One result of the economic crisis facing newspapers and most other media outlets is that the number of foreign correspondents is plummeting. Here at The New York Times, we still have all of our foreign bureaus — partly because our strategy is to compete for readers who seek international news and analysis — but most newspapers and TV networks have been pulling back. Only four American newspapers now have foreign desks. And for a network, it’s very expensive to base a correspondent in London or Tokyo, and so much easier to film two people yelling at each other in a studio. More…

Bill Bell, Centre for the History of the Book, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
www.Book-Conference.com

Bill Bell is Director of the Centre for the History of the Book at The University of Edinburgh where he teaches in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures. He specialises in Nineteenth Century literature and culture and has written extensively on the sociology of the text, the history of the book, and theories of cultural production. He has held visiting posts at The Australian National University, The University of Ottawa, and St John’s College, Oxford. More…

As books make the leap from cellulose and ink to electronic pages, some editors worry that too much is being lost in translation. Typography, layout, illustrations and carefully thought-out covers are all being reduced to a uniform, black-on-gray template that looks the same whether you’re reading Pride and Prejudice, Twilight or the Federalist Papers.

“There’s a dearth of typographic expression in e-books today,” says Pablo Defendini, digital producer for Tor.com, the online arm of science fiction and fantasy publisher Tor Books. “Right now it’s just about taking a digital file and pushing it on to a e-book reader without much consideration for layout and flow of text.”

With the popularity of the Kindle and other e-book readers, electronic book sales in the United States have doubled every quarter. Though still a very small percentage of the overall book industry, sales of e-books touched $15.5 million in the first quarter of the year, up from $3.2 million the same quarter a year ago. By contrast, the printed book market sales in North America alone was nearly $14 billion in 2008. More…

Martyn Wade, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK
www.Book-Conference.com

Martyn Wade joined the National Library of Scotland (NLS) as National Librarian in 2002, after 25 years experience in the public library sector. During this time he worked in a number of rural and urban authorities, including London Borough of Sutton, Leicestershire and Cambridgeshire, and was formerly Head of Libraries, Information and Learning with Glasgow City Council.

Throughout his career he has taken a particular interest in developing integrated customer and citizen focused services, and under his leadership NLS has developed a reputation for innovative developments aimed at widening access to the Library’s collections, expertise and services. More…

Common Ground Publishing has launched a new imprint, Books and Publishing.

You can now submit proposals or completed manuscript submissions of:

• individually and jointly authored books;
• edited collections addressing a clear, intellectually challenging theme;
• collections of papers published in The International Journal of the Book.

Books should be between 30,000 words to 150,000 words in length. They will be published simultaneously in print and electronic formats.

Dylan F. Tweney, Wired Gadget Lab:

Amazon is almost certain to announce a large-screen Kindle on Wednesday.

In the world of e-book readers, that’s huge. But if Apple fulfills expectations and releases a tablet-style computer later this year, it’s going to render the Kindle — no matter what screen size — almost instantly moot.

Amazon’s Kindle is far and away the most popular e-book reader; Amazon probably sold half a million last year and may sell a million Kindle 2’s this year. Yet the Kindle’s 6-inch screen, while impressively readable and crisp, is only slightly larger than a 3? x 5? index card. That’s why many magazine and newspaper publishers are excited about the prospect of a larger Kindle — let’s call it the “Kindle XL.” Even if it’s not as large as Plastic Logic’s promised 8.5? x 11? screen (due in early 2010), a larger screen would provide lots more room to display the day’s news, attractively laid-out feature stories, and, of course, advertisements.

From Brad Stone and Motoko Rich of The New York Times:

Most electronic devices are getting smaller. Amazon’s Kindle electronic book reader is bucking the trend.

Amazon on Wednesday introduced a larger version of the Kindle, pitching it as a new way for people to read textbooks, newspapers and their personal documents.

The device, called the Kindle DX (for Deluxe), has a screen that is two and a half times the size of the screens on the two older versions of the Kindle, which were primarily aimed at displaying books. The price tag is also larger: the DX will sell for $489, or $130 more than the previous model, the Kindle 2, and willgo on sale this summer.

Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, speaking to a crowd of journalists and Amazon employees and business partners on the campus of Pace University, said the new Kindle was a step in the direction of a long-dreamed-of “paperless society.” More…

Abstract: The technological development and cultural acceptance of e-books today parallels the state of the printed book in the 15th century. E-books are increasingly available from a variety of distributors and retailers, and work on a myriad of devices, but the majority remain simply digitized versions of print books. Some devices or platforms include such tools as word definitions, highlighting, and note taking, but many of these tools simply mimic what students and researchers have traditionally done with printed texts.

This paper examines three examples of innovative e-books in order to illustrate the potential and pitfalls of electronic publications. The first is a history e-text that includes 1,700 primary-source documents—such as Presidential memos, reports, and even audio and video clips—linked from footnotes, providing a treasure trove of research material to readers. The second is a novella in hypertext form. The third example examines digital textbooks that include multimedia, assessment, and other digital tools. Each of these cases demonstrates creative approaches, business models, and methods of review that point to the enhanced, interactive, interlinked future of the e-book.

The third issue of Volume 6 of The International Journal of the Book is now available.

Volume 6, Number 3 contains:

• Law and Heidegger’s Question Concerning Technology: Prolegomenon to Future Law Librarianship by Paul Callister.
• Rhetorical Experiments in Medium and Message by Valerie L. Perry.
• Literacy’s Role in Revolution and Independence: Where have we been, where are we going? by Laurie Andes.
• Audio Description: An Aid to Literacy by Joel Snyder.
• The Book as Object and Event in the Works of John Latham by Kathryn Brown.
• The Changing Face of Children’s Picturebooks: An Analysis of Caldecott and Children’s Choice Award Winners in the Digital Age by Rachel Nolde.
• The Nature of Language in Foreign Language Textbooks by Violeta Ramsay.
• The Province of the Author as Recorder by Simon Bell.
• Infiltrating Contexts: An Experiment in Total Book Design by Alan James Robertson.
• Israeli Architectural Periodicals in the 1980s – Springing and its Interpretation by Vera Treitel and Iris Aravot.
• Picture Books that Paved the Way: The Touchstone Works Edited by May Massee by Jane Claes.
• Sociology of Publishing: The Role of Social Ties in External Recruitment by Pui-yan (Flora) Lau.