The Power of Books

Marginalia

• @muttinmall holds forth: “eReaders are now crafted with greater quality and an eye toward the reader experience than ebooks themselves.”

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• 1. Understand the Consumer’s experience. 2. Become at least as “tech savvy” as your readers. 3. Wherever your titles or discussions of your titles can be found, you should be there. 4. Ask lots of dumb questions internally. —Fran Toolan

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• 56 percent of tablet owners are male, while 55 percent of e-reader owners are female. Women also buy more books than men do—by a ratio of about 3 to 1,…—and are therefore more likely to buy devices that are made primarily for reading books.

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• “Somebody has to proofread this stuff, you guys. I have tried in vain to find out just which job title at each of your illustrious firms is the responsible party. But I do know whose job it should NOT be, and that’s mine, after I have already shelled out money.”

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• Byrnes Woder explains how it uses Markdown and Smartypants to generate clean HTML, and thence ePubs, from plain text.

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