Blog

The Guggenheim’s usually ahead of the curve (probably inspired by their geometry), so it’s no surprise to see them move into eBooks. They’ve recently launched Guggenheim.org/publications, which offers a “newly digitized selection of essays and historical material dating to the ...

Writers can’t just write for the drawer; technologists can’t just program for themselves. At some point, the work must emerge. And that first draft always requires editorial review. Software companies need their equivalent of Thomas Wolfe’s Maxwell Perkins — the ...

We’ve been working — and in the case of customer support honcho Jeffrey Yozwiak, sometimes kind of living — at Vook’s office on 25th and 7th since July, but it still feels new and shiny and interestingly sophisticated. One floor ...

I used to work in daily emails, agonizing over 50 character subject lines and 150 words of painstakingly edited body-copy. Which is why I get such pleasure from Stephen Elliott’s email, The Daily Rumpus. Elliott writes in text blocks that ...

If the printed word had brainstormed a go-to-market strategy to spread everywhere in the 16th century, it couldn’t have done better than violent religious controversy. Luther’s 95 Theses and the invention of the printing press dovetailed to create what the ...

Our friends at CodeMeetPrint alerted us to an announcement that Amazon will be distributing the Queen’s Christmas address as a free Kindle eBook on December 25th. Thanks to a Wodehouse inspired youthful Anglophilia, I’m a casual fan of the royal ...

I’ve been a long-time subscriber to food culture daily email Tasting Table (I think I was getting the test-sends) so I’m pleased to see their editorial team produce eBooks as expertly as they do short form emails – it’s like ...

What is it with our Nicholas Carr fixation? Authors take note -- mention us in print and you're guaranteed Vook blog coverage. Today, I want to call your attention to a piece Mr. Carr wrote for the Nieman Journalism Lab ...

If Christopher Hitchens is wrong about the non-existence of a soul, he and Vaclav Havel must be giving Kim Jong Il a drubbing in whatever forum the afterlife offers political brawlers. While we'd expect Havel and Hitchens to eventually win ...

I was surprised and deeply saddened to learn of Christopher Hitchens' death this morning. I'd known he was sick but hadn't known his health was so poor. I hadn't read Hitch 22, hadn't read his more recent essays. I wanted ...

We began onramping beta users on Tuesday—and the turn-out for online training reminds us of the end of "Ghostbusters." We thought we had a lot of demand, but we were still surprised when a Mr. Staypuff sized colossus suddenly materialized. ...

We opened Vook to our first group of beta users today. We trained the early adopters in online sessions, fielded questions, and handed over accounts. The first eBooks produced independently with the new Vook are now rolling off the digital ...

Turning an unknown author into a surprise bestseller is publishing at its finest—and a classic example of old fashioned interupption marketing. The author toils in obscurity for years and emerges with a work that transfixes an audience that hadn’t previously ...

When I present Vook to people who can take advantage of it – anyone with content and an audience, basically – I like to stress three key things you can do with the platform: Productize your content Ship eBooks fast ...

Last night I attended CodeMeetPrint at General Assembly where Findings, Projeqt, Urtak and MagAppZine (now MAZ) presented and sat for a Q&A. The last time I was at General Assembly for a presentation, Steve Jobs died—so happily this time I ...

Faced with overwhelming demand, we’re closing the Vook beta to additional registrants on December 9th. After December 9th, you’ll still be able to sign up on our page to learn more about Vook—but we’ve rocketed past our goal of collecting ...

As he probably did for many, T.S. Elliot inspired my love for poetry. Reading him twenty five years after struggling through the Wasteland in my parent’s copy of the Norton Anthology, I have new insight into his appeal. While some ...

Yesterday I was thinking about books in video games, today I'm reading about books in books, how we make books, how some people write them. The book in question: Vanity Fair’s How A Book is Born: The Making of The ...

For those of you who aren’t gamers or don’t keep reddit open in a browser tab, Game of Thrones isn’t the only property turning television screens into Scandanvian Renaissance Festivals. Video game company Bethesda Software recently released Skyrim, an incredibly ...

Everyday we get requests from people who want to build an eBook with Vook immediately. Everyday we look at what we’re building, what our users want and expect, and what we’ve committed to delivering. Our engineering team is working night ...