Japan Digital Books
The other night while watching an installment of HGTV’s House Hunters I saw a young professional woman who works as a mortgage broker looking for a small apartment in Manhattan. When she entered one apartment and saw vast walls of built-in bookcases she said the bookcases would be the first thing she took down if she bought the place. Her reason was, “Who reads print books anymore? Didn’t these people ever hear of e-books or Kindle?” And this article about how e-books are moving forward in Japan is interesting because it seems to go along with the way reading habits are changing…not to mention the significance of e-books.
The Diet enacted a bill Friday to revise the copyright law to recognize publishing rights for electronic books. Under the revised law, which is set to take effect in January 2015, rights holders will be able to file suits to stop pirated digital books from being distributed on the Internet. Copyright holders of books and other publications have already been allowed to file such suits over electronic versions. The revised law is also designed to promote the distribution of digital books, whose market is growing due mainly to wider smartphone use.
You can read more about it here.
Berenstain Bears’ App
For those who have followed my Chase of a Lifetime series the Berenstain Bears are a favorite with Jim and Len’s son. The author of the children’s books also came from Solebury, PA, which is where I live (New Hope is the main post office for everyone.) And now there’s a BB app for Mother’s Day.
We Love Our Mom! is designed for 4-8 year olds. The interactive app includes tools to help teach vocabulary, as well as a feature that lets readers record their own narration.
It’s interesting to me mostly because I once read on a literary agent’s blog that technology and children in publishing would never come together. What that agent failed to understand is that most children between the ages of 4 and 8 can run circles around her when it comes to technology.
Self-pubbed Bestseller DBW
Divergent has been holding its own on the DBW bestseller list, but it recently slipped in the ranks thanks to a self-published digital book.
Divergent is this year’s runaway top best-selling ebook in the U.S. — but it’s not the best-selling ebook this week. (In the UK, at the London Book Fair, the buzz around HarperCollins is about why Divergent is selling comparatively well abroad.)
The juggernaut has been stopped and sits at No. 2 on the Digital Book World Ebook Best-Seller list, making way for Fixed Trilogy Bundle, a collection of titles by self-published author Laurelin Paige.
It kind of has a Fifty Shades look to it, but I don’t know much about it. I just hope it didn’t reach this bestseller point due to more gaming. I don’t mind a little author/publisher subterfuge, within reason. I don’t think anyone selling anything commercial can claim sainthood. But I’m not fond of the all out vicious race we’ve been reading about and hearing about recently.