I liked how this

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2011/06/17/137221886/yes-those-people-ar...

Led to this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/arts/design/01tino.html

which led to this article on book culture:

http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2010/03/against_writingthis_prog...

and now I feel so much smarter.

I just read a blog post from Eoin Purcell where he refers to the saying 'people don't know you're a dog online' to make a point. It occurred to me that with google chat, skype, social networking and all, that that saying just isn't true anymore.  The internet is not about being anonymous. The digital space has changed dramatically since the time of that the cartoon was drawn, that Purcell mentions: (New Yorker 1993) 

Of course the point he was making was about how backlist competes with frontlist because now no one knows that it is backlist. It just is. And while I agree that digital distribution has changed the game for frontlist and backlist I still think that pubdate is extremely relevant and that it will be pubdate that influences purchases. Pubdate is what creates backlist and media is going to still push/review new over old. So while backlist is no longer constrained by material space it is still very much constrained by it's actual original existence and the way dialogue happens around books. (Oh plus, try to get a movie or t.v. show made from your work -and get on Oprah!)

Hi there:

A couple of problems I wanted you to be aware of. I was enjoying reading The Girl Who Played with Fire on my iphone with the kobo app. Then I upgraded to the 4.0 kobo app and you lost my bookmark. A bit of a pain with an ebook for sure but I forgive you.

Then I was reading along when I came to a passage that is supposed to be an icq exchange with Plague and Salander and the text in tags ran off the screen. I changed the font size to the smallest possible but it still didn't fit. I would have loved looking at the epub to see what was what but I didn't. Not sure who is at fault here - your conversion or publishers but I can say I blamed your app. Also, wondered how I get a new ebook if there is a fix for this? (As an aside I did go to the source! the pbook to see what I was missing)

Anyway I know there is a lot of crap that goes on in ebooks but because this is such a high profile ebook I thought I would write.

Oh yeah, you lost my bookmark again when I went back in the book to find where the passage was so I could take a photo of it (attached)!

I recently read a tweet from @NicholasHoareTO and there was something about it that bugged me.

The tweet went like this:

"Dear customer, please don't use our store and staff to put together your online shopping list. :("

First of all how do you know dear store and staff that that is the reason a list is being made? I use my iphone and write notes about books I see all the time and I never or at least rarely order them online - and so what if I did? Don't you sell books online? Well you have a website but I can't order anything from it so perhaps I will just "steal" "your" catalogue and order them from somewhere else? Is that what you want?

Secondly, yes I am your customer - I might even be following you on twitter and you might even be pissing me off with your snotty tweets therefore I may not buy those books from you after all.

I know you have a reputation to keep up Nick Hoare but if you are going to use social media and your website presumably for the good of your business - don't complain when others use you to benefit their consuming. Be gracious, be helpful and all that other stuff that good retailers do who want to gain customer loyalty and then perhaps you will get customer loyalty.

There is an occupational hazard in my role as the retail liason for BookNet Canada - this hazard is that I have to go to a lot of bookstores. This is a hazard because inevitably I end up buying far too many books. There is something seductive about seeing all of these beautifully designed objects placed in seductive positions on lovely shelves.

This past week I went to the University of Waterloo bookstore and since I was in Waterloo I later dropped in on Words Worth Books - a general trade bookstore. Although I was tempted to buy something at the Unversity I did escape wallet intact. But I was blown away by the aggresive position that the bookstore is taking toward ebooks. The university is in an enviable ,or uneviable depending on how you look at it, position of being embedded in a highly sophisticated technology environment. This means they need to stay up on technology and to this end they have been running an espresso machine (for books not coffee) as well as selling mobile phones (they are a rogers dealer and licensed to sell!) Soon the university will be selling ipads and ereaders alongside their laptops and iphones -and oh yeah blackberries too. If the ipad had been in Canada I surely would have been hooked and bought one here.

We all know that the road is not that smooth for this kind of mix of products - books and ebooks. However early signs indicate to the managers of the store that students want bundles and that ebooks do not cannibalize pbooks but actually enhance the reading experience by making those books available at all times in all places. Who wouldn't want to be dancing up a alcohol enhanced storm at ....... and suddenly when the conversation has room to happen and the arguements begin to fly being able to whip out your medical reference text and supporting your position?

My next stop was the general trade bookstore. The difference between visiting an academic bookstore and a trade bookstore cannot be too finely stated.  I sat leisurly in an office discussing a wide range of issues at the university and then left two hours later while at the general bookstore I inserted comments in between customer transactions at the bookstore till. Comments about ebooks, or software, the digital catalogue project and more. Occasionally I just had to back away from the till to let the late lunch rush load up on books, which was quite impressive to see. I would wander the store, load up on books of my own, then back to add another point - harried bookseller saying hmmm, ok hmmm, edespair, hmmm, ok - more edespair.

But at the end of it all, and the point of this blog post, was that I left the store with four books and three of them would be highly unlikely to see any life as an ebook. In the hopes of spreading a veneer of hope for the booksellers I said as I bought the Andy Goldsworthy and the humungous kid's books that these are books that will never be ebooks. Hmmm, said the bookseller -edespair!