Sarah Weinman

In the UK, a survey of heavy book-buying habits conducted by Book Marketing Limited and Lovereading demonstrated that while 56% of the approximately 1,300 respondents use the Internet to find out about books, social networks were less useful as a recommendation tool – only 34% found social networks as a whole to be helpful, and Twitter even less so (at 17%). The figures contrast with author and retailer websites, which 83% found “useful” when taken in total. (Of course, when Facebook now allegedly accounts for 1 in 4 pageviews, one could argue about what the definition of a website is […]

Europeana, the EU’s digital library, has more than doubled its collection of digital books, maps, photographs and other items since its November 2008 inception and with projections of up to 10 million by 2010, the European Commission has opened up a public inquiry on the future challenges for book digitisation in Europe and the need to reform copyright framework that runs until November 15. In a statement, Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media “finds it alarming” that Europeana makes only 5% of all digitized books available, with much of those works from a single country. Other issues […]

WHSmith and Waterstone’s appear to be heading towards a price war on Sony Readers once the latter retailer’s exclusive period ends on September 17th. Waterstone’s will be selling the new Sony Reader – Touch for £249.99, however the WHS website is selling it for £219. With the Sony Reader – Pocket Waterstone’s is taking pre-orders for £179.99 whereas WHS is offering it at £159.The Bookseller But don’t expect the Daily Edition, Sony’s touchscreen wireless reader, to be available in the UK anytime soon. Sony did confirm it will be sold there, but that it may take “a year or two.”PC […]