Is publisher greed endangering the e-book market?

Is publisher greed endangering the e-book market? We're already seeing publishers like Harper Collins restricting e-book use by libraries, and Amazon not allowing library loaned e-books to display on Kindle. Now Random House is the last of the big 6 publishers to switch to agency pricing. This latest move is a big blow to any hopes that e-books with older published dates will ever reach a remainders market. It's the Wild West right now in e-book land and the robber barons are looking to scoop up as much gold as possible. Read here at Literary Sluts Blog.

Can the IPad or the Kindle Save Book Publishers?

Terry Gross interviews Ken Auletta, author of the article Publish or Perish : Can the IPad topple the Kindle, and save the book business? published in The New Yorker, for NPR's program Fresh Air. He discusses the pricing structure agreement between book publishers and Apple that has changed Amazon's pricing structure, the effects of e-books on independent book stores, e-book rights and Google activities.

Watch, Listen and Learn!

The Adam Smith Academy is dedicated to producing original audio-VISUAL educational content, and distributing it through the latest technology, such as, iPods, iPhones, DVDs and online streaming videos. By creating short, narrated and illustrated “movies” of classic literature, history, economics and philosophy, parents and teachers can increase interest, comprehension and retention of difficult subject matter by delivering it to students in their favored formats.

From the site:

Place a book, an iPod, a cellphone (with video capability), a DVD, and a computer with streaming video in front of 10 students with the exact same content, and maybe, just maybe, one would pick up the book.

Taking the previous example a step further, ask any student for a memorable quote, and see if any are from a book. Most likely, 99-out-of-100 students would quote you something from their favorite, or even the last movie, they saw.

Put simply, the current educational system is antiquated. But, it’s not the content. It’s not the teachers. It’s not for a lack of money, or the age of school's buildings or grounds. It doesn’t need another bond, or smaller classes sizes, or a more conservative or liberal approach. The problem with the system lies in its distribution.

What may have worked 10, 20, even centuries ago, isn't the best option with today's current technology. And, while Thomas Jefferson and John Adams might still choose to curl up with a good book (if they were alive today), we can guarantee you Ben Franklin would be surfing the Internet for the lastest scientific information out of MIT or CalTech, and Alexander Hamilton would be scrolling through the latest stock quotes on his new iPhone.

The truth is, while parents, teachers and politicians argue over why “Little Johnny” isn’t learning in school, Johnny’s up in his room listening to his iPod, watching a DVD, and/or playing video games on the Internet. If only someone had noticed that “Little Johnny’s” book bag was lying in the corner collecting dust, perhaps the seemingly endless arguments and finger-pointing over what's wrong in education might have been averted, along with the waste of a lot of the taxpayer's money.

We believe that by presenting educational content in an entertaining fashion and on a “cool” format, students may not even know that they’re learning.

Here is an example - The Occurance at Owl Creek by Ambrose Bierce:

E-book week

This week is set aside to promote reading electronic books and other reading material. E-books are delivered to the end user electronically, and are read on devices such as Amazon’s Kindle.

It takes as many as 24 trees to produce a ton of printing paper. Up to 35% of books printed for consumers are never read but are used for display in book stores, and are eventually returned to the publisher for disposal. Given that a mature tree can produce as much oxygen in a season as 10 people inhale in a year, a serious alternative to paper books, magazines and newspapers needs to be considered and for many that alternative is e-books. Consider your carbon footprint. Read electronically.

The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age

John Siracusa looks at the past, present, and future of reading books on things that are not books. From the excellent article:

"I was pitched headfirst into the world of e-books in 2002 when I took a job with Palm Digital Media. The company, originally called Peanut Press, was founded in 1998 with a simple plan: publish books in electronic form. As it turns out, that simple plan leads directly into a technological, economic, and political hornet's nest. But thanks to some good initial decisions (more on those later), little Peanut Press did pretty well for itself in those first few years, eventually having a legitimate claim to its self-declared title of "the world's largest e-book store."

"Unfortunately, despite starting the company near the peak of the original dot-com bubble, the founders of Peanut Press lost control of the company very early on. In retrospect, this signaled an important truth that persists to this day: people don't get e-books."