This book had me diving into my current e-book projects within the first few minutes of opening the review copy, looking at how to improve the preview, feedback hooks, tagging, category choice, etc. And by the end, I had a whole checklist of sites to visit, tweaks to make, programs to sign up for. That's how useful it is. Irish author and self-publishing proselyte David Gaughran has turned himself into quite an advocate for the e-publishing revolution. Advocate is putting it mildly; I wouldn't like to be the publisher or vanity press on the receiving end of a diatribe like this....

Penguin Books, along with its seriously talented team of graphic designers, is making great play of its latest rebooting of the George Orwell franchise. Coverage from the Huffington Post to the Creative Review lauds Penguin’s brave and high-minded initiative to relaunch Orwell’s works with bold cover designs that recall the original Penguin editions—only, in the case of Nineteen Eighty-Four, with the title erased to signify censorship. Penguin Classics’ own website states: "In recognition of one of Britain’s greatest and most influential writers, Penguin Books, the Orwell Estate and The Orwell Prize are launching the inaugural ‘Orwell Day’ on 21st January with new editions of...

I was lucky enough to be gifted with an Android PC on a USB stick this Christmas: the Rikomagic MK802 III model, latest in a series from one of the originators of this category, although there are plenty of other makers and models now. And though it's obviously not something you can carry around to read e-books off, like a tablet or phone, it has surprising potential as an e-reading device, most of all for the educational market. As the Rikomagic website explains, once this super-tiny, pocket-sized PC is up and running, "it's a bit like turning your TV into a...

I was unpleasantly reminded of the sometimes virulent passions that can be unleashed by the e-book debate on Mayan apocalypse day, as I was sitting in a cafe near Budapest's Chain Bridge, reading on my Nexus 7. A middle-aged English couple were sitting at the next table, and as they left, the man launched into an angry anti-e-reader rant to his partner: how the book had been around for thousands of years and was unimprovable; how if he was given such a device he would throw it away ... and so on. As usual, I was too slow on the uptake...

What We Really Talk About When We Talk About E-Books This post was inspired by a few of the recent complaints posted to TeleRead about e-publishing standards, and by some of the other more Luddite anti-e-book comments that have appeared here and elsewhere online. I think it's worth reminding both e-book-pros and the anti-e-book contingent that in fact all books have been e-books from the word go, for many years now. What I mean is that almost all new publications since the mid-1980s have been laid out in software and digitized in at least some stage of their life cycle from manuscript to print. There...