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.

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.

Interesting opinion piece from an author who has written both ebooks and books, and crowdfunded a book, and done all sorts of neat things from a publishing angle, calling for a "back to the content" sort of movement. Not sure what I think of this, but thought it was worth pushing out to you all since I know for a lot of us, a love of books is what got us into this field to begin with.

Hmm. This is British and talks about a primarily British (that I can tell) service marrying itself to Facebook, but it has interesting implications should others decide to adopt the same thing. "'There's been a big barrier to sign-up, we wanted to remove that and make it a seamless experience,' [Daniel Ek, Spotify co-founder] said in one tweet, apparently indifferent to the criticism that Spotify had just erected a barrier where there wasn't one before." "'We want to remove barrier to sign-up and create a more seamless experience...' he confirmed in a follow-up." Yep, it'll be completely seamless for the advertisers who want to target Spotify users, they can get all sorts of other info on them besides just that they downloaded Rebecca Black's "Friday"...Zuckerberg must be laughing all the way to the bank.

Story in Washington Post about how indie bookstores are cropping up in the aftermath of Borders' crash-and-liquidate.

Interesting article about how a former BitTorrent junkie is now perfectly happy to Netflix the movies he wants. Perhaps there's a lesson here for publishers....

I can't decide whether I'm going to be happy I can get books & the like for insanely discounted prices (yay books I can read because I *want* to), or feel like I'm looting a corpse when I go to my local Borders next to help lighten the load. Anyone else feeling a little conflicted?

Article from March that popped up on my radar now about how to handle lending e-books and first-sale-doctrine issues.

Other things that led to Borders' demise -- not just their "the Internet stole our lunch money" argument.

Interesting project for Internet archiving...wonder about some of the (eventual) privacy issues that might be involved, though. As the article quotes the archivist: "'Whoever is going to be president in 2048, she's in high school now, and she may have a Web site, and we probably have it.'" How many political opponents would love to seize on this hypothetical person if her teenage rants (e.g., "OMG my mom is so horrible, she won't let me go to Kasey's party on Saturday! Isn't there some kind of law against child abuse?") came to light when she's 53 and in a position of power? Is/Will it be considered fair game to judge a middle-aged woman by what the adolescent says now?

There's a blurb and a video at this link -- go take a look. (Also, would it be illegal if instead he was selling ebooks? Do the retailers' laws even cover that, does anyone know?)

Okay, does anyone besides me find it ironic that by making a kerfluffle about it, more people are going to know about this story than just the publication's original readers? Ironic that a post condemning the (lack of) ethics of a publisher are in some ways exacerbating the original problem.

Apparently in some places, the move to digital has been more pervasive than estimated.

Ethical dilemma -- how far can a publication ethically go to get a hold of its story sources?

Intersection of privacy law and copyright law (esp. fair use and library/archival uses) -- is it ethical to reproduce signed cease-and-desist letters?

Academic publisher's code of ethics

This is a disclosure statement from the JOHO blog. Do you think it goes far enough, or perhaps might it be detailed to the point of C-Y-A-neurosis?

Thoughts about use of disclosure statements in the blogosphere to establish trust with readers.

Tim O'Reilly and others have called for codes of conduct in the blogosphere, and this is some of what that call has yielded. My problem with it, however, is that it seems to be very, very general -- which is a great starting point, but individual blogs may have other things come up.