http://printisdeadblog.com Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:37:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Telegraph in the UK is reporting on a new plan by Brooklyn writer Tao Lin to sell shares of his upcoming book. He’s doing this --- charging $2000 per share to potential investors --- in order to raise enough cash so that he can support himself while he completes ... http://printisdeadblog.com/2008/08/06/taking-stock-in-yourself-literally-writer-sells-shares-in-his-new-book/ The Los Angeles Times recently announced that they will cease publication of the standalone Sunday book review section. As further fallout from this decision, a number of editors will lose their jobs. This is of course bad news, but I also think it needs to be kept in perspective. For ... http://printisdeadblog.com/2008/07/31/memory-of-a-free-festival-you-say-goodbye-they-say-hollow/ Via Buzzmachine, last week I discovered Wordle, a really great site/online application that generates “word clouds” from either text that’s pasted into the Wordle site, or else from words that are scooped from a website or blog. According to the Wordle site, “The clouds give greater prominence to words that ... http://printisdeadblog.com/2008/07/29/what-a-wonderful-wordle-staring-at-clouds/ In the recent edition of The Nation, Eric Alterman has a story entitled “I Read the News Today…Oh Boy.” The thrust of Alterman’s story is that newspapers are in serious decline, and the newspaper industry can’t figure out a way to stop the bleeding. Here’s how he sums it up: The ... http://printisdeadblog.com/2008/07/24/fear-of-a-byte-planet-the-nation-on-not-saving-newspapers/ Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing wrote last week about another instance of someone using books in an, uh, interesting way. This time books are being used to create what Doctorow calls a “marvelous” chair (pictured above). And while I’ve written about a number of design uses involving books or bookcases ... http://printisdeadblog.com/2008/07/22/ass-the-dust-sat-on-a-good-book-lately/ Via Galleycat, today I read about an event entitled “Great Expectations: A Reading Marathon.” Scheduled to occur this October, and started by the RiverRun Bookstore in New Hampshire, the plan is for independent bookstores to host “24-hour reading marathons in their stores, designed to highlight the importance of reading to ... http://printisdeadblog.com/2008/07/18/hands-on-a-hardcover-bookstores-to-stage-reading-marathons/ Last week Apple introduced its newest iteration of the iPhone, the 3G, and people around the world lined up outside stores (sometimes overnight) to be one of the first ones to get it. Now, while this has become routine (people have been known to join a line outside of an ... http://printisdeadblog.com/2008/07/15/queue-and-apple-excitement-over-the-newest-iphone/ Via MJ Rose’s blog, today I found what seems to be the third part of a four-part conversation with Corrections author Jonathan Franzen. After making what seems to me some terribly shaky reasoning when it comes to publishing work about the lives of his friends and family (Franzen says ... http://printisdeadblog.com/2008/07/09/paper-or-plastic-franzen%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9charsh%e2%80%9d-view-of-online-reading/ Last week, a reader turned me on to an article entitled “The 21st Century Writer,” which happens to be the current cover story for The Futurist magazine. Written by the magazine’s senior editor, Patrick Tucker, the article is one of the best ones I’ve seen in a long time to ... http://printisdeadblog.com/2008/07/07/the-futurist-on-the-%e2%80%9c21st-century-writer%e2%80%9d/ Today I came across the website Read at Work, which was created by the New Zealand Book Council in order to encourage people to, well, read at work. When you click to enter the website, it expands to fit the entire screen, and is perfectly designed to look like a ... http://printisdeadblog.com/2008/06/26/the-powerpoint-and-the-glory-reading-great-works-at-work/