I sat down with my Kindle e-reader on Saturday morning to read the Los Angeles Times.  There was an article about an L.A. used bookstore called Iliad Books.  Sounded nice.  So I went.  What should I find but a section of books about books and publishing.  There was a copy of The Nature of the [...]

After two years of reading reviews, watching products come out and compete, listening to people gripe about DRM and ebook pricing, I jumped directly into the fray and opted for the Kindle from Amazon. I am completely and utterly smitten with the thing.  It feels like a magic book.  No – more like a printing [...]

I’ve been so waiting with my bated breath and all for this magical Nook machine from Barnes & Noble.  I was in a right dither tonight about an hour and a half ago as I shoved my reading glasses into my pocket, put my regular glasses on my face and piled into my car for [...]

There’s been a huge battle of the ebooks going on between Amazon.com and publisher Macmillan.  Last week, Macmillan, in response to rotten Apple’s announcement of $14 and $15 ebooks on its new iPad, insisted that Amazon give Macmillan the right to choose its own higher ebook pricing for the Kindle ereader device.  Amazon got peevish [...]

So after all the hoopla the Apple company has decided that it’s a good idea to sell an iPod Touch that you can’t carry.
The just-announced iPad is big, with a fullscreen display instead of widescreen, has no camera, and cannot multi-task.  So only one application at a time will run.  The fullscreen thing may make [...]

Apple really could be preparing to announce something pretty extraordinary for content publishing, creation and consumption today.  Its widely rumored tablet device will very likely put most other ebook reader devices out of business simply because the Apple product will be a real computer, useful for reading and for creating.  It will most likely build [...]

Here’s a stop-motion film about the making of a book called The Complex of All These.  It was made at the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York and consists of 3,000 photographs taken over a 2-month period.
Via Dangerous Minds

We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.
Pablo Picasso

John Grisham on NBC’s Today Show discusses his new book, writing novels versus short stories, and so-called predatory book pricing by large retailers like Walmart, Target and Amazon.com.  I like Grisham in this interview.  He’s a good interview and he seems sharp.  He talks about how it’s much more difficult to fix a problem in [...]

Here’s a reprint of a fascinating and well thought out CC-licensed article by Ransom Stephens on the openDemocracy Network about the future of books and publishers.  The main thrust of the article is that books will survive mainly in hardback versions, electronic on-demand publishers will take over the bulk of book publishing, this takeover will [...]

The Nation has a fascinating essay by Elisabeth Sifton called The Long Goodbye? The Book Business and its Woes.  She writes about the tidal changes facing the entire book industry from publisher to bookseller to reader.  Here’s a short excerpt:
“Books have had a kind of spooky power, embedded as they are in the very structures [...]

Extremely interesting post over on the MobyLives blog called Dangerous Books about how the radical Islamic outrage over Salmon Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses has led to a pernicious self-censorship by major publishers in the West.  Iran issued a death sentence for Mr. Rushdie who stayed in hiding for many years.  Publishers and translators associated with [...]

Look at the image to the left.  If that image disturbs you to the point of banning the comic book, you are unintelligent.  No doubt about it.  It disturbs Apple so much that they’ve removed the comic book from their App Store.  Clear censorship.  The comic book is by author Cory Doctorow who has written [...]

Well… it better not jam. That’s my two cents. But really this is a neat idea. A book printer. It lets a user download, print, and bind a real book in just a few minutes. The New York Public Library has one. I’m not sure if one is expected [...]

In what amounts to a shocking display of callous disregard for handicapped readers, The Authors Guild threatened to sue Amazon.com over its text-to-audio feature built into the Kindle 2.0 ebook reader.  It then negotiated with Amazon to allow authors to disable the feature for their books.
Apparently, the Guild and its member authors (who really need [...]

At the Conversational Reading blog, Scott Esposito writes a post called ‘Why EBooks will Change How the Industry Functions.’  He’s writing about his reaction to another blogger who wrote a post about ‘Why Ebooks Must Fail.’  I like Esposito’s common sense approach to the subject of ebooks and his confidence that the publishing industry will [...]

by Artie Knapp (USA)
Illustrations by Barbara Leonard Gibson

Popular children’s book author Artie Knapp hits the book stores with his latest offering, ‘Stuttering Stan Takes a Stand.’
Stanley is like most squirrels: he loves nuts, climbing trees and playing with friends. But Stanley feels different from the other animals in his neighborhood, because he has a problem [...]