Simon and Schuster has been on the loose lately.In January they partner with Gather.com and Borders for a nationwide literary contest that reeked of American Idol. They framed it this way "Publisher Leverages Power of Social Media to Find America's Next Great Writer"Then they go ahead and Long Tail their standard author contract so that technically a book never goes out-of-print.and now they've launched the ambitious BookVideos.tv. A "social media video site...where you can engage with the literary community on a whole new level."All the books on the BookVideos.tv website are available for sale directly from S&S. They provide you...
The Death of the Bookend?
Furniture designer Leo Kempf was interested in designing a piece of furniture using a new technique. He came up with a "process of bending plywood to create a simple curve." He then inserted these curved plywood shelves into a red hardwood main beam to create The Gravity Bookshelf.The bookshelf "is ideal for holding books securely without the need for bookends."It works by "gravity gently press[ing] the books into the shelf, creating a very simple, clean, and unique piece of furniture"Thanks to LibraryPlanet for the lead
Buy – Dry – Read
This is Paolo Orsacchini's striking design for a limited anniversary edition of the Italian publication of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.The book comes wet. Soaked in sea water then sealed in a nice clear pouch.Luckily, the paper is waterproof so if you want to read it you simply set the book out in the sun. Let it dry then read.I haven't been able to find out much about the book details, like size of the edition and retail price, but the image and the story have been deservedly making the rounds of the design blogs.The concept alone...
Research Reveals AbeBooks Driving Booksellers Crazy
Maybe that should have been the title of their latest press release.While most of the bookselling trade is going nuts over AbeBooks' new 'bookseller rating' system, which is running in beta version right now, they release this news flash:Research Reveals Baby Boomers Drive Online Used Bookselling in USBefore I get to that here is a bit about the current skirmish between the booksellers in the ABAA and AbeBooks.AbeBooks is working on a rating system for booksellers based on the star rating systems that appear at other online marketplaces. Unfortunately, this bookseller rating system has nothing to do with bookselling and...
Readings For Money and Books For Free
You get a sneaking suspicion reading Ceclia McGee's piece in the New York Times "A Way to Give Authors a Lucrative Second Platform" that the model for author readings has changed drastically and that the free in-store author reading is endangered.Many of the major publishing houses have set up in-house speakers bureaus which now hire out their authors to various groups and businesses for a fee which includes travel expenses.Why are they doing this? The publishers say "they are responding to common industry trends: fleeting tastes in mass-market books, shrinking shelf lives in bookstores, disappearing book review sections, and the...