Ebook Text Problems

I’m a voracious reader, and read between 80 and 100 books a year. Obviously, this is a habit that gets expensive so I’m always looking for legal ways to still read and cut back on the spending. Until I got my iPad in 2010, I was a frequent customer of my town’s library. Once I got hooked on digital books, however, I never really went back.

Some of this is due to the fact that I live in a very small town (about 5,000 people). I often joke that there are more cows on my street than people. So, my library is very small. While we are tied into a regional network of libraries, the next closest library is still two towns over.

Thankfully, my library joined the digital age and I can check out books digitally. This is a big deal for them, since the last time I asked them if I…

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50 of the Greatest Characters in Literature

19 September 2014 by particularkev

Authors United may not want to admit it, but most books are consumer goods like any other

16 September 2014 by particularkev

Gigaom

As my colleague Laura Owen has reported, Authors United — a group of writers who are upset at the tactics Amazon is using to negotiate with the French publisher Hachette — has posted a letter to the company’s board of directors, arguing that the online retailer is being unfair to authors. Among other things, the group says Amazon is making a mistake by treating books like any other consumer product.

In fact, in a somewhat bizarre turn of events for a group that is supposedly protesting Amazon’s methods — the refusal to allow advance orders of Hachette books, the removal of some books from the search index, and so on — Authors United makes an odd admission: it agrees Amazon “has every right to refuse to sell consumer goods in response to a pricing disagreement with a wholesaler.”

But wait — isn’t that exactly what Amazon is doing with…

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