Category Archives: Book Talk

Book Talk, News, On the Web

Secret Student-Run Library

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In the vein of “if it’s on the internet it must be true”, here is a private schooler running a blackmarket lending librray from their locker. Basically, the school banned and pulled a bunch of books. Many are titles on everyone’s banned lists The Catcher in the Rye, Catch 22, The Evolution of Man, etc. So the student has been sneaking the books into the locker and lending them out.

I am heartened at the idea that books could mean so much to the younger kids running around, though I became suspect when the student claims that the Twilight series is banned, but won’t be in the secret library as

“…I don’t want that polluting my library.”

I thought all kids were required to worship at the alter of Stephenie Myer?

Book Talk, Digital Publishing, New Releases, On the Web, Publishers, Publishing Industry News, Technology, Upcoming Titles

Allowing Comments to in-progress Manuscripts

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O’Reilly Media’s Programming Scala won’t hit bookstore shelves for a long time. But the entire working manuscript has been posted to their site! Each and every paragraph, sidenote, chart and graph has a comment box underneath it. They are hoping that the community will contribute knowledgeble bits of information and ideas, which the author will vet and toss or incorporate. The idea is that this crowdsourcing filtered through their expert author will produce a more auhtoritative work.

Not too mention the marketing side of things. I guess one side could say “you’ll sell fewer books, because all of your hardcore readers have been reading while it’s been written”. Which might hold true for a few folks. But can you imagine the buzz this would build within the programming community? Or how much of a boost the book might get from folks talking about/buying a book that they were involved in producing? The system has a sign-in for commenters so that they can be credited in the final book, if their contribution is used. O’Reilly also provides RSS feeds for the various sections so that a commenter can keep up with that specific section of the text.

Obviously, this idea wouldn’t work for every type of book and the progamming community is a good place to start. It’s not the first book to be published from crwodsourced information, but it’s the first time, I’m aware of, a major publisher has added a crowdsourced component to the traditional publishing workflow. Which means that it gets checked and balanced by author and editor, which may be enough to sway a few naysayers.

I wonder what Andrew Keen would think of this community/professional mashup? Ha!

Book Talk, Digital Publishing, E-Books, Publishing Industry News

Poor Kindle-Laden Students

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I read this post this morning and thought about students being forced to use Amazon’s new Kindle DX. While I don’t shy away from eBooks and think the Kindle DX is a step in the right direction for textbooks and newspapers, I really think this is a bad move, for one major reason. That is usability.

It’s true that the screen is bigger and as a dedicated reading device the Kindle is pretty good. But reading texts for school is a TOTALLY different type of reading and the Kindle is only going to slow students down and tick them off.

I mean have you ever tried to cross reference something between two separate works on a Kindle? It’s the worst. The device is just not made for easy navigation. Even if you have the forsite to use the bookmark feature and know exactly where the info you need is (remember no page numbers) and you are only using two books for your work, it could take you almost a full minute to close a book, navigate to the other book, find reference, make a note and navigate back and load original text. Killer!

That little flip-flop between titles would take seconds with two books open side-by-side on a desk. The Kindle is just not built with usability in mind. It’s built to deliver books and ease eye-strain. So until they fix the navigation and allow multiple texts to be loaded into the RAM all at once, I’m afraid it’s going to be slow going.

I’m all for saving the environment and spreading the eBook love, but not at the expense of time and productivity.

Authors, Book Talk, Digital Publishing, E-Books, Publishing Industry News

Does it matter what an author looks like?

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I do a lot of thinking about ebooks and digital media, but Readerville pointed the way to a post by author Jennifer Weiner about something I have never really thought about: does it matter what an author looks like? Their example given is a good one:

the idea that she would likely have reacted differently to the author’s tale of marital woe had she known she was a gorgeous blonde who’d have no trouble finding a new mate.

I have to admit to often deciphering an author’s name as I reach for a book in the bookstore. Especially in the Current Events topic areas. You really do get different points of view from people living in different places, but I never applied to the sympathy and believability side of things.

I’m going to have to go through LibraryThing’s author database and look up all of my authors to see who lives up the image in my mind and who surprises me.