Canada's Digital Divide Likely to Widen Due to Access and Adoption Failures (Michael Geist) Coursera Begins to Make Money (Inside Higher Ed) Can Indie Bookstores be Saved? (Digital Book World) B&N Upgrades Pubit! to Nook Press (Publisher's Weekly) Kindle Daily Deals: Sucker's Portfolio by Kurt Vonnegut (and 3 others)...

Book retailer Barnes & Noble has reportedly reduced the amount of titles it stocks by Simon & Schuster authors and lowered the number of S&S books on display as it continues to be embroiled in a debate with the publisher. Neither the chain nor Simon & Schuster would specify exactly what is being negotiated, but sources cited  by The New York Times told the newspaper that Barnes & Noble wanted more funds for displaying S&S titles in coveted spots in the store and to pay lower costs for the books themselves. The bookstore chain also wants more money for events promoting Simon...

Ebooks: Newspapers should capitalize on their archives (The Guardian) Bookstore browsing vital for publishing, research finds (The Bookseller) Are African writers and readers ready for the e-book revolution? (The Creative Penn) Short Books + Fast Books (and Diet) = Indie Success (Publishing Perspectives) Kindle Daily Deals: Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut (and 3 others)...

E-book discovery by readers has been much in the news lately, and it's definitely an issue for authors, especially those who are self-published. While readers continue to find their next great book in online stores, some still browse brick and mortar bookstores. Wouldn't it be nice if they could find and buy e-books in a store? No, not showrooming Books-A-Million to buy a book on Amazon. Buy actually buying the e-book in the store, so that the author and the store both make money on the deal. Bitingduck Press has an answer. It's still new, so don't look for it yet...

Bittersweet news came out this weekend that Nicholas Hoare, a landmark Toronto bookstore, is set to close April 1, 2013. The store is known for its eclectic stock and elegant interior, and has been in operation in three different cities, at various junctures, since 1971. The shocker? This article on the closure says there isn't actually any 'untoward' reason for the closure—no 'competition from big chains will destroy us all' or 'Amazon is killing the little guys' or 'ebooks are causing the death of print.' It's simply that Hoare's lease was up for renewal and Mr. Hoare had a choice to...

TeleRead posted earlier about an idea that was floated by Victoria Barnsley, a HarperCollins CEO, during a recent NPR interview: the idea of charging people for the privilege of browsing in bookstores. The idea was that they'd pay to browse, and then go home and order online from the vendor of their choosing. The analogy Barnsley gave with this was that of a high-end clothing store—say, for wedding dresses—charging a nominal trying fee that is taken out of the cost of your purchase. But I think that analogy is a faulty one, and I think the true analogy demonstrates why 'pay...

  'Tis the season for reading -- both print and e-books. But can the two really coexist? For this video report, I checked in with three bookstores in Chapel Hill and Durham, N.C., and asked store managers and customers whether they preferred print or e-books. Some of their answers were expected, such as people's love of the smell of print books, and how they enjoyed having a break from staring into a screen. E-book users praised their devices for their portability, and enjoyed being able to carry multiple books with them without being weighed down... Read Full Article... Source: Media Shift (PBS) * * *  ...

It’s the week before Christmas, and the post office and local stores are full of people I’ve never seen before. Where do they shop the rest of the year, these folk? Do they live in suspended animation till December? I can only surmise that the warmer weather here in Oz wakes them up, like locusts, just to clog the supermarket aisles and make buying a postage stamp a two-hour operation. But at least they got me thinking about one of the nicest and most often overlooked aspects of purchasing e-books—you don’t have to relate to the other customers. Not that bookstore...

The popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey continues, and people keep trying to make sense of it. The Bookseller’s blog had a couple of interesting posts lately on the phenomenon. Scott Pack writes of how the book came from right out of nowhere, completely overturning established expectations, and now publishers and bookstores are scrambling to capitalize on the momentum. Expect a bunch of copycat covers to appear over the next few months. Pack believes that this is a great thing, regardless of the quality or lack thereof of Fifty Shades itself, not because it will get people to read...

Nick Bilton has a piece in the New York Times in which he tells of how he wandered into an old bookshop in New York and stared (and smelled) nostalgically at the printed pages all around. As an avowed e-reader now, he nonetheless misses the experience of shopping in bookstores. For those of us who have switched to e-readers , the e-book shopping experience, while immediate and painless, is about as sentimental as a trip to the family doctor. There are no creaking doors, or bells that announce your arrival so someone can smile at you as you walk inside. There...

It came as a surprise a couple of months ago when pre-eminent UK bookstore chain Waterstones announced it would be entering a partnership with Amazon to sell Kindles. Now that the shock has worn off, Publishing Perspectives reports, a number of UK publishers and bookstores are speaking out (mostly anonymously on the publishers’ part, of course) about it. The consensus among publishers tends to be backhanded admiration of how shrewd the deal is for Waterstones, while at the same time recognizing it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the industry. One publisher compares it to “Vichy France,”...

Can bookstores survive in an e-book world? Leigh Beadon of Techdirt thinks they can, if they play to their strengths. Beadon points out that when people talk nostalgically about bookstores, they are usually referring to their local independent stores, not the soulless big box chains. Where the big box chains have been outcompeted by Amazon on the only advantages they had to offer—convenience, selection, and price—the independent stores offer a sense of community, which isn’t as easy to outcompete on-line. While there has been concern that customers would use such a store as a “showroom” where they look at...