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At one Colorado library, even plant seeds can be borrowed

Dan Eldridge — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 03:06:25 +0000

Is it just us, or does it seem as if there’s an unusually large number of quirky library stories floating around lately? Thanks in no small part to the digital revolution, many municipal libraries today are watching their budgets shrinks at they same time they find themselves having to defend against accusations of irrelevance. But there [...]

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Pay to Browse: Why it will never work for bookstores

Joanna Cabot — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:00:00 +0000

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 [...]

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Has the public perception of self-publishing finally changed?

Susan Lulgjuraj — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 17:00:50 +0000

Self-publishing a book can come with pre-conceived notions from readers, other writers and even publishers. People used to think self-publishing a book meant it wasn’t good enough to get picked up by traditional houses. However, the stigma of self-publishing is changing. Success stories have become more and more abundant, and the shock those successes caused [...]

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Morning Links — E-Reading stories you may have missed

Dan Eldridge — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:00:26 +0000

Blind Date with a Free eBook (Galleycat) Students Still Not Taking to E-Textbooks, New Data Show (Digital Book World) Barnes & Noble’s Big Problem — and a Solution (Digital Book World) Why Traditional Publishing Is Really In A ‘Golden Age’: (NPR) The Most Borrowed Library Books and Authors in UK 2011-2012 (Info Docket) Kindle Daily [...]

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Morning Links — DRM, Robotic Librarians and more

Dan Eldridge — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 16:48:53 +0000

Is This the Most Amazing Library in the World? (Flavorwire) Don’t hold your breath waiting for Amazon to give you Kindle copies of your books (Paid Content) An Open Letter to Audible and Amazon: Stop the DRM (ZDNet) NBA Star Aims To Inspire Young Readers With ‘Slam Dunk’ [...]

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Need Library E-Books to Feed Your New Gadget? Here’s the Answer

David Rothman — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 14:15:01 +0000

If you can’t find the right library e-books for your new Kindle, Nook, iPad or other gizmo, you’re not alone. More than 100 patrons of the District of Columbia Public Library were lined up electronically today for 10 e-book copies of The Racketeer, John Grisham’s new novel about the murder of a federal judge. Some 400+ D.C. library [...]

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Morning Links — Are print book sales up … or down?!

Dan Eldridge — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 13:30:00 +0000

Print book sales rise hailed as a sign of fightback in a digital world (The Guardian) Print book sales soar to three-year high (The Bookseller) E-Book Reading Jumps; Print Book Reading Declines (Pew Internet & American Life Project) ‘Fifty Shades Is The One That Got Away. At Least From Me (NPR) Kindle Daily Deals: Water for Elephants [...]

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Morning Links — Are e-books really killing traditional publishing?

Dan Eldridge — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 14:30:10 +0000

Looking Forward to 2013 (Digital Book World) Good-bye books, hello e-books (ZDNet) E-Books Destroying Traditional Publishing? The Story’s Not That Simple (NPR) Kindle Daily Deals: Under the Dome by Stephen King; Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz; and two other choices * * *

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Is Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore the first novel for the TeleRead generation?

Dan Eldridge — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 16:23:22 +0000

“Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a story about a young man who loses his job as part of the Great Recession of the early part of the 21st century, and gets a new one working a night-shift at a 24-hour bookstore in San Francisco. He quickly discovers that there’s much more than meets the eye to [...]

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{AUDIO} NPR on E-Books

Dan Eldridge — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 22:58:02 +0000

Over the last few years, NPR and its many affiliate stations have done a fantastic job in their reporting of the changes taking place in the publishing industry today. Many of those stations, it turns out, seem to have a soft spot for e-books. I figured it might be fun, and maybe even useful, to compile some of NPR’s [...]

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To pirate or not to pirate: Convenience vs compensation in the Internet age

Chris Meadows — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:39:32 +0000

Here are two articles that expressly discuss pirated music, but a lot of the same issues of morality and artist compensation apply to any pirated media—movies, games, and, yes, e-books. They make an interesting presentation of two sides of the piracy argument: what can be done to get artists paid for their music? On one [...]

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Publishers, DRM, unauthorized sharing, and the NPR example

Chris Meadows — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:00:57 +0000

We’ve heard a lot of people arguing that publishers should fight Amazon by dropping DRM. However, in The Scholarly Kitchen, Joseph Esposito has written a long and thoughtful piece looking at the possible drawbacks of this approach. Esposito first looks at the question of whether unauthorized sharing of e-books increases the market for them. His [...]

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The information age could require readers to learn fact-checking skills

Chris Meadows — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 22:15:00 +0000

On NPR’s Talk of the Nation today, authors Tim Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach discussed their new book, Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of Information Overload. The thesis of the book seems to be that the more information we’re bombarded with by the Internet, the more adept we need to become at [...]

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Is free on-line writing devaluing paid prose?

Chris Meadows — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 05:04:05 +0000

A few days ago, NPR carried an interesting story looking at the sale of the Huffington Post to AOL. As David Carr pointed out, much of the value of the $315 million sale was created by bloggers working for free. When you look at personal blogs and social media, you might see random people telling [...]

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Homeless newspapers help some homeless afford homes

Chris Meadows — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 19:11:30 +0000

As much attention as e-newspapers are getting for threatening the livelihood of printed newspapers, there are some areas where selling e-papers just won’t do. One particular case is that of “homeless newspapers,” papers written by and sold by homeless people. NPR’s All Things Considered carried a story on these papers a couple of days ago, [...]

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