In the past, publishers and authors had no way of knowing what happens when a reader
sits down with a book. Does the reader
quit after three pages, or finish it in a single sitting? Do most readers skip over the introduction, or
read it closely, underlining passages and scrawling notes in the margins? Now, e-books are providing a glimpse into the
story behind the sales figures, revealing not only how many people buy particular
books, but how intensely they read them.
The major new players in e-book publishing—Amazon, Apple and Google—can
easily track how far readers are getting in books, how long they spend reading
them and which search terms they use to find books. Book apps for tablets like the iPad, Kindle
Fire and Nook record how many times readers open the app and how much time they
spend reading. Retailers and some
publishers are beginning to sift through the data, gaining unprecedented
insight into how people engage with books.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304870304577490950051438304.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Anu Garg (born April 5, 1967), an Indian-American
author and speaker, is best known as the founder of Wordsmith.org, an online
community comprising word lovers from an estimated 200 countries. His books explore the joy of words. He has authored A Word A Day: A Romp Through Some of the Most Unusual and
Intriguing Words, Another Word a Day and The Dord, the Diglot,
and an Avocado or Two: The Hidden Lives
and Strange Origins of Common and Not-So-Common Words. He writes about language-related issues for
magazines and newspapers and speaks internationally. He is a columnist for MSN Encarta and Kahani
magazine. Garg was born in rural India. His schooling
took place under a mango tree, his classroom consisting of a few broken sticks
of chalk and a blackboard made by painting a flat piece of wood with soot. The only language he knew was Hindi, and did not
see a library until college. Anu Garg
graduated from Harcourt Butler Technological
Institute in Computer Science in 1988.
He moved to the United States to do graduate studies in Computer
Science at Case Western Reserve University,
and then worked as a Computer Scientist at AT&T and
other corporations. He founded
Wordsmith.org in 1994, during his graduate work. In 2010, the number of subscribers to
Wordsmith.org's "A Word A Day" email list reached one million. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anu_Garg
monology (muh-NOL-uh-jee) noun
1. A long speech by someone,
especially when interfering with conversation.
2. The habit of
monologizing.
From Greek mono- (one) +
-logy (speech). Earliest documented use:
1608.
logomachy (luh-GOM-uh-kee) noun
1. A dispute about words. 2. A
battle fought with words. From Greek
logo- (word) + -machy (battle). Earliest
documented use: 1569.
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Andrea Wan Subject: Words with variant spellings
Enjoying this week's words as always and, working as an
attorney, it occurred to me today that a word I use daily--plaintiff--falls in
a related category. As I'm sure you
know, it is related to plaint, which is an archaic form of our modern
"complaint" which, of course, is how a plaintiff begins his suit!
From: Carolanne Reynolds Subject: Punctuation rules too O Commas
Reminds me of the well-known punctuation exercise:
Woman without her man is nothing
Males: Woman, without
her man, is nothing.
Females: Woman: without her, man is
nothing.
The
Trinacria is a symbol that derives from the archaic Triskele--the strange figure
composed of a head of woman from which three human legs are folded at the knee--of
Sicily, the notion of the geographic triangular shape of the island finds one
of symbolic depiction of the monster with three legs, trìquetra (to three
apexes or triangular). In fact, its
particular geographic configuration, characterized from three capes, Pachino,
Peloro and Lilibeo, are very well adapted to that figure to which the Romans
imposed the same overall name for the Island. Perhaps from this configuration to the three
apexes, the name Triquetra or Trinacria was given in the Hellenistic Age. The Gorgon-like figure of three legs was adopted
in some coins of classic antiquity, and became the official symbol of the
island. See
images at: http://www.csssstrinakria.org/tringlis.htm
In San Antonio,
Time
Warner Cable customers have been given the online equivalent of a
scale in the bathroom, a “usage tracker” that adds up all the household’s
Facebooking and YouTubing. Customers who
sign up for a light plan of 5 gigabytes of broadband—that’s the equivalent of
two high-definition movie downloads—are rewarded with a $5 discount each month
if they don’t go over. If they do, they
pay $1 for every additional gigabyte.
“We’re moving away from one-size-fits-all,” said Jon Gary Herrera, a
Texas spokesman for the cable company, which now tends to call itself a
broadband company instead. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/business/media/internet-providers-testing-metered-plans-for-broadband.html?_r=1&ref=technology
Earlier
this year when Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced a licensing
agreement with Amazon to publish and distribute all adult titles from Amazon
Publishing’s New York office under the newly created New Harvest imprint,
independent bricks-and-mortar booksellers as well as the nation’s two largest
chains, Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million, said that they would not carry
them in their stores. Among other
reasons for the ban, they cited the fact that Amazon would retain exclusive
rights to the e-book edition. With the
first two books about to ship—Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine’s Outside In
(shipping Aug. 1) and Jessica Valenti’s Why Have Kids?(Aug. 8)—PW
got back in touch with booksellers to see if they have changed their minds
about stocking their competitor’s titles and found little has changed. In fact over the past five months booksellers
have become more entrenched about their decision. One contributing factor is the growing
awareness of the lack of transparency in the way Houghton sold previous one-off
titles licensed from Amazon. This helped
to account for strong bricks-and-mortar sales for novels like Oliver Potzsch’s
The Hangman’s Daughter, which had been originally published by Amazon as an
e-book before being sold by Houghton in print. For book two in the series, Dark Monk,
a full-page ad in the New York Times Book Review in June made no mention
of either Houghton or Amazon, another irritant to booksellers. The fact that indies said that Houghton sales
reps have been up front that New Harvest titles—that are in the fall HMH
catalogue-- have been licensed from Amazon hasn’t made them anymore likely to
carry the books. In addition, the book
world has changed dramatically since the winter with the April filing of the
Department of Justice lawsuit against Apple and five publishers over agency
pricing of e-books. Many independents
cite Ken Auletta’s recent New Yorker article and blame Amazon for the
suit. Without the agency model they feel
that they have no possibility for significant entree into the e-book market.
July 12, 2012 Richard
O’Dwyer, an enterprising 24-year-old college student from northern England,
has found himself in the middle of a fierce battle between two of America’s
great exports: Hollywood and the
Internet. At issue is a Web site he
started that helped visitors find American movies and television shows online. Although the site did not serve up pirated
content, American authorities say it provided links to sites that did. The Obama administration is seeking to
extradite Mr. O’Dwyer from Britain on criminal charges of copyright
infringement. The possible punishment: 10 years in a United States prison. The case is the government’s most
far-reaching effort so far to crack down on foreigners suspected of breaking
American laws. It is unusual because it
goes after a middleman, who the authorities say made a fair amount of money by
pointing people to pirated content. Mr.
O’Dwyer’s backers say the prosecution goes too far, squelching his free-speech
right to publish links to other Web sites. The entertainment industry lobbied Congress
hard for the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, which was withdrawn this year
after an online uproar led by Web companies and their consumers. Another bill on Capitol Hill would establish
intellectual property attachés in American embassies. An international antipiracy treaty, the
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, was roundly rejected last week by
the European Parliament. In the last two years, the
Obama administration has closed about 800 Web sites suspected of piracy,
including those that stream new Hollywood films. In a widely publicized case, the Justice
Department has sought to extradite the operators of Megaupload, a site that let
users anonymously share movies and music, on criminal copyright infringement. Somini Sengupta http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/technology/us-pursues-richard-odwyer-as-intermediary-in-online-piracy.html?_r=1&hp
