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It’s been a good run.  2011 was the year when self-publishing broke open with the successes of Amanda Hocking, John Locke, and JA Konrath.  The stigma is gone.  No one thinks a self-published book is bad just because it’s been self-published.  But people are creative – there are some out there who actively want to dislike self-publishing, and will look for reasons to criticize.  There are also plenty of people who still want to believe in the validation of a traditional publisher: if an agent and editor like it, I must be good.  So now the stigma is not: self-published […]

Paypal hasn’t had a great few months of PR. First there was the Regretsy debacle, in which Paypal refused to process  donations for kids:

PayPal demanded that Regretsy, an Etsy parody site, return its recent donations garnered to provide Christmas presents for disadvantaged kids. Though Regretsy functions primarily as a humor blog that mocks unfortunate-looking items on the craft site Etsy, it also allows Etsy sellers to donate their products to charity — and even to other sellers in need.

After the internet outcry, they reversed this decision, and finally decided to make donations of their own.[…]

Having reviewed as much non-fiction as I have, you are bound to come across those who have “borrowed” other people’s work and not given them credit for it. It doesn’t happen often in traditionally-published works, but it does happen. As a green reviewer early on, I missed one that was a direct rip-off of another authors work. It was embarrassing, to say the least.

Plagiarism happens in many genres of non-fiction. Older material is out of print or in limited issue and someone thinks no one will notice. These titles can be run through software that checks for plagiarism and […]

You may be aware by now of the brewing battle between Amazon and both publishers and bookstores.  A new Tumblr – Against Amazon – lays it all out.  On the one hand, it doesn’t fill one with great sympathy to see one profit-driven corporate giant being driven out of business by another, but in the digital age it’s indie bookstores that suffer the most. A recent Slate piece with a title that’s designed to get under people’s skin – Don’t Support Your Local Bookseller – defends Amazon:

Compared with online retailers, bookstores present a frustrating consumer experience. A physical store—whether

Thanks to Teleread, here’s an interesting infographic about changing reading habits (via Live Science).

It’s encouraging news for the e-revolution, as people with an ereader read more books – and more people are getting an ereader, so do the math – but what the infographic doesn’t cover is how people’s reading habits might change once the majority of reading is being done via ebooks. Even intellectuals like Sam Harris say that his personal reading habits are changing:

I love physical books as much as anyone. And when I really want to get a book into my brain,