Our Resident Bibliomaniac

[yfel-axel]

[songthursh]

@stupidlynx 's and mine take on how this priceless dialog happened on the old cemetery of Ankh Morpork one glorious 25th of May

[shirmart]

I haven't read "Night watch" yet, but I heard enough of Glorious revolution to make myself cry

[spacecapart]

"John Keel, Billy Wiglet, Horace Nancyball, Dai Dickins, Cecil ‘Snouty’ Clapman, Ned Coates and, technically, Reg Shoe. Probably there were no more than twenty people in the city now who knew all the names, because there were no statues, no monuments, nothing written down anywhere. You had to have been there.

He felt privileged to have been there twice."

[humanoidhistory]

The Empire Strikes Back poster from Japan, 1980. Artwork by Noriyoshi Ohrai.

[inatungulates]

Lesser mouse-deer Tragulus kanchil

Observed by hamsambly, CC BY-NC

[lilithsaintcrow]

"This week I discovered the same pattern, executed by Google. Google Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking."

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. — Th

Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise t

[spockvarietyhour]

Google Chrome Secretly Downloads Huge Local AI Models

Google Chrome automatically installs local neural network components on user systems via default configurations. The browser downloads a 4GB

Procedures for disabling it

[rena-ragerat]

Redraw of an old work

[barissoffee]

HAPPY STAR WARS DAY! | May 4th, 2025

[psychotic-gerard]

x

[kiragecko]

[Image of text saying,

Some AAVE speakers pluralize 'child' as 'childrens'. People get racist about this ("It's already plural!"), but 'children' actually comes from Middle English speakers doing the same thing: slapping their plural marker on word already pluralized by an extinct plural marker.

To oversimplify: in Old English, 'childer' ('ċildra') was the plural of 'child' ('ċild'). Middle English developed an '-en' plural marker, which we see in 'oxen'. Instead of updating to 'childen', people slapped their preferred '-en' onto the end of 'childer' - so now we have 'child-er-en'. AAVE carries on this tradition with 'child-er-en-s'.

"Pure" language is just impurity obscured by the passage of time.

End ID.]

[cottoncandylesbo]

the excitable hog

[the-hope-gnome]

[of-swords-and-princes]

"I’m not going to be like her. I’m not."

[thebibliosphere]

Opening my author email these days really is just some variation of "hello influencer, we have noticed your [product] and that you are very good at it. We would like to talk to you about a way you can expand your audience using our unique subscription service training people how to self publish there book," and that's great and all, but I'm doing that shit for free.

[thebibliosphere]

Anyway, in light of Draft2Digital implementing fees for new authors or authors who do not make the yearly threshold of sales (I get why they're doing it, and it's still less expensive than Ingram by a country mile. But it still sucks for the people affected by it and it will drive more people to Amazon :/), you can publish your digital media directly through Kobo.

They do not offer paperbacks or hardbacks at this time.

But their digital market has the same e-book and audio market reach as D2D/Ingram and allows for library lending. So if you are an indie author who was mostly using D2D for that library access, and for whom the maintenance fees would be prohibitive against your earnings, you can use Kobo for free.

I haven't used it, because I'm not affected by the D2D fees and I didn't want to mess up my market listings by having duplicates, but when I heard about the D2D fees, I started researching so I could hopefully find a free alternative with comparable market reach. And good old Kobo was there.

Anyway. Hope that helps someone.

[thebibliosphere]

Also, to any authors still using Kindle Unlimited, I'd highly suggested thinking about moving over the Kobo+.

It allows for the same subscription model as KU, but doesn't enforce an exclusivity clause, so you can still mass sell through the global market and also be hosted in libraries.

I know it seems risky when KU is so established, but Kobo+ subscriptions are increasing quite a bit as even the most stalwart of Kindle fans get sick of Amazon, and my Kobo+ numbers are starting to eclipse Kindle, which is delightful.

The more we as authors push readers to Kobo+, the more freedom we'll have, so I think it's a worthwhile endeavor, for us and them.

Anyway, that's your two bits of free indie advice for the weekend.

[kirahti]

Your Kobo numbers are outpacing your Amazon? That's great! (sorry, librarian here with a vested interest in Kobo XD)

I switched to them last year after Amazon pulled its 'no more side loading bullshit' and have been watching them closely. They were already Amazon's primary competitor before but last year saw them really starting to get up there, I feel. If they keep going how they are (and if bookshop.org finally does their Kobo support) finally there might be something that takes a hard bite out of Amazon's monopoly at least in the e-book department.

[thebibliosphere]

There's been a real jump to Kobo over the last year or so!

It's always been a bigger source of income for me in Europe compared to Euro/UK Kindle sales, but there's been a marked increase in that revenue compared to previous years overall. It's an encouraging trend to watch :)

[kirahti]

I remember last year they were sold out of...I think it was the Clara e-reader until pretty much the summer! It was heartening to see.

If you don't mind me asking out of insane curiosity (and I actually used to work for Barnes and Noble, started *right* when the Nook came out way back when), do you have anything in the Nook department or have you noticed any trends for you there?

[thebibliosphere]

I can only speak personally, but Nook/B&N is way down compared to Kobo.

I also suspect B&N's numbers are going to continue to plummet after B&N announced that authors can only upload a maximum of 100 books to their accounts going forward and a lot of prolific indie authors who heavily promote the platform abandoning them because of it, but I guess we'll just have to see how that pans out.

[samsayswhatever]

Wow, they literally turned the entire subway car

[loudcheesecakefan]

That's so freaking cool

[theskatingarchive]

Lucinda Ruh (SUI)

1999 World Championship Short Program

[great-and-small]

Common gallinules are one of my favorite baby bird designs. Because they haven’t developed the bright orange frontal shield yet they just look hilariously bald

[me----irl]

Reblog if you think the person you reblogged this from deserves to be happy.