About six months ago, when vook was just a gleam in founder Brad Inman’s eye, I was reporting about the book business and received notice that Sony had a big announcement regarding its e-reader. Kindle was king at that moment — the second version had just been released — and I, like a lot of other reporters, thought this would finally, finally be Sony’s moment to go wireless, the one thing the company’s e-reader wasn’t yet — and needed to Read more…
More proof, if we need it, that there’s more than one way to read a book. My fifteen year old son is scrambling to finish his reading list for tenth grade. One book on the list is The Reader, by Bernard Schlink, which most people probably know as the movie with Kate Winslet that came out last year. Charley and I picked up a copy at the local bookstore last week, and I told him that once he’d read it, Read more…
Rumors have been flying for months — actually since the much admired Jane Friedman left HarperCollins over a year ago — that she would, indeed, be back. Today, Paid Content reveals that she is indeed back, with a new publishing venture that has raised at least $3milion. The specifics are characteristically vague but you can bet it’s not because Jane doesn’t know what she’s going to do, but because she wants to control the flow of information. . . As Read more…
To those who think the magazine industry just doesn’t get it — and I know who you are, all 20 million of you — I direct your attention to this cool little thing vook’s Joel Burshem turned me on to: It’s a video ad stuck smack in the middle of an issue of good old fashioned Entertainment Weekly. As Joel said, it might scare the pants off you if you didn’t know it was there, but if the goal of Read more…
Packing for a trip is always a nightmare for me. Not only do I usually forget some crucial piece of personal article — one time I went to Europe without any clean underwear! — it’s the books that really hang me up. What to take on a two week trip to a place where there are virtually no book stores? What if the novel I’m reading, Pete Dexter’s latest in this case, turns out to be a dud? How many Read more…
What would EL Doctorow, author of Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, and many other great novels have done if electronic books had been invented a century ago? He wouldn’t have had such a great topic for his latest novel, Homer and Langley, because there wouldn’t have been the great epic iconic story of the Collyer brothers, recluses who — as every baby boomer’s mother told every child — died under an avalanche of books and newspapers. “Clean up your room, Read more…
So, it was announced today that Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol will be simultaneously released as an ebook. So says Suzanne Herz at the Knopf Publishing Groupthis morning, “Now that all of our security and logistical issues surrounding the e-book of THE LOST SYMBOL have been resolved, the e-book will be released simultaneously with the hardcover on September 15th. “ Smart move, obviously. But so secret is all the information regarding The Lost Symbol, that one can’t help but wonder if the reality is Read more…
Not to be mean, but it does seem typical of the mainstream press to now announce that regular people seem to be liking e-readers. I mean, when I went to a dinner party in New York six months ago with some of the most dyed in the wool print folk and one of them walked in with a Kindle — which I quickly appropriated, to see what he’d bought — they should have been tipped off: I mean, I know Read more…
Have you heard the one about the declining book business, and how nobody read any more? From where I sit, in the middle of BookLand, I hear it all the time — business is bad, publishers are buying fewer titles for less money, and readers — whoever they are anyway – are not going into bookstores anymore. Yet, inside all this “common wisdom” — a term I hate, not because it’s not common but because it’s rarely wisdom — is what Read more…