Scott Sigler, the novelist-podcaster whom TeleBlog helped discover, will reportedly take home $500K plus from his three-book deal with Random House. No question: there's big money in plenty of other creators and creations online. So why couldn't smart publishers of paper books watch the best-seller lists at Fictionwise and other e-bookstores, then just bid away? Might e-books sales be an excellent indicator of p-book potential? Well, read on. It isn't quite that simple. But first---some pro-correlation arguments. Correlation in Japan---among cellphone novels In a post to the eBook Community list, novelist Ed Howdershelt, whose sci-fi novel is now Number #3 at Fictionwise, suggests that e-book...

Michael Banks wants a darker green, and I myself agree. I'd also like the photos to be flush vertically with the text. CSS tweaks can restore certain things back to the old TeleBlog look, fortunately. Encouragingly, Bill Janssen likes the way the comment boxes appear on his high-res monitor. So what are your thoughts on the new look---pro and con. This is actually the WordPress Almost Spring theme in its original condition. On the positive side for certain, we finally have a good WYSIWYG editor, plus the already-mentioned guidelines for contributors. Come on. Don't just read us. Write for us and be part...

Note that we have created a Submission Guideline for TeleRead. For future use, the link is in the upper right of the blog's home page....

Educators and librarians rejoiced. Harry Potter was driving kids back to books. But will the supposed good times go on, now that the series is winding down? To what extent has the Potter phenomenon really helped literacy among the young? Well, perhaps not as much as hoped, if you go by the New York Times and Print is Dead---following up on a Boston Globe mention of a forthcoming study. Net among the villains The Internet is among the distractions driving the young from books, at least the paper variety; just consider the amount of time devoted to social sites, the usual IMs and,...

DigitalPulp Publishing (DPP), a member of IDPF, is the first publisher (as far as we know) to release an e-book in IDPF’s new “epub” format: My Ántonia by Willa S. Cather. This e-book is being freely distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. At present our e-book is only downloadable from IDPF’s web site, but will soon be available through DPP’s site. In addition, I’ve posted a message to the public IDPF Standards Forum summarizing, in gory detail, which features of OPS 2.0 are and are not supported (OPS 2.0 is the backbone specification underlying “epub” — currently OPS 2.0...

I went to the Alexandria Public Library yesterday while my favorite Shell Service Station labored on my 1988 Honda. Among other items, I checked out a p-copy of Saving Graces by a former Alexandria resident, Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. Just as ancient as the 1988 Honda Unfortunately, along the way, I was reminded how the library in one respect is as ancient as my car. In this supposedly modern Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C., the public library still doesn't carry e-books with text except for a horrid NetLibrary arrangement through which you apparently can only view e-books rather...

Moderator's note with quiz answer: Tarzans of the Apes is the bowdlerized work spotted recently in the archives of the valuable Project Gutenberg. Congratulations to the quiz winner, the sharp-eyed Munango-Keewati---and also to Jon Noring for his never-ending efforts to encourage providers of public domain content to reveal the provenances of books. Below, our anonymous spotter offers further thoughts. - David Rothman. In an earlier post I asked blog readers "What famous book has been bowdlerized and currently resides in the Project Gutenberg Archive?" The answer is Tarzan of the Apes. I discovered this while listening to an audiobook version of...

The TeleBlog's daily readership often surpasses that of LibraryJournal.com and normally exceeds the audience of The Book Industry Standard if you go by Alexa.com. Would you believe, the TeleBlog even beats Publishers Weekly on rare occasions. Check out the numbers yourself. We may well be the most popular Web blog dedicated to e-book industry news and views, as opposed to, say, mobile news in general. Whether the topic is DRM or Iraq, we'll generally cover it from an e-book angle, and this focus has helped put us on the map. At various times we've drawn links from major sites ranging from...

Carly and I are leaving Statesville, North Carolina, to head back to the Washington, D.C., area. That means no new TeleBlog entries from me until Sunday or Monday. Enjoy the holidays, and if you, too, will be driving along Route 77 through the Blue Ridge Mountains, please watch out for those trucks! Recommended read: 2006: Looking Back and Looking Forward---blind blogger David Fauxcheux's discussion of tech predictions for '07 and beyond....

I perp the TeleBlog from a brick building on a grassy hillside in the state of Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. But as with Branko Collin, a native Netherlander based in Amsterdam, not that far from iRex headquarters, our regulars are everywhere. And today we welcome Snappy from Asia, a Chinese-speaking geek who wrote the informative Jornada 720 post above. Here's Snappy's self-bio: I'm a tech geek who has been programming since the mid 80s. Upon graduating from college with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, I worked as a R&D software engineer in a multimedia tech firm...

Roger Sperberg, an author and e-book pioneer who has worked for Random House, Conde Nast Publications and the Electronic Directions consulting firm, is the newest contributor to the TeleRead blog. He is an important and much-cherished addition. TeleRead has always advocated a smooth transition from paper to electronic books, and that means the participation of people with traditional publishing industry experience--not just them but also them. Beyond that, he brings a wealth of technical knowledge about e-book standards. And best of all, rather than fixating on the past, he is looking ahead--as shown by his just-posted article on the Plucker...

Free, city-provided wi-fi has come to a downtown section of my hometown, Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac from Washington, D.C. The usual suspects say muni wireless is a waste of money. But a poll online by Washington TV station WRC showed a 90-percent approval rating with 340 voters participating at the time I dropped by. Sounds like fun–browsing e-libraries and news sites while taking in the breeze by the river. Of course, I think it would be cooler if Alexandria did the wi-fi routine in a housing project and provided families with free handhelds and adequate tech support–along with guidance...