Backlist discoveries: Make New Friends, but Keep the Old:

I have to admit a weakness for nostalgic childhood songs. As my mother and I say, “we sing off- key, but we remember all the words.”

One of my favorites is this round:

Make new friends, but keep the old.

One is silver but the other gold.

All my life I have taken pleasure in adding to my friends far more often than subtracting any, and in introducing new friends to old. And I think the same rule should apply to reading – and rereading – good books.

This applies especially non-fiction that may have been published in those decades between college and middle-age when you’ve been too busy raising a family and building a career to read as much for pleasure as you did when you were that history major turned law student.

For some suggestions, Time Magazine has just issued a list of 100 top “non-fiction” books (http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2088856,00.html).

These “influential books” include many gems you may not have read in school, (if you are too old or were not an English major), from Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land (a memoir of growing up in Harlem before the drug epidemic, the only reason the author survived.) to Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, a less pretentious window on Americans in France in the early 20th Century than Hemmingway, especially if you liked Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.

I like the new writers and books as much as anyone. Far be it for me to stop repeatedly checking Google, as well as browsing all the best book reviewers (NYT, Wash Post, NYRB, Atlantic, New Yorker) in the few places who still employ staff writers

If you are interested in reading more than just the things that make new news every 15 minutes on social media, I hope you’ll check out Unglue.it, where our Team is building a new way to get more ebooks reprinted, into more public libraries, and read by more people -- all over the world.

What’s your favorite book that isn’t yet available as an ebook? Go to www.Unglue.it and let us know, or email me at:  amanda@gluejar.com.

On Twitter You can also follow  #gluejar or @AMREADERTOO





P.S. (FYI, if you like me sang a lot of rounds at camp or in scouts, my other favorite song is “one bottle top, two bottle top…. But that’s another story.)

Watch this space....

Ask you local library about ebook loans. An easy way to keep a reading "budget" while playing with your new Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony or Kobo reader.


From Library Journal reporting on BEA -- annual Book Industry Convention


Growth in demand just beginning
All four panelists described an exponential upward demand for ebooks. For example, Michael Colford, the Boston Public Library's director of resource services and information technology, said he expects the library's ebook budget to triple next year (FY12) from its current total of $105,000 (about 5 percent of the library's materials budget).

Reprint more e-Books

You don't have to read industry publications to realize eBooks are booming, but Publisher's Weekly has a timely story today (see below) that makes it obvious that publishers should release as many new and backlist books as eBooks as possible -- just as trade paperback reprints exploded in the 1980s.

Although there are high upfront costs to making eBooks from books older than 10-15 years (because the original printing was from film and must be converted to digital files not just to a Kindle or Nook format), it is penny wise and pound foolish not to reissue eBooks, especially of authors who have new books just out, whether they are popular novelists or important scholars. 

Where necessary eBook prices could be higher than the average for the initial releases, and Foundations should subsidize academic eBook reissues from non-profits, especially University Presses.  If Apple is serious about reaching out to the education market, they should also make it as easy as possible for non-profits to put their books into the iBookstore, regardless of commercial "agency" model issues.  Reader on the iPad and iPod Touch will be more than a cool trend ONLY if the iBookstore increases it's inventory. Likewise, Kindle and Nook should discount university press conversions, so that every eBook can be bought from any online eBook retailer that sells the printed book, whether B&N or Amazon.

Readers need a choice of formats and, yes, they don't want to wait a long time for the eBook in order to be "forced" to buy an exclusive hardcover.  That's a way to lose readers not gain profits in today's fast moving eBook world.

link to PW here

E-book Sales Jump 172% in August
While sales in the print trade segments shrank in August, e-book sales had another strong month, jumping 172.4%, to $39 million, according to the 14 publishers that report sales to the AAP's monthly sales estimates. For the year-to-date, e-book sales were up 192.9%, to $263 million. AAP said that of the approximately 19 publishers that report trade sales, revenue in the January to August period was $2.91 billion, making the $263 million e-book sales 9.0% of trade sales. At the end of 2009, e-book sales comprised 3.3% of trade sales. The mass market segment, where sales were down 14.3% in the first eight months of 2009, represented 15.1% of trade sales through August. more...  link to PW here