end papers

From: classaction.org

“April 17, 2014 – Last week, the Authors Guild (AG) filed an appeal to the US Court of Appeals in their ongoing fight against Google’s book-scanning project. This week, eight amicus briefs were filed with the court declaring the original ruling unacceptable. The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) participated in two of those briefs. Longtime TWUC members Margaret Atwood, Lawrence Hill and Yann Martel joined a brief prepared on behalf of 17 of the world's most beloved authors. Other signatories include J. M. Coetzee, Peter Carey, Malcolm Gladwell, and Ursula Le Guin. As a founding member of the International Authors Forum (IAF), TWUC itself is represented in the IAF's amicus brief. “TWUC is extremely grateful to Margaret, Larry, and Yann for showing leadership and agreeing to sign the individual author brief,” said TWUC Chair, Dorris Heffron. “It’s so important for the courts to see the world’s authors are against Google on this.” The New York Second Circuit court previously ruled Google’s unpermitted, uncompensated copying of millions of complete, in-copyright works to be a "fair use." The AG’s appeal and the author briefs argue such a finding is without precedent and plainly ridiculous.”

— The Writers’ Union of Canada
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“The most arresting moment in 'Google and the World Brain' Ben Lewis' thoughtful new documentary about the search giant's effort to scan all the world's books, takes place not in Mountain View or a courtroom but rather a monastery high above Catalonia in Spain. The film's globetrotting crew is interviewing Father Damiá Roure, who runs the library at the Benedictine abbey of Montserrat, about what happened when Google came to digitize the library's collection. Roure speaks happily of the Googlers' visit, explaining that their efforts allowed the monks to bring their collection -- which dates to the library's founding in the 11th century -- to the wider world.
     As he finishes speaking, a filmmaker just out of the frame asks about what else Google might do with the information found in those books. What if, she asks, Google wanted to sell the information they had scanned in those books? Should the monks get a cut of the sale?”
— Casey Newton, cnet
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Why do e-book outfits love the letter 'K'? (Part 1)

From: Sesame Street
via The Official Cranberries Fanblog

"Looking to keep pace with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and the fast growing self-publishing market in general, Barnes & Noble is phasing out its PubIt! self-publishing service and relaunching it as Nook Press, an upgraded e-book self-publishing platform offering an array of new services to authors and publishers. B&N is partnering with the self-publishing platform Fast Pencil to supply Nook Press with its proprietary online authoring technology, while also offering Fast Pencil authors access to a variety of marketing opportunities via B&N’s Nook platform. […]

     Much like PubIt!, Nook Press will pay authors up to 65% of the e-book list price based on how much an author wants to charge for a book. The Nook Press platform is nonexclusive (authors and publishers can sell the e-book where they want) and, like PubIt!, Nook Press is free of charge and B&N takes a percentage of the list price when the books sell."
— Publishers Weekly
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Oops, sorry... wrong "Kobo" (photo from: kapok.com)

"Kobo, a small Canadian ebook and e-reading company now owned by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, kicked Google’s butt… when it comes to selling ebooks through independent bookstores, that is. […]
     The reason the program existed in the first place was to give independent bookstores a way to get involved in the growing market of ebooks and digital reading, to give them a chance to survive the ebook revolution.
     After Google announced that it was cancelling its program this past spring, Kobo swooped in and signed a deal with the American Booksellers Association to provide e-readers, tablets and ebooks for them to sell.
     In the first month of the Kobo partnership (Oct. last year), independent bookstores sold more ebooks than in the entire two years working with Google. The key, say bookstore owners, is being able to sell the devices along with the ebooks. It just makes more sense to customers."
— Jeremy Greenfield, Forbes
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Write-By-Numbers

From: Above & Beyond

"In the past, publishers and authors had no way of knowing what happens when a reader sits down with a book. Does the reader quit after three pages, or finish it in a single sitting? Do most readers skip over the introduction, or read it closely, underlining passages and scrawling notes in the margins? Now, e-books are providing a glimpse into the story behind the sales figures, revealing not only how many people buy particular books, but how intensely they read them. For centuries, reading has largely been a solitary and private act, an intimate exchange between the reader and the words on the page. But the rise of digital books has prompted a profound shift in the way we read, transforming the activity into something measurable and quasi-public.
     The major new players in e-book publishing—Amazon, Apple and Google—can easily track how far readers are getting in books, how long they spend reading them and which search terms they use to find books. Book apps for tablets like the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nook record how many times readers open the app and how much time they spend reading. [...]
     Pinpointing the moment when readers get bored could also help publishers create splashier digital editions by adding a video, a Web link or other multimedia features [Jim Hilt, Barnes & Noble's vice president of e-books] says. Publishers might be able to determine when interest in a fiction series is flagging if readers who bought and finished the first two books quickly suddenly slow down or quit reading later books in the series. [...]
     Others worry that a data-driven approach could hinder the kinds of creative risks that produce great literature. 'The thing about a book is that it can be eccentric, it can be the length it needs to be, and that is something the reader shouldn't have anything to do with,' says Jonathan Galassi, president and publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 'We're not going to shorten 'War and Peace' because someone didn't finish it.'"
—Alexandra Alter, The Wall Street Journal
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“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?”— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

From: Modern Mechanix

"But early this year, Grove Press, a venturesome publishing house, felt that the time had come to challenge the taboo and they brought out the book unexpurgated, just as Lawrence wrote it. Literary critics all over the country cheered. Some said it was a masterpiece. Some said it wasn’t all that great, but still it was a good book and a serious one that deserved to be read. Not one important critic felt that the book should continue to be suppressed.
     A bookclub for eggheads, the Reader’s Subscription, thought enough of the book to make it a selection and started to mail it out to members.
     Wham! The Post Office stepped in.
     The fellows who always ring twice refused to ring at all for Lady Chatterley. The P.O. said the book was obscene and couldn’t be mailed.
     This punch not only caught the Reader’s Subscription in the solar plexus (they do their business by mail) but it was also a gasser for the Grove Press, which couldn’t mail the copies out to bookstores.
     So the two companies demanded a hearing. The Post Office gave them one before Judicial Officer Charles D. Ablard. The companies brought in two of the most eminent literary critics in America, Malcolm Cowley and Alfred Kazin, to testify that the book was not obscene, but was a work of art by a serious artist.
     Ablard listened, but passed the transcript and the final decision on to Postmaster General Summerfield. And Summerfield decided that Lady Chattelley’s Lover was filthy."
— Tim Wilkins, "Art Or Filth? – The Prose And Cons Of Lady Chatterley" (Nov, 1959) Mechanix Illustrated via Modern Mechanix
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"In its twice-yearly Transparency Report, the world's largest web search engine [Google] said the requests were aimed at having some 12,000 items overall removed, about a quarter more than during the first half of last year.
     'Unfortunately, what we've seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different,' Dorothy Chou, the search engine's senior policy analyst, said in a blogpost. 'We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it's not.'
      Many of those requests targeted political speech, keeping up a trend Google said it has noticed since it started releasing its Transparency Report in 2010.
     'It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect — Western democracies not typically associated with censorship,' said Chou.
     [...] in Thailand videos featuring the monarch with a seat over his head have been removed for insulting the monarchy. The country has some of the world's toughest 'lese- majeste' laws.
     In Canada, Google was asked by officials to get rid of a YouTube video showing a citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet. But in that instance the company refused.
     Google and many other online providers maintain that they cannot lawfully remove any content for which they are merely the host and not the producer, a principle enshrined in EU law on eCommerce since 2000."
— Reuters (via Huffington Post)
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