August 16, 2005

David vs. Goliath

What small bookstores can do to compete with the giants like Barnes & Noble, Borders and Amazon. (link via Kottke)

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July 14, 2005

NYT on Jeff Bezos & Amazon.com

Amazon.com turns 10 years old and the New York Times takes a look at the Internet giant and their bold, risky-happy founder, Jeff Bezos. Best detail in the story is that billionaire Bezos has a salary of only $81,000. He's got to be one of the cheapest CEOs in the country.

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July 13, 2005

The Book Proposal Book

The Adfreak blog talks about a failed book proposal (yawn), but the interesting part is the idea of a book collecting book proposals. Not every book needs to be written, but sometimes the proposals themselves are interesting. Fun idea.

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July 6, 2005

Amazon.com is 10 Years Old

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos talks about the giant online retailer on their 10-year anniversary. Nothing groundbreaking here, except more about lowering prices and looking at long-term growth.

For an inside look at Amazon.com, check out Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut or Amazon.com: Get Big Fast.

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June 23, 2005

Religious Reading on the Rise

3.4% – Increase in U.S. consumer spending on books in 2004.
17.3% – Increase in spending on religious books during the same period.
(Time, June 13, 2005)

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June 20, 2005

Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town Free

Cory Doctorow, novelest and editor of the blog Boing Boing, has released his latest book, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, and you can snag a free copy. Doctorow has released the book under a Creative Commons license and explains:

As with my first and second novels, I've posted the entire text of this book online under a Creative Commons license that allows the unlimited, noncommercial redistribution of the text. You can send it around, paste it into a chat, beam it to a friend's PDA, or print out a chapter to hand out in the university common room. Like Woody Guthrie said, "Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

The whole point of giving away electronic books is to experiment with electronic text and spot where the new opportunities for earning a writer's living lie -- working with my audience, not against them. So with every release, I've tried some experimentation. This book is no exception.

He's also releasing the book in developing nations as if it were public domain. Read more about Doctorow's open licensing.

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May 12, 2005

Book Publisher is Blogging

The vice president and publisher of Wiley books, Joe Wikert, is blogging. You can blame Robert Scoble and Shel Israel who pushed Wikert into it as a way of sealing the deal on their forthcoming business blogging book. Wikert took up the challenge and has been blogging since February. Check it out for a behind the scenes look at the publishing industry.

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