the single most valuable—productivity boosting—feature that an ereader platform could add would be a complete and open API for bookmarks, highlights, and notes. If I could have all of my highlights and notes automatically sync—marked up and tagged—to my Simplenote account, that would trump any design feature or widget ereader vendors can possibly think of. —Baldur Bjarnason
Category: Marginalia
A sideblog of links I found interesting but haven’t (yet?) written a whole post about
@pkay225 puts it another way: Me: should books be culturally privileged? Audience crickets Me: who has had their life changed by a book? Audience all hands go up
@crankykramer plays the dozens: Yo mama’s so old she thinks CMS stands for Chicago Manual of Style.
@Ted_Underwood, 2 tweets: Wrote on board: “read intro to p. xxvii, story to p. 43.” Students: “wait, do we read to page 27 or page 43?” Revealing that they still understand roman numerals … but not necessarily the conventions of the printed codex …
Fun fact: many of the most influential people in ebooks today outright reject the idea that design makes a substantial contribution to a book’s meaning. —Baldur Bjarnason
“[T]he people who [make e-books] work in Stygian gloom, eat living things and snarl when poked with a stick.” Not true! We don’t eat anything. I, for one, subsist entirely on the moisture that trickles down my cave’s walls.
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
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.
“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.”