eNews

The WSJ reports on Scribd’s long-discussed plans to make their document files portable to all manner of e-readers and mobile devices like iPhones. As they note, the site is “trying to become the universal adaptor for e-readers.” (A little like Google’s let-us-run-your-ebook-cloud strategy.) The Journal says iRex and Cool-er have approved the new efforts, and “an Amazon spokesman said the company approved the addition of a Kindle button to Scribd, but declined to comment further.” The feature will work with nook and Sony’s Readers, “but only when those devices are plugged directly into a computer and the user manually drags […]

Vook will publish a version of Anne Rice’s vampire short story The Master of Rampling Gate (originally published in Redbook in 1984, and released later as an audiobook), available March 1. In announcing the new product, Vook also says it has a “relationship” with Rice’s agency, Janklow & Nesbit. A spokesman said that means Vook has “an ongoing partnership” with the literary agency, with “additional titles to come from other authors” that they represent.

You can, and probably have, read in your venue of choice that the Department of Justice filed a new brief yesterday with Judge Denny Chin in which they still have certain problems with the revised Google Books Settlement, and those accounts nearly all dutifully declare the filing yet “another blow” to this sweeping plan. What you won’t read in most of these places is that it had to be expected that Justice would still raise issues. The revised settlement quite consciously addressed some but not all of the government’s concerns, and it would have been unrealistic to expect the government […]