Canada’s dominant retailer Indigo has plans for a electronic text offering focused on free and paid downloads for mobile devices, Quill and Quire reports. The enterprise will be established as a separately-branded subsidiary of Indigo, serving customers throughout North America (with intentions of going global), and set to launch in early 2009. “The final details won’t be unveiled until December,” the magazine reports, but Indigo cto Michael Serbinis confirms certain detials. Material on offer will range from complete e-books for mobile reading to small chunks (chapters, articles and short stories) and user-generated content. It sounds as if download fees will […]
eNews
Google Settlement: Expanding Public Access?
Since the announcement of the Google settlement, the Internet has abounded with fantasy suggestions for changes in the agreement. On his personal blog, executive director for the Digital Library Federation Peter Brantley offers a level-headed proposal on expanding access to the public in areas with “underprivileged populations.” Simply put: “I propose that public terminals be accessible on a tiered basis. If a certain percentage of a public library’s served population falls beneath the poverty level or a similar metric, the number of public access terminals is commensurately increased. At public libraries, internet access is a priority; so is access to […]
Another eReader for the UK
The BeBook has launched in the UK, selling for 230 pounds, and provided with 150 free books pre-loaded on to the device.ReleaseSale offering, with picture
WorldCatFight
OCLC posted a new policy for the transfer of WorldCat biobliographic records recently that quickly provoked a worried reaction from community members. Terry Reese at the Oregon State University library posted concerns that the service was trying to claim ownership over data contributed by individual libraries: “What OCLC has going for them is the WorldCat database that has been created by publicly funded institutions (like the Library of Congress, universities and public libraries)…. What we have here is OCLC looking to claim ownership over metadata within WorldCat and outside of WorldCat – and I don’t believe that this is something […]
What Schwalbe's Cooking
The NYT provided advance publicity this weekend for former Hyperion editor-in-chief Will Schwalbe’s new venture, Cookstr.com. Katie Workman is both editor-in-chief and chief marketing officer. Going live later this month, it presents recipes from chefs who are also well-known cookbook authors (and often Hyperion authors, such as Nigella Lawson and Jaime Oliver), and aims to sell print copies of those cookbooks as well. Schwalbe says they will start with about 2,500 recipes from 100 cookbooks. The article says that Nielsen Bookscan recorded cookbook sales for 2007 of 13.9 million copies, down almost 7 percent from 14.9 million copies sold in […]
Test Program for Universal Online Catalog
The innovators at Above the Treeline will begin testing an online interactive catalog of books from multiple publishers. The six-month pilot program features books from Chronicle, Harper, Wiley, Penguin, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Thomas Nelson, and Tyndale House. Called Edelweiss, the new interface aspires to let retailers “manage their catalogs easily in a single online library, to view dynamic, enriched content about new titles, and to efficiently integrate orders and bibliographic information back into their point-of-sale systems.” CEO John Rubin explains to BTW that they have tried to redesign the catalog to work as an interactive online product rather […]