And people wonder why traditional publishing is floundering?

From Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rapper Kanye West does not read books or respect them but nevertheless he has written one that he would like you to buy and read.

The Grammy Award winner, known for his No. 1 albums and outspoken statements on everything from racism in America to the banality of Twitter, is the co-author of “Thank You And You’re Welcome.”

His book is 52 pages — some blank, others with just a few words — and offers his optimistic philosophy on life. One two-page section reads, “Life is 5% what happens and 95% how you react!” Another page reads “I hate the word hate!”

That 52-page collection of fortune cookies will set you back 10 bucks. The book is deliberately not wordy or anything, because that’s the author’s philosophy on books:

“Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed,” West said. “I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph.

“I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life,” he said.

*sigh*

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The article — headlined “More authors turn to Web and print-on-demand publishing” — reads like something that might have been written a few years ago, but when the mainstream corporate press finally catches on to something that’s been going on for ages, that’s a sort of stamp of approval.

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I always find more stories that I want to blog about than I have time to cover in depth, but they’re still worth pointing out:

• Spotted on Boing Boing: “Why the Real Estate Boom Won’t Bust and other funny books still for sale on Amazon” (it’d be funny if the state of the economy weren’t so scary)

• At Publishers Weekly: “The Kindle for iPhone: Good App with Flaws” (early review of the new iPhone app)

• “Innovation and the Future of e-Books” (download a PDF with three examples of innovative e-books that illustrate the potential and pitfalls of electronic publications)

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In what might be considered a long overdue move, The New York Times has created a new list of bestselling books: graphic novels.

Of course, this is probably a defensive movie on the Times’ part, just as it was when the Harry Potter books threatened to dominate the Times’ fiction bestseller lists, and so the Times created a new, separate list for children’s literature.

See, the Watchmen graphic novel — which collects 12 issues of the limited-series comic book in one volume — is currently the No. 1 ranked book on Amazon. Which means it probably would have shown up in the Times regular bestseller list.

But the Times explains its creation of the graphic-novel list this way:

Comics have finally joined the mainstream.

Except comics have been the mainstream for quite a while — at least since the original publication of the collected Watchmen almost 20 years ago — and if the Times thought it was time to finally acknowledge that, it would have let Watchmen sit on its main list of book bestsellers.

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It seems that with literally each passing day these days, the news of the decline of corporate publishing mirrors more and more the decline of corporate music: just as music and bands continue to flourish even as the big music publishers continue to complain about the Internet, reading and books and authors continue to flourish even as corporate book publishers appear to be orchestrating their own downfall by misunderstanding the sea changes the Net, print-on-demand, and e-books are bringing.

A piece at The Big Money by Marion Maneker, though, gets it:

The Kindle Revolution

Digital readers will save writers and publishing, even if they destroy the book business.

The Kindle may be little more than a novelty device today. With each passing day, though, it begins to have the potential to change the business model for writers of all types and stripes.

That’s how it begins. And it’s chock full of more revolutionary goodness:

Forget all the myths about the book business: the parties, the poring over manuscripts, and passionate arguments. The book business is a distribution business, pure and simple. It’s about getting the words and ideas of a writer into the hands of a reader.

…

Theoretically, the Kindle will give writers greater access to the public. Some of contemporary publishing’s biggest success stories are self-propelled sensations. The Secret and the Twilight series were self-published works that became independent industries. A publishing house played no role in their initial success.

This is only the beginning…

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Publishers Weekly announced today that F+W Media has launched a test program to draw readers by giving away e-books:

Last week marked the soft launch for F+W’s month-long test to increase subscribers to its e-newsletters for its Writing, Woodworking and Genealogy communities by offering free e-books. The free downloads include Bob Mayer’s 70 Solutions to Common Writing Mistakes, Tom Begnal’s Popular Woodworking Pocket Shop Reference and a compilation of Maureen A. Taylor’s Photo Detective columns from Family Tree magazine.

Much more exciting: users of the iPhone and the iPod Touch (which is basically an iPhone without the phone) will now be able to read everything available to Kindle users (as reported by The New York Times):

Starting Wednesday, owners of these Apple devices can download a free application, Kindle for iPhone and iPod Touch, from Apple’s App Store. The software will give them full access to the 240,000 e-books for sale on Amazon.com, which include a majority of best sellers.

The publishing revolution continues…

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You wouldn’t think this would constitute much of an innovation, but the fact that it is is an excellent example of how backward the corporate publishing industry is:

Thomas Nelson announced today the launch of NelsonFree, a program that allows readers to receive content in multiple formats—physical book, audiobook and e-book—without making multiple purchases. With NelsonFree, the price of the hardcover book includes both the audio download and the e-book.

…

Once readers purchase a book with the NelsonFree logo, they are directed to a Web site where they register and answer a security question. They then can download an audio MP3 file and several types of e-book files, including EPub, MobiPocket and PDF.

…

Nelson president and CEO Michael S. Hyatt said, “I believe that the industry is shifting and we, as publishers, need to explore new methods of getting our content into the hands of customers”…

Now we’ll wait and see which major publishers follow Nelson’s lead. I’m not holding my breath…

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From music to movies and now books, the new world of electronic distribution — authorized or not — of creative product continues to challenge both creators, who understandably want to retain as many of their rights as they can, and consumers, who understandably want to enjoy the products they’ve purchased as fully as possible.

Amazon’s just released Kindle 2 is the latest battleground. The Authors Guild has been objecting to the device’s text-to-speech capability, claiming that it infringes on their audiobook rights.

It’s a bit of a mystery why the Guild waited until the device was released to raise their objection, since the features of the Kindle 2 had been widely publicized long before the device was available. But that was its game, and it has paid off: Amazon has backed down.

As The New York Times reported over the weekend, “Amazon Backs Off Text-to-Speech Feature in Kindle”:

Amazon announced today that it will let publishers decide whether they want the new Kindle e-book device to read their books aloud.

The Times also noted that Amazon, even as it gave in to the Guild, remained adamant on the legality of the Kinde’s text-to-speech:

Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given.

Kindle owners — particularly those who snatched up a Kindle 2 specifically for its text-to-speech capability — are pisssed. As one commenter at Times asked:

What difference does it make if I read it, or have the computer read it to me?

And that’s an excellent question. Clearly a computer-generated voice is no competition for a professionally produced audiobook — many of which are read by professional actors and are as much a performance as a reading. Just as clearly — as Guild president Roy Blount Jr. made clear in his published complaint about the Kindle — people reading books aloud to one another does not violate any rights of authors. Blount argues that while computer voices may not yet be particularly pleasing to the ear — I certainly would not want to listen to any entire novel read by a voice that doesn’t understand what it’s reading — they will eventually get better. But if they do, then the computer-generated voice is only more like one person to reading to another. Which Blount agrees is not something the Guild is worried about.

So what’s the problem?

Of course authors — and all creators of material that is easily distributed electronically, such as music and movies — deserve to be fairly compensated for their work. But this seems like a nonissue… and I say that as both an author myself as well as a publishing professional.

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Always cause for celebration: newly found work from the author of beloved classics:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has acquired a previously unpublished work by J.R.R. Tolkien, written while Tolkien was a professor at Oxford during the 1920s and ’30s, before he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The house will publish The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún in the U.S. and worldwide on May 5. The publication will mark the first extensive retelling in English narrative verse of the epic Norse tales of Sigúrd the Völsung and The Fall of the Niflungs. The book will include an introduction by Tolkien, drawn from one of his lectures on Norse literature, with commentary, notes on the poems by Christopher Tolkien.

via Publishers Weekly

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The original Kindle has been sold out since November, and finally the replacement model is here. The New York Times seems to love it:

Amazon’s newest version of its popular e-book reader (see their announcement here) looks a whole lot more attractive and seems to have a simpler, more intuitive interface (the new joystick controller helps). The Kindle 2 is thinner (thinner than an iPhone, to give you some idea), has a crisper black-and-white display, turns pages much more quickly and should hold its battery charge for about 25 percent longer than the previous version. New features include text-to-speech and the ability to transfer content to other devices (such as mobile phones and other Kindles). It’s the same price as the outgoing model ($359) and will be shipped Feb. 24. Amazon is taking preorders now. The online retailer has said customers who are already on the waiting list for the old Kindle will get new Kindle 2’s.

Sounds great. And looks great, too:

So gorgeous! And what’s that they say about not such thing as being too thin…?

The new Kindle will be available February 24, but you can preorder it now.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s got a new rival for the e-book/e-reader business:

Plastic Logic, maker of an electronic book reader, plans to announce partnership deals on Monday that it says will bring a number of major publications to its planned device.

The company plans to make a device with a 10.7-inch diagonal electronic display, larger than the screens on an Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader, two of the more popular models currently on the market. Plastic Logic says the device will be available early next year. It uses the same technology to display print as its main competitors.

…

Unlike the other products, the screen of the Plastic Logic Reader is big enough to more closely approximate the look of a printed newspaper or magazine page.

Ooo, that sounds nice too.

So, buy a new Kindle now, or wait for Plastic Logic’s e-reader? Can’t a girl have both?

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