Category: publishing

“The situation in journalism is changing so rapidly that it is difficult to get a sure sense of what is going on. There is a great deal of discussion but it mainly takes place in an endless series of panel debates and blog posts where there are plenty of confident assertions, but not much reliable data.”

“The move to exploit reading data is one aspect of how consumer analytics is making its way into every corner of the culture. Amazon and Barnes & Noble already collect vast amounts of information from their e-readers but keep it proprietary. Now the start-ups — which also include Entitle, a North Carolina-based company — are hoping to profit by telling all.”

“The Italian government is planning a 19 percent tax rebate for book buyers, up to a maximum annual limit of EUR 2000 ($2746).” (Real dead-tree books only, though.)

This town’s daily newspaper has just released a second paperback of police stories under the title, We Don’t Make This Stuff Up. (No, it’s not in Florida. Who’d believe what goes on down there?)

“For years, the books kept coming. A precious edition by Thomas More. Leather-bound volumes from the Italian Renaissance. Some stolen from the Baroque-era Girolamini Library in Naples, given as gifts to an influential longtime consigliere to former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.”

What should you do next? A guide.

The sky has fallen on literature so many times that we can be forgiven for approaching the latest round of digital doom-saying with some skepticism of our own. For all the protestations that “it’s really different this time,” sometimes it seems like people just get off on prophesying gloom.

“The appeal of the shared notes and highlights stems from what’s enjoyable about physical books: picking up a secondhand book or finding a novel in a library, flicking through and finding evidence of who has read it before you.”

It may be only a matter of time before there are more Wikipedia articles in Farsi than in French.

“Our investigations found that there was a true criminal system in action. A group of people… carried out a devastating, systematic looting of the library.”