"The new BlackBerry Z10 is designed to keep you moving," reads the copy on the website of a new promotional campaign for the recently-launched smartphone. "So we've given it to three people who never stop. These incredibly talented and ambitious people are always looking for the next exciting challenge." Yeah, that's pretty corny. But I was certainly surprised to learn that one of the three people involved in the Z10 campaign was the author (and longtime TeleRead favorite) Neil Gaiman. (The campaign's other two artists are the singer-songwriter Alicia Keys, and the filmmaker Robert Rodriquez.) But here's the interesting bit: As the promotion's website explains,...

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...

One of the oft-heard plaints whenever someone compares how the music industry and the book industry should deal with pirates is that authors don’t have the same ability to earn a living from “live shows” that musicians do if their recorded media stops bringing in enough money. But one literary agency thinks that may not necessarily have to be true. The Literary Platform has an article looking at agency Conville & Walsh’s efforts to create a new revenue stream for authors and agents out of live appearances, with a speakers agency called “Hire Intelligence”. The agency has already created...

From the Open Rights Group: Neil Gaiman is a bestselling author and ORG patron. He has long been one of the top writers in modern comics, as well as writing books for readers of all ages. He is listed in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the top ten living post-modern writers, and is a prolific creator of works of prose, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics, and drama. He is best known for his science fiction and fantasy work, including his best-selling graphic novel "The Sandman". He was awarded the Defender of Liberty Award by the Comic Book...

On Publishing Perspectives Daniel Kalder talks with Scott Walker, president of Brain Candy LLC and one of the people behind the Creative Commons shared-universe project Runes of Gallidon. Walker believes that there is a gap between creators of commercial media, and the fans who enjoy the commercial media enough to create their own derivative works based on it and distribute them for free. He thinks the gap can be bridged, with financial benefits for all. In Walker’s proposed “transmedia” projects like Runes of Gallidon, there are gatekeepers on the world to make sure that any prospective new additions fit...

Hopefully you don’t need a Famous Author to validate your purchasing decisions, so I’m not posting about Neil Gaiman’s opinions on the Kindle just to make you feel better/worse about your new ereader. Instead, I thought it might provide some useful things to think about when you shop for your next device, or when you buy ebooks in the years to come. The Kindle, he writes in a forthcoming article for Locus magazine, “wins” over print in two areas. First, it’s easier to read than a printed book if you need larger sized text, because it can...

I am in downtown Kansas City right now, waiting in the Hyatt lobby for ConQuesT 41 registration to open. I am a short distance away from historic Union Station, and most of that distance can be covered by enclosed, air-conditioned skywalks. If any of our readers are in Kansas City and would like to say hello in person, let me know! Expect updates from me to be fairly rare this weekend, unless I can find time amid other things to put in some entries. I do hope to get in an interview or two with convention guests, and...