HaithiTrust is a coalition of university libraries that have pooled their resources in order to enable faculty and students to access copies of scanned books.
Access used to be restricted to the member libraries physical locations, but on Monday the HaithiTrust announced that, for the first time ever, they are going to allow remote access - but only for patrons whose university library has been closed.
The Emergency Temporary Access Service permits special access for HathiTrust member libraries located in the U.S. that suffer an unexpected or involuntary, temporary disruption to normal operations, such as closure for a public health emergency, requiring the library to be closed to its patrons, or otherwise restrict print collection access services.
The service makes it possible for member library patrons to obtain lawful access to specific digital materials in HathiTrust that correspond to physical books held by their own library. The Emergency Temporary Access Service will enable many HathiTrust member libraries to continue supporting the teaching, learning, and research mission of their institutions during said disruption in service.
If you click through to the announcement you will see that access is still restricted; patrons can only use this option if their university library is closed, and they can only access the scanned books that match their library's catalog.
HaithiTrust had previously allowed access to a subset of the scanned copies of books in its collection under an older legal principle that said a patron could access the scanned copies only when the patron is in the library building itself, but they are relaxing that restriction because it's an emergency. (And that's not counting the scanned copies that are even more restricted, and can only be searched.)
What this tells me is that HaithiTrust is not completely convinced CDL is legal, but they are adopting it on a limited basis because it's an emergency.
That is not good news for the Internet Archive.
Last week the IA picked a fight with authors when it announced that it was going to loan copies of the scanned books in its National Emergency Library, without limit, to any member of the public who signed up for a library card. (The IA had claimed they were doing this to support teachers, but they also had a significant number of recently published books, including Harry Potter in five languages and a heck of a lot of fiction.)
Before last week the IA had previously loaned copies of the scanned books in its The Open Library under the argument that CDL was completely legal fair use. Then on Wednesday they announced that they were removing the waitlists and were switching to unlimited lending, and defended the move with the claim that it was fair use.
Here's what's so fun about the HaithiTrust announcement: it essentially calls the IA's argument bullshit. HaithiTrust has demonstrated that it's not convinced this move is legal, and they would really prefer if you would visit a member library. In fact, as recently as December 2019, HaithiTrust said this about CDL:
While we are very interested in the legal theories offered in support of controlled digital lending, we have not identified a way to implement it through HathiTrust that we believe to be lawful.
Suddenly the IA's position doesn't sound quite so much like a slam dunk, does it?
TBH, I am not surprised. I have not been able to find any court rulings that explicitly cited CDL as fair use, which is why I had been referring to it as an untested legal opinion. I am looking forward to one day reading the ruling where the legality is decided, but at this point CDL is about as useful of a legal defense as a screen door would be on a spaceship.
If you have been following me on social media then you might have heard that I have been organizing swag bags for book fairs and book signings. I started doing this early last year in order to give authors something useful, and to connect to other service providers. (And frankly, it has been a lot of fun.)
This year I decided to get serious, I was going to organize the swag bag for a conference, The Career Author Summit. (I want to help run a conference one day, and this seemed like a good way to work my way up.) Alas, that conference has gone virtual, so I will not be handing these bags out to authors in Nashville in May.
I may never have a chance to give away the swag, so I want to take this opportunity to thank my partners. Over a dozen freelancers and companies, including Kobo Writing Life and Bookbaby, had sent me either a flyer or swag. Writer's Digest even sent me copies of a free issue of their magazine.
Please do check out their sites. I had planned to thank my partners on social media before, during, and after the conference, but this post might be the only thanks I can offer them.
P.S. If you provide services to authors, and would like to participate the next time I organize a swag bag, send me a note.
Microsoft's new co-editing tool takes on Grammarly where it is the weakest, in the web browser.
Last week Microsoft rebranded Office 365 as MS 365. They added a bunch of new features, including a new editing tool called Microsoft Editor.
This AI-powered editor reportedly expands on 365's existing features in several ways:
Provides suggestions to improve sentence clarity
Estimates time to read or speak your document
Suggests alternate vocabulary or punctuation, and gender-neutral and inclusive terms
Reminds you when to use formal language
Helps identify plagiarism in your work, or lets you quickly provide citations if you’re the one writing
A number of those features already exist in most writing apps. Others are paid features through services like Grammarly (which is pretty awful). And now Microsoft is going to make them available to paying 365 users.
Microsoft Editor started rolling out last week and should be available to all "by the end of April." It's going to be available in Outlook, 354, and in both Chrome and Edge web browsers.
I can't see it in the Chrome Web Store at the time I wrote this post, but I assume that will change at some point.
Here are a few stories to read this Monday morning.
The first 5 stories are all on the same topic (the Internet Archive's recent acts of piracy), so I have split the other links into a separate section.
Bill Rosenblatt reached the same conclusion about the Internet Archive's National Emergency library pirate site that I did, that Brewster Kahle's goal was less about helping libraries and more about forcing a lawsuit in order to rewrite copyright laws.
Karin Wulf believes that the " Internet Archive is not breaking the glass to save anyone but rather seems to be just… breaking glass".
David Newhoff questions the ethics of the Internet Archive's decision to deprive creators of income, and rightly so.
Ryan Clough lays out the measures real libraries are taking in response to the current crisis, all of which are far more limited than the Internet Archive's acts of piracy.
A new theory has been invented about who actually wrote Shakespeare's plays.
When it comes time to refresh your author website, I have a few ideas of what you should look at.
Online ad rates fell last week, and continue to fall (because people aren't buying).
Ted Goia points out how many web platforms such as Facebook and Youtube are designed to get creators to give their work away so companies can exploit it.
I still don't have any evidence that this ereader is actually available, but it now appears that at least two color ereaders have been announced in China.
The iFlytek eBook is a 6" ereader with an unknown price tag and an unspecified ship date. According to coverage from China, it uses E-ink's new 4,096 color Just Print screen.
Details are rather scare on the iFlytek eBook (which is why I seriously suspect it's vaporware). Everyone is reporting that it has a 24-LED frontlight, support for TTS and music via a built-in speaker, but other details like RAM, CPU, Wifi, and touchscreen tech are still unknown.
What I do find interesting is that several sites mention that the screen has two modes, one for black and white and another for color. Here's the fun part: the color mode is 212 PPI, while the black and white mode is 300 PPI.
I asked E-ink for more info on why there's a difference, but given the current crisis it might take them a while to get back to me.
Barnes & Noble's hardware section is going to be a little smaller when its stores reopen to the public. Someone on MobileRead noticed, and I can confirm, that B&N has removed its 7" Nook-branded budget tablet from its site.
It's not just gone from the menus; I chckded, and even the product page is gone. This is an ex-tablet.
B&N launched this particular tablet in December 2018, so it was getting a little long in the tooth, but that segment of the market hadn't changed much in the past several years. There was little reason to replace the tablet, and B&N could have kept it another couple years.
The tablet had been developed by a Chinese company before being licensed to B&N, and I had expected that if it were retired B&N would license another tablet to replace it.
But they have not. Instead B&N chucked the tablet out the window.
YOur guess is as good as mine what it means for B&N;s hardware plans.
A story broke this past week that reminded me about a post I had been wanting to write.
The Atlantic and ProPublica partnered on a deep dive into the Kindle Store's problem with white supremacists, but they didn't quite get to the root of the story.
Give me, a white man, a reason to live,” a user posted to the anonymous message board 4chan in the summer of 2017. “Should I get a hobby. What interests can I pursue to save myself from total despair. How do you go on living.”
A fellow user had a suggestion: “Please write a concise book of only factual indisputable information exposing the Jews,” focusing on “their selling of our high tech secrets to China/Russia” and “their long track record of pedophilia and perversion etc.”
The man seeking advice was intrigued. “And who would publish it and who would put it in their bookstores that would make it worth the trouble,” he asked.
The answer came a few minutes later. “Self-publish to Amazon,” his interlocutor replied.
“Kindle will publish anything,” a third user chimed in.
The thing about this story is that it is a slight variation on the same tale we've heard on an annual basis for the past decade. The current situation involves white supremacists, but in the past Amazon has been plagued by scammers, spammers, more scammers, content farmers (aka catfishing), book stuffers, yet more scammers, and even more spammers.
We've read this type of story so often that you can't write them off as being the work of an Amazon hater like David Streitfeld of the NYTimes. You also can't ignore them on the basis that Amazon is only getting coverage because of their high profile. Apple's brand has similar value as clickbait, and yet we don't see these stories about Apple Books (and that's because Apple Books doesn't have nearly the same volume of problems as the Kindle Store has).
No, as I explained to Ben Collins of CNBC last month when the Coronavirus spam books were first getting attention, the problem is unique to Amazon. "Most of Amazon's e-book competitors have a content approval process in place that keeps the worst content out," I told him.
When I was talking to Collins last month, I checked Kobo and Play Books and could not find any Coronavirus spam books. Amazon, on the other hand, was filled with them.
"I don't know if it's a case of can't or won't," I told Collins. "What I do know is that Amazon is the only retailer with this problem. They have the lion's share of the e-book market revenue, and could easily afford to use the same quality assurance processes as their competitors, and yet they still have this problem."
As Google has demonstrated, it's not impossible to build a system to keep out evil-doers. Back in 2015 Google had an epic piracy problem in Play Books which was on the same scale as any one of Amazon's problems in the Kindle Store. Google responded by shutting down new registrations in their publisher portal, and leaving it shut down until they had a process in place to prevent pirates from registering.
As a result, Google reduced their piracy problem from a disaster to a nuisance.
The thing is, folks, Amazon could nip these problems in the bud by building the same systems used by their competitors. And while the retailer will insist that they have built these systems, Amazon keeps having problems, and Amazon's competitors do not.
At some point we're just going to have to conclude that the real problem is actually Amazon and its corporate culture. Until Amazon is willing to make fundamental changes, these stories are never going to stop.
Offices are shutting down due to the pandemic , and that is throwing a wrench into previously orderly operations. Messages are going unanswered, and now Barnes & Noble has warned that its royalty payments could be delayed as a result of shifting its staff to work at home.
Draft2Digital sent out an email today, warning that B&N royalties could be delayed.
As the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak continue to impact the industry, some of our retailers are having to adjust to new ways of operating certain aspects of their business.
As a result, Barnes & Noble has informed us that they are experiencing some delays in processing payments for February sales, due to having to shift to remote operation.
We will continue to monitor and make any updates to royalty reports as those come in. At this time, we are hopeful the payment will be received from B&N before the April 15th royalty payments are applied. However, if they come later, we will make a second payment of royalties immediately after we receive the funds.
The pandemic has also disrupted supply chains. While Amazon has not announced a delay to payments, it is delaying shipments of non-essential products. (I've been waiting 3 weeks for an order that would usually arrive within a couple days.)
I haven't gotten the announcement email yet, but CNBC has reported, and I have confirmed on Amazon's affiliate site, that Amazon is cutting the fees it is paying for referrals from websites in Amazon's affiliate program.
The rates will change on 21 April, and the affected product categories are:
category
old rate
new
Furniture, Home, Home Improvement, Lawn & Garden, Pets Products, Pantry
8.00%
3.00%
Headphones, Beauty, Musical Instruments, Business & Industrial Supplies
Here’s what reportedly what Amazon said in the email.
Hello Associate,
We hope you are staying well during this time. We are writing to inform you of upcoming changes to the Amazon Associates Program Operating Agreement, which governs your participation in the Amazon Associates Program. All changes are effective as of April 21, 2020.
An interesting copyright ruling crossed my desk today. I don't think it has been explained very well, so I would like to explain what it means for the average user.
When it comes to appropriating images found online, the situation is understandably confusing. If an individual posts something on social media, does that give someone else the right to use it in a different forum? Most lawyers would likely answer, "Not so fast," and yet on Monday came a suggestive ruling perhaps otherwise from a New York federal court.
The plaintiff in the case is Stephanie Sinclair, a professional photographer known for exploring gender and human rights issues around the world. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Time magazine and National Geographic. She uploaded one of her photographs — an image of a mother and child in Guatemala — to Instagram. Later, the news site Mashable contacted her because it wanted to reuse the image for a story on female photographers. Mashable offered $50. Sinclair declined. Mashable used the image anyway by embedding her Instagram post in its story. Sinclair claimed copyright infringement.
You can find the ruling over on THR's website, and you can see the original Mashable post in the Wayback Machine.
Sinclair lost the case in a ruling that can be summed up pretty simply. In the view of the judge:
The copyright holder uploaded an image to Instagram, granting IG permission to post the photo, and
Instagram has as part of its platform an option to embed posts on other websites, so
when someone uses that embed feature, they are doing so with the implied permission of the copyright holder.
That makes a lot of sense, and it fits with existing copyright rulings. What's even better is that it doesn't conflict with a related ruling from two years ago where a number of media orgs lost a suit over embedding a photo. (The photo they embedded was uploaded to Twitter without the permission of the copyright holder, so it was in fact pirated before the media orgs shared it.)
Also, this decision sidesteps the really stupid "server test" that had started to creep into copyright rulings.
Now, I am sure there are many who are unhappy with this ruling, but I see this as an example of how users need more control so that we can say whether our work can be used elsewhere.
Some platforms already give you that control; Youtube, for example, lets you disable the embed feature on a per-video basis.
It would be great if more platforms gave us similar options, don't you agree?
I am a big fan of tools that let you make ebooks (fun fact: none of Amazon's Kindle creation tools qualify). I in fact have a post on ebook tools, and I am shortly going to be adding to it now that I have heard about the WordToEpub app from the Daisy consortium.
This is a Windows app that you can use to make an Epub 3 ebook. It is not a Word extension, but unfortunately it still requires MSWord in order to function.
I twice tried running the app even though I don't have MSWord, and it crashed, both times. This is a shame because it means I can't use it to convert docs made by Libre Office or another office app.
I tested the app, and aside from some initial fussiness (it refused to accept a Word doc that had no headings) it started out okay. I fed it a Word doc, and then in the next menu it gave me the option of setting the metadata.
Then I clicked the okay button, and everything went down hill. The app tried to open MSWord, couldn't find it, and had a nervous breakdown.
I would like to tell you more about how the app works or what the Epub looks like, but there is no Epub because the app didn't work.
Pocketbook has just announced that they are launching a 6" color ereader later this year in Europe.
Details are still scarce, but we do know the device will reportedly cost 200 euros when it is released in the third quarter, and that it will sport the 4,096 color E-ink screen sported by the two Chinese ereaders announced last month. Coincidentally, neither of those devices have shipped yet, and now I think we know why (the screens haven't shipped, either).
Heise.de says that Pocketbook called the screen Kaleido E-ink. That is not a name I have heard before, and it's not mentioned in any of E-ink's marketing materials.
There actually is a company called Kaleido that makes printer ink, which could be a sign that the company is E-ink's new tech partner (perhaps they were brought in for their material sciences expertise).
In any case, I am waiting for more info from Pocketbook, and from Kobo. I fully expect Kobo to launch their own color ereader this year (assuming the screens are available).
I am also reasonably certain that Amazon will launch a color ereader this year, but with different screen tech. I am basing that conclusion on the way three different companies have announced ereaders that don't exist yet.
It's almost as if they expect a bigger competitor will announce its color ereader soon, and they wanted to get a lead on the news coverage.
Everyone knows that the current quarantine is throwing a wrench in the book publishing works, but what does that really mean?
Earlier this month an editor with a leading SF publisher explained on Facebook just what is happening behind the scenes.
First, you need to know that the vast majority of our business remains in hardcover and paperback books. Hard copies, physical objects. The second strongest sector has been audio books. Ebooks are a distant third.
Selling books is a very long and complicated supply chain. Ignore editorial -- writers and editors can work at a distance and electronically. It really starts with the paper. Storing paper for the big presses takes an enormous amount of warehouse space, which costs money. Printers don't store a lot -- they rely on a "just in time" supply chain so that when a book is scheduled to go to press, the paper is delivered to the printer. Most of that paper is manufactured in China. Guess what isn't coming from China? Anything, for the last three months. Some of it comes from Canada. Guess what the Trump administration put a big tariff on at the beginning of the year?
So, we don't have adequate paper supplies. Then consider, big printing plants are not "essential businesses". There are only a couple printers in the US that can handle the book manufacturing business. One of them shut down last week. Covid-19. We started rescheduling books like mad to deal with that.
But supposing we had paper, and a printer and bindery, the books have to be shipped to the warehouse. Again, non-essential movement. The freight drivers moving books? Staying home, as they should. Not all of them. I hope they remain healthy, because dying to get the latest bestseller to the warehouse doesn't seem quite right to me.
Now then, our warehouse. We have a gigantic facility in Virginia. Lots of people are working there, bless them, but it's putting them at risk. There they are, filling orders, packing boxes, running invoices. Giving those boxes to the freight drivers who take the books to the bookstores and distributors. Again, truck drivers risking their lives to bring books to the bookstores.
But think again. The bookstores are closed. The distributors are closed . No place open to deliver the books to. Some bookstores are doing mail order business, bless them, but they aren't ordering very many books from our warehouse. Amazon isn't ordering very many, either -- because they have (correctly) stopped shipping books and are using their reduced staff to ship medical supplies and food.
So the books that distributors and sellers ordered months ago are not being printed or shipped or sold. And because of that, they aren't making any money. And because of THAT, they are not ordering any books for months from now. Plus they aren't paying for the books they got from us last month and the month before. Cash flow has ground to a halt.
Now, audio books....turns out that people mostly, almost 100%, listen to audio books while they commute to work. Sales of audio books collapsed about three weeks ago. Fortunately, there isn't a physical supply chain there, so theoretically that business can restart immediately upon resumption of commuting.
I understand the situation the industry is in. I don't have a supply chain issue, but the shutdown of all public events has cost me all of my carefully laid plans to meet new clients at conferences and trade shows. I've had to pull out all the projects I didn't have time or interest for before, and see which ones can still be implemented during a quarantine.
Brian Frye believes that creators wanting to be paid for their labor is "pure landlordism" (and to think this guy is supposed to be a law professor, and not just an internet leftie).
Podcast downloads have dropped like a stone now that no one is commuting any more. Audiobooks will likely show a similar decline when the sales stats are announced.
Well, I think that device may have just cleared the FCC website.
Earlier today a new device called the Kobo Nia showed up on the FCC website. It is made by Netronix, and will have an E-ink screen, but that is about all I can say about it. The test reports also tell us it will have Wifi, a 1Ah battery, and 16GB of storage, but all the more interesting details (such as the photos and user manual) have of course been embargoed.
All we really have to go on is the screenshot at right. If you look carefully, you will see there's no mention of Kolaido, E-ink's new color screen tech. That might indicate that the new device doesn't have a color screen, but I am hoping against hope that it will.
Kobo's embargo expires in October, but I would expect that the new ereader will be launched in the next few weeks.
BTW. a certain less than reliable blog had previously claimed that "Kobo is developing a next generation e-reader that will have note taking functionality and come with a stylus". They said it would have a 7.8" or 10.3" screen, and ship in August or September.
They have since taken that post down, which makes me wonder if perhaps they were telling the truth this time (there is a first time for everything, after all).
The test reports do not mention a stylus, so I don't think that is likely.
With Pocketbook, a couple Chinese companies, and now Onyx announcing a new device, 2020 has turned into the year of the color ereader.
Details are still scarce, but Onyx has officially announced that they will launch a color ereader this year. Well, they have not announced it so much as released this graphic, and said nothing else.
We do not know the screen resolution, price, or release date at this time, but this is most likely going to be a 6" ereader, and ship some time this fall.
This device will likely be using the Kolaido E-ink screen tech announced by Pocketbook (the Chinese ereaders use the same tech, Pocketbook told me). That screen is capable of displaying 4096 shades of color at a resolution of 212 PPI, or grayscale at a resolution of 300 ppi.
E-ink has not yet answered my questions about the difference in screen resolution yet, but one reader pointed out that the difference could be explained if the color mode requires 2 grayscale pixels to display a color pixel. If you look at the number of pixels on the screen (and not just the PPI), the math checks out.
Onyx has captured our attention by announcing a color ereader, but that is not their only new gadget. Earlier today they started shipping a new ereader called the Poke2.
The Poke 2 runs Android 9.0 on an octa-core CPU, and can be bought today from Boox.com. Retail is $189.
The Onyx Boox Poke 2 features a 6" Carta E-ink display with a capacitive touchscreen and a color-changing frontlight. Screen resolution is 1072 x 1448, or 300 PPI.
It runs Android 9.0 on a 2GHz octa-core CPU with 2GB RAM. It also has 32 GB storage, Wifi, and Bluetooth. Battery capacity is 1.5Ah, which can be recharged through the micro-USB port.
Hardware specs are nice and all, but what really matters is what you can do with it. The Poke 2 supports a wide variety of file formats, including PDF, which can be read in "scrolling mode" to avoid leafing through one page at a time and speeding up reading.
That sounds like a great device, but I for one am eagerly waiting for the color ereader.
When I reported last week that B&N was delaying payments, I didn't know whether it was the result of the office closing or a sign of money issues.
In what is an eery reminder of the end of Borders, B&N has now admitted that they are having money issues so severe that they are even delaying ebook royalties (which are a negligible percentage of B&N's revenue).
Draft2Digital sent out an email today, passing along the bad news.
Recently we informed you of certain issues facing Barnes & Noble, resulting from the impact of COVID-19. We wanted to update you with some news, and with a special request.
Just as each of us has individually faced unexpected challenges during this worldwide crisis, so have major retailers. With many of B&N’s storefronts closing during the pandemic, the retailer has seen a dramatic drop in cashflow. One result of this has been a delay in paying publishers for ebooks sold via their Nook Platform.
We've been informed that these delayed payments are being done for larger accounts, such as Draft2Digital, and not necessarily for all smaller accounts.
Barnes & Noble has advised us that full payment may be delayed up to 90 days. However, B&N has agreed to pay us 1/3 of the total for February sales now, and to pay the remaining 2/3 of funds at a future date.
Do you want to know how small fry the Nook is to B&N?
In B&N's last fiscal year, Nook revenues, including both hardware and content sales, totaled $92 million, while revenues for the fiscal year totaled $3.6 billion.
That is not a lot of money when divided into monthly payments, which is even more worrisome. A back of the envelope calculation suggests that Nook royalty payments for February are in the ballpark of $3 to $4 million.
To be fair, with over 400 stores closed to the public, B&N has lost anywhere from a third to half of their revenue, so that minuscule Nook revenue now represents a much larger percentage of company revenues.
Furthermore, ebook sales are bound to increase as a result of the shutdown, which means that B&N's ebook sales could grow to be as much as ten to fifteen percent of company revenue this quarter.
We're not talking chump change any more, but it remains to be seen whether the company will still be around to make those sales.
