Notes: E-Book Ad Patents?; Hachette's Free Online Titles
Attention, Kindle shoppers!
Amazon.com is applying for several patents on ads in e-books, according to Slashdot, which has links to the Patent & Trademark Office (oldfashioned) paperwork. One example: "For instance, if a restaurant is described on page 12, [then the advertising page], either on page 11 or page 13, may include advertisements about restaurants, wine, food, etc., which are related to restaurants and dining."
Like ads for Medieval Times sprinkled through Richard II and Hamlet?
The two patent applications officially are for On-Demand Generating E-Book Content with Advertising and Incorporating Advertising in On-Demand Generated Content.
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On its website,
Hachette Book Group has launched OpenAccess, which makes available for
free the full content of some of its titles so that readers can have
"an experience similar to shopping in a bookstore, where they can
browse the entire book to get a sense of an author's work before
deciding to purchase."
The first 17 titles on OpenAccess are "a
wide range of bestsellers, critically acclaimed authors, and eagerly
anticipated books." Some are previous titles by authors who have a new
book. For example, one book that can be read for free is Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, whose new novel, The Secret Speech, is published next month.
The list of titles will change every 30 days.
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As more students have bought textbooks online, during the past seven years, text sales at the University of Iowa's bookstore have fallen 35% and at the Iowa State University Book Store dropped 10%, according to the Des Moines Register.
In response, the bookstores are "playing up the convenience of campus stores, which get book orders directly from professors and will accept returns up to two weeks after the start of class," the paper said. They're also testing digital textbooks.
Northwest Missouri State University had a pilot project last year in which some 200 students were given Sony Readers that contained textbooks for four courses. "NMSU students reported the devices limited their ability to highlight, skip sections and take notes, and 40 percent said they studied less than they would have with hard-copy books, the university noted."
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In an item about three new stores in the Crossroads Shopping Village in Carmel, Calif., the Monterey County Herald noted:
"Diane Keene Simonds has opened River House Books at 208 Crossroads Blvd. Simonds, who grew up in Pebble Beach, previously operated a bookstore in St. Helena." The store's phone number is 831-626-2665.
A listing on the shopping center site described the store this way:
"A family-owned, independent bookstore where every book is hand-picked by the proprietor. Visit us for new works in the humanities and sciences, select bestselling fiction and nonfiction, travel guides, children's classics, reference materials, foreign and domestic magazines plus collection-worthy architecture, art, cooking, equestrian, fashion, gardening, interior design, photography and wine books."
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Scott Pitches and Angelika Cruz, co-owners of Barnacle
Books, Montauk, N.Y., are selling their business in the Montauk
Colonial Building on the South Plaza. According to the East Hampton Star,
"John Keeshan owns the building and is reportedly trying to keep it a
bookstore. He has been in touch with the owners of BookHampton."
"I would love to have them in here. We need a bookstore out here," said Cruz, though the Star added that "if a buyer were to come in today, she would willingly hand over the keys."
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Half Price Books, whose headquarters are in Dallas, Tex., is "thriving in hard economic times," the Dallas News reported. "Sales are up. More people are bringing in books to sell. So selections are wider and the titles more current. Retro, recycling and secondhand are cool."
CEO Sharon "Boots" Anderson Wright told the paper, "Everything is working perfectly. Cosmic karma has aligned." Sales at Half Price were $205 million in the fiscal year just ended.
The story includes a discussion and letter about the effect of sales of remainders and used copies of books still in print on authors.
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"Enterprising
fiction writers are marketing themselves to book groups in person, by
phone, and over Skype to boost sales. Meet the new breed of literary
types on the make," the Daily Beast observed.
Among several writers showcased was novelist Joshua Henkin, author of Matrimony,
who has visited more than 175 book groups online or in person. "With 10
people in each group, that's 1,750 books sold right there," he said,
noting that his initial efforts had reaped many benefits. Among them:
book groups sometimes seek him out now. "Most sales are going to come
shortly after publication. When you see sales stay steady, something is
going on in terms of word of mouth. And that tends to be book clubs."
Author,
editor and professional book-club facilitator Mickey Pearlman suggested
that the "only thing that's going to save publishing is book clubs."
"Certainly
the initial impetus and the continuing impetus is: sell books," Henkin
added. "But I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it. Fiction writers are
gossips. What fiction writer doesn't want to be invited into a
stranger's living room?"
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The Boston Globe
reported on the members of a special book club, noting that "for two
lively hours every Tuesday morning, in a church meeting room with old
oil portraits, they are book club members first and homeless people
second. . . . The story of the book club, now in its 10th month, is a
tale of ordinary city life upended."
The book group has "proved
its power to reach homeless people and build their confidence.
Emboldened by its success, Ron Tibbetts, a Beacon Hill church deacon
and longtime homeless outreach worker, has launched plans to replicate
it. His new nonprofit group, the Oasis Coalition, aims to establish
dozens of small social groups citywide, filling the gaps left by large,
institutional programs that offer the homeless food and shelter but
little or no personal connection.
"It's five people in a book group, not 5,000 people fed, but it's five people I can pull aside and talk to," Tibbetts said.
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Still wondering about beach reads this summer?
The Guardian offered "Text on the beach--the 50 best summer reads ever."
And USA Today
went to the literary source waters to talk books with people who follow
a classic behavior pattern: "Read a little. Stare out at the sea
awhile. Read a little more. Sleep."
The intrepid journalist
discovered that "what people read at the beach can be as eclectic as
what people wear at the beach. Some choices have substance. Others are,
well, a bit more revealing. Sexy, even."
Even a beach book group
was discovered: "Six members of a 2-year-old book club, made up of
twenty-something professionals in the Washington, D.C., area, are lined
up in a row near the boardwalk."
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The Codex Sinaiticus,
the oldest bible in the world, "written in Greek in the fourth century
but now scattered between the British Library, Germany, Russia and St
Catherine's monastery in Egypt's Sinai desert," has been reassembled
online.
The Guardian
reported that the "pages can be searched in facsimile, transcribed or
translated. The digital photography is of such high resolution that
insect bites and scars of some of hundreds of animals whose hides
became the vellum pages can be seen."
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"The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are filled with passionate intensity." In our time, rife as it is with the din of competing and seemingly irreconcilable dogmas, Yeats's lament would have been a fitting epigraph for this challenging encomium to the virtues of passionate uncertainty. Eminent sociologist Peter Berger (The Social Construction of Reality) and his Dutch colleague, sociologist and philosopher Anton Zijderveld, have constructed a methodical if somewhat understated argument in support of the proposition that rational doubt, which some might call it skepticism, is a healthy antidote to the twin evils of modern political and cultural life--fundamentalism and relativism.