I was frankly disappointed in the Nook Color. While it was great in terms of sales – and those sales help support the existence of brick and mortar, Barnes and Noble bookstores – I didn’t like the move from e-ink to LCD. The idea behind e-ink was to better mimic the experience of reading a physical, paper book by eliminating the back lit effect of reading on a computer.

By moving to LCD screens, the Nook Color made itself into an affordable entry in the tablet computer market and is possibly better for perusing photograph heavy magazines, but seemed to move away from the central function of reading (and as far as the magazines go, I prefer magazines heavier on the written word than on photographs).

Well, Barnes and Noble is now unveiling a new Nook that returns to the e-ink screen, while adding a touch screen.

To me, going back to e-ink sounds like progress.

What is the value of professionalism in book reviewers? How much more valuable are they, if at all, than amateur book reviewers? What are the criteria for ‘professionalism’ in book reviewing?

As blogs (like this one) and other new media invested in books proliferate and as Amazon’s customer reviewers rival the New York Times for influence, this becomes more of an issue.

Though I am clearly on the amateur side (with sad pretension of more, but that is all) in terms of my own reviewing, I come down on the side of ‘professionalism’ in reviewing as a necessary aspect of maintaining our culture.

It is not just a question of gatekeepers. It is also a question of specialized knowledge and education and the benefits they impart.

Read this article for more on the suggested limitations of a reliance on sources like Amazon reviewers.

As e-books become a larger and larger part of the book market, it seems that the biggest target will be mass market paperbacks.

For what this article calls a “book reader” (as opposed to a “book owner”), e-books are an obvious replacement for mass market paperbacks.

Purchasing hard cover books and even trade paperbacks is more of an event buy. One is putting down a little bit more money for the unique experience of a desired physical book. But mass market paperbacks are the books printed to be read on subways and airplanes or impulse buys because they monetary outlay isn’t great. As a result, they are the closest competitors to e-books.

I’d hate to see them go. If you, like me, are a genre fan, then you have spent a lot of time with the mass market paperback. In my case, it’s science fiction and fantasy, where only the biggest names see the light of day as a hardback tome and where thousands of new books are produced as those small paperbacks that populate my shelves.

There’s something wonderfully egalitarian in the nature of the sci fi paperback, as well as an attachment to its history in the pulps. It’s inexpensive nature made it so easy as a young man browsing the shelves at Waldenbooks or B. Dalton’s in some mall or other to take a chance on an unknown writer based on a combination of cover art and the description on the back.

After getting its settlement proposal in America shot down by judge for not doing enough to avoid screwing authors, three publishers in France, including the legendary Gallimard, are suing them each volume Google digitized from their backlist.

It’s getting harder and harder for the producers of creative content – like writers – to receive the benefits of their work. Yes, I use Google, but that doesn’t preclude me from asking if there are not now violating their old dictum against being evil. Arguably stealing the work of writers without compensating is surely touching on evil, is it not?

I’ve never really contemplated whether there was a distinction before, but this New Yorker article asks the question.

I just wanted to link to this hopeful sounding article from The Atlantic.

The piece looks at the same information reported here, but sees not just a silver lining, but an unbroken tradition of humans reading. For cuneiform to e-readers, as it were.

As the author (Peter Osnos) states: “My view is that books are being read, but the means of delivery are changing.”

I pray he speaks the truth.

Another day, another article about the death of book publishing due to e-books.

My main concern is how online only stores like Amazon and online only methods of purchasing and reading books like e-books reduce that old-fashioned activity known as browsing.

Especially for someone like myself, whose book buying habits lean towards niche tomes, I depend on various forms of browsing to discover new books. While some of those forms of browsing are online, the publishers themselves depend on dedicated booksellers in brick and mortar locations to keep them, if not in the black, at least marginally out of the red.