Quite frequently I hear people talking about the future. They will argue and pontificate about when the new digital book, the new digital fiction, the new digital culture will arrive. In the world of digital publishing futurologists abound as we all try and work out what will happen next, even as we are still working [...]
Digital Books Are Already Here
on 3 February, 2009 – 2:04 pm
Posted in Development, General, eBooks, read/write culture
Highlights of 2008
on 22 December, 2008 – 4:51 pm
Posted in General
With roughly a day and half of 2008 office time to go, thoughts inevitably turn to the year that was. Despite the near unbearable profusion of phatic and irritating “best of [insert year]” lists it seems worthwhile highlighting some of the, um, highlights from 2008 as this really was the year things kicked off for [...]
Visuals and Text
on 12 December, 2008 – 4:22 pm
Posted in Search, read/write culture
There is often a perception that digital text is somehow different to print. It hyperlinks, is easy to update and is, according to the argument, filled with pointless invective and ephemera. It doesn’t allow for deep and considered reading, catering as it does for the atrophied attention spans of the Youtube generation. Despite their recreation [...]
10 ways to gain a lover… of ebooks
on 1 October, 2008 – 1:19 pm
Posted in eBooks
There is a good post of 10 things epublishers should do for readers (the organic kind) by Jane at Dear Author (via Times Emit) – link
These are all good suggestions, although one or two would be a matter of your personal approach (e.g. preferring PayPal, or wanting the ecom site to store your credit card [...]
It is a little bit exciting, I must admit
on 9 September, 2008 – 2:22 pm
Posted in General, Publishing, Reading devices, eBooks
Michael beat me to it last week, but I wanted to reflect further on the Waterstones / Sony ebook launch last week. Anecdotally, Waterstones store staff report a great deal of interest from customers, and the rumour mills (or well-planned leak??) put a *correction: five* figure number on the Sony Readers sold by the morning [...]
10 Reasons Not To Write Off Reading From A Screen
on 18 August, 2008 – 11:23 am
Posted in Publishing, Reading devices, eBooks
Below is a post I recently wrote for the new Writer’s Handbook blog- well worth looking it for aspiring and established authors alike. Much of the material comes from an earlier post for the Digitalist condensed into a more digestible format.
2nd special edition ebook out now
on 29 July, 2008 – 4:11 pm
Posted in General
We have released the second in our special edition ebooks programme: Sid Smith’s China Dreams. More about it on the Picador blog.
“Ebooks suck etc”. Yawn.
on 28 July, 2008 – 4:19 pm
Posted in General, eBooks
On the back of the announcement that Waterstone’s and Sony are jointly entering the ebooks marketplace there has been quite a bit of coverage in the media, to the extent that I now regularly discuss ebooks with pretty much everybody. On this blog I have spoken before about the issue of both over hyping or [...]
Work in progress
on 15 July, 2008 – 3:21 pm
Posted in General, Reading devices, eBooks
The blogosphere has been buzzing since the App Store launched over last weekend with comments about ‘dozy publishers’ who have missed a great opportunity to make their books available on the iPhone. But apart from a few digital PR points scored against competing publishers, there doesn’t seem to me to be any huge value in [...]
