Category Archives: News

Authors, Birmingham, Book Talk, Events, News

Local Author Expo – Birmingham

Leave a comment

Mark your calendars for December 3rd, 10:00am-3:00pm. That’s when the sixth annual Local Authors Expo is slated to take place. As always, the event will take place downtown at the Central Library. The expo is always an interesting mix of authors and books. Most of the tables are stacked with books by self-published authors. So authors have a publisher, but most are braving the wilds of literature on their own. Prices and subjects run the gamut, so you’ll want to leave yourself enough time to make the rounds. More than 90 authors have already signed on.

In keeping with the self-published push, they have also invited Liz Reed, of the Birmingham Arts Journal, to lead a 90-minute discussion/orientation for people wanting to get published. The event is called “Every Writer Needs an Editor“. It is free, but they’re asking that you click through that link to reserve a spot, so they can make sure they have enough seats.

E-Books, library, News

Getting Library Books on Your Kindle

Leave a comment

UPDATE #2: Looks like the Kindle library lending options are live for the JCLC system!

UPDATE : OverDrive has released a statement saying that the library system will work with WhisperSync to push notes, bookmarks, etc. to the ebook if you buy it or check it out again. But you still can only download library ebooks via WiFi or the USB cable. /stop/

News broke today that Amazon officially started letting people, in select parts of Washington state, check out and read library books on their Kindles. This program is in partnership with OverDrive, which is a good move I think, but Amazon should have worked harder to integrate. For starters, they’re wrapping all of the ePubs in their proproetary .tpz format. Whatever. But the “ugh” part really kicks in during checkout.

Checking out JCLC books via the OverDrive app is a painless one, once you get the Adobe DRM straight. But Amazon has added a couple more clicks and a couple more steps to the process. So to read library books on your Kindle you:

  1. log in to your library
  2. check out book
  3. which take you to Amazon.com where you have to log in there
  4. check out book there which lets you download the file
  5. hook your Kindle up via USB, drag and drop the Kindle library book

 

Now I don’t live in Seattle and have yet to do this myself. I’m very thankful to the Seattle Times crew and their detailed photos and coverage.

I am not a software engineer and I’m sure it’s very hard to get the big independent systems to work together on something as complicated as checking out files that need to expire. But it’s Amazon! If anyone has the customer-centered focus, skills and dollars, to bring harmony to the library>>OverDrive>>Kindle>>library cycle, it’s them.

No word yet on when the rest of the country might get the service, but no doubt Kindle users will be very glad to have access to their library’s ebook collections, no matter how cumbersome the checkout process gets.

Birmingham, Events, library, News

Bham – Erase those library fines this month

Leave a comment

We are in the middle of this year’s Food for Fines month, in Jefferson County. Basically, you get $1 credit applied to your library fines for every canned good you bring in. All 39 JCLC branches are collecting the food for their annual food drive.

It caps out at $10. So if you have $11 in fines, you will need to bring 10 cans and $1. For that you’ll get your overdue library fines erased, help some people in need and get a warm smile from a friendly librarian.

News, Publishing Industry News

Print Sales Falling Faster & Faster

Leave a comment

Publishers Weekly shared some Nielson BookScan data showing that sales of print books fell by 10.2% in the first half of 2011, with sales of mass market paperbacks falling the fastest at 26.6%. This time last year, it was the same song except that print sales were down only 0.4% in the first half of 2010, with sales of mass market falling the fastest at “only” 4.6%.

An acceleration from .4% to 10.2% and 4.6% to 26.6%, in only a year’s time, is a crazy thing to wrap my mind around. I hope everyone in ANY kind of publishing is cranking out new ideas to respond to what and how readers want to read.

Also, I should mention that BookScan covers about 75% of the shops out there and they do not yet track ebook sales. So any comparison or shift in consumer behavior is guessing based on their data.