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."

If your novel isn't by someone famous, won't receive a star in Publishers Weekly, or can't generate a slavish "At Home" featurette in That Other East Coast Newspaper, how do you get someone in the media to notice it? Swag, of course.

Interesting reaction from the ABA to Amazon-as-job-creator speech given by the President.

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

It's all just a little bit of history repeating...some of these quotes sounds awfully familiar these days WRT lamenting how no one writes or reads paper anymore because of the frenetic pace of life.

Conventional wisdom says that entrepreneurs who start a Web-based business will do so with VC money. Read enough stories of Internet ventures that enjoy lucrative exits in the millions (in some cases billions) of dollars, and it's easy to assume that the only path to success is to begin by securing deals with investors who are far less interested in helping a start-up build a substantial brand as they are in realizing a return as quickly as possible. Bootstrapping simply isn't sexy anymore. But for many start-up publishers, bootstrapping is a way of life, and VC money isn't an option.

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....

Opinion piece about copyright reform.

Bookish is a new online service for discovering and purchasing books. It's a joint venture of three of the largest trade publishers: Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Penguin. (Penguin will shortly be merging with Random House.)

Chapter 1: You stumble upon an interesting book at your neighborhood bookstore. Chapter 2: You go home and order it from Amazon for half as much. Chapter 9: Your favorite bookstore is bankrupt.

"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?

A proposal by the Prince George's County Board of Education to copyright work created by staff and students for school could mean that a picture drawn by a first-grader, a lesson plan developed by a teacher or an app created by a teen would belong to the school system, not the individual. The measure has some worried that by the system claiming ownership to the work of others, creativity could be stifled and there would be little incentive to come up with innovative ways to educate students. Some have questioned the legality of the proposal as it relates to students.

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.

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.

(Some NSFW language, heads up.) Humorous look at some of the lesser-known realities of being an online content creator. :) Happy Friday!

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

Why it is important to fully think through one's marketing plans...this is also a great example of real-life viral marketing that started from a rather creative author idea. :)

Short-form publishing is becoming more popular as the financial impracticalities of publishing something at this length become a moot point, thanks to the digital era.

Interesting look at how there are new niches in old technologies formed as the demand for archiving increases but the technologies that formed the originals fall out of popular use.