Harry Potter e-book fever

25th April: Daily Telegraph reports that Harry Potter ebook sales top 1m in three days

27th March Guardian article about Pottermore

“Although the titles feature on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, they can only be bought from Pottermore. By selling the books via her own website, Rowling will be able to keep much of the revenue rather than sharing it with the publishers.”

“The first three novels cost £4.99 in ebook form, compared with a cover price of £6.99 for print editions, while the final four are priced at £6.99 in ebook compared with £8.99 in print.”

(Guardian newspaper article by Alison Flood, 27.3.12)

It is worth mentioning that JK Rowling has agreed that the Harry Potter e-books can be loaned through the Overdrive software commonly used in British public libraries.

 

Happy Shakespeare’s Birthday and Happy World Book Night!

Today is the day Shakespeare was born and died. Here are some interesting videos with more information about the man and his life and work.

 

World Book Night

World Book is a celebration of reading and books which sees tens of thousands of people giving books within their communities to spread a love of reading on April 23rd. These are the 25 titles selected to be given out.

It is being celebrated in the UK, Ireland, Germany and USA.

 

American Digital Library promised for 2013

Guardian Article from 5th April 2012

American Digital Public  Library

Two million books will be available in an online digital library to rival Google’s collection, according to Professor Robert Darnton, who promised the new database would overcome copyright hurdles by next year.

The British Library is constantly digitising its collections. Vast numbers of resources are available online including sounds, images and newspapers. Many are freely available, others are paid for.

Digital collections

Digitised British newspapers

Endangered archives

Festival books (1475-1700)

International Dunhuang Project

Manuscripts

Sounds

Theses

UK Web Archive

 

Orange Prize Shortlist 2012 Announced

Orange Prize Shortlist 2012

The UK’s only annual award for fiction written by women announced the shortlist today.

Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues Serpent’s Tail Canadian 2nd Novel
Anne Enright The Forgotten Waltz Jonathan Cape Irish 5th Novel
Georgina Harding Painter of Silence Bloomsbury British 3rd Novel
Madeline Miller The Song of Achilles Bloomsbury American 1st Novel
Cynthia Ozick Foreign Bodies Atlantic Books American 7th Novel
Ann Patchett State of Wonder Bloomsbury American 6th Novel

Ann Patchett,  won the Orange Prize for Fiction ten years ago for Bel Canto (2002). Bel Canto is a fantastic book – thoroughly recommended read.

Pinterest – Pinboards to promote good books.

Pinterest is a content sharing service that allows members to “pin” images, videos and other objects to their pinboard. A way of grabbing images and websites on themes. It’s also an attractive way to create recommended reading boards.

Here’s a pinboard I created for the Carnegie Children’s Book Award 2012 shortlisted books.

Here are  thematic book boards put together by a school librarian in Kent.

Mashable suggests ways teachers can use pinterest to organise the web.

We will be creating more themed book boards in the near future and welcome suggestions. Next one will be film tie-ins.

 

E-books – the new reading

Here are some interesting articles from The Guardian about how e-books are changing the way we read, how we annotate books and what we read. Self-publishing is on the rise and short books are being written for e-readers – ideal for long haul flights: ebooks-the-new-reading

Includes a fascinating article –  “Digital butchery makes a monster of Frankenstein -Mary Shelley’s classic horror story has been dismembered for the age of the app”