new vogue

A word that is coming into vogue: optic.

as in: "The optic to view much in north Australian indigenous affairs is …" Nicholas Rothwell The Australian July 18-19 2009

Who's bigger Harry or Stephanie?

The Harry Potter series have sold over 400 million copies and the Twilight series has sold over 50 million. Harry, with seven books in the series, was first published in 1997 (11 years ago) and Twilight, with four book in the series - the last was published in 2005 just three years ago. The last Harry Potter was published in 2005 and the last Stephanie Meyer was published last year, and not in the first half. Twilight as a franchise is looking like it is even bigger than Harry.

Will the next mega-YA/crossover/fantasy series be even bigger?

entertaining …

… challenge

Bulwer Lytton competition

I preferred the runners up! (So short should this have been a tweet?)

not back lit

One of the pleasures of the Sony ereader for me is that it ain't backlit. With the constant use of phone and computer my eyes get tired of backlit screens. I'm wondering whether other people are finding the same an advantage?

in praise of the ereader

I'm really enjoying my Sony E-reader. I'm worried. Have I fallen out of love with paper? Or is this just an infatuation with the new. I've been reading manuscripts - it saves paper as I don't have to lug around a huge hefty wad of paper. (Are we going to be driven to ebooks for environmental reasons?) And more - I have access to a whole lot of manuscripts. I can pick and choose -wow! I can browse manuscripts. And I can read in odd moments like I do with a book. And I never lose my place. (And I never discovered I've printed out the whole script without page numbers.) But that's really manuscripts not books. I have one book on there. A book from an overseas publisher (a pdf), so it doesn't feel like a book being read for pleasure (though I'm absorbed). I do get lost though and went back to the computer once and its larger screen to get a sense of where I was in the pdf.

I think they'll take a while to takeoff though especially with teens and even kids. Except as an act of desperation, the phone screen is too small for comfortable reading. The ereaders are expensive (and they're no here yet!) Maybe electronic paper will be the iTunes moment for books. The genres will be conquered first.

What about non-linear books like our non-fiction picture books? Will they ever make and ebook?