I’m no fan of JD Salinger. I’m talking about the man, not his writing. You can read my reasoning in this earlier post What do authors owe their readers. Mr. Salinger is not helping his case in an ongoing legal battle where he wants to prevent publication of a ’sequel’ to his infamous novel Catcher in the Rye.

You might recall that on July 1, an injunction was ordered by a judge that prevented the publication of the sequel by Swedish author Fredrik Colting called 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye. Since that ruling, groups ranging from free speech advocates, librarians, the Associated Press and others have been filing briefs with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to get the injunction lifted. The appeals court will start hearing arguments on September 3.

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The debacle over Amazon and their decision to remotely remove several George Orwell titles from their Kindle device, from customers who had paid for the books, has sparked a pretty fierce debate online. I’m actually a little surprised at the number of people who have come to Amazon’s defense and even applauded Jeff Bezo’s generic apology.

A lot of people, it seems, are getting hung up on the idea that the ebooks in question were illegally uploaded to Amazon’s system, and therefore, Amazon had every right to delete them from the Kindles and issue a refund. But I think there’s a deeper problem, and a danger lurking in the shadows if something isn’t done.

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Romance is not a genre I read, much less write about on this blog. But the romance genre is fairly large and has a fiercely loyal following, so it’s no surprise that romance is still doing well, despite a grim economy. Thus this is a genre that cannot be easily ignored or shunned aside.

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When I read yesterday that Amazon had removed several George Orwell titles from their Kindle ebook reader, I can’t say I was surprised. Sad but true. Not too long ago a story surfaced about an Amazon customer who had his account suspended (too many returns, I think) and all the ebooks on his Kindle became disabled. Is this becoming a disturbing trend on Amazon’s part?

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Imagine this for a moment: You download a book onto your ereading device (lets use the Kindle) because the ebook was either free or pretty darn cheap. As you begin reading, you notice more than just text fills each page. There are ads in the ebook! They are non-intrusive, but still, books are generally thought to be sacred ground from any type of ad placement. How would you react?

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In an article posted on Publishers Weekly yesterday, Hatchette Book Group released a statement trying to clarify its position on text-to-speech functionality of ebooks – a hot-button issue after the Authors Guild objected to the feature on the Kindle. The main argument for their objection was that TTS infringed on the copyright of audio books.

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I’m really excited about the release of the new book by Chris Anderson, from The Long Tail blog, and plan to pre-order my copy soon. For those of you who don’t know, Chris has been leading the way in promoting ‘free’ as a new kind of business model. I advocate it here on this blog as well by encouraging and supporting authors who give away free ebooks to help promote a current title (for example).

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If there is one thing I’ve learned about the world of ebooks, it’s that you can’t always predict what publishers will do. Back in May I wrote this post ‘Will book publishers learn from music  and newspaper industries‘. In it, I gave a fairly harsh critique of Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy for arguing that ebooks should not be priced lower than their print counterparts, because you’re paying for the content, not the format.

I’m not going to re-hash how loony her reasoning is (read my early post for that). But you can imagine I was surprised when I read in this New York Times article ‘Simon & Schuster to sell digital books on Scribd.com‘. Apparently, someone over at S&S has some idea of how to integrate digital books into the traditional publishing model.

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I’m always on the lookout for authors who not only embrace ebooks but use them to compliment their print book sales. The most interesting way of doing this, I think, is by giving ebooks away for free. Science fiction writer Cory Doctorow does it and I’m sure a lot of other writers do to.

Last night I came across the blog of writer JA Konrath (who goes by the pen name Jack Kilborn) via this Enriched by Words blog post. As I side note, I’d like to mention that I had the pleasure of seeing Konrath in my local bookstore when he stopped by to sign a few copies of his book. He happens to also live in the Chicago area like I do.

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I’ll admit that I wasn’t very surprsied when I read Declining Sales Cast Gloom at an Expo on the New York Times website yesterday. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, cut off from all civilization and news, then it’s hard to ignore the news about how this deep recession we are in is hurting a lot of industries – publishing included.

This weekend BookExpo America, the book industry’s annual convention, is taking place in New York City. Also not surprising is that attendance at the convention is down as well.

Normally I’m not a numbers guy. I don’t like math and I failed remedial math in college (embarrassing, I know). But sometimes you have to let the numbers speak for themselves.

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