Google’s Squidoo knockoff product Knol is now open to public use after a less-than-spectacular introductory phase, so they’re making a particular appeal to authors to take advantage of the service: “Knols are articles about specific topics written by authoritative sources, so if you’re an author, writing a knol is a great way to raise the profile of a topic you care about. “Let’s say you’re an author who’s a gardening expert. You could write a knol on how to tend roses, which could introduce a few general principles of gardening and then explain how to care for a rose bush. […]
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Google Book Search, en Francais
Google has now officially confirmed the enrollment of the the Municipal Library of Lyon as the first French institution to join the Google Book Search Library Project. Together they will digitize “close to 500,000 public domain books.” You may recall that in the early days of GBS there were two primary schools of griping: the we’re going to be included and we don’t want to be branch, and the we’re not going to be included (and horrible English works will smother the world) branch. Needless to say, the French were among the leaders of the latter camp, advocating for government-backed […]
More Free: Pinter, Friedman, and Tor
Through August 5, author Jason Pinter is offering visitors to his web site free online access to the first book in his Henry Parker series, THE MARK. (The third in the series publishes at the end of July.) In an additional twist, Pinter offers to thank in the acknowledgements of next year’s book any fan who links to the free offer, posts the widget or e-mails five friends and notifies Pinter. I guess we just qualified.Pinter blog Separately, starting a few days ago, Thomas Friedman has been offering a free audiobook giveaway of THE WORLD IS FLAT from his web […]
At CBA Show, Zondervan Introduces Download-by-Card
The Tamba Bay newspaper covers the CBA’s International Christian Retail Show in Orlando, with approximately 7,000 attendees (and no exhibit from Thomas Nelson). Non-book merchandise captures the paper’s attention more than books, including everything from “a Christian version of the wildly popular Guitar Hero video game to ‘witness wear’ clothing and skateboard art that proclaim faith in bold cultural statements.” With Nelson’s absence, the show appears to be in serious decline, with numbers well below the approximately 9,250 attendees recorded the two previous years. (Even that number is well below the show’s high-water-mark of almost 15,000 attendees from 1999.) Publisher […]
Mitch Albom's Kindle Exclusive
Amazon started selling bestselling author Mitch Albom’s “Commencement Speech To His Nephew’s Graduating Class: May 30, 2008, Nice France” today as an exclusive Kindle file, priced at 99 cents. (It’s fewer than 4,000 words.) The AP notes, “proceeds are being donated to a Detroit-based charity for the homeless — but it does offer a test for the digital device that has created a great debate about the future of books and great speculation over how much the Kindle is part of that future.” Amazon pitches it: “Albom created a memorable testament to what we know and what we need to […]
ABA to Partner with Applewood on POD
I love the tidbit via Vermont Public Radio that, despite publishing world dreams that a POD book machine within a bookstore will make available countless titles efficiently to individual customers, what those customers really want is to make their own books. There is, potentially, huge opportunity there for physical bookstores, since the dozens of web sites that offer such services don’t have their own retail outlets. The bookstore is a natural place to go for help in publishing your own book (and if you buy the right package, they’ll put it on sale for you, too.) I’ve noted in speeches […]