Ebooks, libraries, and... ebooks' Netflix?

The Netflix for books is here, it’s mobile, and it makes Amazon look old

Now that's something interesting!

Alas, only for iThings thus far.  But it's new.  Give it time.  I hope it sticks around.


Cory Doctorow: Libraries and E-books

I really recommend reading Cory's posts over at Locus.  This one in particular, since it's about ebooks, and how the publishers need to work WITH libraries.  They aren't the enemy.  Libraries are the friends of both publishers and readers.

If you want to know more about helping libraries here in the States, check out the ALA's Authors for Library Ebooks site.  If you read at all, have any favorite authors, do go look at that site, please!

Look for this badge and help authors and readers encourage publishers to help us all keep reading.

How CAN they...

How can legislators attack the teachers? Where would Abe Lincoln have been had he not learned to read? Heck, where would WE be?

I've always loved Lincoln. What would he have thought of his party now??

How can they attack the post office? Yes, the good ol' USPS. Congress forced the post office to pay 75 years worth of pensions -- yes, seventy-five! -- in ten years' time. Thus reducing their finances even further.

Ben Franklin was our first postmaster general. He also [says Wiki] set up our first lending library. I wouldn't be me without the library -- all of them. What about you?

It's all about the money. I bet you can feel where this is all going.

Yep. Shut down every institution that is for the common good -- the education, the postal service, the libraries, the health systems, everything. Because if you cannot pay, say the conservatives, then these should be sold at the highest price to the profit of someone else.

Privatize.


This so feels like a very frightening book instead of real life. I wouldn't read Animal Farm in my teens. I hated Brave New World, but had to read it twice. [Funny, I love apocalyptic fiction, though.] I managed to squeak out of reading 1984.

How can we stop this? Speak out. Don't hide. Spread the word about the laws you can't stand, about the things happening where you live. Tell people all over what you think.

The world is changing, everywhere. I'm advocating speech, so don't be shy.

The greedy bastards doing all this act like they have no shame. Maybe they don't. Doesn't matter. Society has a lot of tools for social change, and shame is not the least of them.

But pressure, now, pressure is a lovely tool.

And for the ones now in office who pretend that it's time to push their personal moral beliefs into law -- time to fire their misbegotten selves. This ain't what they were hired for.

This is my world too. I'm proud of all of the people in it. It doesn't matter if we never meet, if we don't eat the same things or speak the same languages. A lot doesn't matter. But this matters; to make things change, we all have to step up and speak.

I feel no need to return to the pre-industrial era, thanks. What about you?


But if you heard me cuss half the time lately, you'd think I wished I was violent like certain relatives... two of my favorite board games in the 80s were Family Business and Tom Wham's Gangsters.

I was good at those games. :D

Snippets: new book recs & libraries.

Angry Robot titles through to June 2012

Recommendations: My top picks from these new books are Dead Harvest, Debris, and Empire State, plus Blackthorne favorites Edge and Point. Runners-up: Damage Time and Nekropolis:Dark War.

My wish list is The Alchemist of Souls and Giant Thief; also Blackbirds.


@EV_Mag: are you an author? like libraries? go here and consider being an advocate
Also, librarians can go here to get some info on cultivating your local notable writers

Crippling libraries

I'm outraged about a particular publisher deciding to punish libraries who have e-books.

Full disclosure: I don't read e-books. I may someday, but I haven't tried 'em yet.


Imagine how you'd feel if you were the 27th person who lived somewhere rural, far away from a good bookstore, whatever -- and wanted to read something that you couldn't buy this month. And the library's only allowed to "rent"/lend the e-book 26 times.

Myself, I'm awaiting a status change on Charlie Stross's new Laundry book and Patricia McKillip's latest; they're both still new and can't be requested from other libraries.

With Lois Bujold's Cryoburn, I waited until the print book was off the new book shelf and could be requested. I have checked out hundreds of library books all my life, and that's a conservative guess. Last year alone I went through most of the Ellery Queen series [about 50 books] in 2-3 months.

More from a librarian about this madness. She provides lots of details, including contact info for HarperCollins and Overdrive.

The Analog Divide also has links for Trashy Bitches and Library Journal on this, along with Neilhimself's thoughts.


And another thing; what about the re-readers? I read my favorite books over and over. I honestly couldn't tell you how many times I've read the Miles Vorkosigan books. If I owned an e-book and it had a limit on how many times I could read it, and would expire out of my library...! What if I snagged a library e-book because it rocked and wasn't available in print format -- and that meant that someone else never got to read it?

Retiring or replacing a worn-out print book is NOT like limiting how many times an e-book is accessed!


Thanks to Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing and Lee Harris for tweeting the news. Also, there are a lot of great links and thoughts by commenters at BoingBoing.

I think that people who want the libraries to have more money ought to think about donating to them instead... because we moved away from the subscription-lending libraries quite some time ago.

Ereader use.

Maybe you heard all the ruckus back in February 2011 when the publishers all decided that library ebooks should be limited. It was a BIG ruckus. Or, as Literary Sluts put it: Congratulations HarperCollins – you just guaranteed Amazon and Kindle will win the eBook & eReader war

That's a good precis.

I bring it up because I bought Dad a Nook, and my sister-in-law got my brother a Kindle Fire. I won't use the Kindle app on my Galaxy Tab 10.1. I've added the Nook app instead. (More on this anon.)

I like Amazon's convenience, I do. But their business practices are horrible; just consider last month. Despite a long-held belief that the market is always right, it's really not. Businesses are not built to be kind, they are built to seek profit. Playing well with others is a social concept devised by humans. Corporations are not people, they are constructs made by people for a purpose.

Monopolies make for bad business practices: On eating your seed corn.

Part of why it all makes me angry is that libraries -- libraries! -- are suffering.

The economy worldwide is doing poorly, and the people who buy the most books read like the dickens. Of course we use library books. If I bought one new book a week, I still wouldn't have enough to read. I read far more than one book a week! I'm reading 2 nonfiction books [I finished The Gift of Fear a week ago], along with several fiction novels; before Christmas I'd wrapped up six novels. I finished three more by 4am yesterday.

I read a LOT.

I know I'm not the only one, since I got the seed corn link from this blogger. Except... I don't remember libraries ever limiting me to a few books (except my elementary school). I remember bringing home at least 10 or 12 in high school, which was just enough for about a week if I took it slow.

Literate people need books desperately. Publishers need new readers even more desperately. Thrusting readers back into the 1800s is the worst possible idea. We want to reach the future, our future, not fall backward into the past.

So think carefully about ebooks, oh corporations. Never eat your seed corn! How ever will it grow then??

Losing libraries.

Moonrat posted about Philadelphia's libraries and publishing. I began from her link because she talks about the importance of libraries to readers and to publishers.

Max told me about a local library's problems. The Troy Public Library or 20 police officers??

So I found that Michigan's libraries got cut also. Here is MeL's save library funding.

Please look around at your libraries. See if they're in trouble. Ask if there's anything you can do, or your kids, or your family, or your friends: Volunteer. Donations. Spreading the word.

We need our libraries, all of us. Don't let them die.