Fantasy author accuses the online giant of using its market dominance ‘to control what we write and what we read’The grande dame of fantasy Ursula K Le Guin has weighed in forcefully to the debate about Amazon’s role in publishing. In a blogpost on the site Book View Cafe, entitled “Up the Amazon with the BS Machine, or Why I Keep Asking You Not to Buy Books from Amazon”, the American author has spoken out against what she describes as the company’s increasing influence not only on the bookselling market but also on which books get published, promoted and read. Her fierce conclusion is: “Every book purchase made from Amazon is a vote for a culture without content and without contentment.”After an analysis of how the “Best Seller Machine” has worked in the last decades, Le Guin writes that the online retailer is changing the culture of publishing. The Amazon model, she writes, is “easy salability, heavy marketing, super-competitive pricing, then trash and replace”. The ideal book, under this template, is “a safe commodity, a commercial product written to the specifications of the current market, that will hit the BS list, get to the top, and vanish. Sell it fast, sell it cheap, dump it, sell the next thing.” Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2015-06-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Retailer Toys R Us is set to launch a tablet for children in the US, pre-uploaded with a number... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-09-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The San Francisco Chronicle launched its 49ers Insider digital magazine last week in advance of the team’s season-opener against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2012-09-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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When a slide showing eight book covers popped up in Jeff Bezos’s presentation on Thursday, Jennifer 8. Lee--who was following along on a live blog from New York City--gasped. The books are part of Amazon’s new Kindle Serials format, and she published three of them: Hacker Mom, The Many Lives of... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2012-09-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Throughout its 17-year history, Amazon has helped change the way that books are sold, the format in which they’re read and how they are published. Now it could change how they’re written. In addition to the Kindle Fire HD and the Kindle Paperwhite, Amazon introduced a subscription book format... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2012-09-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took the stage at a large airplane hangar in Santa Monica, Calif., this morning and presented a dazzling, methodical, hourlong disquisition on the state of the technology business. He began by explaining why most of the iPad’s competitors have failed: “They’re gadgets,” he... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2012-09-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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John Bond, former m.d. of Press Books at HarperCollins, has teamed up with former HarperPress... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-09-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon's new lineup of devices includes a Kindle Fire tablet with HD and other new features as well as a back-lit e-reader called the Kindle Paperwhite. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-09-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon has officially unveiled the 2012 vintage of the Kindle Fire, which is reportedly 44 percent more powerful than its predecessor. The service-orientated slate (as opposed to a gadget, which CEO Jeff Bezos claims nobody wants) comes with a bigger battery, a new processor and 1GB RAM --... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2012-09-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Just hours ahead of Amazon's debut of a new Kindle tablet on Thursday, Kobo, the ebook company that can be thought of as "Canada's Kindle" debuted a new color Android tablet called the Kobo Arc. Kobo Arc is the company's second Android tablet, following up on the Kobo Vox which debuted around... Continue reading at Betanews
[ Betanews | 2012-09-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon is planning to take a Charles Dickens approach to publishing with the launch of fiction in... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-09-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Singularity & Co aims to rescue near-extinct 20th century sci-fi titles to ensure they still exist in the next one. Established from a Kickstarter campaign, the small team has already digitized and published A Plunge Into Space and The Torch, both with new cover art, while its third title... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2012-09-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Woman's Own, IPC Connect's weekly women's title, is set to revamp its print edition and launch a standalone website. Continue reading at Media Week
[ Media Week | 2012-09-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Just how important Amazon’s Prime shipping offer has been to the online giant’s success can be seen in data recently compiled by the Codex Group. Last Monday, Amazon announced that Prime, which allows customers free two-day shipping for a $79 annual fee, had surpassed its free shipping on orders... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-09-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Blackwell's, Foyles and Argos will sell Barnes & Noble’s Nook in the UK from... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-08-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Bookworld, formerly Borders.com.au, has internet giant Amazon in its sights with new book business. Continue reading at The Sydney Morning Herald
[ The Sydney Morning Herald | 2012-08-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon Publishing is continuing to broaden its distribution channels, as the New York-based imprint has formed a partnership with Ingram Content Group that will make the company's ebooks available to competitors such as Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. As you may be aware, there's some uneasy... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2012-08-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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E-book releases from Amazon’s New York-based publishing imprint will be available through... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-08-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Barnes & Noble has formed its first partnership with Hasbro to create My Little Pony ebooks... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-08-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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John Lewis has been named as the first retailer to sell Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-08-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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At least one entrepreneur sells positive book reviews to Amazon authors. How an apparently unreliable customer-review system might finally eat itself. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2012-08-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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