Category Archives: Web/Tech
The Second Pass’ First Anniversary
In her keynote speech at last month’s Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, Arianna Huffington tossed out a good point on the way to her explanation of why she doesn’t pay bloggers. (“Self expression is the new entertainment…. We never used to question why people sit on the couch for seven hours a day watching [...]
And Other Stories: Publishing by Forum
From Words Without Borders comes news of a startup publishing venture, And Other Stories. Its focus is contemporary fiction in translation, and its editorial decision-making will be collaborative. Spanish-language and Portuguese-language reading forums have been set up at LibraryThing, where readers, writers and translators can evaluate and discuss titles for potential publication next year. While [...]
Every Day
There’s more than a little superstition at work in the belief that as my morning goes, so goes the rest of my day. I know I’m not alone in having a set of rituals to try and impose some order, whether or not it actually takes: a two-mile walk with my dog, two cups of [...]
Good Guys, Bad Guys, Which is Which?
For now, at least, the dust has settled in the Amazon/MacMillan confrontation. Last weekend Amazon restored the buy buttons for MacMillan and its imprints, although with some seriously deep discounting of hardcovers and that same objectionable $9.99 sticker on the Kindle editions. Amazon has agreed to accept the same model MacMillan uses for its dealings [...]
Showdown
As of Tuesday night, Amazon’s standoff with Macmillan has showed no signs of resolving itself since they went head to head Friday. For those not following the ins and outs of the situation obsessively, which is probably most people, the setup is as follows:
In the course of negotiations, Macmillan CEO John Sargent proposed a plan [...]
Sports and Accessories
In Jacket Copy, Carolyn Kellogg wonders if the mythical Apple tablet, perhaps maybe scheduled to be announced today, is setting itself up for direct competition with Amazon. McGraw-Hill’s CEO raved about the tablet on CNBC yesterday, and while Amazon has been vocal about providing a Kindle platform for major textbook publishers, McGraw-Hill isn’t one of [...]
The Dog’s Bollocks
Over at The Bygone Bureau, Nick Martens has been browsing the Oxford English Dictionary and meandering through words tagged “typogr.”—typographical terminology. Now that all references to movable type are from a bygone age, a printer’s term from the 1970s is just as archaic as one from the 17th century: hell box, tympan, turtle, fly the [...]
Pay What You Like
Earlier this month in Slate, Jack Shafer took the New York Times to task for what he sees as a constricting set of ethics guidelines. Although he doesn’t argue with recent incidents that led to the firing of three freelancers, he sees their code as pandering to a lowest common denominator of decorum that’s at [...]
Going By The Book
OK, so The New Republic has jumped into the fray with its own book review-focused site, conveniently called The Book. By all rights, this is a good thing—furthering the conversation, etc. Their print reviews are usually worth reading and the site looks interesting, with a good mixture of new and archived material and not too [...]
Who Says the Renaissance Man is Dead?
According to CNET News, the most commonly pirated e-book in 2009 was the Kama Sutra, followed closely by Adobe Photoshop Secrets, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amazing Sex, The Lost Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, and Solar House: A Guide for the Solar Designer.
The breakdown of titles was courtesy of the open source file-sharing site [...]
