By Siobhan O’Leary Russian poet Yulia Privedennaya, leader of a youth commune called PORTOS (an acronym for the slightly Orwellian-sounding “Poetic Society for Development of the Theory of the Common Good”) has been given a 4 1/2-year suspended sentence after a Moscow Court ruled that the commune was being operated as an illegal militant group. According to [...]
By Wuping Zhao As Shanda Technology company announced the arrival of its e-reader Bambook today, industry insiders are also discussing the possibility of the sale of Amazon’s Kindle in China. A job opening for a “Sr. Product Manager, Amazon Kindle” was spotted on Amazon.cn on July 19, according to National Business Daily in Shanghai. The description of [...]
By Wuping Zhao Reading e-books on Kindle-like e-readers is out of fashion, according to various reports from the 21st Hong Kong Book Fair which was held from 21st to 27th July, 2010. Mobile is the new e-reading platform of choice. Like the Paris Salon du Livre, the annual Hong Kong Book Fair is mainly for the local [...]
By Rachel Aydt New York writer Rachel Aydt is traveling through Europe this summer, and has been filing occasional posts on her bookish adventures. Today, she visits an English-language bookshop in Rome. We headed to Rome for a few days after spending two days with my mom and stepdad, who’d done an apartment swap in Anzio (despite [...]
By Emily Williams Spanish telecom giant Telefónica and the Spanish Association of Publishers’ Guilds shook hands on a deal that allows the publishers to avail themselves of Telefónica’s technical expertise. The press release implies help with digitizing content (with a strong emphasis on standards that suggests adherence to the epub format), as well as access to [...]
by Helen Gregg For the first time, the Hong Kong Book Fair has devoted an area of the packed show floor to digital publishing and technology exhibitors, reported the New York Times. The new digital book and e-publishing zone at the week-long fair features over twenty technology companies showcasing their products to the almost 900,000 attendees [...]
By Siobhan O’Leary There are plenty of cities in the world where book kiosks rule the sidewalks but on a recent trip to Mexico City, I saw something I hadn’t seen before: sidewalk book kiosks specializing in specific book categories (even professional books). Among the many book kiosks on the Paseo de la Reforma, for example, [...]
By Mark Garcia-Prats The Frankfurt Book Fair is only a few months away! Argentina will be featured as the Guest of Honour of this year’s fair (6 to 10 October 2010), appearing under the motto “Culture in Motion.” Playwright and author Griselda Gambara, will speak at the Frankfurt Book Fair’s opening ceremony and more than 45 Argentine authors [...]
By Edward Nawotka In our continuing series on dead, dying, and vaporware e-readers, we add the news that the makers COOL-ER e-reader is said to have gone into liquidation (according to TeleRead ,via a contributor). The COOL-ER garnered a great deal of attention at BEA 2009, particularly for it’s candy hued covers. On launch it was a [...]
By Edward Nawotka Olufemi Terry, a Sierra Leone writer resident in South Africa, has won the £10,000 Caine Prize for African Writing for his short story Stickfighting Days, which you can read in full here. In addition to £10,000 in prize money, Terry will take part in a month long writer-in-residence program at Washington, DC’s Georgetown University. Shortlisted writers included South [...]
By Chip Rossetti In the fall of 2004, I was an editor at a New York publishing house, [...]
• Cognito Comics is launching an immersive digital graphic novel called Operation Ajax, [...]
