“
“Digital is its own audit.” That’s really kind of interesting to me. I’m used to unique counts being obscured and lied about. But I hadn’t considered the open-count public services. And, of course, this is what Likes and RTs and +1s lead to. A world where we encourage everyone to vote on everything (an element of more than a few sf pieces).
Cultural voting, of course, leads to the triage suggested in the quote: following counts leads inexorably to media that play only the things they already know people like.
Which makes me prize things like Mary Anne Hobbs’ Saturday night show on XFM all the more: because I know that for three hours I will hear things that I have never heard before.
”
—
Of course, there’s a meta-level of this attention-voting at work, as well. Curators have their own followings, alongside the media they curate.
Warren Ellis » When The Internet Deletes Hype
6:00 pm • 29 May 2012
• 2 notes
#warren ellis #internet killed your * #hype #marketing
“Who Decides What Gets Sold In The Bookstore?”
I just found out that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is rejecting my new manifesto Stop Stealing Dreams and won’t carry it in their store because inside the manifesto are links to buy the books I mention in the bibliography.
Quoting here from their note to me, rejecting the book: “Multiple links to Amazon store. IE page 35, David Weinberger link.”
And there’s the conflict. We’re heading to a world where there are just a handful of influential bookstores (Amazon, Apple, Nook…) and one by one, the principles of open access are disappearing. Apple, apparently, won’t carry an ebook that contains a link to buy a hardcover book from Amazon.
That’s amazing to me. It must be a mistake, right?
Oh Seth. Oh, poor poor Seth Godin.
Hasn’t someone at Amazon mentioned it to you in your ‘exclusive partnership’ with them? Amazon and Apple aren’t running “bookstores”. They’re running content services for their devices. Completely different.
Totally, completely different.
8:37 pm • 29 February 2012
• 1 note
#books #doomed #internet killed your * #amazon #apple #seth godin #ebooks #barnes and noble #tech
“SFWA is redirecting Amazon.com links”
In recent days, Amazon.com decided to remove more than 4000 e-books from its website after a pricing dispute with IPG. The Independent Publishing Group is one of the largest independent distributors in the United States.
While Amazon has the right to decide with what company it does business, its removal of many of our authors’ books from its ordering system will have an economic impact on them. Our authors depend on people buying their books and a significant percentage of them have books distributed through IPG. Therefore, SFWA is redirecting Amazon.com links from the organization’s website to other booksellers because we would prefer to send traffic to stores where the books can actually be purchased.
To that end, our volunteers are in the process of redirecting book links to indiebound.org, Powell’s, and Barnes and Noble.
[source.] Emphasis mine. What good is an e-reader if no one wants to submit to your terms to have their content on it?
Barnes and Noble went through a version of this back in the 90s, when they were the big bad wolf in the publishing industry. (The company still demands a 55% discount off cover price for buying books from publishers, and are by no means a small fish.) But Bezos is the man that scares the publishing industry now, because he wants to be what neither Barnes and Noble or Borders ever tried to be: a publisher.
Amazon is no longer just another marketplace. It’s direct competition for publishers.
8:32 pm • 29 February 2012
#internet killed your * #publishing #tech #amazon #scalzi
“Canada’s Torstar reported fourth-quarter and fiscal year results Wednesday, and the performance of Harlequin fits the general pattern of other publicly-reported trade publishers: sales were down a little, and operating earnings rose. This is what the digital transition looks like.”
— http://lunch.publishersmarketplace.com/2012/02/like-others-harlequin-sees-sales-soften-and-margins-hold-up/
10:23 am • 29 February 2012
#internet killed your * #publishing
“There’s nowhere to “go” now that the green fields of the matrix all got built over by junkspace conglomerates. But so what? I’ll meet you on Twitter and let’s get fucked up.”
— http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/arcades-mallrats-tumblr-thugs/
10:28 am • 13 February 2012
• 3 notes
#internet killed your * #twitter #digital apocalypse
Social ereading idea:
The nook ereaders all have prominent “search” buttons on their main menus that are completely superfluous, because both the library and shop views have search functions. So kill that button and replace it with a social hub: here’s a list of all the books you’ve finished lately but haven’t reviewed. Here’s books your friends finished and reviewed. Want to share a highlight from one of these highlights on Facebook?
11:06 am • 12 February 2012
#nook #ebooks #internet killed your *
“I say we get out of The Pretending To Be Moral game altogether and use the Internet for important things like posting pictures of cats looking at croissants and PDFs of sensitive government documents.”
— Culture Desk: M.I.A. Shouldn’t Have Apologized : The New Yorker
3:51 pm • 7 February 2012
• 1 note
#internet killed your * #mia #super bowl #oh please don't like this be called fingergate
Barnes & Noble, Taking On Amazon in the Fight of Its Life - NYTimes.com
rachelfershleiser:
bennettmadison:
much as i am rooting for the ultimate viability of the publishing industry (or some form of it at least), sorry but I truly can’t bring myself to root that hard for Barnes and Noble. I suspect there are many others who feel the same way. I guess it’s like how if you had an ex-boyfriend who cheated on you in some harsh and egregious way, you wouldn’texactly want him to die but you wouldn’t exactly be totally heartbroken if it actually happened. (At least not if the boyfriend was a giant corporation.)
In which Bennett speaks from my soul.
Sometimes I feel that way, and I work there.
(Side note: the article asserts there’s a new device coming this spring. Eink model update?)
9:55 am • 30 January 2012
• 12 notes • Reblogged from rachelfershleiser
#barnes and noble #nook #internet killed your *
