Digital Book Bonanza

By Jason Boog 

phone2.jpgOver the weekend, the NY Times jumped on the digital-book-reporting bus, tying together a number of loose ends from all corners of the publishing universe–but the story lacked hyperlinks many of the key initiatives. In the interests of sharing, GalleyCat assembled some links to help readers find out more.

The article connected Google’s historic settlement with the Authors Guild to an equally exciting European initiative to digitize books called Europeana–a collection of two million cultural artifacts, including books, movies, and sound recordings.

Along with that exciting development, the article also looked at mobile phone platform for reading books. GalleyCat has also covered: authors who write for cell phones, developments at the mobile phone e-reader Stanza, and surveyed readers about their favorite cell phone reader. TeleRead has some great material about these readers as well.

Finally, the article examined Penguin’s plans for a subscription-based e-reader service, or even free books. What do you think?

“Penguin was considering subscription plans, where readers would pay a monthly fee for online access to best sellers. Another possibility would be free or reduced-price online versions of books, supported by advertising — an approach adopted by newspapers on the Internet.”