This political season, Amazon is tracking all of the “red books” and “blue books” sold. It’s been fun watching the trends as they move through the country, but I’m having a tough time making sense of any of it. Usually, all the traditionally more liberal states are buying the “blue books, while the more traditionally conservative states are buying the “red books”. Here is a May-June snapshot that Amazon posted:
Category Archives: On the Web
Penguin posts new ebook buffet
I haven’t tried it yet… but Penguin is now offering (what they call) ‘ebook tasters’. These are files are from upcoming or newly released books, in a digital download form. It seems they are only available in ePub format which means you’ll need an ereader or Adobe Digital Editions installed on your computer. I’m sure all of this is a DRM move, which I’m not sure is a wise thing, if you’re only giving away samples. Wouldn’t you want to make that as hassle free as possible?
Font Conference
Co-worker passed along this video, hosted over on CollegeHumor.com, that’s pretty darn funny except for the senseless inclusion of Comic Sans. But the production meetings are more fun now that people have started talking in wingdings!
What if e-books were first?
Mac Slocum over on the O-Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing blog offers up a neat twist to the debate of e-books vs. paper books… what if we had all been using e-books for the past few hundred years and paper books were just coming on the market? Would we all laugh at the paperback, or as the new kid on the block, would it capture our attention and spark a movement?
He lists out the benfits of the new unplugged book model: no need to buy batteries, lasts a loooooong time, ultra portable, ultra cheap, etc. All these things almost put the old e-book model to shame, huh?
Slocum calls it the flip test and it sure seems a good way to look at both sides of an equation.