If you have been wanting to pre-order your iPad as early as possible, your first opportunity will come tomorrow morning starting at 5:30 a.m. Pacific (8:30 a.m. Eastern) on Apple.com.
This is the American release date, naturally. The rest of the world’s will come sometime later.
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A fin de subir otro pequeño peldaño de la difusión cultural sin barreras, Goggle y el gobierno de Italia firmaron ayer un acuerdo, el primero del mundo de este tipo, para digitalizar hasta 1.000.000 de libros de las bibliotecas nacionales de Roma y Florencia.
Un peldaño más para materializar la biblioteca universal borgeana.
Entre los autores digitalizados (y que no reclamarán derechos de autor, a menos que se organice alguna sesión de espiritismo) encontramos a Petrarca, Dante o Leopardi. Además, el catálogo cuenta con una amplia variedad de textos científicos y políticos.
Comme le flux RSS de Karl Dubost n’est pas lisible dans Google Reader, je me rends sur dans la Grange de temps en temps. C’est aussi bien, tant le voyage vaut toujours le détour…
Et je suis tombé (pour ce qui nous intéresse ici) sur cet excellent schéma publié sur le blog de Flurry, le Google Analytics des applications mobiles. Flurry a étudié comment les applications, par catégories, parviennent à retenir les utilisateurs, selon la fréquence d’usage par semaine et dans la durée (sur 90 jours). Bref, est-ce que les utilisateurs utilisent les applications dans la durée et avec quelle intensité…
Le Quadrant I comprend les applications les plus utilisées sur les plus longues périodes de temps : et c’est l’information et les références (dictionnaires, thésaurus…) qui viennent en tête… Les applications d’information sont utilisées en moyenne quelques 11 fois par semaine ! A l’autre bout du graphique, le Quadrant III on trouve les applications de distraction : des applications aussi vite abandonnées qu’elles ont été utilisées. Le Quadrant II montre le livres et les jeux, les catégories les plus répandues et téléchargées, toutes deux caractérisées par un usage intensif sur une période de temps limitée. Pour le livre, 72 % des applications sont consommées dans les 30 jours, avec une fréquence d’utilisation par semaine très forte (une 10aine de lancement d’une même application, ce qui montre plutôt une assiduité à la lecture). Le Quadrant IV montre les applications de productivité : des applications utilisées de façon occasionnelles mais qu’on garde disponible…
Depuis quelques temps, les livres sont devenus la première des catégories d’applications sur mobiles, en nombre - et ça devrait continuer : chaque livre étant une application potentielle. Début novembre, Flurry pronostiquait déjà que l’iPhone s’apprêtait à prendre des part de marché au Kindle et allait devenir un acteur significatif dans le domaine des supports de lectures. C’est le cas.
Ces chiffres sont une bonne nouvelle. Ils montrent que la lecture sur mobile ne s’arrête pas au téléchargement d’applications (souvent gratuites en ce qui concerne le livre). Ils montrent que les lecteurs vont plus loin qu’expérimenter la lecture sur mobile, que tester, qu’y jeter un oeil : ils lisent. D’une manière fractionnée, mais assidue. Ils se plongent dans la lecture comme ils le font avec le livre papier… Malgré la petitesse de l’écran, sa luminosité excessive, les innombrables capacités de communication de leur appareils… ils lisent et reviennent lire.
Il est tant de leur fournir les livres qu’ils cherchent.
If this isn’t proof that ebooks are going mainstream than nothing is. I got this press release from Vodafone:
Vodafone UK is giving its customers the opportunity to download five bestselling eBooks for free to their mobile phone on Friday 12 March. As part of a series of Free Friday campaigns from the UK’s best network, this will be a significant eBook promotion run by the mobile operator.
The free books include the first title of the bestselling Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” now a major motion picture, Sophie Kinsella’s current chart-topper “Twenties Girl”; another bestselling offering from king of thrillers James Patterson – “The Murder of King Tut“, hot new fiction debut from Alex Preston “This Bleeding City”, and in conjunction with the Tim Burton film release, the classic “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll. Customers will also be in with a chance to win a private film screening of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
By the way, I recently finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo on my Kindle. It was really first rate – and this is a big deal for me to say as mysteries are definitely not my type of book.
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There has been lots of speculation about whether Apple will disallow other ebook reading apps on the iPad. Well, I guess that’s not going to happen.
B&N has confirmed that they will be adding a reader app to the iPad. According to their website the app will give readers access to the ebooks, magazines and newspapers in their bookstore as well as to existing content in readers’ digital library (including content that was downloaded to the Nook). The app will be released “around the time of the iPad’s expected availability”.
Full release here. Thanks to Aaron Pressman for the heads up.
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There is a lot of passionate discussion about whether self-publishing is a valid career move. I’ve learned that instead of wasting time trying to win converts, I’ll simply follow what I believe, based on the evidence I have at this point.
To wit:
1) I will make more on my backlist first novel THE RED CHURCH this year than I did from its original advance. In other words, in the year it took the book to get through “traditional production.” And I can do whatever I want with it, forever.
2) My later publishing contracts tied up my rights for seven years even though the books were left for dead after a couple of years, therefore I am losing five years of potential income. In other words, I’ve actually lost money instead of earned money by publishing midlist books.
3) Many agents and publishers generally only want you to write one book a year, for their own reasons. You can sneak around it with a pen name, but unless you are JA Konrath/Joe Kimball/Jack Kilborn and display all the names, you have to work to get name rec for each. Now, NY won’t COMPENSATE you for the books they don’t want you to write. But you can certainly compensate yourself.
4) You are generally expected to write only one type of book and stick with it. Look how long it took Joe to break out as Jack Kilborn.
5) Instead of wondering about hundreds of elements beyond my control that will affect my career as a writer, I can now see the daily income and projected revenues and weigh that against the investment of time and passion. I can hope my NY lottery ticket gets plucked or I can publish 10 books and be making more than I do in my day job. I can do simple math. If I had the rights to my published books and released those I am shopping, I would have more than 10 books. And don’t think I ain’t thinking about it.
6) Any ebooks I publish on my own will give me 100 percent of net. Any book I publish through a major publisher will give me 50 percent net at best, 15 percent at worst, and that’s even assuming an advance earns out. Giving away 85 percent for virtually an entire career doesn’t inspire me.
7) Now that I know I can find whatever audience I deserve, judged on nothing but quality and talent and my willingness to connect with my audience, I am more inspired than I have ever been–to take chances, to try new things, to strive for art, to write without thought of what one or two people in New York will think. Working-class fiction is an idea I can get behind.
While I believe those who publish through traditional means will still fare the best overall, I can’t help but wonder if getting published was the worst thing I ever did for my writing career.
9) I’ll still sell in New York if I can.
10) I will still self-publish even if I sell in New York.
11) I care not one bit about stigma or what other writers, agents, and publishers think of me–I care only about what’s best for my career and how best to reach my audience.