Links for 2009-1-28

“As traditional publishers look to prune their booklists and rely increasingly on blockbuster best sellers, self-publishing companies are ramping up their title counts and making money on books that sell as few as five copies, in part because the author, rather than the publisher, pays for things like cover design and printing costs.” (via @bookoven)

“What would have to happen for books to be considered a legitimate form of media in the iTunes store? We can’t know for sure until Apple actually embraces ebooks as “real” media. In the meantime, we can reverse engineer some of the requirements based on Apple’s previous moves.”

“Very likely, in the near future, I won’t “own” any music, or books, or movies. Instead I will have immediate access to all music, all books, all movies using an always-on service, via a subscription fee or tax. I won’t buy – as in make a decision to own — any individual music or books because I can simply request to see or hear them on demand from the stream of ALL. I may pay for them in bulk but I won’t own them. The request to enjoy a work is thus separated from the more complicated choice of whether I want to “own” it.”

“It’s been a little over a year since Amazon released the Kindle, and now publishers are finally getting the chance to set their own pricing on ebook editions. The result has been a slow creep in pricing on some titles—in some cases to levels above the price of a paper edition of the same book—for a digital edition that you can’t resell, give away to someone else, or read on any other device. Kindle owners have started to notice, and now some of them are complaining that Amazon overpromised the $9.99 bookstore concept to move Kindles.” (via Smart Bitches, Trashy Books)

“Bucking the trend of celebrity memoirs, the star of Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club is writing a novel about living as a 40-year-old.” Aw, but I want a Molly Ringwald memoir!