By Dan Bloom A little more than a year ago, I wrote a piece for TeleRead that was headlined, ''Cli-fi ebook to launch on Earth Day in April." The article was about a cli-fi novel by Tulsa writer Jim Laughter titled Polar City Red, which I produced and packaged from far away in Taiwan—although every word in the novel belongs to Mr. Laughter, and all the royalties go to his bank account. In the year since his novel hit the book-ordering sites, it sold 271 copies nationwide, which just goes to show that selling e-books, especially dystopian novels about polar cities in...

My life on the borderland between text and tech started in adolescence as a sci-fi nerd, dreaming of a future that started to come true around the release of the first Star Wars film, and has since been outstripping most fancies from that era year on year, hand over fist. As a writer and editor, though, I only got into electronic text by chance when I took a job editing and localizing entries for the first generation of Microsoft's Encarta CD-ROM encyclopedia in the mid-1990s, when multimedia, never mind the Internet, was only just getting going. I spent the next five...

Some of you may remember a post we ran last Wednesday, May 1, about a ridiculous website calling itself Blognix, and which had seemingly cloned TeleRead's entire site—content, design and all. Well, I suppose I was remiss in mentioning that just two days later, and without too much of a hassle, frankly, the head of NAPCO's IT department succeeded in squashing Blognix like the sad and pitiful little project it was. Incredibly though, Blognix morphed like an amoeba almost immediately after ridding itself of its bogus TeleRead cloak; it's now cloning a website called Cheap Tech For Me. Take a look for...

I had a pretty bizarre email waiting for me in my in-box this morning. It was from a fellow I'll call Bill, since I don't know if he would actually appreciate being identified here or not. At any rate, Bill was getting in touch, odd as it may sound, to alert me to the fact that TeleRead had somehow—at some point—been cloned. Bill proceded to tell me that a website of his had previously been cloned by someone using the IP address 192.155.93.220—he thinks they also used 184.22.242.240—and he was eventually able to stop the cloners by simply blocking their IP address. (He's...

The public library question is one we ask ourselves frequently here at TeleRead: In general, how well—or how poorly—are libraries adapting to the Internet age? And how, exactly, are library patrons using their local branches? (As low-cost coffee shops or free Internet cafes, perhaps?) And for that matter, do most patrons consider their local library's print book collection to be just as crucial as it ever was? Tough questions, all of them. If you spend a moment studying the infographic below, which was sent to us today from the website CityTownInfo.com, you'll likely come to the same conclusion we've come to...

TeleRead has earlier covered two stories about some bad publishing experiments: The first was about the scammy contracts Random House was offering authors who signed with their digital-only imprint. The second was about a Canadian newspaper, the National Post, which was trying to extract 'licensing' payments from readers who were trying to quote from their stories in a legal way under fair use rules. In both these stories, I pointed out that neither business was being illegal, per se—but that they were being fishy, and would learn their lesson if people raised a loud enough hue and cry. Well, it's happened! I...

I read a lot of news stories as part of my work for TeleRead, and lately, I've noticed that many are dominated by a decidedly gloomy tone. Apple gets sued. Readers get sued. All five of the big publishers get sued. Then there are the copyright squabbles, the fair use disputes, author's rights, reader's rights, corporate overlord rights ... it just goes on and on. And it's all terribly complicated and difficult and cumbersome, and ... well, pointless, really. This is an industry that's under threat from a million competing forms of entertainment, 95 percent of which can be accessed off the...

"Over the years I've often quoted David H. Rothman of Alexandria, Va., a pioneer in the entire field of electronic reading devices," writes James Fallows, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, in an article about U.S. infrastructure that was published earlier this morning on The Atlantic's website. "[Rothman] was talking about his "Teleread" proposal many, many years [before] products like the Kindle, Nook, or iPad had been conceived." [caption id="attachment_79310" align="alignright" width="130"] David Rothman[/caption] In the same post, Fallows also emphasizes Rothman's philosophy of e-readers as "'public goods' and indispensable parts of the modern infrastructure of the 21st century, in much the way public libraries...

I used to be a library junkie with books piled on my nightstand. I’d be constantly renewing books until I finished all of them. There had to be a way to escape the clutter. That’s when I discovered e-book apps for my old Blackberry. I bought plenty of books and read and read and read. I even developed what I called ‘Blackberry Eye,’ small wrinkles under my eyes from staring down at my phone all day. After jumping into the digital book world, I haven’t looked back. Six years later, I have the original Nook, Nook Touch and a Nexus 7. I spend plenty...

Those of you who read TeleRead regularly probably noticed that our coverage was a little bit thin last week ... but not to worry! I've got an alibi: I was in Las Vegas since last Sunday, covering the 2013 International CES for NAPCO—my employer, and TeleRead's parent company. This was my first-ever trip to CES, and while it was a huge milestone in my still-burgeoning consumer technology career, here's the God's honest truth: The experience totally and completely smacked the life out of me, both physically and psychologically. I walked for miles and miles, literally, every day. In fact, I walked so much—while at the same time straining...

The majority of you out there who follow this site on a regular basis have long been aware of the fact that TeleRead's once mighty Twitter account has sat sadly dormant for quite some time now. Sleeping, as it were. But thanks in no small part to the crackerjack social media team that toils late into the night inside a top-secret, restricted access bunker—which just so happens to be located three stories beneath the basement of NAPCO's World Headquarters building in North Philadelphia—we're back online once again. We'd be pleased and honored if you'd consider following our account, @teleread, where you'll find links to our stories, retweets from...

Help Tell, Win Prizes Tell us who you are! Technology Tell (under whose umbrella TeleRead sits - or stands, or lies, or whatever) needs your help to complete our extremely short reader survey. Answer five questions -- completely anonymously -- so we can better serve you the best technology content on the web. Take the survey now by clicking here To thank you for your help, eight lucky readers will have a chance to win one of the following prizes: -Bits Limited's Smart Strip Energy Saving Smart Surge Protector -myCharge's Portable Power Bank 3000 -HMDX's Jam Wireless Speaker -Crimson's Pocket-eAzl Tablet Stand Thank you for helping us, and good...