LISNews: Librarian News

Scott Douglas has released full details of a book give away contest here:

Do you have a picture that perfectly illustrates the insanity that takes place at a library? Maybe it's the book drop that was destroyed by a firecracker, the librarian who never matches his socks, or the library that is completely falling apart and has structural damage to prove it! If so, send them to me and you will automatically be entered in a drawing for a free signed copy of Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian.

The Reed Business Information division is mainly trade publications such as New Scientist and Library Journal. Reed Elsevier indicated that the sale of the division has to do with it's advertising-based model, among other reasons. Last year, 60% of their income came from advertising. At this point in time, there are no buyers for the division, but the private equity investment group Apax Partners has indicated some interest.

Publishers in the U.S. released more than 291,000 separate titles in 2006. But one imprint that got its start just last year has already had a string of hits with a philosophy of "less is more."

"Nobody has any idea what's going to hit. I think that publishing is basically a corporate form of legalized gambling," says Jonathan Karp, publisher and editor in chief of Twelve, which only releases one book a month — 12 each year.

Karp had already ushered a string of books onto best-seller lists before starting Twelve; he began his career in 1989 as an editorial assistant at Random House and worked his way up to editor in chief. Among the hit books he worked on were Seabiscuit and The Orchid Thief

Story continued at NPR.

Steve Jobs said earlier this month that Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader was dead on arrival, since Americans have largely abandoned reading.
“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”
Now Amazon wants the naysayers like Mr. Jobs to listen up –- literally.
On Thursday it said that it had agreed to buy Audible, the Web’s largest provider of downloadable audiobooks, for $300 million. Amazon isn’t saying much about what it will do with the company, but bringing audiobooks directly to its Web site and to the Kindle is the obvious first step.
What comes after that? (Article continued here.)