Quo Vadis, Amazon?

Evan — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 10:20:51 +0000

Reading Nicholson Baker's long piece in the August 3^rd New Yorker while on the beach last week, got me thinking about the role of Amazon in the future of print book publishing. Mr. Baker, a novelist, is coming to terms with his new Kindle - its benefits and as well as its drawbacks. While I don't get a few of his observations (especially his preference to read on the much smaller and much harder-on-the-eyes LCD screen of the iPhone), one comment made about the Kindle struck me as particularly eye opening.

“If I looked up a particular writer on Amazon—Mary Higgins Clark, say—and then reached the page for her knuckle-gnawer of a novel “Moonlight Becomes You,” the top...

Ceci n’est pas un ebook

Evan — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:23:04 +0000

It was perhaps the most significant news to break since the launch of the Kindle. Google rolled out its inevitable and longstanding plans to enter the digital content selling arena at BEA, which it has dubbed, Google Editions. Google Editions is cleverly named because it explains what it isn’t (ebooks), where you get it (Google), and, by putting the word Google together with an assumed possessive plural of “Editions,” there is an implied unique quality to these editions that is not found anywhere else. These are not ebooks, these are Google Editions. Google Editions will be composed of content that is currently (or will be) found in the Google Partner Program. The Partner Program of Google Book Search is the discoverability...

Black Plastic Glasses » Google Book Search

Quo Vadis, Amazon?

Ceci n’est pas un ebook