of titles they know they already like—and then, importantly, purchase them. Like the Random House project BookScout, the idea, on one level, is to facilitate discovery across the industry, for the good of the industry. And while users can discover just about any book, the books they can purchase...

Earlier this month, I wrote about the launch of Bookish. At the time, their e-reading apps were "coming soon." And now they are here. Are we impressed? Not really. It's a bare bones e-reading app with nothing to recommend it. The Android version isn't bad. You can override publisher defaults to get some font and formatting choices. There is a night version, if you like that, and you can personalize both background and text colors. The layout on the page is serviceable but unexciting. I'd still say you're better off downloading the book and using Aldiko, which does work with Adobe...

Bookish has launched with much fanfare. Some good. Some bad. Nate over at The Digital Reader had an amusing look at their terms of service. DBW has three reasons they will succeed and three reasons they will fail. Hedging their bets much? So I decided to try using the site and assess it from a usability perspective. The first thing I tried didn't work out so well. There's a big box in the middle of the page that says "Enter a Book." I assumed I would enter a book title and get some recommendations based on that title. Failing that, I thought at...

eReaders Not Selling Well in German Bookstores (The Digital Reader) Why Using Creative Commons Licensed Material is Not as Easy as it Looks (Techdirt) Bookish: Will it Succeed? (Digital Book World) Libraries Lobby Publishers to Change eBook Policies (Penn Live) Kindle Daily Deals: Justice Denied by J.A. Jance (and 3 others)...

Copyright, Plagiarism and the Internet (The Guardian) U of Chicago Press Launches DRM-Free eBook Line (Boing Boing) Kobo Lowers Commission Rates on Affiliate Program (Good e-Reader) Bookish Launches New Website (Digital Book World) Kindle Daily Deals: The Pain Scale by Taylor Dilts (and 3 others)...

From the press release: Bookish (www.bookish.com), a new digital platform for readers, is set to launch this summer it was announced today. Backed by Hachette Book Group, Penguin Group (USA), and Simon & Schuster, Bookish has been designed to provide readers -- from the most casual to the most dedicated -- with a personalized experience connecting them with their favorite authors and books through original editorial features, unique tools and more. The AOL Huffington Post Media Group is partnering with the site to engage users with Bookish content across the network's wide range of destination sites; AOL will provide advertising sales...