We’re not even a week into the new year and already 2011 is not being very nice to Borders. Publishers Weekly is reporting that some publishers have stopped book shipments to stores because Borders Group has suspended some payments. Also, 2 Borders executives, the CIO and General Counsel, have resigned.

None of these are good signs for the book retailer. So why is Borders in this predicament? What, or who, is to blame?

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Cooks Source, the small cooking site that stole an article from another writer, and then suggested that said writer should pay them for the privilege will likely be closing their doors. Editor Judith Griggs posted a long pseudo-apologetic, passive-agressive note on Cooks Source’s homepage.

I hate to pat myself on the back, but I kinda predicted this (along with many others). To quote myself from my post Public Domain Invoked Incorrectly in Cooks Source:

Cooks Source is already feeling the pain. Whether or not they can get their reputation back and keep going is hard to say. Right now, I highly doubt they

The book sales numbers are out for the month of September and there’s good news and bad news. According to Publishers Weekly, ebook sales were up 158.1% for September. For the first nine months of the year, ebook sales skyrocketed:

Sales for the 14 publishers that reported e-book sales hit $39.9 million in the month, and were up 188.4% in the first nine months of the year to $304.6 million.

The bad news is that traditional print book sales took a dive:

Sales for the 14 publishers that reported e-book sales hit $39.9 million in the month, and were up 188.4% in the first nine months of the year to $304.6 million.

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When the editor of Cooks Source Magazine, Judith Griggs, decided to publish an article written by Monica Guadio and then said Monica should be paying Cooks Source for the privillage of being published, Ms. Griggs unleashed an online firestorm. She also added insult to injury by saying that the web is public domain, therefore anything posted online is fair game.

Why she would think something like that is beyond me. When Monica wrote her article it automatically became protected under US copyright law, regardless if it was published online or not. That alone should prohibit someone like Ms. Griggs to use Monica’s work without proper permission and/or compensation. And as a magazine editor, she should be well-versed in copyright law basics, so there’s no excuse.

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No, we’re not talking about a dating service for Kindle owners (ouch, I know, bad joke). Amazon announced today that they will be offering works that are between 10,000 to 30,000 words to Kindle owners. Here’s an excerpt from their press release:

Today, Amazon is announcing that it will launch “Kindle Singles”–Kindle books that are twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book. Kindle Singles will have their own section in the Kindle Store and be priced much less than a typical book. Today’s announcement is a call to serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to join Amazon in making such works available to readers around the world.

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A fight for the future of mega-bookseller Barnes & Noble is underway, and will hopefully be settled tomorrow. The fight centers around Ron Burkle and Yucaipa company, which is trying to place their own members on the B&N board. Burkle says that without his people, B&N is left to the whims of Leonard Riggio.

Here’s what Publishers Weekly said:

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Publishers are tearing their hair out over ebooks. How do they make money when ebook prices are being pushed so low? One idea that has been thrown around is to subsidize ebook with in-book ads. Yes, the idea is controversial and probably makes traditional book lovers cringe. Heck, it makes me cringe a little too.

I’ve already visited this subject twice on Brad’s Reader. The first was back in 2007 in my post Advertising in Books: Will it Work? and again in 2009 Ads in ebooks – Coming to an eReader near you. Notice that my thinking on this does shift from post to post.

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Literature doesn’t have to be just words on a page (or screen). One literary publication is taking literature out of the confines of words and turning it into visual art. Electric Literature, a website I have already profiled here, does just that. They not only publish short fiction in both print and digital form, they visualize the literature they produce.

One of my favorite parts of what Electric Literature does is taking a single sentence from a short story they publish, and then animating it. The result is an illuminating visual interpretation of that one sentence. In a way, the short cartoons (often less than a minute long) represent how one’s imagination would perceive a particular literary “bit.”

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There’s been a lot of excitement for Apple fans this week. With the release of the iPhone 4, Apple has garnered a lot of media attention in the tech world. But another story also got a lot of attention and scrutiny from Apple: CEO Steve Jobs’ assertion that because of the iPad, Apple has eaten up 22% of the ebook market.

That’s a very large chunk. When I see numbers that big I become skeptical. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t doubt that Apple is now cutting a large slice of the ebook market pie. Just how much, though, is up for debate.

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I’ve always maintained that ebooks and digital publishing will bring the short story back to the mainstream. For over half a century now, short fiction has taken a back seat to novels.

There used to be a time when writers could make a living writing short stories that they sold to magazines (who paid a healthy sum for quality work). F. Scott Fitzgerald financed his novels by writing short fiction, as have other writers.

Today, I think it’d be nearly impossible for a writer to make a living solely on short fiction. But with ebooks now in the mainstream, it’s a lot easier for writers to publish their short stories and for readers to consume them. And publishers are taking notice.

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