Designers & Books

Designers & Books is devoted to publishing lists of books that esteemed members of the design community identify as personally important, meaningful, and formative - books that have shaped their values, their worldview, and their ideas about design

63% of publishers plan eBook in 2012: DCL Report

Publishers are beginning to understand the importance of having their eBooks available in multiple digital formats. According to a new survey from Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL), 43 percent of publishers "realized the importance of compatibility with all e-readers, including iPad, MOBI (Kindle), Nook and custom formats." The report, which interviewed 411 publishers, found that 63 percent of publishers plan to publish a digital book in 2012. The report also found that 64 percent of publishers are interested in publishing non-fiction and technical digital content. The preferred eReader among is group was the iPad with 44 percent of the respondents preferring the iPad as their eReader of choice, versus 36 percent preferring a Kindle

Pan Macmillan launches new ebook bundles and second round of digital-only Short Reads

Pan Macmillan has published its first ebook bundles (collections of 2 or 3 titles in a single ebook) and a second collection of ebook Short Reads for 2011's digital Christmas. The ebook bundles will sell from between £13.99 and £15.99 and include books by bestselling writers Ken Follett, Jon Ronson, Sue Grafton and Andrew Marr. Ken Follett’s Thundering Good Thrillers feature three classic spy thrillers from the master stortyteller, Eye of the Needle, Jackdaws and Hornet Flight. A History of 20th Century Britain bundles together for the first time Andrew Marr's two bestselling volumes, A History of Modern Britain and The Making of Modern Britain. Jon Ronson's Adventures with Extraordinary People includes The Pyschopath Test, published earlier this year. Sue Grafton's new novel, V Is For Vengeance, has also been published early in ebook to meet the demand over Christmas, with the hardback out in January

BTB #270: For Authors, A Changing World, in Europe & Beyond

Not only publishers feel the impact of the digital revolution. For better and for worse, authors around the world face new questions and new challenges brought by the Internet and the rise of social media. Personal branding and marketing; new income sources and remuneration schemes; copyright protection and licensing; even the act of writing itself – all these are evolving into new forms. But are the changes happening the same way for every region of the world, whether in bigger and smaller countries, or in language communities of different sizes? As part of special programming within Beyond the Book from RightsDirect, the European subsidiary of Copyright Clearance Center, Victoriano Colodrón speaks with Natalie Ariën of VAV, the Flemish Authors’ Association, representing the interests of Dutch-speaking authors from the Flanders region of Belgium. VAV members include authors of prose, poetry, plays, screenplays, children's and youth literature, literary non-fiction and comic strip/cartoons, as well as illustrators and literary translators

Jo Shapcott wins Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry

Jo Shapcott has won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, its judges saluting the "calm but sparkling Englishness" of her award-winning verse. Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, chair of the judging panel, said the medal was "the true crowning of her career". Shapcott won the Costa Book of the Year award in January for Of Mutability, a collection of poems partly inspired by her battle against breast cancer. George V inaugurated the Gold Medal for Poetry in 1933

Lesley Pearse event (UK)

Meet Lesley Pearse at Greenwich libraries (UK) on 23 January 2012 at 7-8 pm. She will be talking about her latest novel "The Promise"

Dangdang launches E-book platform in China

Dangdang has announced the launch of its e-book platform in China. Dangdang provides approximately 50,000 book titles in the initial launch of the e-book platform at e.dangdang.com. After online payment, customers can download the digital content using Dangdang's free applications on iPhone(TM), iPad(TM) and Android(TM) devices or read online on their PCs

Read Google eBooks offline

Google eBooks now supports offline reading in Google Chrome

National Post launches e-book publishing program (Canada)

The National Post has become the first Canadian daily to launch an e-book publishing program. Following the model made popular by Amazon's Kindle Singles and Byliner.com, the newspaper's editors, in partnership with HarperCollins Canada, will bring together feature-length articles that have appeared in print and online and republish them in a downloadable EPUB format. Duncan Clark, vice-president of digital media, says the project responds to growing reader appetite for intelligent, long-form journalism they can "dig into" and "invest time in."

Tower Hamlets Book Award 2011 wiiner (UK)

The winner of the Tower Hamlets Book Award 2011 is Joe Layburn, for Street Heroes