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If electronic books are the future-literary volumes optimized for the Kindle, the Sony Reader, the iPhone-how come two of this fall's hottest books won't be available in digital form anytime soon?

Tapping into teen trends--vampires and the push towards interactivity--novelists Laura Moser and Lauren Mechling have launched a YA serial on Slate.com with a parallel online world where their characters update their Facebook pages, tweet, and post videos on YouTube.

Article in Slate about POD and the ways in which it can help the yearbook business, which has some really interesting parameters to follow as a short-run publication....

Possibly a new in-road for those looking to do e-publishing for the iPhone or similar platforms?

Musings on the e-reader replacing the book, and how well (or not) it replaces the book as conversation-starter. Replacing the ink-and-paper book may be a bigger issue than anyone so far has actually realized....

Really interesting interview about Wikipedia and the democratization of content.

Let's see if this case becomes an industry changer. This would affect everyone from the smallest blog to the biggest publisher.

Amazon's reader is a brilliant device that shanghais book buyers and the book industry into accepting a radically diminished marketplace for published works.

Interesting article (though severak days old now) about typefaces on the web.

Citizens took to the digital streets today to celebrate what has become known as "Internet Freedom Day." The new holiday celebrates users' ability to speak, share, create, and innovate. It commemorates the Internet blackout of Jan. 18, 2012, in which tens of thousands of websites participated, to protest the draconian copyright bills SOPA and PIPA.

"Back in October, the startup tech firm Silent Circle ruffled governments' feathers with a "surveillance-proof" smartphone app to allow people to make secure phone calls and send texts easily. Now, the company is pushing things even further-with a groundbreaking encrypted data transfer app that will enable people to send files securely from a smartphone or tablet at the touch of a button. (For now, it's just being released for iPhones and iPads, though Android versions should come soon.) That means photographs, videos, spreadsheets, you name it-sent scrambled from one person to another in a matter of seconds." In an age where we can pretty much assume we're being monitored 24/7, is this a good thing? Or is this another tool for some really terrible people to do some really terrible things, but now with an added layer of privacy?

Via Joshua Gans, Harry Potter fans can now get their favorite books in digital format. But not from Amazon or the iTunes bookstore. Instead, the exclusive source of Potter ebooks is J.K. Rowling's Pottermore website where you're able to get them in formats that run on all major e-readers and tablets.

I think this article overlaps into the discussion of ethics in publishing. Personally, I am not only appalled but also very disappointed in the choice Lifeway made to stop selling these Bibles. 

Amazon started life as a book retailer, and as a book retailer they made books cheaper. Then they were pioneers in the e-book industry where they made books cheaper. Their recently announced plan to give readers free e-book copies of books they buy in physical form doesn't make books cheaper per se, but it does give readers greater value for their book-buying dollar. This is all great stuff. But not everyone agrees. Emily Gould complains that "When ebooks and pbooks are bundled, the ebooks are sold at a loss. That's authors', publishers' and, associatively, non-AMZN retailers' loss" and "frustrating we have to keep explaining that ebook production is not free. digital objects are not made by elves."

Sex sells, and e-readers offer a new, more discreet means of selling it.