Tag Archives: books

The line between book and Internet will disappear

September 13th, 2010

The secret among those who have poked around EPUB, the open specification for ebooks, is that an .epub file is really just a website, written in XHTML, with a few special characteristics, and wrapped up. It’s wrapped up so that it is self-contained (like a book! between covers!), so that it doesn’t appear to be a website, and so […]

Tags: , , ,
Comments Off

Disposable books

March 4th, 2010

As the publishing industry wobbles and Kindle sales jump, book romanticists cry themselves to sleep. But really, what are we shedding tears over? We’re losing the throwaway paperback. The airport paperback. The beachside paperback. We’re losing the dredge of the publishing world: disposable books. The book printed without consideration of form or sustainability or longevity. The […]

Tags: , , , ,
Comments Off

Penguin Tasters

March 18th, 2008

My favourite publisher is at it again. Soon after announcing they would be experimenting with DRM-free audiobooks, Penguin today announced their new Penguin Tasters program.

From today (or actually from six months ago if you were sniffing around some of our new novels on the Penguin website) you can download the opening chapter (or chapters) of all Penguin’s new fiction for free. Yes, that’s right. FREE. For nothing. In pdf form — which you can print, email, view on your PC screen or a Blackberry, Palm or iPhone — these Tasters offer you the very beginnings of Penguin’s latest novels. You can get your mitts on some great stories without having to give a jumped-up calculator the keys to your bank account. It’s an entirely risk-free way to discover new authors, to read new stories (and to pass them on to your literate friends).

I’ve been quite effusive in my praise of Penguin before, but I think deservedly so. They seem to relish in experimenting with what it means to be a publisher in this day and age, and it’s a joy to watch them innovate.

(Disclaimer: My employer was recently purchased by Pearson, who also own Penguin. Make of that what you will)

Tags: , , ,
Comments Off

Escaping the annotated version of you

July 24th, 2007

The thing that limits you with Google is what you can think of to google, really. There’s some kind of personal best limitation on it, unless you get lucky and something you google throws up something you’ve never seen before. You’re still really inside some annotated version of your own head.

- William Gibson, interviewed on the Amazon Bookstore Blog

Hat tip: Boing Boing

Tags: , , , ,
Comments Off

Bedtime reading

May 3rd, 2007

Bedtime reading

Purchase it via the official site and the Drupal Foundation will get some loving in the form of cold hard cash.

Tags: ,
Comments Off