A view on the dire situation with ebooks. From technology (formats, DRM) to distribution, pretty much everything seems to be broken.

»Writers suffer because DRM encourages piracy. Readers suffer because rampant platform lock-in prevents long-term ownership: for example, if you buy a book for a Kindle, it won’t run in iBooks. It’s extremely difficult to copy the Kindle files that you’ve bought if you wish to back them up, because they’re wrapped in DRM. If it’s simpler and more convenient to just buy the paper book, then the existing ebook model is broken.«

»Libraries are the largest consumer of books in the country, but their relationship with ebooks has been fraught. Libraries usually buy a printed book for a set number of checkouts; once a book has been worn out, usually after ten years’ use, they buy another copy to replace it.«

via https://twitter.com/MJ_Coren/status/205158938902134784 "how big is the adoption of e-books today?

Mike Shatzkin: I would say that for the big publishers, for what I call immersive reading, which is to say not illustrated books but books where you start on page one and read to the last page, we are in the mid-thirty percent. So out of a hundred thousand copies of a new hard cover they’re going to sell sixty-five thousand print books and thirty-five thousand e-books. But it’s fifty percent for fiction and twenty-five percent of non-fiction."

The iconic compositions of Chip Kidd, the art direction of John Gall, the illustrative touches of Grey318 or Ben Wiseman, the classic typography of Birdsall, and David Pearson's, Helen Yentus', and Peter Mendelsund's beautiful series design.

These designers find ways to make exciting — through illustration or creative debossings or other hacks — a space that's remained largely unchanged for a hundred years. Their covers occupy a point of convergence blending austerity, sensitivity, reverence for the text and, of course, marketing:5

Cognitive Bits Software today announces Self Help Classics 5.0, an important update to their best-selling personal improvement app for the iPhone and iPad devices. A one-of-the-kind ebook app, Self Help Classics is a collection of the finest classic masterpieces in the field of personal improvement, self help, business advice, inspiration and motivation. Version 5.0 not only adds 15 new classics to the library, but also brings a full redesign and major implementation of the ebook software.

Summary of current eBook options for libraries —

DocStoc unleashes 30 free iPad and iPhone apps for business types | VentureBeat

= on ebooks, the cover's an afterthought, because we search Amazon for data, not images @craigmod #fridayreads

"If digital covers as we know them are so ‘dead,’ why do we hold them so gingerly? Treat them like print covers? We can't hurt them. They're dead. So let's start hacking. Pull them apart, cut them into bits and see what we come up with.

This is an essay for book lovers and designers curious about where the cover has been, where it's going, and what the ethos of covers means for digital book design. It's for those of us dissatisfied with thoughtlessly transferring print assets to digital and closing our eyes."

Summary of current eBook options for libraries —