Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Book News: Amazon's Kindle Matchbook Is Out - Will Publishers Opt In? - NPR (blog)

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveils new Kindle reading devices during a 2012 news conference. Enlarge image i

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveils new Kindle reading devices during a 2012 news conference.

David McNew / Getty Images

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveils new Kindle reading devices during a 2012 news conference.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveils new Kindle reading devices during a 2012 news conference.

David McNew / Getty Images

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

  • Amazon Launched Kindle Matchbook, a Service That lets customers buy steeply discounted ebook versions of books they’ve already bought in print (from Amazon, of course) on Tuesday. Publishers must opt-in, and as of Wednesday morning, some 75,000 ebooks were available for $ 2.99 or less. Of course, It May prove difficult to persuade publishers to sell ebooks at popular Such sharp discounts. NBC News’ Helen A. S. Popkin called the selection “70,000 shades of blah,” pointing out the lack of bestsellers by authors zoals Stephen King, EL James and Dan Brown alongwith classics by the likes of Mark Twain, Maya Angelou and others.
  • Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble is releasing a $ 119 black-and-white version of the Nook e-reading device. Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey tells The New York Times That May Be wary consumers of the new Nook Because Of B & N’s corporate struggles: “[W] ill people perceive That Barnes & Noble as a company will be around to Fulfill the promises That That device makes? It’s a shadow That hangs over the entire enterprise Nook right now. “
  • “Hyperbole and a Half” creator Allie Brosh spoke to NPR about dealing with depression: “Depression can be Such an isolating experience, and it’s deceptive, you know, you think, ‘Surely I’m the only one that’s ever gone through this, or felt this depth of misery. ” I spent a lot of time, just because it was so difficult to get the balance between looking at the subject with a little bit of levity and usefull treating it with enough respect. But That I really felt it was important to talk about it. It was cathartic for me, and cathartic – I hope -. for other people “
  • at NPR’s Monkey See blog, Linda Holmes says one of the reasons Brosh’s work is so moving is its immediacy: “In the conversations surrounding her book, Brosh has made it clear That she is not looking at depression in the rearview mirror in some sort of ‘let me tell you about this thing that happened to me once’ kind of way. She’s in it, and she lives with it, and sometimes it’s better, and sometimes it’s worse. It means you do not see her for a while, Because she’s a real person and it’s a real thing. “
  • We Need to Talk About Kevin author Lionel Shriver describes the daily life of a writer in The New Republic : “I have grown perversely nostalgic for my previous commercial failure – when my focus was pure, and the books were still fun to write, even if nobody read them. “
  • Anna Holmes writes about the value of Twitter in literary criticism: “It may not be a coincidence tat in contrast to the shameful sex ratio endemic to so many literary publications, some of the most Widely read critics on Twitter are women One. That many critics might argue outright dismissal of the technology is directly related to Their feelings or privilege. ‘Some of These people do not need to be on Twitter Because they already have all the access they need, “the fiction writer and critic Roxane Gay told me. “

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