Kindle - text to audio at the same spot

It's interesting that one of the features of the new Kindle is that you can switch from reading the book to listening to it at the point where you left off. I'd like that feature on my iPhone. 

My consumption of ebooks and audiobooks has shot up since I got an iPhone, more the audio than the e. But sometimes when I'm listening to a book I want to transfer to reading it, and then back to listening to it. Revolutionary for me.

Twitter

I'm trying to figure out how it works. And Twitter is going to link to this blog - I hope.

Shorts and Numbers for Shortlist

Congratulations to Reggie Abios for being short-listed in the APA design awards in TWO categories with a black dog in each:

"Short" in the Best Designed Children's Fiction Book category

and

"A Story of Natural Numbers" in the Best Designed Children's Non-fiction Book category.

Whoo-wee.

Antarctica

I was reminded of Dr Mark Norman terrific The Antarctica Book this morning when reading about a recently completed wildlife survey of Antarctica. The Antarctica has a diversity rivalling that of the Great Barrier Reef: 7500 animals in the region. Interestingly 235 of the species are found both here and in the North Pole region some 11,000 km away (polar circle to polar circle?). And the species are on the move as the seas warm. The WWF called for an expansion of protected areas.

Productivity Commission

The submissions to the Productivity Comission project "Copyright Restrictions on the Parallel Importation of Books" give a snapshot of the state of play of Australian book publishing industry. A browse through rewards the effort. They could be recommended course reading for editing and publishing courses. The Hardie Grant submission makes particularly good reading.

if you fly regularly …

don't watch this video

Taiwan Lantern Festival

nice

News Corp profits from book publishing

It's interesting that News Corp's operating profit from publishing reduced from US$67m in the December quarter 07 to  US$23m in December quarter 08. It's not looking very recession proof. Can we (in publishing) take heart from television, which declined from US$245 down to US$18m?