Unknown's avatar

Goodreads’ growing pains: Attempt to curtail author bullying angers many users


Laura Hazard Owen's avatarGigaom

What makes for a proper book review? Reading-based social network Goodreads says reviews that focus on an author’s behavior, rather than a book’s content, don’t have a place on the site — and announced Friday that it is going to start automatically deleting those reviews.

The new guidelines are infuriating some users who say that some authors’ bad behavior online should be a factor in book purchases. And the entire episode highlights the challenges that Goodreads, which was acquired by Amazon (s AMZN) earlier this year, faces as it adds users (CEO Otis Chandler recently announced the site has over 20 million members) and becomes more influential.

A ban on “the author is an a**hole” reviews

Goodreads wants book reviews to be focused on a book’s content, not on an author’s behavior online. Until now, it had moderated reviews that seemed too personal, but those reviews remained on members’ profiles…

View original post 1,070 more words

Unknown's avatar

Google and Authors Guild return to court for fair use showdown


Unknown's avatar

Don’t price your ebook at $1.99


Laura Hazard Owen's avatarGigaom

What’s the right price for your self-published ebook? You’ll probably want to stay in the $2.99 to $5.99 range, new data from Kobo’s Writing Life platform suggests — and stay away from $1.99 if you want to maximize sales.

Publishers Weekly reports on Kobo’s self-publishing platform, Writing Life, which launched in June 2012. Mark Lefebvre, Kobo’s director of self-publishing and author relations, tells PW that the $1.99 price point “is dead”:

“Authors most often start at $2.99 ‘and walk the prices up,’ he said, noting, ‘A low price point may be a hook, but it’s the quality of a work that attracts readers, not the price.’ Lefebvre added that $1.99 is dead ‘not just for us, but also, it seems, on other platforms,’ pointing out that $0.99 KWL titles sell twice as many copies as those at $1.99, and that ‘$2.99 sells more than four times more.’ About 80…

View original post 140 more words

Unknown's avatar

Article: 17 Ways To Find Good Books To Read


The link below is to an article that looks at 17 ways to find a good book to read – I on the other hand only need two (go to my library and/or the bookshop).

For more visit:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/17-ways-find-good-books-read.html

Unknown's avatar

A Brief History of Stupid Book Bans, from ‘Twelfth Night’ to ‘Where’s Waldo’?


Unknown's avatar

Online Information, Ebooks, and Moral Panic


Unknown's avatar

Article: Banned Books


The link below is to an article that takes a look at the practice of banning books.

For more visit:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/courtney-l-young/freedom-to-read-under-fir_b_3971779.html

Unknown's avatar

Article: Automatically Archive Quotes from Ebooks in a Single Document


The link below is to an article that explains one way to automatically archive quotes from ebooks in a single document.

For more visit:
http://ebookfriendly.com/archive-book-quotes-in-a-single-doc-ifttt/

Unknown's avatar

Article: Ebooks Vs Printed Books


The link below is to an old article along the ebooks versus traditional books battleline.

For more visit:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/9047981/Jonathan-Franzen-e-books-are-damaging-society.html

Unknown's avatar

Reuters is suffering the same fate that newspapers are — it’s just doing it more slowly