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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Writers know that inspiration can come at any time: Driving down the freeway at 80 miles an hour, walking through the grocery store, in the bathroom, and just about anywhere else you won’t have a pencil and paper handy. I’ve always advocated getting your ideas down on paper as soon as possible because I can never seem to remember them (or at least, not as well) later on. Sometimes writing down your ideas isn’t possible. What’s a writer to do?

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Today felt a lot like Christmas for me, especially as I sat and watched the liveblogging of Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) keynote presentation. The excitement peaked when Apple unveiled the next generation iPhone – the 3GS (the ‘S’ stands for ‘Speed’).

The newest version of the popular mobile device is packed with new features – like auto-zoom camera, video recording, digital compass, longer battery life, etc. There are plenty of places where you can read all the juicy details about the 3GS, so I’m not going to go into much detail here. But there are a few things I found interesting.

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Sometimes I lose all faith in the world of book publishing. And after I read the article Steal This Book from the New York Times, I just wanted to bang my head against my desk until I stop caring what publishers do. The article details Amazon’s $9.99 price point for a majority of ebooks and the consequences it might have on the publishing industry.

For one, publishers (and a few authors) fear that if us readers get too comfortable with lower prices for ebooks, it might be the end of literature as we know it. Well, not really, but that’s how they make it sound. And the sheer stubbornness that some publishers and authors view ebooks with is frustrating. But what gets me the most is that some in the book industry have not really learned a single lesson from the music industry, or even our county’s dying print newspapers. Here’s an example:

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I was deeply saddened to read this Ars Technica post about Yahoo! shutting down Geocities. The service, which was bought by Yahoo! in 1999 enabled people with limited technical and design skills to create their own little home on the web:

Started in 1994, Geocities was like the Facebook to Angelfire’s MySpace—competing webpage services that allowed over-enthused HTML newbies to create artfully horrific webpages to represent themselves in the early days of the Internet. (I was a diehard Angelfire fan, myself.) Geocities was acquired by Yahoo in 1999 with the intent of extending Yahoo’s reach with its Internet advertising and services.

Geocities was where I set up my first website, and where I first posted my short fiction and various essays. I still remember the night I "published" my first short story on Geocities, after getting the HTML just right, and wondering how many might read my story. Probably not very many.

Goodbye Geocities, you will be missed!

It has been a while since I’ve written about DailyLit – the site that lets you read full-length novels in increments via email or RSS feed. Back in February 2008 I posted this review, but haven’t really followed up since. Luckily for me, I continue to subscribe to their email newsletter.

When I read today’s newsletter, I was pleasantly surprised at some cool things happening over at DailyLit. Here’s a quick rundown:

1. The 6 Word Autobiography! And you thought drabbles were hard! But hey, I give DailyLit a lot of credit for keeping their customers engaged by keeping those creative juices flowing! You can read some current entries here and maybe even add your own.

2. Offering best-selling author books! You can read Nicholas Sparks’ The Lucky One and get the first 5 installments free. Not a Sparks fan? Then you can read Seth Godin’s Unleashing the ideavirus absolutely free!

3. New DailyLit Affiliate Program! I’m pretty excited about this one. Here’s what the email message said about the program:

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Up until now my discussion of the iPhone and iPod Touch have been related to ebooks. I have avoided the rumor mill that is cranking at full speed among Apple fanboys and fangirls.

My wife sent me these pictures she took at her office (with her own iPhone 3G), where a co-worker had returned from Singapore – where he purchased it for around $100. He had, what by all appearances looked like a mini iPhone (nano?). My wife says that the "mini iPhone" had a different operating system (OS), but the home screen looked identical to what’s on the market now.

Take a look for yourself:

She reports that the back casing is identical, and the smaller iPhone was a 16GB.

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With all the attention I give my iPhone, many readers out there probably don’t realize that I have a Sony Reader (1st generation). I’ll be the fist to admit that the Reader has taken a back seat to my iPhone. But today I gave the trusty reading device new life, thanks to an open source program I recently discovered.

The one mistake Sony has made with its Reader is that their proprietary software that you must download and use to purchase books is only available for the PC. So when I switched to Mac in early 2008, my Reader sort of went out of commission for a while. What is an Apple fanboy to do?

Luckily for me, and many others I assume, there are people out there who create fanastic open source programs to help with problems like the one I described above. After searching the internet for a solution, I came across Calibre, and open source program that works on PCs, Macs and even Linux-based systems. Calibre basically acts as a content management system for your reading device (it supports more than just the Sony Reader).

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Today, the Federal Trade Commission began a conference in Seattle, WA to discuss digital rights management – aka DRM. While no policy shift changes were announced, I was pleased to read via this post on Ars Technica what one FTC official had to say as a warning to companies that use DRM:

Mary Engle, an FTC Acting Deputy Director, began her remarks by warning that those who use DRM had better get serious about disclosing it and the limits that it places on products. She referenced the Sony BMG rootkit debacle, saying that "sellers who use DRM technology to enforce the terms of bargains with consumers need to be particularly careful to disclose in advance" what those bargains are.

Isn’t that what the fine print is for, to disclose shady terms to consumers without actually expecting the consumer to read about the shady terms and conditions associated with DRM. According to Ms. Engle, that is not acceptable:

And just stuffing the disclosure into the fine print of an End User License Agreement (EULA) isn’t good enough. "If your advertising giveth and your EULA taketh away," she said, "don’t be surprised if the FTC comes calling."

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As I promised in this earlier post, here’s my review of the Amazon Kindle app I recently added to my iPhone (1st gen).

Download/Installation

No problems here. The Kindle app downloaded nicely onto my iPhone and I was able to open it up after it finished installing. No crashes. No glitches that I was able to detect. Par for the course.

The Kindle app is free, and so is my new ebook reader of choice Stanza, so they are both tied in this category.

Price

I decided to buy William Lashner’s Marked Man as a test book. Why? Because I’ve read a few other of Lashner’s books and have really enjoyed them, and I wanted something light and entertaining to test drive the Kindle app on.

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