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I was reading a post over at DBW today when I noticed that someone was misusing the word discovery again:
Amazon wants to take readers on a trip around the world. No, it’s not a sweepstakes and it certainly isn’t literal. The leading U.S. ebook seller has launched a new ebook discovery tool, Around the World in 80 Books.
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Here’s a story that is a couple weeks old but seems to have gone unreported.
If you’ve been following digital publishing news then you’ve probably heard about the Publishing Hackathon. This was a contest that was held at the same time as BEA 2013. A total of 30 contestants submitted project ideas which, following the true spirit of a hackathon, were developed over the course of a weekend.
I only got a chance to look at that contest and the entries today, and I am surprised that there seems to be no commentary on the fact that one entry truly is a hack.
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Discovery is a buzzword right now in digital publishing circles, with many publishers and tech companies trying to solve the “problem” of helping readers find their next book. One thing I have noticed about this word is that it doesn’t always mean quite the same thing when said by different people.
Today I would like to give you an orthogonal view of discovery, presented as a dictionary definition.
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There’s a new article over on PandoDaily yesterday which looks over the explosion in subcompact publishing that was inspired by Marco Arment’s The Magazine.
The article offers a brief retrospective on the rise of The Magazine and then goes into a summary of a number of digital magazines that were inspired by The Magazine. The article is well worth a read, but there was one error in particular that I thought was worth noting:
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In early April 2012 there was a spate of posts from readers/bloggers which protested some of the more egregious and pushy methods that some authors use to promote themselves (“The Care and Feeding of Authors”, for example). I wrote one such post, and I largely focused on how the pushiness can fail in its purpose by annoying readers.
Today I am going to take a step back from the diktats I issued in that post. I’ve come to realize that there were more nuances to the issue than I had known at the time, and I have revised my opinions on how authors should promote themselves and their books.
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The online learning startup Coursera and a handful of textbook publishers announced today that they’re teaming up to make certain digital course materials available to students enrolled in Coursera’s classes. Cengage Learning, Macmillan Higher Education, Oxford University Press, SAGE, and Wiley will offer versions of their textbooks via an e-reader provided by Chegg.
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Did you catch the news earlier today?
B&N surprised the blogosphere with the news that the Nook HD and Nook HD+ could now be updated with Google Play. These media devices now had access to over 700,000 apps as well as ebooks, movies, music, and more.
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It’s that time of year again.
Today is the International Day Against DRM, the unofficial holiday dedicated to making more people aware of DRM and how to remove it.
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James Patterson has caused some ripples in the ebook world (see here or even here) by calling for government aid for the traditional publishing model. I’d like to examine his principal delusion: that publishers are the guardians of literary culture.
The first duty of any business is to make a profit and reward its shareholders for their backing. It should also be able to provide its employees – who are investing their time and labour rather than their capital – with job security and decent benefits. Thirdly, it should behave in an ethical way. If for no other reason, to do otherwise will bring the business down, whether by alienating customers or falling foul of the law.
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James Patterson is a well-known and well-respected author, but lately that hasn’t been enough for him. It looks like he recently decided to also take on the role of the publishing industry’s curmudgeon emeritus, a job that Scott Turow has more than adequately filled of late.
Last weekend Patterson bought full page ads (at right) in major newspapers which called for the government to take steps to rescue books, the publishing industry, bookstores, and libraries from the scourge of technological progress.
Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense to me either but Patterson has been getting press attention. Earlier this week he gave an interview for Salon.com in which he laid out his complaints:
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