e-books

Six Late Afternoon Items

1.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Huffington Post is getting into the e-book business.

3. Chris Newgent asks poets to rise up.

4. You should read Vanessa Veselka’s Zazen. It’s a fierce book. I didn’t realize this when I bought it but you can read the entire book online, for free. You should also buy it though.

5. The Awl has a really interesting essay on cookbooks as literature.

6. Kenyon Review is offering fellowships that pay $32,500 to writers with an MFA or PhD looking for some time to write and grow as a teacher.

Roundup / 40 Comments
September 7th, 2011 / 5:11 pm

e-books all calorie suck

E-book assassin, etc. My first response was falling sky, or I am sick of people saying the e-book will garrote the book book. But then I read the article and found several points for possible discussion here:

1.      Was the indie bookstore having troubles anyway? The e-book might be gaseous, but maybe the canary died from starvation?

2.      One complaint is about “browsing.” You’ll do your browsing online, then just drop by the brick/mortar store and get the book you already know you want. You won’t browse at the store. To me, if you enter the store, all is good. Who cares why/how you entered?

3.      But people sell their books online now, so don’t enter a used store to sell, and therefore another opportunity missed to buy.

4.      Google ebooks allows indie bookstores to join/not beat the future.

5.      All the ebooks in the world aren’t going to replace the “space” of a bookstore, readings, signings, coffee, conversation….

Random & Technology / 7 Comments
December 13th, 2010 / 11:59 am
—

Here’s Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing, introducing this Guardian article about the Kindle. (Link clicks through to the Guardian piece.)

In today’s Observer Business column, John Naughton discusses what a ripoff it is for ebook vendors to “sell” you books with abusive, multi-thousand word “license agreements,” pretending that because you bought your book over the network, it wasn’t a sale, and so you don’t get to own it. These “licenses” aren’t about upholding copyright (if they were, you could replace thousands of words of lawyerese with four simple words: “Don’t violate copyright law”). They’re about overriding copyright — which has all kinds of guarantees for the rights of book-owners — with a private law that gives every advantage to the publisher or retailer, converting you from a noble reader to a wormy, contemptible licensor who doesn’t deserve to own books.


2
—

The tools (as usual) are neutral. It’s up to us to insist that onscreen reading enhance, not replace, traditional book reading. It’s up to us to remember that the medium is not the message; that the meaning and music of the words is what matters, not the glitzy vehicle they arrive in.

from David Gerlenter, in this presentation: Does the Brain Like E-Books?

8