Amazon.com dropped a bombshell on the publishing industry with the announcement on Friday that they will no longer allow print on demand books printed by vendors other than Amazon, to be sold directly by Amazon. In other words, use our print services or lose your listing on our site. This decision effects over half a million books listed on their site and could be a defining moment for both publishing and the future of online retailing.
posted on Apr 3, 2008 - View this thread

Clay Shirky, professor at ITP - NYU, often linked to at MeFi, presents at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society on the ideas in his new book on organizing without organizations.
posted on Mar 25, 2008 - View this thread

The editor of the New York Times Book Review asks "do others have favorite signature passages in books they love — a sentence or two that seem to convey the essence of a complex, beautiful work?" after giving his own example from To The Finland Station. Hundreds respond, often with some wonderful passages (as well as some not so wonderful ones). Any examples from the hive mind?
posted on Mar 9, 2008 - View this thread

Would you like a latte while I print that up for you? The Espresso Book Machine (previously) that was in the New York Public Library has just moved to the Northshire Bookstore in Vermont. The beta versions of this portable book-making machine are pumping out paperbacks around a book a minute at the Open Content Alliance, The Library of Alexandria, The New Orleans Public Library, and the University of Alberta. The mass produced commercial version of the machine is scheduled to roll off the assembly line within the year and will be priced between $50,000 and $20,000. Combined with one of these, publishing as we know it may never be the same.
posted on Mar 7, 2008 - View this thread

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism is a book released last month by Tim Keller. Its faired reasonably well (NYT, login req'd), which is interesting, considering the wide success of books preaching the opposite message, as of late (Dawkins, et. al.).
posted on Mar 5, 2008 - View this thread

Comic Book creator Steve Gerber has died.
posted on Feb 11, 2008 - View this thread

Floor Games. H.G. Wells and miniature gaming.
posted on Feb 10, 2008 - View this thread

Who's the new darling of the literary world? Charles Bock. Although, some are asking, how the hell did a guy like him get all this high-profile coverage? [Bock previously on MeFi]
posted on Feb 5, 2008 - View this thread

Just ended on eBay: Auction for the Wycliffite New Testament ca. 1400. Closing bid; US $399,100.00. The seller supposedly is The Bible Museum, Inc. (according to The Little professor). More about Wycliffite editions and some choice bookbinding samples at Bridwell Library
posted on Feb 2, 2008 - View this thread

Darkroom book images, You may have had to of spent 100's of hours in a darkroom to appreciate this project. "Images articulated around the decline of silver-gelatin photography" Book from Nazraeli Press by Michel Campeau. {via darius himes blog}
posted on Jan 28, 2008 - View this thread

"This is a building where our deeply-troubled public school system once stored its supplies, and then one day apparently walked away from it all, allowing everything to go to waste...All that's left is an overwhelming sense of knowledge unlearned and untapped potential." (Via Making Light.)
posted on Jan 22, 2008 - View this thread

Book Scavenging. Hundreds of homeless people eke out a living scavenging books from dumpsters and sidewalk trash in Manhattan. Sidewalk is a book about the subculture of sidewalk book scavengers and vendors.
posted on Jan 20, 2008 - View this thread

Better World Books - Recently recognized by Fast Company as one of the best for-profit social enterprises of 2008, they offer a wide selection of new and used books with free shipping in the US and less than $3 shipping elsewhere. A portion of the profits go to fund literacy organizations such as Room to Read and WorldFund, and their shipping is carbon-neutral. The only thing missing is the ability to import Amazon wishlists.
posted on Jan 16, 2008 - View this thread

The Story of Blossom the Brave Balloon.
posted on Jan 15, 2008 - View this thread

The finished work of a favorite author annoys, resonants a certain word. Puissant at first, it puissantly overpowers sentences and paragraphs amazingly. Anyways.
posted on Jan 10, 2008 - View this thread

The National Academies release their new book Science, Evolution, and Creationism, targeted at the public, which summarizes the "scientific understanding of evolution and its importance in the science classroom." Download the 89-page book free in PDF format (you will be asked for your e-mail address, location, and employment sector first). Other resources on evolution from the National Academies, including other free online books (previously on MetaFilter). There's a brief NYT story about it as well.
posted on Jan 4, 2008 - View this thread

"This is the third version of a guide I have been developing for the past 5 years. It takes the 200 best documentaries I have reviewed on my website True Films and puts them into one handy book." Free as a PDF download, Kevin Kelly's book True Films.
posted on Dec 29, 2007 - View this thread

Ultimate: The Greatest Sport Ever Invented By Man is coming soon to a bookstore near you.
posted on Dec 13, 2007 - View this thread

Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs (1867).
posted on Dec 5, 2007 - View this thread

Coloring is fun! Engage kids and get your message across with soothing, simple style!

Print these .pdfs for the little ones in your life to color. Together, learn a little grown-up wisdom about Being a Witness in Federal Court, Disaster Preparedness, Food Safety with Thermy™, Why Elephants Cry, Biomedical Research with the Lucky Puppy, or how the United Nations is a very bad organization made up of foreign countries who do not want you to be free, with Brasco!
posted on Dec 3, 2007 - View this thread

So, whatcha readin? The John Ashcroft Alberto Gonzales Michael Mukasey Book Club wants to discuss your latest reads. Amazon thinks it's none of their business. So does your librarian. While it may seem that your reading list is safe, fact is you're actually just one National Security Letter or subpoena away from full disclosure. Want to change that? One step in the right direction would be to contact your Senator about getting S.2088 out of Committee and on to the floor. Oh, and tell them to vote for it. And then to override the veto.
posted on Nov 28, 2007 - View this thread

Multinational food and pharmaceutical company Podrovka is cooking its books -- literally. Its latest annual report includes a section that must be baked in the oven before it can be read.
posted on Nov 21, 2007 - View this thread

John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
posted on Nov 13, 2007 - View this thread

The manga series "Death Note." The first volume. The adapted anime series, newly arrived on Adult Swim. The Japanese movie trailer. Spoilers: Possible origins. The early press. Interviews with writer Tsugumi Ohba and illustrator Takeshi Obata. The controversy. The collectibles. The online Death Note. The last volume, finally released in the US and reviewed.
posted on Nov 12, 2007 - View this thread

"An extended family of nonconformists travels the world on rafts, teaches its own brand of philosophy, joins the circus, starts a popular jazz band, and sets a new world record along the way." And now, the movie (previously)
posted on Nov 5, 2007 - View this thread

Scratchboard artist Scott McKowen was a successful designer of theater posters when Marvel Comics hired him to create the covers for Neil Gaiman's 1602. He recently completed new covers and illustrations for old classics like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Surprisingly, he has no entry at Wikipedia.
posted on Sep 26, 2007 - View this thread

Blog a Penguin Classic.
posted on Sep 21, 2007 - View this thread

101 Things I Hate About Your House Advice on how to choose safe cleaning products for the home, create chocolate dessert recipes and book reviews. No, it's not Martha Stewart, but rather, helpful tips from interior designer James Swan.
posted on Sep 17, 2007 - View this thread

Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi was born on 1926 in Hamburg and grew up in Nazi-Germany. He dreamed of joining the Hitler youth but besides best efforts was always rejected. But you can see him here wearing a swastika.
posted on Sep 9, 2007 - View this thread

Vernor Vinge: Mathematician, computer scientist and science fiction visionary worthy of Arthur C Clarke's mantle, Vinge is most famous for popularising the idea of the singularity, where technology advances so quickly that humans cannot participate, but he's also credited with writing one of the first stories about cyberspace, True Names, back in 1981. More recently, he's been exploring how augmented reality and belief circles will change the way we live in his latest novel Rainbows End - which he put online, completely for free.
posted on Aug 24, 2007 - View this thread

Pop-Up Puppetry
posted on Aug 18, 2007 - View this thread

Digitized Book of the Week. An eclectic collection of works digitized from the Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They include books and serials from its collections that focus on Illinois history, literature, and natural resources; rural life and agriculture; railroad history and engineering; and works in translation. A project of MsMolly.
posted on Aug 8, 2007 - View this thread

The book is an account of the battle of Adrianopolis (Turkey) in 1912 in which the author volunteered as a Futurist-soldier.
Futurism (1909-1944) was perhaps the first movement in the history of art to be engineered and managed like a business.
posted on Aug 2, 2007 - View this thread

How to make a secret hollow book.
posted on Jul 30, 2007 - View this thread

"The [textbook] industry charges outrageous prices for new textbooks while simultaneously doing everything it can to make older versions unusable or obsolete. There is simply no reason that a new calulus textbook should cost $157. The study of calculus, at least the type of calculus that most of us need to study in high school or undergraduate programs, has not changed significantly in decades." - Textbook Revolution.
posted on Jul 24, 2007 - View this thread

Mary Shelly's (awful/wonderful) Frankenstein rap. They read the book, eh?
posted on Jun 28, 2007 - View this thread

Sure, reading is great, but books are fun to look at, too
posted on Jun 21, 2007 - View this thread

Confessions of A Long Distance Sailor - I had been sitting in dark rooms, punching computer keys, for years. I had always wanted to learn SCUBA diving, hike around in the tropics, so I booked a flight to Hawaii. But a month later I was in — are you ready? — a traffic jam on Maui. I understand now, from the moment I touched that sailboat's dock lines, I was doomed to sail.
posted on Jun 17, 2007 - View this thread

The Prelinger Library is a small privately owned "public library" in San Francisco with the unique philosophy that browsing library stacks can reveal new knowledge, if the books are arranged for browsing. This is counter to most public libraries who rely on computer terminal searching, databases and the Dewey Decimal system to atomize books and subjects, with stack browsing a sort of random after effect, and in some places--like the Library of Congress--normally not even allowed. Now a (real) public library in Arizona has joined the revolution and claims to be the first public library in the nation to drop the Dewey Decimal system. Instead, books will be shelved by topic, similar to the way bookstores arrange books. The demise of the century-old Dewey Decimal system is overdue, county librarians say: "People think of books by subject. Very few people say, 'Oh, I know Dewey by heart.' "
posted on Jun 10, 2007 - View this thread

It's a sad old story but the reading of literature continues to decline. Prospero's Books - a Kansas-city used bookstore - is so desperate to thin out its collection it has started to burn books. Co-owner Tom Wayne says he is unable to sell many of his thousands of books, or even to give them away to libraries and thrift stores, so he started a pyre in protest.
posted on May 29, 2007 - View this thread

Book Excerpt: The Assault on Reason Time Magazine publishes an excerpt to further whet appetites. Releases on the 22nd.
posted on May 18, 2007 - View this thread

Horses are not always good role models. Just in case you thought the craziness was limited to this one book, the authors proudly present a "true crime" glimpse into a shadowy world of... okay, I actually have no idea what they're talking about. Ah, the joys of vanity publishing.
posted on May 16, 2007 - View this thread

Russian Book Jackets, 1917-1942, courtesy of the NYPLDG. [Via Growabrain]
posted on May 16, 2007 - View this thread

Netflix of Books? BookSwim aims to be 'Netflix' of books with a monthly subscription, 3 book-at-a-time with free postage. They are not the first, BooksFree offers a wide selection of 'beach books' and JiggerBug rents a wide audio book selection. Google tried it in 2005, and nearly got burned to the ground. Could libraries and local used book stores be marginalized (though never destroyed) as the local video rental store? Will Border's become the same struggling dinosaur Blockbuster has turned out to be?
posted on May 15, 2007 - View this thread

OK, Here I go, I'm going to make this whole website right now on this dry-erase board.
posted on Apr 6, 2007 - View this thread

The Caravan Project: "Imagine you're a customer looking for a book you don't find on the shelf. As you would now, you'll likely ask a bookseller to check the store computer for it. As is not yet possible, the bookseller will say: "We can order you a print copy or we can sell it to you in other formats, some of which could be ready for downloading by the time you get home. How would you like it?"
posted on Mar 19, 2007 - View this thread

The Best of Technology Writing 2006. 24 articles from Salon, New Yorker, NYT, Discover, etc..free book from digitalculturebooks and UofMichigan Press, also on Amazon.
posted on Mar 2, 2007 - View this thread

Best opening (or closing) paragraphs of academic works, a discussion at Crooked Timber. (This is of course different from first lines of novels, as discussed here, there, and elsewhere.
posted on Feb 23, 2007 - View this thread

James Bond eat your heart out - the name's Chapman, Eddie Chapman. A German spy who was awarded the Iron Cross and a yacht. A British spy who probably saved vast chunks of London from bombs. But above all, a conman with a penchant for "prostitutes, cognac, gambling, Savile Row tailoring and fast cars" according to his spymasters (warning - PDF). Read the book. Or the other book. Or see the biopic he reportedly didn't like. He died aged 83, in case you're wondering.
posted on Feb 15, 2007 - View this thread

"The Uncontainable Kurds" (NYRB). Nice summary of recent Kurdish politics in Iraq, Iran and Turkey.
posted on Feb 11, 2007 - View this thread