Nothing to do with ebooks, but with paper books.  Type Books, a Toronto based high street book shop, well actually there are two branches, so a pair of Type Books there, have produced this charming video about their store and the books that (literally) inhabit it.

As it speaks for itself I shall say nothing more, but ask you to sit back and enjoy this amazing little video…..

So, beware the next time you go into a book shop…. Books really are alive you know.

Link to Type Books: http://typebooks.ca/

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Lately I have seen a number of so called enhanced ebooks for kids, and whilst they are often great fun, and kids really enjoy playing with them, I have considerable reservations when it comes to “enhancing” real classic kid’s stories, such as Alice in Wonderland, and now Peter Pan.

The Magic Pudding

I feel that when a story is written from the ground up as an enhanced ebooks, then it is fine, and probably a good idea too, rather like films that are conceived as 3D films, rather than films that have had 3D sections sort of shoved in simply to be 3D without any real reason for that effect.

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All you Harry Potter fans will shortly be able to write your own versions of his story on line…………

J.K. Rowling rather astonished us all the other day when she announced the shortly to be launched website called Pottermore which will be the only place that you will be able to buy the Harry Potter ebooks.

Whilst she is firm in her statement that she has no intention of writing any more Potter books, she has assembled an amazing amount of stuff in  sort of Harry Potter data base that you lucky guys with literary aspirations can use to write your own Harry Potter books as this new site is also a sort of social network site, so people will be able to communicate with each other via it (I think) and work cooperatively on their versions of new Potter ebooks.

No DRM:

But the main thing that came out of this press conference that is of interest to us  is that the Potter ebooks will be sold without DRM protection, but instead each sold copy will have a unique “water mark” built into it, so that should that particular copy be sold on line, it will be easy for them to know which customer it was who sold the copy illegally.

Whilst this is actually probably not really workable – if the customer in question happens to live in Uzbekistan, how on earth would they go about taking legal action against that individual?   Also, all the Potter books have been available online from all manner of illegal torrent sites for ages, so legal purchasers of these ebooks will have no reason to make pirated copies and spread them on the net.

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I suppose it is inevitable, the first ebooks about Bin Laden are already happening:

Never slow to see a commercial advantage in large scale events in the world, publishers are rushing to print a whole slew of books, both ebooks and paper  ones all about the man, what the effects may be of his death and other ponderings.

Whatever one may feel about the assassination of Bin Laden, it is an event of major significance to the world, and thus it is not unreasonable that we are now seeing the first wave of what I am sure will be many books on the subject.

A serious look at it all:

One that has caught my eye is a collection of essays by a number of heavy weights on this subject, called Beyond Bin Laden: America and the Future of Terror (eISBN 978067964449. $1.99 Random House),  I have not read it yet, as it will be published on 9th May.  this one is a collection of ponderings  by people such as James A. Baker III, former secretary of state; Karen Hughes, former counselor to President George W. Bush and former under secretary of state for public diplomacy; Richard N. Haass, president, Council on Foreign Relations; Bing West, author of The Wrong War and former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs; Andrew Exum, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security; Daniel Markey, a senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations; Evan Thomas, an award-winning historian and former editor at large at Newsweek; as well as Meacham himself.

As you can see, these are people who know what happens in the real world, not a collection of speculations by journalists who are mainly famous for making up their stories as they go along…………………

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Now all you Germans can enjoy ebooks in German on your Kindle ereaders:

The other day, Amazon Germany announced the launch of their German ebook service, in which they have launched a whole new range of German language ebooks on their German Kindle ebook store.

This is great news for all German readers, as it means as Amazon’s press release puts it:

More than 650,000 titles, 71 of 100 Spiegel bestsellers, and over 25,000 German-language titles with thousands of German classics downloadable for free only on Kindle.

Concurrently with this launch, Amazon also announced the launch of their Buy Once, read Everywhere Kindle Apps for the most popular devices, including iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac and Android-based devices, in a German language version.

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Part two of Rich Adin’s ponderings on the true value of  books.

As you will have read in part one of this two part pondering, Rich (An American Editor)  has had a hard look at the way in which ebooks are valued, both financially and artistically, and drawn a number of interesting conclusions.

So here is the second part of his article on this subject, with thoughts engendered by various comments people have made on the first part.

The word is with Rich:

The first article in this series of musings, In the Era of eBooks, What Is a Book Worth? (I), brought a lot of comment, particularly on blogs that reprinted it. Most commenters disagreed with me, and several of the commenters compared an author’s uniqueness and a book’s worth to a painting.

Collecting original paintings is one of my hobbies. I was somewhat pressed into collecting by my wife, who is a professional painter as well as a collector. (For those of you interested, some of my wife’s paintings can be seen at her website, www.carolynedlund.com, and in an earlier An Art Interlude: Portraits.) But paintings and books, especially ebooks, are different, and I do not think comparable at all.

Consider that an original oil painting truly is unique. There is one and only one of it. That it can be copied doesn’t change the uniqueness of the original. Unlike that original painting, there really is no “original” ebook that can be identified, auctioned, or made distinguishable from a copy. There is nothing particularly unique about the bytes that comprise the ebook master file. eBooks do not increase in value (in the collectible sense) over the course of years, unlike print books which can increase in value as fewer pristine print copies of the first edition, first printing remain. A first edition, first printing, in fine condition of a print copy of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is worth significantly more today than when it was first published — because a copy in such condition is scarce and Hemingway is considered an important writer.

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