Would you fund schools or libraries?

Would you fund schools or libraries?

I didn’t get a chance to do a poll post yesterday, as I usually do on Wednesdays (things have been a bit complicated lately).

So, I decided to do one today! 🙂

I love public libraries!

In my life, I’ve seen the availability of them remarkably reduced.

It could be branches closing, or hours being reduced.

I spontaneously said at one point that, given a choice between cutting back library availability or cutting back schools, I’d preserve the libraries.

I still think that, given certain conditions.

One is that they have literacy teachers at the library. There should also be a meeting room of some kind.

Now, I do want to be clear: I think schoolteachers do an incredible job. I have academics in my family and I’m a trainer in my “day job”.

However, I think the ability to freely explore the world’s knowledge, going where you want to go, letting your passions and curiosity drive you…nothing makes more of a learner out of someone than that. My guess is that it also improves empathy, but that’s just a guess.

Hypothetically, then, let’s say you have a choice.

You can shut down some libraries to keep schools going five days a week, or you can close school a couple of days a week to keep libraries open 7 days a week.

That’s not an even switch, but I’m sure it’s a lot more expensive to keep a school open than it is to keep a library open

Of course, there would be issues. Some parents rely on a school being a place children can be so the adults can go to work. Could you leave a kid in a library for six hours? You could definitely have left me there!

Would people grow up not understanding context…or would they learn context of some books from other books, and would people naturally step in to give context?

Well, let’s ask:

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Bufo’s Alexa Skills

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. 

Shop ’til you help! 

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other organizations, begin your Amazon shopping from a link on their sites: Amazon.com (Smile.Amazon.com)

American Library Association expresses concerns about new Big 5 tradpub policies

American Library Association expresses concerns about new Big 5 tradpub policies

I thought I was largely done with writing about the tradpubs’ (traditional publishers) policies with regards to public libraries.

For example, here’s an article I wrote about the

ALA & AAP: the relationship between public libraries and publishers

back in 2012.

One of the things I was addressing was a statement from the ALA (American Library Association) about the policies of the publishers.

Well, on July 2 of this year, they put out another one:

ALAnews release

Here’s the thing.

Recently, all five of the Big 5 traditional publishers have announced changes to their policies for e-books and audiobooks for public libraries.

Some of the policies are arguably better for readers, although there is one that particularly stood out to me which is a concern.

Macmillan, which was the corporation which probably had the biggest public advocacy on “windowing” in the past, has announced it would “… embargo ebook sales of new titles to libraries for four months,” according to this

ALAnews article

I should define windowing. In this context, that’s delaying the release of a format of a book when another format is released. We used to see that with e-books to the public: the hardback would come out and we’d have to wait for the release of the e-book. One argument was that that was already being done with mass market paperbacks: they often came out a year after the hardback.

However, that eventually changed, with e-books generally being released simultaneously with hardback.

Now, this policy goes back to windowing, at least as far as public libraries are concerned. That seems to mean that people will be able to buy the e-books months before they can borrow them. For people who can’t afford to purchase the e-book and instead get it at the public library, it sounds like that means they will generally have to wait.

There are other policy changes. In fact, the ALA indicates it is re-activating a working group concerned with digital content.

One line in the letter: “Librarians across the country have increasing consternation about ebook access. The high prices and complexity across publishers are only growing.”

I’m really not sure what is driving these changes after several years of relative stability.

What do you think? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

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Bufo’s Alexa Skills

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Google’s new move: good for readers, bad for Amazon?

Google’s new move: good for readers, bad for Amazon?

Amazon and Google don’t exactly walk through the consumer wonderland hand-in-hand. 😉

While Amazon has never been the walled garden some suggest (for example, the e-tailer had the Netflix app in the Appstore and available on their tablets from the beginning, when it directly competes with Prime Video), there’s been a clear division for people who use both companies (as I do).

Amazon tablets can’t use Google Play directly. That’s a real limitation, and my sense is that it is Google’s decision, not Amazon’s.

They compete in music, appstores…and books.

On the latter, I don’t think Google has hurt Amazon much…the percentage of e-books that people own which they purchased from Google (not just found free public domain books) has to be tiny compared with Amazon.

However…

Google has a new search result tool which could make some difference.

I (and apparently others) had missed, or missed the significance of, an announcement from Google about a month ago. I’m grateful to this

Lifehacker article by Nick Douglas

for the heads up.

When you search for a book title on Google, it now tells you which public libraries have the book available near you…and you can borrow it right there (if you have a “library card”). On a mobile device, you tap, “Get book” (then “Borrow ebook”, but you might be able to see the latter without tapping), on a laptop/desktop, you should see the options, probably on your right.

I’ve been testing it out, and it’s clearly inconsistent at this point. It doesn’t happen for lots of books, but that may just be because they’d rather not show negative findings. Still, it apparently only searches Overdrive, which is the predominant e-book server for individuals using public libraries for e-books, but it isn’t the only one.

For the sake of argument, let’s just say postulate that when people search for a book title with Google, they’ll be able to borrow the book from the public library if it’s available.

What would that mean?

Before I speculate, here’s a link you can try:

search for “It Stephen King”

 

First, this does have the potential to hurt sales at Amazon…but only for a particular segment of customers/readers. Traditional publishers (at least some of them) were pretty reluctant to have e-books in public libraries, initially…part of the argument was that the e-books didn’t wear out like p-books (paperbooks) do, so libraries wouldn’t have to replace them as often. There were some strong restrictions, if the books were available at all. This would seem to play into those fears.

That said, my guess would be that most people who are using Google to search for a book are looking for a free one. Not all of them are particular about the books being legal, either. It’s not difficult to scan a p-book and make a PDF out of it, then put it up online. There are a lot of reasons people do that…they aren’t all trying to make money, although some do by having advertising on the site hosting the downloads.

If someone wants to buy an e-book, my bet would be that the vast majority of them go to Amazon (or Barnes & Noble, if they have a Nook), or perhaps iTunes.

It is possible that people search for an e-book and don’t find a free copy, then they push further.

I would think this would affect bestsellers, more than smaller market or older titles. Google searching for a book feels to me (and I freely admit, much of this post is speculation) like it is more likely to be used by a “casual reader” than by a “serious reader” (I define the latter as reading fifty books or more a year).

I think the impact will be small.

Second, Amazon could lose all income from selling e-books…and it wouldn’t make much difference to their bottom line. It’s no longer a big part of t

Right now, the Google search includes buying the book…but not at Amazon. 🙂 Barnes & Noble, Google Books, and Kobo all showed for me on the search for “It”. I doubt that pulls that much from Amazon’s sales.

I think it hurts Amazon a small amount, and considerably helps some readers. I usually don’t borrow e-books from the public library. I can afford books to read, including being a happy member of

Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

and there is “scarcity” for public library e-books, although a lot of people find that counter-intuitive. A library can’t just copy the file for everybody who wants it; there are legal licensing issues.

That may change for me: I’ve mentioned that we have a life change coming up, and now we have more of a timeline for it. My Significant Other is voluntarily leaving a job, and we aren’t quite sure what will happen after that (we’ve done the math…we’ll be okay). If money got a lot tighter, and there was a book I really wanted to read and the public library was the only way to get it, I don’t have any hesitation or see a negative to it. It’s just not my habit now.

Now, some of you may wonder about how this is different from this

Chrome extension tells you if that Kindle book is in your public library

that I wrote about previously.

When I go to a book’s Amazon product page in Chrome, I automatically see if it’s available at the public library…and yes, that’s similar.

It’s also different, though, because people who are at Amazon are already likely to get books from Amazon. It’s convenient to keep it altogether: if I could have every single payment I ever make for anything go through Amazon, I would. To use the extension, people have to also first install the extension…a much smaller slice than the people who just search with Google.

One more group I want to mention: does this help or hurt authors? Many of my readers are authors, so that’s obviously a concern.

Authors may not get as much for each library borrow as they get for a book sold, but that’s going to depend on contract.

The reason why this helps is that it may replace, to some extent, people getting pirated copies (for which authors get nothing).

I believe that the vast majority of people would rather do something that is legal, and something that would benefit the author, than something that wouldn’t.

If somebody searched for It, and could borrow it easily from the public library or get a PDF from an iffy source, I think they’d go with the library…even though they don’t end up owning the book. Ownership is arguably less important to people than it used to be.

Well, those are my thoughts on this, and there is a lot of speculation and presumption in this piece. What do you think? When would you search for a book with Google as opposed to just going to Amazon? Would you rather own a PDF of uncertain provenance, or borrow an e-book from a library for a couple of weeks? Will this make any real difference to Amazon? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

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My current Amazon giveaway:

Beyond Curie: Four women in physics and their remarkable discoveries 1903 to 1963 (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Giveaway:

https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/b139e577ee333624

• Winner:Randomly selected after Giveaway has ended, up to 1 winners.
  Requirements for participation:
• Resident of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia
• 18+ years of age (or legal age)
• Follow Scott Calvin on Amazon

Start:Sep 25, 2017 5:46 AM PDT

End:Oct 25, 2017 11:59 PM PDT

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* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Read.gov: the Library of Congress “lends” books through a browser

Read.gov: the Library of Congress “lends” books through a browser

I think when most people hear the word “library”, they think specifically of a lending library.

Well, you can’t just walk into the Library of Congress and check out a book. 😉

That always seemed unfortunate to me, because people seeking copyright had to send them a copy. They may have the only existing copy of some books.

Now, logically, I totally understand why they can’t circulate p-books (paperbooks). Those generally decay every time they are read. Public libraries estimate the number of times a book can be loaned before it will have to be replaced (and it varies a bit, but under twenty, I think)…many of these could not be replaced.

However, I thought it would be cool if they were scanning public domain books and making them available. They have been doing that with newspapers (in a nicely searchable way), which I have used extensively (Chronicling America).

Well, I was linking a place to read the Wizard of Oz at The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip and I took a look at the Library of Congress’

Read.gov/books

I wouldn’t say it’s well-organized, and there aren’t a hundred books there…but I think once you launch the book, it’s actually pretty nice!

These are scans of the book…it gives you the experience of looking at the book as if it was paper. The text is not searchable.

You can, though,  choose to either have a one page, vertical scan view, or a two page, flip horizontal view.

You can also download the books as HTML or PDF.

I hope they continue to expand the library, although I do appreciate the care they are taking with it. I’d like to see terms searchable across books, but I do think this is a good effort.

This is the list of books…

http://www.read.gov/books/index.html#adults

It says “adults”, but this page has six of those, six for teens, and 51 for kids. Some of them you’ll know, and some you probably don’t. 🙂 I was particularly pleased to see some of the “other” W.W. Denslow books…Denslow was the original illustrator of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: Mother Goose and Humpty Dumpty.

One other thing: I did test this on my now discontinued Kindle Fire HDX 7″. Without downloading, it still worked pretty well. I normally prefer a horizontal read, like a book, but in this case, the scroll method looked best to me.

Oh, one other other thing 😉 : it doesn’t remember where you were, but it will show you page numbers and you can navigate by those, so if you remembered or noted where you were, it wouldn’t be that hard.

Incidentally, I do have a bit of a family thing going on for the next few days (nothing bad…in fact, it’s great!), so I might be a tad less responsive, but it shouldn’t slow me down too much. 🙂

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* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

E-books at my public library

E-books at my public library

I check in, from time to time, on my local public library’s site to see how their adoption of e-books is going.

I’m not likely to borrow one, by the way. My reasoning for that is pretty simple:

• I have enough to read (there are many sources for free books, and I am a happy member of cKindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
• I don’t want to take a book away from somebody who can’t otherwise afford a book. That’s the main reason: as I assume it will show again when I check, there can be long waiting lists for popular e-books

Before I go on, you might wonder why there are waiting lists at all. Can’t the library just make more copies for their readers? Not for books under copyright protection. They pay for a license to loan those books, and they are limited as to how many “copies” they can loan out at a time.

I consider this library to be pretty big…it’s the library for the county, and the one that I have used when I would check something on paper.

I’m going to limit this to fiction first…it’s easier to look at that way.

They have 4,816 Kindle books.

Interestingly, they have 5,220 ePub books…more of those.

The most popular book is The Girl on the Train. They have 24 “copies”…and a waiting list of 11 people per copy. If we figure it takes a week for one to become available (and it certainly might not work that way…people are reading it simultaneously. Still, on the other side, some people will more than a week to read it), the wait time would be very roughly about six weeks.

Here are the most popular fiction titles:

1. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins | 24 copies | 11 waiting per copy
2. The Martian by Andy Weir | 22 copies | 11 waiting per copy
3. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr | 24 copies | 7 waiting per copy
4. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee | 12 copies | 12 waiting per copy
5. Make Me by Lee Child  | 6 copies | 16 waiting per copy
6. The Girl in the Spider’s Web by Lee Lagercrantz | 8 copies | 18 waiting per copy
7. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah | 9 copies | 15 waiting per copy
8. X by Sue Grafton | 4 copies | 15 waiting per copy
9. Gray Mountain by John Grisham | 15 copies | it says zero are available, but doesn’t list how many are waiting per copy
10. Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham | 3 copies | 19 waiting per copy

You could be waiting a looong time for Rogue Lawyer!

If any of you are librarians (I think some of you are), I’m curious…how hard it is to adjust the number of licenses you have? I assume it is quite difficult…that there is a fair amount of process to go through to add or subtract licenses.

The first book which is available without a wait is #12, which is Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn…8 of 25 copies available. It’s been a #1 New York Times bestseller, and has been popular (and was the inspiration for a hit movie). Still, it’s worth noting that it is more than three years old.

Through the top one hundred, the vast majority of them have a waitlist.

3,002 of the books are available without waiting: about 62%.

These are the subjects they list for fiction:

Fiction(5227)
Romance(2401)
Literature(1523)
Historical Fiction(999)
Mystery(735)
Suspense(703)
Thriller(621)
Fantasy(470)
Christian Fiction(220)
Science Fiction(185)
Short Stories(135)
Humor (Fiction)(105)
Erotic Literature(93)
African American Fiction(73)
Classic Literature(71)
Western(65)
Horror(49)
Juvenile Fiction(34)
Mythology(13)
Urban Fiction(13)
Drama(9)
Poetry(7)
Non-English Fiction(6)
Young Adult Fiction(5)
Science Fiction & Fantasy(4)
Chick Lit Fiction(3)
Comic and Graphic Books(3)
Travel Literature(2)
Young Adult Literature(2)
Business(1)
Folklore(1)
Foreign Language(1)
Sociology(1)

There are 1,566 non-fiction titles, in these 50 subjects:

Nonfiction(1747)
Biography & Autobiography(592)
History(415)
Business(135)
Sociology(126)
Politics(120)
Religion & Spirituality(103)
Self-Improvement(101)
Travel(98)
Cooking & Food(80)
Family & Relationships(73)
Humor (Nonfiction)(73)
True Crime(72)
Military(70)
Performing Arts(68)
Essays(63)
Science(62)
Health & Fitness(59)
Psychology(57)
Literary Criticism(36)
Medical(30)
Art(29)
Computer Technology(29)
Sports & Recreations(28)
Reference(26)
Nature(24)
Music(21)
New Age(21)
Philosophy(19)
Careers(18)
Home Design & Décor(15)
Law(15)
Pets(15)
Technology(14)
African American Nonfiction(13)
Crafts(13)
Gardening(13)
Study Aids & Workbooks(13)
Finance(11)
Education(10)
Gay/Lesbian(9)
Women’s Studies(9)
Language Arts(8)
Entertainment(7)
Photography(7)
Mathematics(6)
Self Help(5)
Architecture(3)
Transportation(3)
Antiques(2)

I think it’s great that people can get new and popular books (eventually) through the public library!

If you want to check out what your library has, you may want to go to

https://www.overdrive.com/

If you are okay with older books, Amazon itself has a lot.

What do you think? Do you borrow e-books from public libraries? What’s the longest you’ve waited for one? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things. 

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Children’s use of public libraries in the UK declines significantly

Children’s use of public libraries in the UK declines significantly

This looks like a trend, not a fluke.

According to this

Department of Culture Media & Sport report

called “Taking Part 2014/15 Annual Child Report”, there have been significant declines in children in the UK using public libraries.

Here’s one of the stats:

“70 per cent of children aged 5-15 had visited a library in the last 12 months, a significant decrease on the 2008/09 figure of 75 per cent, and a similar proportion to 2013/14.”

5% may not seem like a lot, but that’s a big chunk.

Reading through the report, there are quite a few negative indicators.

However…

This
The Guardian article

indicates that the number of public libraries during this period had fallen by 286, going from 3,428 to 3,142. What’s that percentage change? About 8.5%.

That may be the factor…there may simply have been fewer libraries for them to visit.

That’s good in the sense that it suggests that children don’t want to read any less than they did before.

It’s potentially bad, though, because they have fewer opportunities to do so.

That same article has a cartoon by England’s Children’s Laureate supporting libraries.

I’m a big believer in public libraries. I’ve said before that if the choice is between keeping schools open, or keeping public libraries (with literacy teachers in them and librarians) open, I’m going with the libraries.

I think “free range reading” is hugely important. I’m sure I’ve benefited by reading books from public libraries to which I would never have been guided in a school.

Now, it is possible that children are, to some extent, reading from other places. E-books could be part of that…free public domain titles, and yes,

Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

and other “subsers” (subscription services).

I’m not finding clear recent data for  the USA for number of  libraries…although I have several sources indicating a reduction in budgets.

What do you think? Are children reading less? How important are public libraries? How good an indicator are they of children’s reading engagement? Did you ever read a book from a public library that you are sure you wouldn’t gotten in school? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

*When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

 

Obama’s plan for needs tested library books…where have I heard that before? ;)

Obama’s plan for needs tested library books…where have I heard that before? 😉

Sometimes you’re right, sometimes you’re wrong…and sometimes, you are just ahead of the curve. 😉

About two and a half years ago, I got one of the most…oppositional responses I’ve ever gotten to this post:

What should the role of public libraries be?

In it, I reiterated something I said in the blog about a year before that…on February 3, 2013:

Random House continues its commitment to unrestricted public library lending

In that one, I said:

“I still think that what may happen in the future is that all of the publishers may allow e-book lending…and a needs-tested basis. In other words, for people who are “certified poor” in some way (one possibility would be proof of enrollment in some appropriate government program, such as food stamps), the publishers would allow them to borrow e-books for free.

Publishers could do that directly, or might do it through a public library system or even through retailers like Amazon.

Publishers have always donated books (and gotten write-offs for it), and I think they would participate in a program like that.”

That might not have been the first time I’d brought up that idea in the blog, but it’s a clear statement of it.

Well, President Obama recently basically announced that plan:

FACT SHEET: Spreading the Joy of Reading to More Children and Young Adults

They’ve gotten commitments from the Big 5 USA trade (trade books are the ones  you bought in bookstores…not textbooks and such) publishers (Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan) to make e-books available to low-income children through an app.

Those are also major e-books (including Dr. Seuss)…and I think many of them are not currently available to the general public through public libraries (as e-books), or have pretty serious restrictions put on the libraries.

There’s also a push to get libraries and schools connected to high speed internet (at least 99% of them) by 2018

Whitehouse.gov ConnectED

through the ConnectED program.

Add to that working to get every kid a library card, and yes, that’s pretty much what I thought would happen.

I just thought it too soon. 😉

Actually, I didn’t make any kind of prediction as to when it might happen, and I thought it might take a while.

In the intervening time, more tradpub (traditional publisher) books have gotten into public libraries (although it’s felt like they’ve been dragged, resisting all the way in some cases), and restrictions have…loosened.

I’m still okay with the idea that low-income people could have access to free books that people with more income pay to get.

Now, I totally get the idea that a public library should be all of the world’s information available to everyone equally for free. That’s certainly the ideal.

I just don’t think it’s achievable at this point.

I also still think that if the Obama administration were to say that the Big 5 needed to make those books free through public libraries without needs testing, it simply wouldn’t happen.

I’d rather have some people be able to get them that way than no people.

It also seems like a practical investment to me.

There is evidence that kids exposed to more books end up making more money (and perhaps paying more taxes to the government).

Hm…I’d be interested to know if that doesn’t have a sort of saturation point.

My intuition is that, if you take a child with access to zero books and give them access to 1,000, it makes more of a difference in earning potential than if you take a child with access to ten thousand books and give them access to 1,000 more.

That’s just my guess, though…don’t have the studies to back it up.

Having this happen for the kids makes me feel good…and yes, I’m glad I suggested it here in the blog.

Gee, maybe if I last long enough, that idea I had decades ago for a decimal time system will catch on.

I’m not holding my breath on that one…not even for a kilosecond. 😉

What do you think? Is this program a good thing? Will it really happen? What difference does it make to give a low-income child access to books versus a child of means? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Round up #274: the adventure of the standing ruling, infringer down

Round up #274: the adventure of the standing ruling, infringer down

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Infringing site taken down

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that a site was reproducing all of the posts in this blog…every day..verbatim…without permission.

One of my readers, Clint Bradford, suggested I use

http://www.whois.com/

to find out who the host was, to report the infringement.

That didn’t work exactly, because the company it said was hosting it wasn’t actually the right one.  It identified GoDaddy, and that company was nice enough to give me the accurate name, lunarpages.

After informing lunarpages, within days, the site was down.

To me, this is a story about the good in the world.

The website was infringing…that’s not good, although it could have been done out of ignorance.

I first notified Google AdSense, and they apparently pulled their ads…thanks, Google!

Then Clint helped me…thanks, Clint!

Then GoDaddy helped me…thanks, GoDaddy! They weren’t under any obligation to do that.

Then lunarpages helped me…thanks, lunarpages!

On balance, there was a lot more good in this sequence than bad…and that’s the assessment I generally make of the world. 🙂

Fire TV $15 off

I use our

Amazon Fire TV (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

every day, and it’s on sale right now for $84 instead of $99. They’ve been putting it on sale on and off, and there may be more sales before the holidays…although I don’t think this specific sale will be continuous until then.

You can get that one right away, unlike the

Fire TV Stick (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

which is currently expected to arrive for consumers placing new orders after January 16, 2015. I’m glad I recommended that people jump on the chance to buy it…and lots of people did do so!

These two devices will work well with the new Prime benefit announced today in this

press release

With Prime photos, Prime members get unlimited Cloud storage of their photos…and can view them easily on many devices.

That is a really nice additional benefit: we now have shipping; Prime video; Prime music; the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library; and early access to Lightning deals.

U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear Sherlock Holmes case

I’ve written before about a legal fight going on over the copyright status of Sherlock Holmes.

It’s a bit tricky. In the USA, most of the original Holmes stories are clearly in the public domain. There are a few stories, though, that are not. The estate essentially argued that, when people write fiction about Holmes, it is likely influenced (and some cases, specifically so) by those still under protection works…so that new unauthorized may be infringing.

The Supreme Court declined to review a lower court ruling saying that wasn’t the case…making it okay to write new Holmes works without obtaining permission or paying royalties, but keeps the ten stories which were under protection in that condition.

In other words, you can go ahead and write a new Holmes story…

Fun image

EBOOK FRIENDLY is especially good at finding clever e-book related images, and I thank them for the heads up on this one:

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/132996995221820561/

Star Libraries

This is a fascinating

Library Journal article by Ray Lyons & Keith Curry Lance

It analyzes libraries in some very intriguing ways. One thing is that people are now trying to measure the impact a given library has on the community…the article says specifically:

Outcomes are an entirely different matter. They are changes experienced by library users—changes in knowledge, skills, attitude, behavior, status, or condition.

One of the stats they give us is circulation per capita…and the library listed with the highest is in Avalon, New Jersey, with a very high 121.6. The next one only has 95.5, so you can see it is a stand-out.

Why your favorite author’s next book isn’t finished

This

Buzzfeed article by Arianna Rebolini

reports on a survey of authors by Stop Procrastinating about what distracts them from writing.

23% said “videos of animal internet celebrities”, while 4% said…sex.

Hm… 😉

What do you think? If you are a writer, what keeps you from writing? I hope reading is on that list! After all, that’s probably one of the best fuels for the literary engine. Are you satisfied with the outcome of the infringing site being taken down…or do you think that was too harsh or not harsh enough? Do you think libraries should be measured by their impacts…or should they simply stand as a public good with no performance evaluation? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

Join hundreds of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Meanwhile…at the public library

Meanwhile…at the public library

I have a lot more to say about Kindle Unlimited (how it affects authors, how to find the audiobooks, my experience in using it), but I don’t like to write too much about the same thing too many posts in a row! I like the blog to be eclectic, so that if something doesn’t appeal to a reader, they don’t have to wait too long to get to something that does. 🙂

I was inspired to take a look at my public library’s e-book collection again, based on some things I’ve heard in the past couple of days (okay, those comments did tie into KU, but still…). 😉

I haven’t looked at it in a while. I have borrowed a couple of e-books from the library in the past, but it was really to test out how it worked for you readers.

One thing that might be a bit odd is that I deliberately picked unpopular books with no waiting lists.

I did that because I didn’t want to keep someone else from getting the book sooner, when I can afford to buy it myself if I want it.

That doesn’t mean I want to spend money unnecessarily, but my Significant Other had a great insight for me once, and it applies here.

Neither one of us is good at household things. I mean things like heavy gardening, fixing a door…you know, I’m proud of myself if I can get the air filter in for the air conditioner, and I literally have screwdriver scars on my hand. 🙂

However, I used to still try to do that stuff.

My SO pointed out, though, that there are people who are really good at doing it, like doing it (I’m stressed the whole time)…and it’s how they put food on their family’s table.

Since we can afford to pay somebody (that certainly wasn’t always true, but we both have good day jobs ((knock virtual wood)) and I make some money from writing), and it benefits that person and us (no stress and better results), it makes sense to do it.

Similarly, since I can afford to get e-books outside of the public library, it makes sense for me to leave those available for someone who can’t.

That may surprise some of you…that there is a “supply issue” with e-books at public libraries. You might think they can just let as many people download an e-book as they want.

Actually, they are quite limited…even more so than you are with your individual Amazon account, typically.

Publishers have gotten looser with their restrictions with the public libraries over time, but I’m going to show you what the current state is at my library (which I would say is a good one) for people wanting to get popular e-books.

Before I do, though, here’s how you can check your own library (in most cases).

Go to

http://www.overdrive.com

That’s the company most public libraries in the USA use for e-books (I’m reasonably sure it’s still most, although some other companies have been making inroads).

You should see a link to “Find your library”, and then you can probably find the e-books from there.

I can’t get too specific after that, because it varies considerably by library.

Here are the most popular fiction books at my library. The lending period can vary, but let’s call it two weeks. I’m going to give you the title, the number of “copies” the library has, the number of people on the wait list, and then I’ll divide the people by the copies to get an estimated wait time. I’ll also take a look to see if it is in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (eligible Prime members can borrow up to a book a month from the KOLL at no additional cost) and if it is in Kindle Unlimited (KU).

• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn: 14 copies, 36 on waitlist, 36 days, not KOLL, not KU
• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt: 16 copies, 182 on waitlist, 159 days, not KOLL, not KU
• The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty: 5 copies, 128 on waitlist, 358 days, not KOLL, not KU
• Sycamore Row by John Grisham: 10 copies, 59 on waitlist, 82.6 days, not KOLL, not KU
• Orphan Train by Kristina Baker Kline: 3 copies, 46 on waitlist, 214 days, not KOLL, not KU
• A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin: 7 copies, 26 on waitlist, 52 days, not KOLL, not KU
• Inferno by Dan Brown: 9 copies, 83 on waitlist, 129 days, not KOLL, not KU
• Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James: 14 copies, no waitlist (available now), not KOLL, not KU
• Dark Places by Gillian Flynn: 5 copies, 51 on waitlist, 178 days, not KOLL, not KU
• The Racketeer by John Grisham: 6 copies, 2 on waitlist, 5 days, not KOLL, not KU

You can see, the public library would be a place to get books you can’t get from the KOLL or the KU and get them for free…but you have to be patient.

How many fiction e-books does my public library have? 3,113.

How many e-books in the Literature and Fiction category in the USA Kindle store? 842, 979.

How many e-books in the Literature and Fiction category in the KOLL? 273,867.

How many e-books in the Literature and Fiction category in KU? 197,822.

Certainly, the public library is an important resource. I support their continued existence, and I’m happy for people who make good use of them.

I can also see how they aren’t going to provide a fully satisfactory alternative for many people to getting books (buying them individually ((which is really buying a license)), or through the KOLL or KU) from Amazon.

YLMV (Your Library May Vary). 😉

I have to say, I noticed some good prices on these books while I was checking for this story. A number of them were $4.99…that’s quite a bit lower than I would have guessed.

Here’s a search for

$4.99 literature and fiction books in the USA Kindle store (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

sorted by “New and Popular”.

I think a lot of you can find something you like there.

Enjoy!

New! Join hundreds of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Round up #241: messy bookstores, color screens

Round up #241: messy bookstores, color screens

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Just around the corner: a color non-tablet Kindle?

pdurrant made this interesting

MobileRead post

It has to do with noticing new job openings at

Liquavista

a company Amazon bought from Samsung in May of last year.

Why does that matter?

Liquavista makes color screens…for non-backlit devices. I prefer the term “reflective screen”, but I know that confuses some people. You read a reflective screen by the light reflecting off it…the same way you read a p-book (paperbook).

There have been a lot of challenges to bringing a color reflective screen to market. They are likely to cost more, refresh the screen more slowly, and use more battery charge.

The real question is, do people want one?

I think the answer is yes…I believe there would be a market for it.

The trick would be to make that the choice for a reflective screen device at the moderate price level.

Let’s think of it like the frontlighting on a Kindle Paperwhite.

You can get the least expensive Kindle, or you can  move up one step and get a frontlit device.

The market is supporting frontlighting.

If you had another device which was the equivalent of the Paperwhite, but didn’t have a frontlight, and was, say, $20 cheaper, which one would be more popular?

I think that’s harder to say.

If Amazon brings out a color reflective screen device, not as a more expensive upgrade, but as the next generation of device, I think that would be attractive to people.

It wouldn’t replace a tablet…it’s not going to do animation, most likely.

Many people, though, want both: a largely dedicated e-book reader, and a tablet.

I don’t think the vast majority of people would reject color for their EBR…if the costs for it (money, efficiency, and so on) were low.

Color can be useful for textbooks, and especially for magazines…which just aren’t an optimal experience on EBRs now.

We’ll see what happens, but that could really make a splash (which might not be an inappropriate term for “electrowetting” technology). 😉

“Why libraries deserve to be hip”

In this

Salon article by Mary Elizabeth Williams

the author makes an argument that libraries should be more “fashionable”…

One of the points is that the author likes having the sense that a book has passed through many hands, contrasting that with a Kindle (about which the author says, “…I’m sure someday I’ll get around to getting a Kindle or an iPad”).

My adult kid at one point mentioned the same thing.

It’s an interesting perspective, and one that many people share…but many don’t.

I love that people at another time read the same book…but for me, I don’t need it to be that they read the copy in my hands.

I don’t like finding marginalia, or dog-eared pages, or broken spines.

When I read a hundred year old e-book, I can imagine how it impacted someone a hundred years ago.

However, for me, it’s a bit like Shakespeare. People forget that audiences in Shakespeare’s day weren’t hearing archaic language (to them). If you wanted to experience Shakespeare the way those audiences did, it should be written in your contemporary language…with all the slang, double entendres, and dialectical humor that would be the equivalent of what they understood.

That doesn’t mean I think you shouldn’t read Shakespeare in the original! Absolutely not…I loved getting some education in Shakespeare, so that I could recognize what six “feet” in a line instead of five meant, for example.

It’s just that…revering the object on which the play (or book) is written is not the same experience as people had when it was new. For them, it was like watching television is for us today (well, Shakespeare often was more exclusive than that, especially what were essentially commissioned works, but you get the idea).

Public libraries are great, and p-books are great…but should they be fashionable? I think that might go against their special status. Libraries do not equal reading…there is a lot more to them than that, and reading a current book for pleasure may be best done for many people on an e-book. Libraries serve in part as a place of honor for books…and it makes sense to me that history there is more important than fashion.

“In praise of neat and tidy bookshops”

In a related case of variant perceptions, this

Book Riot post by Peter Damien

criticizes messy bookstores (including used bookstores).

For myself, I like my bookshelves in my floor-to-ceiling library (in my home) to be very organized…but I do have books stacked horizontally on top of other books. The shelves of mass market paperbacks may also be two or three books deep, when possible.

They are, though, in alphabetical order and organized by category, typically.

I like order…people see that as an indicator of certain psychological conditions, and I don’t dispute that. I don’t have OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)…it doesn’t interfere with my life, but I do like things in order.

For example, I was once in a videostore for, oh, a good forty-five minutes or so. Finally, one of the employees trepidatiously approached me, and asked me what I was doing.

Me: “I’m alphabetizing the shelves.”

Videostore employee: “They’re already alphabetized.”

Me: “Well, all the “A”s are on the same shelf, but they aren’t alphabetical within A.”

Yep…I was going through the whole store, putting the shelves in order…and having the best time!

What makes it not compulsive is that I could stop any time (they didn’t ask me to stop, by the way). It’s just fun! 🙂

That said, you might imagine I, like Peter Damien, would disdain disorganized bookstores.

Not at all…

It’s one of the attractions for me of a used bookstore (this is not the same for me in a new bookstore, by the way).

I want it to feel like I’ve made an  archaeological discovery…a lost city in the middle of the Fawcettian jungles…and I might stumble on a treasure no one has seen in decades.

Yes, I guess that’s sort of weird…but I do like it like that, and my guess is that some other people do.

I mean, some people like the dusty-musty smell in a used bookstore. Due to allergies, I’m really not one of those, but I want a sense of adventure and serendipity.

What do you think? Should your bookstores be neat? Should your libraries by trendy? Would you want a color reflective screen device, if performance and cost were roughly equivalent to a grayscale one? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

Nominate a child to be given a free Kindle at Give a Kid a Kindle.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.