I know a lot of my readers on this blog are interested in ebooks, publishing news, self-publishing, writing and so forth. How do you keep up with all these topics without spending all day searching the interwebs. Of course Google is probably the first place you’ll search. But Google has tools that will allow you to stay current on just about any topic without wasting a lot of time.

When I first began Brad’s Reader, my main focus was on literature and writing. Since the world of literature is so big, I needed a way to see all the important bits of news and related blog posts at-a-glance. What did I use? I created a Google Alert using the search term “literary news”.

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Did you honestly think I’d go without writing a post about the newest cool gadget from Apple? Don’t worry, I’m not turning Brad’s Reader into a fanboy site, but the iPad has tremendous implications for the world of ebooks. Will it be the long awaited ‘Kindle killer’? I don’t know.

For the last year or so (maybe even longer) there have been rumors that Apple would eventually release a tablet device. That day has come. At first glace, iPad is a beefed up version of the iPhone/iPod Touch. But under the hood the iPad is impressive. I want onto the MacRumors blog and here’s what they had to say:

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Book publishers are still struggling to figure out a way to deal with ebook pirates in a way that will not alienate the average ebook reader. The music industry did a very crappy job of this, and they are paying the price.

In general, the publishers believe that ebooks strip sales from print books (of course, print books are more expensive) and that ebooks are so easy to pirate, they need to be loaded with draconian DRM to protect the financial interests of the publishing company and the author.

I think that these publishers are deluding themselves. Ebooks can help drive sales of print books and ebooks, in the end, are more profitable because of the ‘infinite supply’ theory. Furthermore, DRM has done little to stop pirates. DRM only serves to keep honest readers from buying an ebook.

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The New York Times wants to charge you for the content you read online. Faced with declining revenue for their print editions, the NYT needs a way to bring in more money. But is charging for reading the news online the best solution? This question is hard to answer, given that there are so many free news aggregate sites out there that people can go to for their daily news fix.

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Ebooks are only a part of the digital revolution we are seeing in the world. Everything is becoming digitized; from literature to music and video. Computers are the new entertainment centers. Access to vast amounts of information is now at our fingertips and it’s only going to increase over time.

There’s one new literary magazine start-up that is helping take literature into the future. The quarterly publication is called Electric Literature Magazine. They are using more than just ebooks to help sell literature to a wider and more diverse audience.

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In an earlier post I wrote (Should ebook readers be multifunctional?), I argued that for the most part, when I sit down to read, I want to read with few distractions. I don’t a bulk of my reading on my Sony Pocket Edition Reader and have found myself doing less reading on my iPhone. Call me a purist, but sometimes I just want to read.

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Science fiction and fantasy author Neil Gaiman is going to write a short story using Twitter. To be more precise, his going to write the first 140 characters of a short story, then let other Twitterers write the rest of the story. The crowd-sourced piece of fiction, once complete, will be compiled by BBC Audiobooks and will be made available on the BBC Audiobooks website as well as iTunes as a free download.

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It has been known for a while now that Amazon compensated those Kindle users who had ‘1984′ deleted off of their Kindles by offering affected users a new copy of George Orwell’s novel or a $30 gift certificate. What hasn’t made the news, until now, is the status of the lawsuit brought on by student Justin Gawronski who not only lost the ‘1984′ novel, but also the notes he had taken on the Kindle for a class assignment.

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One of the more disturbing stories I’ve covered over the last few days was a seemingly new policy implemented by the large bookstore chain Barnes & Noble requiring authors to place a link to the B&N website, or risk the large not ordering their books.

My first post on this story Why is Barnes & Noble dictating what authors should have on their website was fairly cautious, as I wanted to avoid adding fuel to a possible rumor (and there are plenty of them on the web). But this story has gained a lot of traction and is disturbing both in its truth and implications for authors.

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In today’s technology-driven, social online world, authors need a website to promote themselves and their books. Without an online presence, an author risks being thrown into obscurity. An author website should be primarily of an author’s own making (except for the design, that should be left to professionals). Their publisher (unless they are an indie author) might help them optimize their site to promote their books – that never hurts.

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