The Books Aren't All Right

People bitching like crazy about digital reading

[piratesswoop]

[relativemorals-deactivated20120]

YES. I’m tired of all of you pretentious assholes saying that I’m not “really reading” because I use a kindle.

[thedistortedone-deactivated2016]

Yes, you are reading.You are just reading a “lesser” form of book. Reading isn’t just reading the words on a page/screen, it’s smelling the book, new or old, it’s wearing the books spine out after rereading it for the X’th time, it’s leaving crease marks on a page you flipped too fast because you were that eager to get to the next page, and most of all, it’s losing yourself in a book to the point where the world around you no longer exists. And I, for one, cannot lose myself in an electronic screen. The words of a real book take on a depth that cannot ever be recreated on anything electronic. So you may be reading a book, but you will never truly experience a book unless you read it in a printed medium.

[piratesswoop]

lol this pretentious bullshit. “The words of a real book take on a depth that cannot ever be recreated on anything electronic.” i mean really. anyway, the words of your reblog have no depth or meaning to me since i’m reading them in electronic form, but u tried it

[jensencockles]

[ceciliatan]

Amazon is suppressing the sales of my upcoming book

In case you missed the news from inside publishing, Amazon.com has decided it wants an even bigger discount from publishers than it has been getting, and the first publisher they’re going after is one of the Big Five, Hachette Book Group. Hachette’s imprints include venerable ones like Little, Brown and also the former Time Warner Books now called Grand Central Publishing. The romance imprint of GCP is Forever. Forever is the publisher of my Struck by Lightning Trilogy.

So if you’re trying to order Slow Surrender or Slow Seduction from Amazon, you may see surprising things like they claim the book is out of stock and will take 3-5 weeks to ship! The ebooks are still available, but they’ve taken the pre-order button off the page for Slow Satisfaction and all it says is “currently unavailable.” That’s right, they don’t even bother to say what the release date of the book is anymore, as if me or the publisher canceled or delayed it. Bullshit: it’s coming out August 26th as planned, whether Amazon sells it or not.

What can you do to help? Purchase books (AND OTHER ITEMS) from alternate retailers. Unfortunately, Hachette has no direct-to-consumer ecommerce so I can’t tell you to buy it direct from them. But you can get the books and ebooks from many other sources, which I will list under the cut.

Barnes & Noble is having a special sale on Hachette titles, in fact, and so are Book-a-Million and some other retailers! Details on the B&N Sale at the bottom of the post.

BUY SLOW SURRENDER: Indiebound: independent bookstores | B&N Nookstore | iTunes/iBooks|Google Play | Kobo | Powells | Ebooks.com

Buy SLOW SEDUCTION: Barnes & Noble | iBookstore | Google Play | IndieBound | Powell’s

Pre-Order SLOW SATISFACTION: Apple iBookstore | Barnes & Noble | Google Play | Kobo | Indiebound

Among the reasons to preorder: all the pre-ordered ebooks ship on the same day (August 26) and count toward the bestseller lists at B&N, Kobo, and the Apple store! So that’s good. In paperback, right now B&N is offering 30% off cover price for pre-orders.

Here’s the details on the special buy two, get one free sale on paperbacks at Barnes & Noble:

“Buy 2 Get the 3rd Free” offer (exclusively Hachette titles, across all imprints), online only: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/books-sale-deals/379003623 OFFER DETAILS: Select Paperbacks Sale — Buy 2 Get the 3rd Free

This offer is valid at BN.com from May 28, 2014 at 12:01am to June 16, 2014 at 11:59pm Eastern Time, while supplies last. When you purchase two (2) or more select paperback books from our “Paperbacks — Buy 2 Get the 3rd Free” promotion, you will get a third less expensive select paperback book for FREE! Simply look for the “Paperbacks Sale — Buy 2 Get the 3rd Free” message icon to identify eligible items on BN.com.

This offer is not valid at Barnes & Noble retail bookstores or Barnes & Noble College bookstores or websites. Some of the titles included: SLOW SURRENDER, SLOW SEDUCTION, PAYBACK WITH YA LIFE, THUG LOVIN, THE GOLDEN HUSTLA, ACCIDENTALLY IN LOVE WITH A GOD, ACCIDENTALLY MARRIED TO A VAMPIRE, SUN GOD SEEKS SURROGATE, VAMPIRES NEED NOT APPLY, NOTHING SWEETER, THE VIXEN DIARIES, SATISFACTION, SANCTUARY COVE, ANGELS LANDING, HAVEN CREEK, FAÇADE, DARK AWAKENING, MIDNIGHT RECKONING, DARKNESS BOUND, THE EX WIFE, SHATTERED.

[ebookporn]

Scanner for ebook cannot tell its 'arms' from its 'anus'

A technical problem with optical character recognition software creates some awkward moments in romantic novels...

[bookriot]

Critical Linking: March 19, 2014

Our daily round-up of bookish links. Tastes great with coffee. 

In 1998, the Modern Library polled its editorial board to determine the 100 best novels published that century. While these classics are adored with the benefit of time and hindsight, they weren’t universally loved when they were first published. Here are 20 harsh reviews of some of the best novels of the 20th century.

This just goes to show…well…I guess it shows that no matter how great you are, you are going to catch heat.

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The publisher’s Vintage Books imprint has created Vintage Movie Classics to release backlist books that served as the basis for iconic films.The new line will release its first list in the spring with four re-issues: Edna Ferber’s Showboat (1926); Cimarron (1929), also by Ferber; Fannie Hurst’s Back Street (1931); and Booth Tarkington’s Alice Adams (1921).

Smart idea.

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Pay what you want. Support charity. Get seven exceptional titles.

The latest humblebundle is pretty compelling.

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E-books will become around 35% of the UK book market in the next two years, but thereafter grow “only very slowly”, according to a new report from Enders Analysis and Bain & Company.

Tough to take any projection with new technology seriously, but this is at least the trend right now.

[ebookfriendly]

Kindle talking too much (cartoon) http://ebks.to/1eyEeqE

[ebookporn]

5 Things We Learned at Digital Book World 2014 : Publishing Perspectives

[thebooksarentallright]

A few key take-aways from DBW 2014: teens aren’t reading for fun, ebook sales grow overseas, Wall Street discounts publishing and Amazon is like modern art.

[ebookporn]

It is becoming a divide, but also, D’Addario believes, a possible future for the printed book as “a luxury object.” As usual, it comes down to economics. Because ebooks are so much cheaper to produce than physical books and therefore cost less, “there is no compelling reason for anyone with an iDevice or e-reader to spend more money for a paper copy of a book other than aesthetic pleasure.”

I think the take away here is to make better books. Better physical books but also better digital books. The idea that an ebook must be a separate file in a zipped container forces emulation of a print page experience. We haven’t lived up to the potential of digital books because we are busy dummying them down to emulate a print book experience. Amazon has ghettoized digital books into a slum of commodities. Publishers should be looking at the full, interactive, innovative, new reading experience digital books can become and use that to lure readers to their own sites. Show why you are publishers rather than why you are not retailers. ~ eP

[lifenebooks]

Well stated, ebookporn.

[literaryreference]

I went to see the writer Mark Z. Danielewski speak about his books once, a couple years ago, and he talked a little bit about this subject. Danielewski is known for his experiments with the physical form of his books, playing around with layouts and fonts and colors and even the size and shape of the book itself to create certain effects, and he said he was initially against his books being made available in ebook form for this reason. But someone convinced him to give ebooks a try for his book The 50 Year Sword, and in working on that he realized that there were things he could do with ebooks that he never could in print, like bringing in sound and animation. Meanwhile, the print book still has a physical dimension that the ebook can’t have. So reading T50YS as an ebook and reading it in print are then different experiences bringing different perspectives to the same text, which is both an interesting artistic approach and (she said cynically) a great way to sell people two copies of the same book.

So yes, I’d love to see more ebooks taking that kind of angle—although certainly it’s more expensive and time-consuming than your standard digital production job, and a less established author than Danielewski probably wouldn’t have been able to talk the publisher into it.

[teal-deer]

Yes, except the hope is that if other established authors decide to try it out, then perhaps it’ll become the new norm.

Yo Xen let’s start a boutique Ebook publishing service. 

[literaryreference]

Are Print Books Becoming Objets d'art? : Publishing Perspectives

Oh, yeah, for sure. That was just a half-thought-out caveat to forestall people going "but it's not feasible for everyone to do that!" that came off awkwardly because I shouldn't be trying to write intelligent posts at 1 AM.

And hey, I'm down if you are.

[thebooksarentallright]

I Don't Care If You Dogear My Pages (And Other Confessions of a Failed Book Fanatic)

There's an adorable HuffPo article going around the internet at the moment: These Stereotypes about Book Lovers Are Absolutely True, and That's a Good Thin

I'd quote bits of the article, but basically all of this.

[thebooksarentallright]

2.

ABC's The Pitch Episode 6 asks two agencies to come up with a campaign persuading people to abandon their ereaders and return to print books. While neither ad is particularly convincing or original, the most glaringly obvious problem is that the campaign itself is based on a practically non-existent concern.

Reading paper books and ebooks are not mutually exclusive activities. You can, in fact, start reading ebooks and still return to print when you feel inclined to. It is possible, I promise.

There seems to be a common assumption on the part of print-apocalypticists that people are preparing to abandon print books en masse in order to have access to theoretically cheaper ebooks. I don't know what they think people will do with the books they already own: throw them on a bonfire as an offering to the god of ebooks, perhaps. In any case, this ignores the possibility that individuals are, in fact, capable of deciding whether print or digital is the most suitable form for a given text they intend to read.

A cursory glance at debates over the pros and cons of digital and print shows numerous reasons why people might go one way or the other. What people situated firmly on either side of the argument seem to miss is that different circumstances call for different forms of media consumption, and that people actually do experience different circumstances at different times in their lives. It seems weird and obvious to say, but at the same time it's something that is being ignored by people more inclined to view populations as being made up of consumer bots rather than actual human beings who do human being things on a regular basis.

By ignoring this in their 'real books are better' angle, The Pitch buys into a boringly simplified luddite view of how the publishing and reading world should deal with the rise of digital media, and misses an opportunity to engage in an on-going, world-wide discussion on the impact of said digital media on publishing (and marketing) that is happening, and is much more interesting than attempting to frighten and coerce people back into the fold of print. It's not going to happen. Digital media isn't going away, no matter how many heads are stuck in the sand. Nor is the print world in such dire straits as is sometimes suggested by the level of desperation that you see from anti-digital folks. But things are changing.

*disclaimer of sorts: The Pitch's episode dealt specifically with fiction, so this was really written with fiction work in mind. That said, the point I'm making works for non-fiction reading too.

** also, I don't really like marketing, just generally.

[thebooksarentallright]

1.

Hilariously, unironically titled 'Out of Touch,' this piece starts with a confused analogy of reading as some quasi-mystical religious experience and then goes on to reference a bunch of irrelevant shit. Throughout, it wanks on about reading being an aesthetic experience rather than simply an intellectual one, as if nobody had ever considered that point before.

Once the circus of getting ready for bed is over (why pajamas are so hard to put on is a mystery), we search out a clear plot of carpet and choose a book to read. Maybe it will be something from the Frog and Toad series or Tinker and Tanker or, the house favorite, George and Martha.

As I begin to read, the kids begin to lean into me. Our bodies assume positions of rest, the book our shared column of support. No matter what advertisers say, this could never be true of the acrobatic screen. As we gradually sink into the floor, and each other, our minds are freed to follow their own pathways, unlike the prescribed pathways of the Web. We read and we drift. 

Pyjamas! Always so hard to put on (?!). Obviously if you read to sleepy children from an ebook rather than a paper one, they would immediately notice the difference and begin shrieking, perhaps ripping off their pyjamas (NOOO!) before exploding into clouds of ash. 

tl;dr - Some dude really wants to be able to get his 'finger' stuck in a 'book.' Yes. This is the shit that actually counts as a serious criticism of digital reading. 

[thebooksarentallright]

Statement of Intent

Literature is dying. Physical books are becoming atypical artefacts, in the same way second-hand booksellers are becoming an endangered species, rare pandas in an increasingly digitized menagerie; no amount of pornographic coaxing, however well-intentioned, can entice the young to retake the libraries.

The novel is a waning art form, supplanted by the internet listacle, the Facebook, the YouTube. Half-demented children fiddle with Kindles and iPad Minis in the pallid twilights of their curtained bedrooms, and with every virtually turned page, another aspiring author gets rejected by a publishing house. 

It’s unconscionable. It’s objectionable.

It’s all, of course, a crock of shit.

The difference in digital adaptation between the publishing industry and the other entertainment juggernauts is that publishers have a ready-made coterie of erudite, highly cultured writers to spring forth and mount a defence of their crumbling business models. That many of these refuse to learn the difference between email and ebooks is immaterial. That many of them are old and white is implicit.

We aim to repost as many of these Soliloquys to the Dying Book as possible – both to argue against, and for hilarious posterity. If you come across any recent writing on the subject, feel free to submit it to us with or without your own thoughts, for re-publication.   

We hope you enjoy this toppling tower as much as we do.