Mass Digitization – Progress, Goals, and Roadblocks

Technology companies today are willing and able to digitize copyrighted works on a scale never imagined before. Copyright owners have raised concerns over their right to do so, and the consequences of mass digitization on publishers’ businesses and accessibility of...

Amazon and The Empty Storefronts Mystery

At the American Booksellers Association’s Winter Institute meeting this week in Denver, indie booksellers heard their online nemesis Amazon branded a monopolist and a tax evader. Douglas Preston, who has led the Authors United movement to force the Dept of Justice to...

Indian Publishers Gain By Translation

Translation, as Salman Rushdie has noted, has its roots in the Latin for “bearing across.” Rushdie – born in Mumbai, or Bombay as it was known then – acknowledges the common fear that something always gets lost in translation, yet he hopes, too, that something can be...

The Threat From Amazon

On Wednesday, January 27, in Washington, the New America think tank plans an open discussion on “Amazon’s Book Monopoly : A Threat to Freedom of Expression?” with author Scott Turow and Smashwords founder Mark Coker,” among others. New America says it is “committed to...

The Risks of Reporting From North Korea

The 38th parallel dividing the Korean peninsula is not the only line Suki Kim has ever crossed. An award-winning novelist and a journalist, Kim emigrated with her family from Seoul to New York City when she was 13. Over a number of officially sanctioned visits to...

Librarians Face “Quiet” 2016

The new year has opened quietly for the book world, but particularly in the e-book market. Barring the unexpected, 2016 sizes up as a period uninterrupted by game-changing new devices and disruptive business models. Even in these tranquil times, though, the winds of...

All-in-One Conference: Copyright and Technology

It’s a truism in intellectual property that copyright legislation is in a never-ending race with technology, and always playing catch-up. When copyright and technology first found themselves in this circular arrangement, the disruptive technology of the moment was the...

Supreme Appeals

William Howard Taft, the only American ever to serve both as President of the United States and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, noted that “Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.” That longevity has a lot to do with the lasting influence of...

Best of BTB: Elements of Blogging

Where it comes to media, as digital diva Clay Shirky once noted, consumers are now producers, and that is the big story. The once-great wall separating reporters from readers has crumbled like sand. High culture and low culture have pretty much found the same level on...