BookBiz: Google Wins, 38 Million Adobe Accounts Hacked, No Money for Library

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Buy a Book Saturday

The Saturday after Thanksgiving has been dubbed Small Business Saturday as a promotion to counter Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Now authors have spread the word and will be working with local, independent booksellers to encourage readers to patronize local brick and mortar stores on that day. Book stores used to prosper in thriving communities.

google-monopolyGoogle Lawsuit Over

The eight year war is over and the final score is Google 1, Authors 0. Apparently scanning and selling copyrighted material is just “fair use”. Google has admitted that their “Do no evil” motto was just BS anyway.

Social Book Selling

BookShout was created to help authors and publishers stay in touch with readers and share information via Facebook…I think.

Magazines for iPhones

Scrunching down magazine pages designed for tablets to smart phone size seems to be a bad idea, albeit .one demanded by the marketplace

Adobe Guesses Way Low

Adobe reported it was hacked in October exposing account information for 3 million users. Adobe has now reported 38 million accounts were compromised.

nautical-chart-divider-5754253Nautical Charts Will Be Available

As reported, the US Government will discontinue printing Nautical charts in April but the charts can be ordered online as “Print on Demand”from two certified printers The charts will be updated weekly by the NOAA (as needed) with new PDFs for the printers.

Amazon Hopes for “Stupid”

I happen to think bookstore owners are generally intelligent (chain stores excluded) so I’ll be very surprised if this sugar-coated offer from Amazon to allow indies to commit commercial suicide picks up much new business for them. Vote now for America’s most arrogant business: Google vs. Amazon.

The Problems With Ebooks

I doubt many of the first ebook adopters anticipated that reading ebooks would be a similar experience to reading conventional books, but to some of us its simply too different to be enjoyable.

twiggs library3 Part Timers Too Expensive?

Two weeks after opening, the Twiggs County (GA) Library is closing. The $1.15 million edifice was built with state funds and an insurance settlement after the old library burned. However, the $48,000 operating budget has been deemed too expensive by county commissioners. The entire budget is payroll for its three part time employees.

Digital Revolution Claims Publishers

This is the first time I’ve seen anyone quantify the effects of the digital revolution on publishers. According to a study prepared by accountants, 98 publishers closed in the UK last year. Seven or eight years ago the U.S. was losing 1,000 printers each month.

Amazon to Rescue USPS?

Amazon’s announcement that it will fill and ship orders on Sundaysmay be just the antidote for falling mail volumes by requiring drop-off, transport and sorting.

Word of the Year

The Oxford Dictionaries have proclaimed “selfie” the Word of the Year, no doubt due in some small part to its usage increasing 17,000% this year. Did you know there was a “Word of the Year”? Hey, at least it wasn’t “twerk”.

Want to Sell Ebooks in Russia?

There is apparently a market for English language ebooks in Russia, but it’s currently being met by unauthorized file sharing. Bookmate is trying to offer a traditional online retail servicefor these books but many US publishers have taken a wait-and-see attitude.

Letterpress Magazine Crowdsourcedluddite_2-100154670-large

A new British magazine calling itself The Luddite has begun publishingThe Luddite features no-tech articles and stories. Ironically, the funding to start the magazine was crowdsourced on Kickstarter.

Final Thought

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people”Eleanor Roosevelt This and nine other quotes are deemed the best quotes ever on Reddit..

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I've worked in book manufacturing for over 30 years, closing my company Baker Johnson, Inc. in 2005. Currently I work freelance with a large group of publishers, advising them on the printing options available to them as the book industry endures major restructuring.
My wife Cathy is a retired psychologist and spent most of her career working with the youth at Maxey Boys Training School. She is a small mammal rehabilitator with Friends of Wildlife.
Our daughter Whitney is a PharmD working in the Denver area evaluating the pharmaceutical requirements of nursing homes. Our son Eliot lives in Waterloo and is an editor at Mathematical Reviews in Ann Arbor.