JK Rowling creates transmedia storytelling site Pottermore.com, dumps Amazon — from psfk.com by Piers Fawkes
Onswipe launches tablet publishing platform with Hearst, Slate, Ziff Davis, Forbes and more — from Onswipe.com
Excerpt:
NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. (June 21st, 2011) – Onswipe, a platform for publishing and advertising on tablet devices, is launching today with an Iconic group of publishers including Hearst, Slate, and Forbes. The Onswipe platform lets publishers use the scale of their web audience to provide a beautiful app-like experience in the browser. Onswipe is also joined by Iconic advertisers Sprint with Slate and American Express with Marie Claire.
Onswipe provides the ability for publishers to make their content look amazing on tablet devices such as iPad while providing an advertising platform to make publishers boatloads of money. In under 3 minutes, a publisher can make their existing content provide an app-like experience within the web browser to their audience. The Onswipe platform works with publishers of any size whether their audience consists of 100 people or 1 million.
The Association of Educational Publishers and Creative Commons to co-lead learning resources framework initiative — from aepweb.org
Organizations are first to craft industry-specific metadata framework for improving Internet search results
WASHINGTON, DC (June 7, 2011)—The Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) and Creative Commons (CC) today announced a partnership to improve search results on the World Wide Web through the creation of a metadata framework specifically for learning resources. This work is being underwritten with grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
— Originally saw this item at Liz Dwyer’s posting at good.is
Should you write an ebook? — from forbes.com by Nick Morgan
Excerpt:
Here are some of the current e-options that have sprung up around traditional publishing and self-publishing.
The rise of new e-book business models — from TrendBiz.net by futurist Thomas Frey
Experimenting our way to success – reinventing publishing models
Excerpt:
Futurist Thomas Frey: Amazon revolutionized book reading in 2007 when it introduced its Kindle book reader. Within the past three years, the explosive sale of book readers has caused a massive surge in the sale of e-books, already outpacing the sale of hardcover books, with a prediction by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that they will outsell paperbacks within the next year.
We are witnessing a major transformation of this industry. Within five years, the vast majority of all books sold will be e-books. Big box retailers like Barnes & Nobel and Borders will have shuttered most of their storefronts. The printing press industry, along with the craftsmen of ages past who have made a fine art of applying ink to paper, will be mothballing their machines. And the media, almost in unison, will begin writing the eulogy for this 500-year old industry.
But before we focus too much on what we’ve lost, we need to pay close attention to the other side of the equation. Digital book publishing will be an exciting new industry with truly amazing potential for growth.
Would you like a $49 electronic college textbook with lifetime updates? — from crunchgear.com by Scott Merrill
From DSC:
I was just talking about this idea earlier today at lunch. Why can’t a textbook be like/look like/act like/and be distributed more along the lines of an app from an online app store than a static, physical textbook? Why can’t someone purchase a lifetime stream of updates? Or at least an annual agreement for such a stream of updates for the next 12 months? Alternatively, perhaps after purchasing the original book, a person could opt in for an upgrade at some point (much life software)?
Also see:
[Concept] The new “textbook”: A multi-layered approach — from Daniel S. Christian
I’ve been thinking recently about new approaches to relaying — and engaging with — content in a “textbook”.
For a physical textbook
When opening up a physical textbook to a particular page, QR-like codes would be printed on the physical pages of the textbook. With the advent of augmented reality, such a mechanism would open up some new possibilities to interact with content for that page. For example, some overall characteristics about this new, layered approach:
For an electronic-based textbook
Advantages of this concept/model:
Addendum (5/26):
Borders lacks bidder for chain, sources say — Detroit Free Press
Borders Group, the bookstore operator looking to reorganize in bankruptcy, has so far failed to find a bidder for the entire chain, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Also see:
Bertelsmann acquires digital media agency Smashing Ideas for Random House, Inc. — from Smashing Ideas (emphasis DSC)
(New York, May 4, 2011)—Bertelsmann AG has acquired cutting-edge digital media agency Smashing Ideas, Inc. for its Random House, Inc. division, the world’s largest English-language trade book publisher. The purchase was announced today by Markus Dohle, Chairman and CEO of Random House and Member of the Executive Board of Bertelsmann AG, and Stephen Jackson, President and CEO of Smashing Ideas, Inc.
The acquisition adds significantly to the set of Random House capabilities and further signals the intention of Random House and its parent company to be leaders in digital content creation, and demonstrates their commitment to expanding revenues from mobile and interactive online products and services.
From DSC:
For those students out there who need to have a professional-looking, hard-copy based portfolio of their work, Blurb.com is an excellent choice.
