As e-books emerge as more and more of a popular medium, politicians have to look at new ways of protecting citizens. When many laws were enacted, even decades ago, they were written without much consideration for future digital endeavors. Arizona is the most recent to state to look at e-books, and to move to protect those that read them. A bill is going through the state legislature to add e-books to the current library privacy law, according to the Associated Press. The current state law already prohibits the disclosure of library records without a court order. This bill would protect readers of...

Since I originally posted about Baen’s deal with Amazon, a couple more details of about the deal have come to light. First of all, the deadline for buying any of the old Baen bundles is Saturday, December 15th. That’s when the deal with Amazon goes live, and the old $10, $15, and $18 monthly bundles vanish, replaced by the higher-priced single books only. If there are any old bundles you might want, better look at and snap them up now. They’ll soon be gone. Second, there has been some discussion over what is to happen with the monthly serialized...

Toni Weisskopf has posted a series of messages to the Baen Bar indicating major changes in the offing for the Baen Ebooks (nee Webscriptions) store. Baen is finally on the verge of getting its titles placed directly into Amazon (and is negotiating with others such as Barnes & Noble, etc.) The problem is, that comes with pesky contractual obligations. The changes amount to the following: “Old” bundles containing books that have already been published will no longer be available for bundle-priced purchase. (Already-purchased ones should still be available for download, though it is possible some books may...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone (in the US, anyway—those impatient Canadians celebrated it weeks ago)! Hopefully you are replete with turkey (or ham, whichever you prefer) and spending the day with your families…in which case you probably won’t see this until at least Black Friday. But hey, we can be thankful any time of year. I have a lot to be thankful for this year. I have my family, who are just close enough to spend time with when I want to but far enough away I don’t have to when I don’t. In particular, I’m thankful my Mom survived losing...

Just in time for the holiday season, the Pottermore e-book shop has added gifting options for Harry Potter e-books and audiobooks. The gift e-books or audiobooks can be bought any time from up to six months in advance through the day on which they should be delivered. The books may be downloaded up to eight times each. All Pottermore e-books are multiformat and DRM-free. Pottermore has also just made the tie-in story collection The Tales of Beedle the Bard available as an e-book for the first time, for £3.99 in the U.K. and $5.99 in the U.S., with a...

In his Copyright and Technology Blog, Bill Rosenblatt has an interesting column looking at the Owners’ Rights Initiative, a lobbying coalition of interested parties who have united under the slogan “you bought it, you own it,” seeking to promote the right to resell digital property. The group includes used book vendors such as Powell’s, movie rental firm Redbook, and used merchandise outlets like eBay, Overstock, and others. But it also includes a number of public library advocacy organizations, because if you “own” something like an e-book, you also have the right to lend it. The group seems particularly interested...

Not everything always goes smoothly over at Amazon. PaidContent reports that, for a few hours Thursday night, it seems Amazon inadvertently disabled the Kindle e-book buy buttons on Big Six publishers (and who knows what other publishers?) for a few hours. The company reported it was a “technical issue”. It also affected users’ ability to buy Kindle e-books or download titles they’d already bought. The funny thing to me is that this little glitch wouldn’t even be a news item if it weren’t for Amazon’s habit of turning off buy buttons to punish publishers who won’t give it the...

Seems like only yesterday that DC Comics was adding the Nook tablets to its formerly exclusive deal with the Kindle Fire platform, and releasing graphic novels via e-book stores. But the thing about DC on those color tablets was that the comics were actually sold through third-party stores like comiXology, or DC’s own app Vertigo. However, today DC announced it will be selling digital comics in single-issue (DRM-protected) format directly through the Kindle, Nook, and iBooks e-book stores. DC will start with current-release issues, then move into backlist titles. 70 titles were available as of today. At the moment...

You could dismiss this title as a fake question, since obviously it is unlikely that I'd write about the topic here, and still come up with a negative answer. But still, I feel it's a question worth posing, if only for the issues it raises. Books are customarily supposed to open new mental vistas for us, spark new trains of thought, stimulate the mind, and ultimately shape our development as thinking people. "How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book?" wrote Thoreau. That may seem very nebulous to the average genre...

“Showrooming.” While I can’t say I’d heard the specific term before, it’s easy to understand what it’s talking about—the practice of using a physical store as a “showroom” where you can examine something and then go buy it online. This is one of the trends many pro-agency pricing comment submitters noted in their comments to the DoJ, though in the DoJ’s response it was largely referred to as “free-riding.” As I mentioned the other day, a lot of people do “showrooming” in bookstores with their Kindles. However, it’s also long been a popular activity on smartphones for general-purpose...

Are you still in the habit of ordering physical things from Amazon, but don’t have a way to ensure you’ll be home when they arrive? Or at least need some way of making sure that Kindle you’re ordering arrives safely so you can stop buying the physical books? Amazon’s expanding its locker delivery program, report TechCrunch and The Verge. It now boasts locations in Seattle, New York, Washington, DC, London, and Silicon Valley (San Carlos, Palo Alto, and Mountain View, California), as well as possibly some others that haven’t been publicized yet but that can presumably be located...

The Economist has an article which summarizes the current state of affairs around e-book library lending. Publishers have an awkward relationship with libraries when it comes to allowing books to be lent, since someone who borrows a book may not have any need to buy it after reading it, which could account (at least in the publishers’ minds) for lost revenue. Publishers were also upset when Overdrive began partnering with Amazon for Kindle library lending, including an offer to “buy this book” after the checkout expired. It also mentions Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library for Prime subscribers. ...