novels

Voices

Authors Feel Pinch in Age of E-Books

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on September 28, 2010 at 12:00 am PT

When literary agent Sarah Yake shopped around Kirsten Kaschock’s debut novel “Sleight” this year, she thought it would be a shoo-in with New York’s top publishers.

Mediocrity Rules! Why the iPhone’s Crummy Camera Is Flickr’s Favorite.

Peter Kafka in Media on August 18, 2009 at 3:28 pm PT

Flickr is one of the Web’s most popular photo-sharing sites. Flickr users’ camera of choice? The iPhone–even though the image isn’t great, the flash is nonexistent, and the only way to zoom is to move your hand closer.

Jeff Bezos Apologizes for Kindlegate, but Can’t Promise It Won’t Happen Again

Peter Kafka in Media on July 23, 2009 at 8:01 pm PT

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos didn’t make it to his company’s earnings call today, but he did find time to apologize for Kindlegate–Amazon’s ham-fisted removal of George Orwell novels from his customers’ e-book readers. Great, right? Almost.

What Book Will Amazon Delete Next?

Peter Kafka in Media on July 21, 2009 at 5:11 am PT

Last week, Amazon acknowledged that it deleted some copies of “1984″ and “Animal Farm” from customers’ Kindles. So what book will be next? Because while Amazon has said it won’t repeat what it did last week, it hasn’t actually sworn off remote book-removal–or remote-anything removal, for that matter–altogether. Does that worry you? It should.

Amazon Rethinks Its George Orwell Removal Policy

Peter Kafka in Media on July 17, 2009 at 6:28 pm PT

Amazon has explained why it has been deleting some novels from its customers’ Kindles: It shouldn’t have been selling them in the first place. Amazon says the copies of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984″ that it removed, without warning, from some Kindles this week are “illegal”, because the publisher didn’t have the rights to sell them. Won’t happen again, the e-commerce giant says. Sort of.

Kindle Now Only $299 More Than iPhone Kindle App

John Paczkowski in News on July 8, 2009 at 3:10 pm PT

Amazon hasn’t said how many Kindles it has sold since launching the device in 2007, but it may soon be selling quite a few more of them. The company today dropped the price of the six-inch Kindle to $299–$60 off of its previous price. That’s certainly not a dramatic reduction, but it may be enough to drive consumers who’ve held off on purchasing the device to reconsider.

Voices

Rejected Tom Swift Novels

Nitrozac and Snaggy in News on July 8, 2009 at 12:30 pm PT

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.)

Voices

Kindle Hikes Book Prices and Adds to My Ambivalence

Dan Gillmor, Director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in News on May 11, 2009 at 8:49 am PT

Just when I was coming to terms with my ambivalence toward my Kindle e-book reader, Amazon and the publishers have gotten greedy. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the device since I bought my first one about 9 months ago. As a frequent traveler and voracious reader, I’ve found the Kindle to be nearly ideal. I never have fewer than a dozen books in its memory, and they’re always things I want to read.