This week Wired published a provocative article about ebooks. In the piece, titled “The Abomination of eBooks,” author Art Brodsky points out how the applicable rules for ebooks are fundamentally different than those for print books; in particular ebooks are leased rather than actually bought and owned. Because of this, he argues that it doesn’t make […]
eBooks
Adventures in Kindle Direct Publishing: New Book “Savvy for the Social Web”
Last week I published a book on Amazon’s Kindle platform. It was a fairly straightforward process, although I had to take some care with the formatting. I wrote my book in Word and was fortunate that I did not have any images or tables. Had that been the case I feel that using HTML would […]
Kindle eTextbook Rentals and the Future of Textbook Publishing
Amazon’s recent unveiling of a Kindle Textbook Rental Service, which allows students to rent electronic versions of “tens of thousands of textbooks,” is the latest news in the radically changing textbook publishing market. Amazon boasts savings up to 80% of the print cover price, offers very flexible rental periods, and enables students to access their […]
Harper Collins’ 26 Checkout Policy Challenges Traditional Role of the Library
Harper Collins recently released a new library ebook policy in which the licenses to its content expire after 26 uses, forcing libraries to purchase them again. This represents a very dangerous trend affecting the very role of the library, and underscores a need for library and information science professionals to take a stand against competing […]