Good e-Reader ran an interesting post earlier today about Oklahoma’s Metropolitan Library System, which took the unprecedented step back in December 2012 of advertising its e-book lending services on broadcast television. According to the post, the 60-second spot was developed by the library system's own IT department. It ran for about two weeks on the area's Fox and CW affiliate stations, and for roughly a month on local cable channels. And as the library system's marketing director, Kim Terry, explained, "over 1,700 new customers began using our eMedia site since the commercial started running, which was a 22 percent increase over the previous month.” Perhaps not surprisingly,...

“You may not be able to tell the difference,” says the advertisement’s narrator, as both the iPad and the Kindle Fire HD sit side-by-side displaying the same images. “But your wallet definitely can.” Amazon’s new 30-second ad draws the comparison in screen resolution between the iPad and the (new, larger) Fire HD 8.9-inch screen. Visually, the Fire looks awesome. Actually, both tablet screens do. I feel that strictly based on just screen clarity, sure, either would be a sufficient choice for new tablet owners. But the Kindle Fire HD's $299 price tag sure does appear as the ‘nice price’ alongside Apple’s $499...

On Maximum PC, author David Gerrold slots the e-book into place as the latest member of a distinguished lineage of disruptive media that build on what came before them. Movies built on novels and Broadway plays, radio built on records and vaudeville, television built on radio, and so on. He points out that the imperative for old media when faced with the new has always been “adapt or die”—and litigating has historically been a poor method of adapting. (He brings up the example of Lotus 1-2-3, which essentially sued itself out of existence.) He brings up the e-book reader,...

It’s a cliché (or at least a TVTrope) that if you want to know what’s really going on in an organization, you talk to the janitors—or other people who have the same habit of being around all the time, observing people and things, without being noticed. In my current “day job” working for a tech support corporation, I’ve noticed a similar truism: If you want to know what’s really going on in the way people relate to technology, you talk to the tech support. Over the last few months, I’ve noticed a number of interesting patters...

If you're an author -- whether you sold your book to a publisher or self-published it -- you'd probably jump at the chance to talk about your book on national television.  Who wouldn't?But beware of predatory producers of "branded entertainment" TV talk shows that are little more than glorified infomercials.  They know how badly you want to promote your book to a large audience, and they'll use that desire to try and separate you from your money, to the tune of thousandsof dollars.Not all the news-style or talk shows you see on television are legitimate.  What do I mean by "legitimate"?  I mean programming...

Last week, writer and consultant Mark McLaughlin had a great article in the Huffington Post about the current attempts of newspapers and others to get audiences to pay for on-line content. McLaughlin points out that audiences usually don’t pay for content, but rather for distribution. It is the advertisers who pay for content. McLaughlin cites the old print newspaper delivery system as an example: newspaper readers didn’t pay for the content in the paper, but for having the paper delivered to their door every day regardless of whether they read a single article in it or not. Advertisers...