You may have heard. Google has just launched a service called Google Print. Like Amazon, Google’s service allows people to search through books. Google announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair that are adding a lot of major publishers and they will be adding many titles. As with Amazon, there is a limit to how many pages you can view. And, at this stage anyway, it’s not possible to search the book database exclusively. I’ve found that the best way to get a Google Print result to show up is to type the word “book” and then whatever it is you’re searching for. It’ll be interesting to see if this develops further.
Books Online
The Possibility of an eBook Summer
Hillel Italie, the AP’s publishing beat reporter, has a story about how a couple of major book stores aren’t getting behind the impending release of the Sony Reader. According to Italie, both Barnes & Noble and Amazon won’t be carrying the device when it comes out this summer, while Borders will be carrying it. In a post from a couple of months ago, I mentioned the Sony Reader, which had gotten rave reviews from people who’d tried it out. Sony now has the Reader up on its Web site, and I have to say, even in the pictures, it looks a lot more usable than I expected. It’s small and relatively elegant looking, but the quality of the text on the screen is most impressive. There is certainly a paper-like quality to the display. Despite all this, I don’t think I’ll be pulping my books anytime soon. I simply enjoy all the non-textual aspects of books too much. I do think, however, that if this device is as pleasant to use as people have described it to be, then surely there will be some use for it, and certainly some categories of books will be ripe for transition to this format. Textbooks come to mind.Truthfully, I’m really not all that surprised that Barnes & Noble isn’t carrying the Sony Reader because I would imagine that the transaction of buying books for the device and the act of reading books on the device won’t have any real connection to the typical brick and mortar book store experience. Not unlike how the way many people now buy and listen to music doesn’t have much of a connection to the Tower Records down the street, and Tower Records (probably to its detriment) isn’t in the “eMusic business.” As for Amazon sitting this one out, that’s a little harder to understand, but I’d imagine it’ll jump on board if there’s any inkling in the early going that the Sony Reader is taking off. Ultimately, I think the Sony Reader will be a success if Sony manages to sell it as a comfortable reading device and not a replacement for books. There are a few other issues, of course. It’s expensive, set to retail for $300 to $400, and there are many handheld devices, and many more on the way, that can function as “eReaders,” though without Sony’s special, paper-like display, while also doing a lot of other stuff – I’m talking Palms and the like here. Regardless, though, 2006 should be an interesting year to watch the ongoing digital future of books.Supplemental Links: Another pic of the device at Gizmodo; Kevin 2.0 asks if dedicated eBook readers are really needed; Bookninja, on the other hand, calls it the “iPod for nerds.”
My Latest Article is a PDF
From the moment I read about alt lit and cracked open a few PDFs, I wanted to create one. My latest article is a PDF. A congealed bit of technology, something we’re trying while we wait for literature’s savior format, not an app, not a Kindle download, but some new form yet to be discovered.
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The Trail of the #AmazonFail
I learned about the Amazon de-ranking debacle on Twitter (follow me @EdanL, y’all). People love to argue that Twitter is a time-wasting site for people to announce what they’re doing: They’re doing their taxes, or they’re drinking the best beer ever, man, or they’re on the toilet. And it’s that, certainly, but it’s also an incredible way to spread information and start a dialogue. Most of the people I know on Twitter are other writers, or editors, critics, or publishers. I’ve learned a lot about the book world since signing up.But I digress.I was by turns upset and confused by the Amazon story (known on Twitter as #amazonfail) and I still am. What am I to believe, and what will it mean, in the long run, even after the “glitch” has been fixed? Am I simply being paranoid? Is mine simply the blanket distate-for-Amazon of an independent bookseller? Maybe. I don’t know. I do know there’s been a lot of valuable dialogue on this “ham-fisted cataloging error,” and I thought I’d highlight some of it here.Mark Probst’s Live Journal post started it all, and Carolyn Kellogg’s reporting at the Los Angeles Times book blog Jacket Copy helped me track the story as it evolved.There’s this thought-provoking post from Richard Nash, who argues that we can’t give Amazon the benefit of the doubt because, …in a world where whiteness and straightness are ‘norms’ and males benefit from our patriarchal history, it is always the GLBTQ books, the queer books, the non-normative books that get caught in the glitches, the ham-fisted errors. As a contrast, here is Sara Nelson’s (of The Daily Beast) interpretation of the reaction on Twitter and the blogosphere: That book lovers seized on this recent de-listing scandal as a vehicle through which to vent their frustration and rage at big bad Amazon makes perfect sense; to have a politically correct hook on which to hang one’s argument makes whatever revenge one might wreak all the sweeter. Meanwhile, Clay Shirky had another angle about the Amazon fury: Whatever stupidities Amazon is guilty of, none of them are hanging offenses. The problems they have with labeling and handling contested categories is a problem with all categorization systems since the world began.At the Vromans Bookstore Blog Patrick used #amazonfail to talk about the danger of putting our faith (and dollars) into one company, and drew a connection to our shift to monoculture farming: It’s taken us some thirty years (since the passage of Earl Butz’s “Get Big or Get Out” Farm Bill in the 1970s) to realize that having a few corporations control our food supply was a really bad idea. (This post, actually, reminded me of these posts Patrick penned for the Millions almost two years ago.)There are many other posts and reports on #amazonfail, including this one from the New York Times. And there is a petition to boycott Amazon, which, at the time of this writing, has collected over 26,000 signatures.It feels funny reporting all this on The Millions, which links to Amazon. This is not my choice, but one I understand and accept. We also have our Collaborative Atlas of Bookstores and Literary Places, and an upcoming walking tour of indie bookstores in NYC (Can we do one for LA next year? Maybe by bus/metro?). It’s this diversity, and our excellent content, that I admire, and why I’m proud to write for this blog, links or not.And, before I go… In the spirit of Twitter/Blog culture, I would love to hear your responses to #amazonfail in the comments.
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Hardcover, Softcover… iPod Shuffle?
Yesterday, Scott posted the good news that six Bay Area libraries are making audiobooks available as downloads that readers can listen to on their digital devices. At least one other library appears to be jumping on the digital download bandwagon, but this one is providing the mp3 player as part of the deal. The South Huntington Public Library in Suffolk County, New York, is lending out iPod Shuffles preloaded with audiobooks. Right now the selection is pretty limited, but I think the news that libraries are beginning to digitally distribute audiobooks could point towards a burgeoning revolution in the audiobook business. Goodbye CDs 1 through 28, hello davincicode.mp3. (This is especially exciting news for me since this happens to be the childhood library of Mrs. Millions. I’ll have to look for the iPods next time I stop by.)
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eBook Paths Converge
When Amazon unveiled its new Kindle recently, I wrote about the twin paths that ebooks seemed to be taking as they gained market acceptance. On Amazon’s path, they would be tethered to the Kindle, while on the Google path, ebooks would be read on iphones and any other similar devices, whether on applications devised by Google or by independent ebook application developers.With the announcement this week, however, that Amazon has created its own Kindle application for the iPhone, the online book giant is clearly hedging its bets, while offering the free iPhone app as a taste of what Amazon can offer in the hopes that readers will graduate to a Kindle.
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