XKCD

Saw Monday's XKCD and thought of you all.

http://xkcd.com/956/

Hope you're well!

Google Plans to Digitize Out-of-Copyright Books of British Library

Interesting read, especially with the ongoing chaos of the Google Books litigation!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-20/google-digitises-250-000-out-of-copyright-british-library-books.html

Hmm, Interesting POV

Are Publishers, Not Technology, To Blame For The Decline Of Books?

http://con.st/10019109

Interesting concept, not sure they back it up as well as they should but it's an interesting question to be asking ourselves as publishers.

Leadership Lessons from the Saddle

Good afternoon,

This article provides a great analogy for leadership. Enjoy!

Leadership Lessons from the Saddle

(Sorry this post is so short. Blogger has been having technical issues all day!)
-Randy

Self Publishing

Lengthy article about the "E-book gold rush."

The New York Review of Books on Google Settlement

Check out the "6 Reasons the Google Settlement Failed" from the words of the New York Book Review blog. The author, Robert Darnton's point? Screw Google Book Search, hail to the Digital Public Library of America.

Independent Bookseller Survival

Found a story about independent booksellers and their attempts at survival on Studio 360.

It's not all new stuff (in fact, several things we've talked about in class pop up), but worth knowing this stuff is part of the discussion out there.

Marginalia

Interesting article from the Times this morning: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/books/21margin.html?_r=2&ref=books

The Cost of e-books

A brief breakdown of the costs of e-publishing a book by a GW MBA student. (From The Washington Post on Saturday.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/05/AR2011020504712.html

DODOcases for Kindles & iPads

I saw someone using one of these on the Metro on my way to class on Monday.

Perusing the site, I think it's an interesting way to keep traditional bookbinding methods alive while still finding a way to serve readers....

Torrenting and the fiction-publishing market

In this LJ post (which I saw on FB), an author sounds off on the impact that illegal downloads can have on her career. Food for thought?

http://anywherebeyond.livejournal.com/342581.html

Literacy Isn't Dead

Apparently a new study lists D.C. as the nation's most literate (based on soft- and hard-copy resources available and used).

USA Today article here

Original study here

An interesting case study (though sadly short on detail) from Kaplan Publishing on the print-to-digital paradigm, from the user-experience (UX) perspective:

Portraits of an Industry in Flux: Digital Publishing and UX (UX Magazine, 1/3/2011) - http://uxmag.com/strategy/portraits-of-an-industry-in-flux

I suppose one lesson is that times of great change also provide the opportunity to refocus resources, revise goals, and identify new tools in creating an improved product type.