A Book Apart celebrates its third anniversary
Aw, my l’il ol’ book is three years old!
To celebrate, you can get 15% off any title from A Book Apart with this discount code for the next few days: HAPPY3RD.
Tags: books
Support Scrunchup
If you’re coming along to the Responsive Day Out and you’ve got some tech books you no longer need, bring them along. We’ll collect them and distribute them to schools.
Jan V. White
Eight of Jan White’s excellent books on graphic design are now available for free online, licensed under CC0 …they’re in the public domain now.
All he asks in return is that you might buy one of his books still in print, and maybe make a donation to the Internet Archive.
Jan V. White is a mensch.
YOU CHOSE WRONG
Documenting all the ways you could die in a choose-your-own-adventure book.
The Humble eBook Bundle (pay what you want and help charity)
This looks like an excellent deal: buy eight sci-fi books for as much money as you think is fair. Lauren Beukes, Paolo Bacigalupi, Cory Doctorow …all good stuff.
Five Simple Steps - Pocket Guides
These short pocketbooks from Five Simple Steps look like they’ll be very handy indeed. Shame they won’t be available in dead-tree format: I bet they’d be really cute.
An e-reader is more like a book than you think | Books | The Observer
James muses on the physicality of ebooks in this week’s Observer.
Platforming Books — by Craig Mod
Craig describes the many different ways he’s publishing his book, including putting the whole thing on the web for free:
Why do this? I strongly believe digital books benefit from public endpoints. The current generation of readers (human, not electronic) have formed expectations about sharing text, and if you obstruct their ability to share — to touch — digital text, then your content is as good as non-existent. Or, in the least, it’s less likely to be engaged.
I also believe that we will sell more digital and physical copies of Art Space Tokyo by having all of the content available online.
The Publication Standards Project
Like the Web Standards Project but for ePub. I approve of this message.
2012 Shortlist | Arthur C. Clarke Award
Well, that’s my reading list sorted then.
Marginalized
Notes in manuscripts and colophons made by medieval scribes and copyists …in 140 characters or fewer.
Albatros - The bookmark following any journey
Well, this looks clever: a self-updating bookmark (that’s an actual bookmark for books, not browsers).
A Book Apart, 2011 Holiday Bundle
The perfect Christmas gift for the web geek in your life: get a discount of 30% when you buy all six books apart.
Welcome to Small Demons
Turning text into hypertext. Pivot on people, places and things mentioned in books. I really, really like this.
The New Value of Text | booktwo.org
A rallying cry from James: since when did we decide that text couldn’t stand by itself without extra layers of “interactive” shininess?
The shape of our future book — Satellite — Craig Mod
Craig has written down his dConstruct talk, the one that completely polarised opinion. Personally, I loved it.
Post-Artifact Books and Publishing — by Craig Mod
Take some time out to read this. Read all of this. Craig’s thoughts on the nature of publishing today:
Digital’s effect on how we produce, distribute and consume content.
Why Preserve Books? The New Physical Archive of the Internet Archive | Internet Archive Blogs
Brewster Kahle explains how and why the Internet Archive is keeping physical copies of the books it digitises.
Out of this World: China Miéville: what if?
China Miéville gives a rundown of some underrated classics of the alternative history subgenre …including Richard Curtis’s Notting Hill.
Google can’t be trusted with our books | Simon Barron | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
The threat to Google Videos shows businesses are not suitable cultural custodians — they can’t be held accountable to the public.
Cranking | 43 Folders
I got your work/life balance right here. Merlin means it, man.
I love him.
The Technium: What Books Will Become
Kevin Kelly asks “What is a book?” and provides some thought-provoking answers. There’s some inspiring crystal-ball gazing in here.
New Titles in Lending Library! « The Open Library Blog
You can now borrow HTML5 For Web Designers through the Open Library. Nice one, George!
James Bridle on Phare Conference on Vimeo
Everything is worth preserving and protecting.
YouTube - TOC 2011: James Bridle, “The Condition of Music”
James’s talk from Tools Of Change. Great stuff!
Publishing Experiences | booktwo.org
I wish I could’ve attended James’s talk at Tools of Change. It sounds like it was great.
The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator
This is kind of mean, but it made me laugh. Out loud.
Dreams of Space - Books and Ephemera
A blog documenting printed visions of space exploration in the form of children's books.
Once Upon a Title
Pervy little stories made entirely from children's book titles.
Welcome to Open Library! (Open Library)
One web page for every book. I love this project.
Walter Benjamin’s Aura: Open Bookmarks and the future eBook | booktwo.org
James Bridle propsed Open Bookmarks during a presentation at Tools of Change in Frankfurt today: "Open Bookmarks is not a thing, it’s a proposal, a flag in the ground. We need to agree on a way of sharing and storing annotations and bookmarks, reading attention data and everything around the book: that aura."
Medieval Multitasking: Did We Ever Focus? | Culture | Religion Dispatches
A fascinating look at hypertext in illuminated manuscripts.
These Golden Books Are Not For Children - Humor - Kotaku
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.
NYRblog - Atwood in the Twittersphere - The New York Review of Books
Margaret Atwood is all kinds of wonderful.
Books in the Age of the iPad
A detailed look at traditional and digital publishing, considered from the content out.
Andy Ihnatko's Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA) » Analog IMDB
A medium-zoom view of shifts in publishing.
A Democracy of Netbooks
The bottom-up appeal of netbooks in all their cheap, crappy glory.
cyoa
An in-depth study mapping all the permutations in "choose your own adventure" books.
Smell of Books
An aerosol e-book enhancer.
Bookkake — Dirty Books
Best. Appropriate domain name. Ever.
Hamish Hamilton: Five Dials
A beautiful PDF literary magazine, designed to be printed out and read away from the computer. I'd still love to see an HTML version.
Eucalyptus: The Library, to go – on your iPhone or iPod Touch.
This looks like a nice book reading app.
kewlchops: A new leaf.
The perfect person for the job—George will be working on the Internet Archive's Open Library project: a webpage for every book ever published.
How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write - WSJ.com
A good piece from Steven Johnson on the future of e-books but alas, it completely ignores DRM which is a show-stopper to the bright future he imagines.
Letterpress books, posters &c. - a set on Flickr
A lovely set of letterpress printing
BBC NEWS | Technology | Bruce Sterling - Prophet and loss
I know this sound uncharitable but there's a good chance that the reason why Bruce Sterling's books aren't selling is because he's just not a very good writer. And I say that as a big sci-fi fan. I mean, really... have you read Distraction? I tried ...and failed.
theunbook.com
An approach to releasing community-driven books that is more like software than traditional book publishing. Think versions instead of editions.
SitePoint : The Bushfire Relief Sale
For three days you can buy 5 PDF books for the price of 1 from Sitepoint and your money will go to the victims of the bushfires.
Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: pirates and scalpels
Chris Heathcote's notes from his PaperCamp talk on guidebooks.
moomazon
Here's a nifty little mashup from Simon: create Moo cards with book details from Amazon.
Nina Katchadourian
The Sorted Books project: using book titles to create short narrative pieces.
The Acorn Electron Haven - Usborne Publishing Section
Prompted by my post on adventure games, Relly sent me this link to a wonderfully archaic series of books from 1983.
We Tell Stories
Aleks pointed me to this sort-of ARG involving authors in London. Could be good fun.
Street Team: Make Your Mark - WaSP Street Team
Here's the first initiative from the WaSP Street Team: labeling outdated webdev books in libraries as hazardous material.
The Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts) [dive into mark]
A superb skewering of Kindle and just about any other attempt to make book distribution digital that involves ludicrously restrictive terms of service (or worse, DRM).
typography - a photoset on Flickr
A collection of books with beautiful typography.
Biologists Helping Bookstores
A blog devoted entirely to reshelving books in their correct categories in bookstores, specifically the science and religion categories. I approve.
Webdesign Bookshelf
Gareth Rushgrove has launched a site devoted to web design books.
Avant Game: the ministry of reshelving
Mobtagging: Discreetly move all copies of 1984 to a more suitable section, such as "Current Events", "Politics", "History", "True Crime", or "New Non-Fiction."
Designing With Web Standards, 2nd Edition
The book that changed how websites are designed is back in a smart new second edition.
VitalSource
A nice app for browsing and buying audiobooks - but why isn't it a website?