Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘kindle’

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Kindle-proof your manuscript

by Celeste Ng

Okay, so maybe you are a confirmed Kindle-hater. And you’re also a writer. You’ve sworn to yourself that you will never, ever, allow your words to be displayed on a Kindle. But as a writer, you don’t always have control over the format of your book. What to do? At The Millions, Garth Risk Hallberg offers 7 ways to “Kindle-proof” your manuscript. For example: Play With Text, Typeface, and White Space eReaders currently use two approaches to rendering text. One is quasi-photographic, but the Kindle’s remains the more battery-efficient method of imposing a standard typeface. This makes the effects of […]


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A Kindle for Dickens

by Celeste Ng

If Charles Dickens had had a Kindle, what would it have looked like? That’s the question art student Rachel Walsh tried to answer for her design class, which asked her to explain something modern to someone who died before 1900. Walsh’s explanation involved creating a visual metaphor: Since a 19th-century author wouldn’t have had any concept of downloads, e-readers, or the Internet, Walsh had to create a metaphor for the device that would resonate with Dickens. Realizing that a Kindle is just a lot of books inside a big book, she created an old-school version consisting of literal little books […]


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Psst! I'll give you print books for that Kindle.

by Celeste Ng

Having post-holiday Kindle regret? Microcosm Publishing, of Portland, OR, will trade $189 worth of paper books for your used Kindle. (Via.) Says the publisher’s website: Beginning RIGHT NOW you can bring in your Christmas Kindle to the Microcosm store in Portland (636 SE 11th) and trade it in for its worth in new or used books and zines! That’s right! Why let fad technology kill print when you can take a stand and fill up your shelves in the process. (Don’t worry, we won’t tell your parents.) And make sure to bring a friend to help you carry all your […]


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Evolution or Devolution: Where is literature taking us?

The following guest post is by Josie Keenan, an FWR intern and second-year student at the University of Michigan. More and more these days, I find myself bemoaning the fate of books. As Lee discussed in her recent blog “Let’s get digital”, downloadable books have been available for some time now. Digitization is one aspect of the way literature is changing, but what we are reading is also changing. Where novels were once belabored, deeply considered works in which every word of every sentence was deliberately placed, today it seems a more manufacturable task. One can write a novel just […]


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Let's get digital

by Lee Thomas

This post stems from a conversation with my brother – who recently moved to Chile – about what he’d loaded onto his Kindle. As a recent college grad, with limited disposable income, he was pretty stringent in choosing the books he bought. But he’s a voracious reader. His solution: he loaded up his e-reader with a clutch of classics that have entered the public domain. Let them read (old) books! Though beautiful books draw my eye, the trump card for me will always be the words on the page. I love books for the story, which means I keep reading […]


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New Skiff, likely to include the ads

by Lee Thomas

We’ve all known it’s coming, but it seems it is now just a matter of time before ads start showing up in e-readers of all stripes. The Hearst corporation’s “Skiff,” an e-reader they plan to debut at the Consumer Electronics Show (Jan 7 – 10, 2011). Website eReader Chat is skeptical about the viability of the Skiff taking off in an already crowded e-reader marketplace, but notes: Just about the only thing about the Skiff that really strikes me as intriguing is the partnership they’ve inked with Nielsen and comScore to handle advertising analytics for the device. Presumably, they’ll be […]


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Dzanc eBook Club

by Lee Thomas

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 of the Dzanc Books eBook Club. Sign up now and get eleven books for $50! With the proliferation of eReading devices and increased interest in reading books on kindle, Sony e-Reader, Nook, etc., Dzanc Books is making it both easier, and less expensive for […]


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Under the Covers

by Lee Thomas

For all of you readers who love new technology, but remain bookish at heart, how about an iPad/Kindle/Nook cover that marries the two? We’ve rounded up a few of our favorite trompe l’oeil covers, so you can have your cake … but dress it up like a book. Or give a bibliophile friend a lovely gift. 1. Leather bound by Pad and Quill 2. Hans Christian Andersen by Vintage Covers 3. Hardback Cloth BOOK by Nedrelow 4. By the Numbers Moleskine-style by RightBrainy 5. Classic black Dodocase 6. Horses (I can’t help but think about Patti Smith with this one) […]


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eBook Readers Read More, Socialize More?

by Celeste Ng

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, 58% said they read about the same as before while 2% said they read less than before. And 55% of the respondents in the May study, paid for by e-reader maker Sony Corp., thought they’d use the device to read even more books in the future. […] […]


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If you were reading this on paper, you'd be finished by now.

by Celeste Ng

Perhaps our recent posts on e-books have you jonesing for an iPad or a Kindle. Or maybe they’ve made you nostalgic for a good old print hardback. Either way, here’s something else to consider: reading on paper is faster than reading on a screen. The Nielsen Norman group (no, that Nielsen) found that reading in electronic format was up to 10.7% slower than reading a paper book. Reports Macworld: Nielsen’s findings were based on the performance of 24 users who “like reading and frequently read books.” The subjects each read different short stories by Ernest Hemingway on all four platforms, […]




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