Group items tagged

Nicholas Carr on the prospects for print publications.

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?

Blog entry about a study that looked at the differences between readers' experiences reading on a screen versus reading hard-copy.

Is there a difference in the way the brain takes in or absorbs information when it is presented electronically versus on paper? Does the reading experience change, from retention to comprehension, depending on the medium?

Ron Charles talks about the challenges of trying to adapt print-book reader behaviors to e-readers.

America's obsession with digital tablets is driving a boon in e-book reading, a new survey shows, a trend that is dampening the appeal of printed books and shaking the centuries-old publishing business.

Many new releases have design elements usually reserved for special occasions - deckle edges, colored endpapers, high-quality paper and exquisite jackets that push the creative boundaries of bookmaking. If e-books are about ease and expedience, the publishers reason, then print books need to be about physical beauty and the pleasures of owning, not just reading.

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."

An interesting hypothesis on how B&N is faring in the digital age.

Something like what we were talking about earlier this week in class....

Internet piracy versus rightsholders square off again in proposing a new addition to DMCA - the Protect IP act (PIPA), blacklisting "rogue sites" and holding Internet Service Providers responsible to block access to these sites. O'Reilly has stepped up in favor of Silicon Valley.