A number of websites are going dark tomorrow to protest the SOPA legislation that could impose harsh restrictions upon the Internet. These sites include Mozilla, reddit for 12 hours, and Wikipedia for a full 24 hours. Google will also place a SOPA-related link on its homepage. Wales explained that the Wikipedia blackout comes as a result of feedback from the Wikipedia community, Not everybody is sanguine about the blackout. On just-launched Silicon Valley news site Pando Daily, Paul Carr writes in agreement with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo’s tweet calling the decision “foolish”. Carr blasts Wales for “[making] a...

The Library of Congress is where not just books but other documents deemed to have great historical significance are stored. And soon those documents will include an archive of every single public Twitter posting ever sent. Twitter and the Library of Congress have reached an agreement whereby an archive of those postings will be transferred to the library for inclusion in its electronic archives. "We were excited to be involved with acquiring the Twitter archives because it's a unique record of our time," [LoC digital initiatives program manager Bill] Lefurgy said. "It's also a unique way...

Received the following email from Markus Wagner: I recently released a blog post about people who tweet about ebooks. Your twitter account and your website www.teleread.com is attending, too. So I thought it might interest you. You can find the article "Twitteraccounts, denen man folgt, um über Ebooks auf dem Laufenden zu bleiben" (translated: Twitter accounts, which you follow to stay up to date on Ebooks) at http://www.ebookreader-und-ebooks.de/artikel/twitteraccounts-zum-thema-ebooks. The part which might be interesting for you is under "Twitterer mit englischen Tweets" (Twitterer with English tweets).  ...

Picked this up from a tweet by Richard Nash.  Twocation is a service that will locate your followers geographically.  Here is a breakdown of those places that represent 1% or over of followers of @paulkbiba (despite the name this account is only used for TeleRead, not for any personal stuff of mine): France 2.2% India 2.2% New Zealand 1.1% Spain 1.3% United States 50% South Africa 1.3% Netherlands 1.6% Jersey 1.1% Italy 2.7% Canada 6.5% Australia 3% Brazil 1.6% United Kingdom 12.4% We also have followers in 33 other countries, each of which accounts for less than 1%...

From Publish Your Own Ebooks: If you are active on Twitter then perhaps you have already seen some excellent lists of twitter hashtags for writers. One good example is Jon Reed’s list of writer hashtags. If however you want to use Twitter to find information relating to ebook publishing, especially as it applies to indie authors, there are some more specific hashtags being used. I have compiled below a list of the most useful hashtags for ebook authors and publishers. For those not familiar with hashtags they are basically a keyword beginning with the “#” character. When ...

Authors have experimented with Twitter fiction before, and even fictional characters from a musical have taken to Twitter to do a little world building (and marketing). But Reif Larsen's enigmatic matryoshka doll piece is the first I've seen in a while to make such effective use of the format. Here are some examples from the blog A New Kind of Book: here’s what Reif wrote on July 19th: Package from Serbia just arrived. I did not request such a package. I wonder the % of unrequested packages that end up being life-changing. That’s odd, I thought. A little quirky, a...

Although this doesn’t have anything directly to do with e-books, it points out a way that authors can use digital media to help raise money for worthy causes. Yesterday, tornadoes ripped through Joplin, Missouri, a city about 90 miles west of my home in Springfield, killing at least 89 people and leaving many more homeless. Galleycat reports that to help raise money for a relief effort through Shelterbox, authors Maureen Johnson and Robin Wasserman are auctioning full book critiques on Twitter. Johnson led a similar fundraiser for earthquake victims in New Zealand...

Paper publishing just can't compete with this type of thing.  From Amazon: In just over a week, a group of unpaid professional and citizen journalists who met on Twitter created a book to raise money for Japanese Red Cross earthquake and tsunami relief efforts. In addition to essays, artwork and photographs submitted by people around the world, including people who endured the disaster and journalists who covered it, 2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake contains a piece by Yoko Ono, and work created specifically for the book by authors William Gibson, Barry Eisler and Jake Adelstein. “The primary goal,” says the...

Flipboard has scored another magazine coup, ReadWriteWeb reports, adding a feed for Rolling Stone Magazine and demonstrating once again why they’re still the best way to read magazine and magazine-style content on-line. The new section is essentially a tweaked presentation of the @RollingStone twitter feed, adding a bent-back-magazine-style frame for the smaller version of the article rather than a scroll-up half-screen version. (This frame seems to be used for all their content partners’ publications, since they know the source will never be bigger than a tweet.) As a result, sometimes short-form tweets share the overview page with framed...

There are great services like Ether Books, which are designed to reach mobile readers and populate their minds with high quality reads tailored to mobile conditions. But what to do when you are not lucky enough to be one of Ether authors? If you are a self-publisher actively using social media to find readers and draw their attention to your books (probably published in an electronic form), this post is for you. I’d like to share a simple way to make your e-book available for instant purchase by mobile phone users. As you'll see - it's...

How much time do you spend on Twitter every day? Are you connecting with a service via your mobile phone or a tablet? This article is for you. Pict. 1: a tweet with a link to Kindle Store Do you know that you can use Twitter as a quick and convenient way to download Kindle ebooks? You can start reading a book in a couple of clicks from discovering it. There is no need to change a device. You don’t have to save your choice for later in order to access Amazon site from a computer or your Kindle ereader. Isn’t that worth...

As experiments with publishing goes, this is an interesting one: you can download Australian writer Conor O’Brien’s new collection, Quiet City, for the price of a tweet and / or Facebook post.  Just go here and follow the clickys.  Alternatively, you can get the paper book for $12. I’d never heard of Connor O’Brien until about 7 minutes ago.  Now I’ve got his book and am subscribed to his blog.  I guess that’s the point. Via Court Merrigan's blog...