Partway through his essay on marginalia, Sam Anderson tells the story of lending a friend his copy of Infinite Jest—complete with his own annotations—then borrowing it back partway through:
The fresh one, she told me afterward, felt a little lonely by comparison: she missed the meta-conversation running in the margins, the sense of another consciousness co-filtering [...]
Is self-publishing really a viable option for writers? It is for Amanda Hocking. USA Today reports on the 26-year-old self-published success story:
Fed up with attempts to find a traditional publisher for her young-adult paranormal novels, Hocking self-published last March and began selling her novels on online bookstores like Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com.
By May she [...]
Addicted to browsing the shelves of used bookstores for that $3 copy of Chekhov’s stories? Sad you can’t do the same with your e-reader? Well, Dzanc’s eBook Club comes close, letting you gather an armful of fiction at a fraction of the retail price. Here’s how it works:
Dzanc Books is excited to announce the launching [...]
n Slate, Brian Palmer asks that very question:
Think of an e-reader as the cloth diaper of books. Sure, producing one Kindle is tougher on the environment than printing a single copy of Pride and Prejudice. But every time you download and read an electronic book, rather than purchasing a new pile of paper, you’re paying [...]
As Barnes and Noble looks to sell itself, chatter about the “future of the book” has grown. But would “futures” be more appropriate? NPR investigates:
Dan Visel, a founder of the appropriately named Institute for the Future of the Book, points out that, first of all, a “book” can mean many things: A cookbook, [...]
Okay, they’re lighter. They’re cheaper. Some have argued that they’re greener, too.
Now the Wall Street Journal reports that ebook readers read more books:
A study of 1,200 e-reader owners by Marketing and Research Resources Inc. found that 40% said they now read more than they did with print books. Of those surveyed, [...]
Tim Ferriss, author of the Kindle-published The 4-Hour Work Week, has an interesting look at the economics of how writers get paid:
- For a hardcover book, authors typically receive a 10-15% royalty on cover price. This means that for a $20 cover price, the author will receive $2-3. If you have a $50,000 advance, [...]
While Apple and Amazon wage price wars over hardware and e-books, the new Spanish-based firm 24Symbols aims to use their gadgets’ own Wi-Fi connections against them.
Using the Kindle and iPad’s internet browsers, 24Symbols promises totally free e-books. Readers will be served advertisements in return for free access to a wide-ranging catalogue, from comic books to [...]
If you decide to follow the tunnel, turn to page 151. If you decide to cross the bridge, turn to page 12.
Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books? Now you can enjoy the series in ebook format with the new iPhone app U-Ventures. The app was created by Edward Packard, one of [...]
Lit journal Crazyhorse now offers its readers two options: print and ebook. But unlike many ebooks, in which font and typesetting may be very different on-screen and on paper, the editors describe the ebook version as “a digital book version of the same Crazyhorse paper-and-print page.” Indeed, the pages are nicely laid out [...]
