TeleRead

If Draft2Digital is distributing your ebooks, you can now make them available to interested local bookstores that belong to Bookshop.org. And if D2D prints your paperbacks, that’s another possible path. Bookshop.org includes several thousand local stores in the U.S. and the U.K. and is notable for its generosity to stores as well as writers. The more alternatives to Amazon, the better for those of us worried about its dominance of the ebook market and online bookselling in general.

For readers who are distressed by the double impact that online book malls and ebooks have on traditional bookshops, Bookshop.org has been offering since 2020 an alternative to Amazon and other online stores that supports local bookstores. Now, however, Bookshop.org is rolling out ebooks in the UK to challenge the Bezos Behemoth. The website provides a map of partnering independent bookstores.

Lyon is France’s second city, renowned as the capital of the rest of the country while Paris is the metropole. And OctoGônes is its biggest annual fantasy, gaming and independent weird publishing convention – a mecca for exhibitors and fans across the country. Official attendance numbers for the long weekend of the convention were 18,200, and the Saturday at least eventually sold out, so there’s no question of its popularity.

Hyperlinked books and other interconnected information—imagine the AI potential of a truly trustworthy national digital library system. But beware if you want AI companies to be part of the effort. So far they’ve balked at the idea of using only trustworthy content. Marx apparently had in mind material that was trustworthy in the usual library sense. But what to do when lying authoritarians like Donald Trump run the country and can order librarians to offer propaganda, including racist content?

By BOB SNYDER Remember when ebooks were supposed to be the cheaper, greener alternative to print? “Buy a Kindle,” they said. “Digital is faster, more sustainable, and easy on your wallet.” Back then, a new ebook often meant $2.99 for an indie title, or $9.99 for a bestseller. It felt like a reader’s dream—frictionless access without the hardback price tag. Well, so much for that dream. I now pay $15-18 for Kindle books. No paper, no ink, no warehouse, no shipping. Just bits and bandwidth.

I shouldn’t need to tell readers that color e-readers have been much in the news laterly. In this context, the TCL NXTPAPER 11 Plus is a device I’ve been eagerly awaiting ever since I saw advance coverage of it online some months ago. Some might ask why. After all, it’s a fast and reasonably powerful 11-inch Android tablet, with fairly solid specifications and the latest version of Android, as well as an attractive price point.

I call it the ScandalsBot. If you ask what Washington sleaze inspired The Solomon Scandals, the bot will oblige. The bot can also compare my corruption novel with All the President’s Men and other Washington books, or it can explain why I mixed genres rather than just writing suspense. What’s more, it can lay out the main themes and sum up the plot and the characters—or answer scads of other questions. Ask. The ScandalsBot likely can oblige.

Could this be one reason why the Kindle Scribe has gone on sale? For $400, Lenovo later this year is to sell a Scribe rival able to record lectures with two built-in mikes and turn handwritten notes into searchable text. Handily, you can sync the audio recordings with notes. Perhaps a tool for journalists, too, not just students? Engadget reports that the Smart Paper can also let you “delete and reorganize notes, and place them into folders.

I can hardly pass a moment at home without an audiobook or an audio podcast playing. But I haven’t invested in a new Bluetooth speaker for a long time. So the Tribit XSound Go, selling for $36.99 USD, was a welcome generational upgrade. No more Micro-USB charging—instead, the Tribit has a USB-C socket, exactly the same as my phone and tablets. That’s one fewer cable. It has Bluetooth 5.0. It has two 8-watt drivers for a total of 16 watts.

At the Hugo Awards ceremony for Glasgow Worldcon 2024 on the evening of Sunday 11 August, the event overcame any of the earlier issues around attempts to interfere with the judging process, and produced an exemplary and transparent ballot, with a stellar list of winners.