Category: publishing

“Textbooks will be better than paper on the Nookcolor. Integrating videos, animations, recorded lectures, LMS functionality (through the browser), interactive diagrams and maps, and continuously updated content will turn textbooks into personalized, active learning platforms.”

“The British Library is asking the public to help it track how pronunciation is shifting in Britain. Volunteers are being asked to record a chapter from a Mr Man book to see how certain words and accents are changing.”

“Worth $50,000 (£31,500), and sponsored by an Indian construction company,” the DSC Prize “has been set up to raise awareness of south Asian culture around the world, and is unusual in being open to authors of any nationality so long as the work is based on the region and its people.”

Slate offers an all-star series to celebrate the comic strip’s definitive entry into middle age: Jeffrey Toobin on Mike Doonesbury; Walter Isaacson on Duke; Gail Collins on Joanie Caucus; Gene Weingarten on Mr. Butts; Nicholas von Hoffman on “what happened when Hunter Thompson told me Garry Trudeau was spying on him.”

“No, we’re all in free-fall together. And Web comics don’t seem to be an alternative, unless you’re uninterested in making a living. There are so many entertainment alternatives to comics now, I’m not sure they’ll be much missed.”

“A former Boston prison librarian has revealed some of the literary preferences of American inmates. And according to Avi Steinberg, aka “Bookie” to the inmates of Suffolk County House of Correction, popular requests are The Diary of Anne Frank, Robert Greene’s Machiavellian self-help manual The 48 Laws of Power, and anything by Sylvia Plath.”

“Gone are the erotic drawings and sexual illustrations that have accompanied various translations of the ancient Hindu text. Instead, the new edition, to be published by Penguin, will be a text-only pocket-sized handbook, described as a ‘classy’ manual ‘covering every aspect of love and relationships’.”

“Ancient communication technologies are current like never before. Boutique stationers like RSVP and The Paperie in Chester are thriving: people haven’t stopped handwriting today any more than they eat lunch in pill form or commute to work in electric maglev cars.”

Here is the bottom line: Say it in writing — and I don’t mean e-writing — or don’t say it at all.

“Two iconic works — one billed as the most expensive book in the world and the other the most important book in all of English Literature — will go under the hammer at a Sotheby’s auction here on December 7.”