'XKCD: Volume 0' is sticking it to traditional publishers

What's the most stupidly ambitious aspect of "XKCD: Volume 0," the book based on the wildly popular yet still very underground webcomic:

• Is it the assumption that cartoonist Randall Munroe's uber tech-savvy audience would pay for a hard-copy version of the comic strips it gets for free in a comprehensive online archive?
• Is it that Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Conde Nast's Reddit, turned his "un-corporation" Breadpig into a publishing company for his friend Munroe's book, while Munroe, 25, declined several offers from established publishers, despite their persistence? "I kind of make it hard to e-mail me," Munroe said on the phone from Somerville, Mass.
• Or how about the pledge to build a $32,000 school in Laos from a portion of book sales without the luxury of advertising or having copies on major bookstore shelves?

You're right if you guessed all -- or none -- of the above.

"XKCD: Volume 0" is a gamble that's paying off for Munroe, a former NASA contractor who left to pursue stick-figure cartooning full-time.

The first run of 10,000 books is almost sold out. Ohanian's half-baked publishing project has attracted dozens of uninvited proposals from authors. And the school in Laos, whose $32,000 goal was reached shortly after the first two book signings in San Francisco and New York, is almost constructed.

Trying to find the literary in the first round of SXSWi panels

South by Southwest Interactive, the wired component of the Texas media conference that famously began with music, then added film, has announced its first batch of panels. They're fascinating -- but they're not particularly bookish. The publishing industry may be going through tremendous upheavals involving technology -- ebooks, the Kindle and its competitors, digital distribution, online marketing -- but those changes may not make many ripples in the greater tech landscape.

That said, there are certainly some smart, tempting panels that are connected to books, through the participants, a discussion of web content or of new ideas about narrative. Here's a brief overview:

Why Keep Blogging? Real Answers for Smart Tweeple. Organized by Emily Gordon, who has been blogging about the New Yorker at Emdashes.com for years, this panel is set to include Scott Rosenberg, author of "Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters" and Ron Hogan, longtime writer at the publishing industry blog Galleycat. 

New Publishing and Web Content. This is organized by Jeffrey Zeldman, web designer and author of "Designing with Web Standards," released in its third edition released today. Zeldman, who began writing his witty, readable design website A List Apart many years ago, is turning his design skills toward words. The panel promises to "explore the creative, strategic and marketing challenges of traditional and new (internet hybrid) book publishing and online magazine publishing."

How the Other Half Lives: Touring the Digital Divide. Set up by Vermont librarian Jessamyn West who blogs at librarian.net, this panel will address questions of the digital divide from the real-world perspective of librarians who confront it daily.

Design Fiction: Props, Prototypes, Predicaments Communicating New Ideas. This panel takes on the forward-thinking idea that fiction and narrative exist in dialog with physical design and communication.

Indirect Collaboration: Collective Creativity on the Web will focus on collaborative design, rather than the perhaps more intuitive collaborative storytelling, but the ideas may cross over.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Image: SXSW

Postponement for the Google books settlement

Today a New York judge postponed a scheduled hearing in the Google books settlement because of pending changes to the agreement. Our tech blog reports:

In response to concerns raised by federal antitrust regulators, the Authors Guild and the Assn. of American Publishers are likely to make "significant changes to the current settlement agreement," wrote Judge Denny Chin. Holding a hearing on the agreement as currently written, he concluded, would make little sense.

Earlier this week, the publisher and author groups requested a delay in the proceedings so they could address copyright and antitrust issues raised by the Department of Justice in a brief filed last week.

The Google books settlement would create a rights registry for books, much like ASCAP for songs. The registry would administer payments for usage -- downloading and printing -- to the authors of books that are out of print. That Google would keep the fees for those books that have no clear owner -- "orphan works" -- is one of the contested issues of the proposed agreement.

There are other, less book-focused concerns. The Justice Department is investigating possible antitrust issues. And industry rivals Yahoo and Microsoft have banded together, organizing some more vested players like the New York Library Assn., to oppose the proposed settlement.

We'll be listening for news on Oct. 7, when the court has said it will discuss how to proceed with the case.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: walknboston via Flickr

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Is giving away a bundle of Kindles brilliant, or a gimmick?

Carolyn Rubenstein, author of the new nonfiction book "Perseverance," is giving away four Kindles this week -- one each day through Friday -- to people who Tweet #perseverance. The hope is to get enough momentum behind the Kindle giveaway to secure it a spot in the top-10 coveted Trending Topics section that is visible on all standard Twitter pages. And for that momentum to transfer to the book.

Is this a brilliant marketing move, or a desperate ploy for attention?

In June and July, web publishing platform Squarespace gave away 30 iPhones in 30 days to people who tweeted #squarespace, and lo and behold, it did become a Trending Topic on Twitter. Technically, Squarespace gave away $199 Apple Gift Certificates; this caused some consternation because the prize didn't cover the cost of the required two-year contract with AT&T. Nevertheless, the promotion maintained a high level of visibility and popularity.

But can marketing magic strike Twitter the same way twice?

The four winners of Rubenstein's contest will get the $299, 6-inch Kindle, costing her about $800. That seems like a high price for a first-time, 24-year-old author to pay. Is it worth it? Is publisher Tor/Forge picking up the tab?

Oh, about the book: "Perseverance" is 20 true-life stories from young cancer survivors. So even if it's a desperate promotional move -- and I'm guilty of succumbing to a gimmick -- well, maybe it is worth it after all.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Book versus Kindle, on video

San Francisco's Green Apple Books has decided to pit the old-fashioned book against Amazon's Kindle in a series of funny, low-rent ESPN-style video showdowns. By today, the third round of the competition, the book is beating the Kindle, 2-0.

Green Apple sells both new and used books and music -- its first episode showed a customer selling used books back to the store (the Kindle didn't measure up). But if no one wanted to buy vintage paperbacks, comics or hardcovers, then Green Apple wouldn't be interested in purchasing them for resale. In fact, the customer is sent away with many books that the store doesn't want to buy. Would it be possible that electronic books and e-readers might erase the value of books as objects completely? That's not in the video, but it is the bigger question.

Like a boxing match, there will be 10 rounds in the book-versus-Kindle matchup. The team at Green Apple Books says they've collaborated on the project, so nobody takes full credit. Keep up with all their videos on their blog and find out when the next one posts by following them on Twitter.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Could a new Apple tablet rival the Kindle?

Today the Financial Times reported that Apple "is racing to offer a portable tablet-sized computer in time for the Christmas shopping season," confirming long-swirling rumors. "The touch-sensitive computer will have a screen that may be up to 10 inches diagonally."

Apple's first overtures seem to be with the music industry, which sees the device as creating seamless interactive environments for music listening -- with both gatefold-style art and links accompanying downloads. Books appear to be a secondary but present concern. FT reports:

Book publishers have been in talks with Apple and are optimistic about being included in the computer.... which could provide an alternative to Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader and a forthcoming device from Plastic Logic, recently allied with Barnes & Noble.

“It would be a colour, flat-panel TV to the old-fashioned, black and white TV of the Kindle,” one publishing executive said.

Even bookish types care about color. Nicholson Baker took the Kindle 2 for a spin; in this week's New Yorker, he writes of his disappointment with its gray-on-gray screen.

The problem was not that the screen was in black-and-white; if it had really been black-and-white, that would have been fine. The problem was that the screen was gray. And it wasn’t just gray; it was a greenish, sickly gray. A postmortem gray. The resizable typeface, Monotype Caecilia, appeared as a darker gray. Dark gray on paler greenish gray was the palette of the Amazon Kindle.

Baker's piece gives a good overview of both the hype and constraints of the Kindle, and the background of how it works (its screen does not work like a computer's). Among the issues he has with the Kindle: an absence of notable literary works (no Nabokov), which isn't really the Kindle's fault; problems with rendering complex illustrations, significant in the case of a several-thousand-dollar manual for nuclear power plants; a kind of silly name; a $395 price tag. And that's not all:

Sure, the Kindle is expensive, but the expense is a way of buying into the total commitment. This could forever change the way I read. I’ve never been a fast reader. I’m fickle; I don’t finish books I start; I put a book aside for five, ten years and then take it up again. Maybe, I thought, if I ordered this wireless Kindle 2 I would be pulled into a world of compulsive, demonic book consumption, like Pippin staring at the stone of Orthanc....

What's clear is that expectations for what an e-reader can do may be outsized. Should the machine on which we read really change our reading habits? Is it too much to expect the device we read to improve how we read?

Perhaps if any company can make such a device, it may be Apple. Although Baker eventually finds his way to liking his Kindle 2, he prefers using the Kindle app -- on his iPhone. 

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Image: Kindle DX / Amazon.com

What does an eBookstore look like?

This week we got a press release from Barnes & Noble celebrating the launch of its eBookstore. The company tells us that with 700,000 available titles, its eBookstore is the world's largest. Currently, its wares can be read -- with the Barnes & Noble eReader -- on iPhones, BlackBerrys, PCs and Macs.

Though more platforms (Sony eReader, anyone?) are promised, chances are Amazon's proprietary Kindle won't be among them.

The challenge to blogger me is that I just can't picture an eBookstore. (Above: no picture). It's about titles and content, but not about layout or design. To represent the ebooks in its eBookstore, Barnes & Noble has rounded off the covers of print editions, so they're roughly the shape of an iPhone screen. Maybe this will be the long-term solution, but it seems like a hedge.

Because an eBookstore filled with ebooks should be something different, I think. Something that exists virtually, rendered as pixels and text. But there's nothing that comes to mind except words on a screen. And you're already looking at words on a screen.

Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part. What do you think an eBookstore looks like?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Chris Anderson's 'Free' appears to borrow freely from Wikipedia and other sources

Late Tuesday, the Virginia Quarterly Review posted startlingly similar passages from Chris Anderson's new book "Free" and several Wikipedia entries. Language common to both was highlighted in bright yellow. "Chris Anderson's 'Free' Contains Apparent Plagiarism," Web editor Waldo Jaquith wrote.

The common passages -- which include definitions for the phrases "Free Lunch," "There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch" and "Learning Curve" -- appear without attribution within the text. The book has no footnotes or endnotes.

The VQR also saw similarities between "Free" and a book excerpted on the website of the New York monthly the Brooklyn Rail, as well as on an archive of an old bbs. Other careful Googlers have found at least two additional samples of text in Anderson's book that seem to match online resources.

Anderson responded to an inquiry from the VQR by e-mail.

"All those are my screwups after we decided not to run notes as planned, due to my inability to find a good citation format for web sources," he wrote.

As citations for Web sources have been established for some time, this seems an odd explanation from Anderson, who is no publishing novice. His previous book, "The Long Tail," was a bestseller, and he is currently editor in chief of Wired magazine.

The book's publisher, Hyperion, sent a note to VQR, which it posted at the end of the day.

We are completely satisfied with Chris Anderson’s response. It was an unfortunate mistake, and we are working with the author to correct these errors both in the electronic edition before it posts and in all future editions of the book.

The lack of attribution may indeed have been a combination of mistake and lack of oversight. But as one commenter on Gawker lamented, "Can't decide which is more embarrassing -- failing to cite Wikipedia as a source or using Wikipedia as a source."

Wikipedia is one of the resources Anderson lauds -- in  "The Long Tail," he called it a phenomenon. In this one, he writes,  "there is the amazing 'gift economy' of  Wikipedia," later explaining, "Wikipedia makes no money at all, but because an incomparable information resource is now available to all at no cost, our own ability to make money armed with more knowledge is improved."

The whole point of Anderson's "Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price" is to explore what he calls "the paradox of Free," in which "people are making lots of money and charging nothing."

Anderson's hardcover costs $26.99. Wikipedia is still free.

And within hours, Anderson's Wikipedia's entry had been updated -- with attribution -- to reflect the charges of plagiarism. Updates to "Free" are expected to take a while. Which proves Anderson's point -- I think.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

For Jeff Bezos, the 'great run' for books is over. Really?

Jeff Bezos sat down with Steven Levy at Wired's Disruptive by Design conference in New York for a conversation called "Having Confidence on the Edge." They talked about which size Kindle is best to read in bed, textbooks and the Kindle, and the Google Books Settlement. "We have strong opinions about that issue," the Wall Street Journal reported Bezos as saying, "which I’m not going to share." 

Tech guru Tim O'Reilly has already posted some bon mots from Bezos, whom he calls "very quotable," noting that he said, "I get grumpy now when I have to read a physical book."

Because Wired has made the video available, we can transcribe this part of the conversation in full (it's also after the jump).

Levy: For a special book, do you still want to read the physical book?

Bezos: No. No, in fact, I now ... I kind of am grumpy when I am forced to read a physical book. Because it's not as convenient. Turning the pages ... I didn't know this either, until I started using the Kindles a couple months ago, I mean a couple years ago, I didn't understand all of the failings of a physical book, because I’m inured to them. But you can’t turn the page with one hand. The book is always flopping itself shut at the wrong moment. They’re heavy. You can only take one or two of them with you at a time. It’s had a great 500-year run. [Audience laughter.] It’s an unbelievably successful technology. But it’s time to change.

Which seems an odd thing to say for an empire built on the bindings and pages of actual hard-copy books. But Bezos is looking forward, not backward.

But is he? Is Bezos right? Is the book's 500-year run over?

On the death of literary website Readerville

After nine years, the website Readerville has decided to call it quits. In my visits, which were admittedly occasional, I found it to have a good literary take on books and solid connections to the New York community of writers and readers.

Although I do not know editor Karen Templer at all, I do have an idea of what it took, in 2000, to build a website -- it took a lot. In the mid-90s, I learned HTML to create a tiny, two-issue webzine, using dial-up and compressing image files on a computer that had less power than your kid's iPod. Back then, I said that if someone made a software program that would let people put stuff -- writing, pictures, music files -- on the Internet, magazine-style, they'd be rich.

I was wrong. Because the people who made those software programs -- we call them blogging platforms -- (mostly) did it for free.

Now the barriers to entry are so much lower than they were in 2000 that it's probably best to say that there are no barriers. Anybody can set up a free Wordpress blog, share photos with Flickr, Tweet away without spending a dime.

Plus, someone who wants to put something on the Internet today doesn't need to know how to ftp to a server. But when Templer got started, understanding the technology was just as important as having an idea of what to do with the technology.

Readerville had clearly evolved since 2000; it used blogs to drive many of its content areas and it had an elegant design. But its large and somewhat fuzzy mandate was a little lost. Was it a weblog making recommendations about books (or film or technology), or was it a community of readers? It seemed to try to tie its blog comments into its message boards. That's where the community part comes in -- in a message board system, which in most cases feels a little, well, 1996. (Believe me, I realize I'm posting this on a blog that looks a little 2005).

As the technologies that drive the Internet have evolved, those enterprises that come in later have a head start. Goodreads, LibraryThing and Shelfari are three sites with slightly different bells and whistles, but  similar mandates -- connecting people through books. Like Readerville tried to do -- but these sites have the advantage of both better coding and a more sophisticated perspective on social networking's best practices.

All of which is to say that what Readerville did was hard and that it accomplished much. Nine years is a long time to keep a website vital and engaged, and they get my thanks.

But chances are there will be one -- or two or 12 -- sites that will pick up where they've left off.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: marksdk via Flickr