Last month, in his post "The End of Indie," Richard Nash proclaimed: "Indie doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s dead. Which is OK, because it won...So now the phase of indie is over, now that the monopoly on the production and distribution of knowledge, culture and opinion has been broken, what next, a new phase..."A week later Amazon released their updated terms of service which essentially, forces the hand of the many websites and companies that use their API to provide data to their users. The gist of the new terms is that if you use Amazon's data, then you must...
The Time is Ripe for Book Arts
"The Book in Time & Place" is the title of the artist book exhibition currently on view at the Anderson Gallery at Drake University and features work from the The University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections and Drake Universities Cowles Library."The goal of the exhibition is to enhance understanding of 20th century artistic and literary developments within the world of books," said Sarah McCoy, Drake assistant professor of graphic design and art and design.It is a fitting title given the massive upheaval the book world is currently experiencing. As the 21st century moves along the pressure on the traditional book...
Books to Bytes: "Physical Storage vs. Digital Storage"
click to enlargeMozy is company that provides online backup and storage solutions. In a recent blog post, Physical Storage vs. Digital Storage, they provided an astounding visual depiction of the advance of technology as it relates to the storage of information.Above is section from the graphic relating to books. Using the Library of Congress as a jumping off point, Moxy claims that they can now store the equivalent of 1000 LOC's without breaking a sweat.That is 32 billion books and 650,000 miles of bookshelves. Enough bookshelves to go from Jerusalem to Beijing 147 times! Now, that's a Great Wall.Essentially, the...
Online Bookselling Pollutes Another Innocent Mind
My inbox is on fire today. Here is another doozy, a perfect specimen of how the barrier-free selling of books online has become the number one threat to traditional sane bookselling practices.***********************************"Where the Wild Things Are- byM. SENDAK -HC, 1963, 1rst edition, rare, urgent quick sale only $2700- listed at $10,000 and rising currently- major profit opp!VERY RARE COPY OF 1963 WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE BY MAURICE SENDAK. ONE OF THE MOST COLLECTIBLE AND ELUSIVE CHILDREN'S BOOKS OF ALL TIME,IT WAS PUBLISHED IN NY BY HARPER AND ROW. THIS FIRST EDITION IS MISSING DUST JACKET, IS IN CLOTH BINDING...
What Tomorrow May Bring : At the Bookstore and In the Classroom
Here is Moriah Jovan's idea for The Perfect Bookstore. The Espresso elements have nothing to do with coffee but relate to the new print on demand machine that is quietly sweeping the nation. While I agee with Jovan that the current publishing/bookseller model is in tatters and in need of serious revision and that we are in dire need of a "new breed of independent bookseller" I'm quite sure this new model, by itself, has nothing to do with books.I would call this destination a Print on Demand/Digitial Download Station before I would call it a Bookstore.But as Jovan points...