Category Archives: Dead Tree Books

CourseSmart Survey: college students are relying more and more on ebooks

CourseSmart has been working with publishers, educators and students since 2007 to integrate ebooks and digital content into college technology ecosystems, bringing digital course materials directly to faculty and student bodies.

While they’re certainly biased towards digital over dead-tree media, they have used Wakefield Research – an independent research firm – to conduct a survey about students and their increasing reliance on technology.  The result is their “Third Annual Survey on Education and Technology.”

From PRnewswire:

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DRM is for Suckers

I recently read a diatribe by an author about how great and wonderful DRM is.  And how it saved the music industry. And how they believe they “added something unique to the market, and I believe I deserve to be paid for my work.” And how ebooks are in decline.  And how “a lack of DRM decimated the music industry.”

Geez.  Some people.

So let’s set the record straight:

“Lack of DRM” had absolutely NOTHING to do with the changes to the music industry.  In fact, having DRM wasn’t even thought of when uncompressed, unencrypted music was being sold for years and years and years in the form of CDs.

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Advice for Writers – Duct Tape

The question was recently asked on a NaNoWriMo Facebook page, “Those of you with children, when do you squeeze in time to write?”

The correct answer?  Two words: Duct Tape. Your children will appreciate it later when you’ve earned enough in royalties to pay for their therapy.

eBooks sell better through Apple’s App Store than through iBookstore. Go figure.

I had wondered about this for awhile; having an interest in photography, I’ve got a copy of Master Your DSLR Camera.  When I went to the BetterBook site, I noticed that the ebook was available as an app.  It’s an ebook.  It’s for sale on iTunes.  It’s #1 in the iBookstore, but way lower on the app store.  I saw this as probably a failure of Apple; they must have categorized the ebook incorrectly, or the ebook creator had made a mistake with the upload.

Turns out that the publisher – Open Air – is selling 10 to 30 times as many ebooks through the app store as they are through iBookstore.  Being #1 in the iBookstore is 10 sales a day.  Ranking around 7th in the App Store translates to 150 sales a day.

Laura Hazard Owen wrote a piece about this particular book over on PaidContent, titled “Want to publish an ebook for iOS? Surprising tips from iPad publisher Open Air.”

From the article: Continue reading

Camp NaNoWriMo 2 Officially Starts Today!

If you are a writer – especially one who can’t seem to find the time, set goals, or who suffers from writer’s block – you should head over to campnanowrimo.org and sign up to write during the month of April.  if you’re REALLY serious, make sure you sign up for NaNoWriMo in November!

From the website:

Based on November’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), Camp NaNoWriMo provides the online support, tracking tools, and hard deadline to help you write the rough draft of your novel in a month.

Camp NaNoWriMo was established in 2011 as a project of the Office of Letters and Light, the parent 501(c)(3) nonprofit to National Novel Writing Month and the Young Writers Program. 2013 Camp sessions will take place in April and July.

To find out more, head over to Camp NaNoWriMo‘s “What is Camp NaNoWriMo?” page and get started!