Hey Miffy you’re so fine. You’re so fine you blow my mind — hey Miffy! Or Nijntje, as this children’s book character by illustrator author Dick Bruna is known in Holland and much of Europe. She’s a girl who wears lightly the distinction of being, at least according to the London Telegraph the most popular rabbit in the world. There’s not a... Read More

The post Minimally drawn Miffy appeared first on How To Be A Children's Book Illustrator.

A Terrible Lizard’s soliloquy moves us to empathy, or maybe not in the gorgeously tactile T is for Terrible (Macmillan)– a 2005 Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year by Peter McCarty. Children’s novelist Julie Lake (Galveston’s Summer of the Storm) walks us through the Paleozoic pastel pages, while I handle the not-so-steadicam. Recorded after hours in  Julie’s primary school library that Julie set... Read More

The post Terrible in pink? appeared first on How To Be A Children's Book Illustrator.

The upcoming Austin SCBWI Graphic Novel Workshop on Saturday, October 5 promises to be a day for writers and illustrators, writer-illustrators and anyone interested in exciting alternative literary forms for children, teens and young adults. OK, plenty of adults read them, too. Webcomics creator, animator, digital content creator and our SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book […]

The upcoming Austin SCBWI Graphic Novel Workshop on Saturday, October 5 promises to be a day for writers and illustrators, writer-illustrators and anyone interested in exciting alternative literary forms for children, teens and young adults. OK, plenty of adults read them, too. Webcomics creator, animator, digital content creator and our SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book […]

Children’s book illustrators and anyone absorbed in the curious business of children’s book illustration, Do you find it interesting, as I do that the big commercial for Google’s Nexus 7 features a little girl and her mom reading a Curious George story on the device? Google, in its elegant way used a simple illustrated page from [...]

Children’s book illustrators, artistrators, writers take note: These guys kind of say it all. The trailer is by animator, web designer, online comics creator Erik Kuntz  (who also happens to be our SCBWI chapter’s webmaster.) Briefly, the Second Annual Austin SCBWI Digital Symposium is October 6 at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. But for the [...]

It’s not a commonly asked question – just how many times do independent and self-published authors cite the American Constitution in their work; there are no reliable figures or clear guidelines on how to quote from the Constitution to be both legally accurate and grammatically correct. In this new series of posts, Schiel & Denver Book Publishers and Christian Book Publishers will examine the issues and over writing tips and advice. We start with an overview of that oft-cited, Boston Tea Party literature.

The Tea Party of 1773 wasn’t just the dumping of tea in Boston Harbor. It was the signal to the world that man was sovereign, had natural rights protected by laws in common, and that those rights were foremost amongst all nations. The local, Boston issue of taxation without representation only heightened the inalienable, organic rights of man.The chronology leading to the Tea Party of 1773 did not just happen with a bunch of rogues deciding to rebel against the English oppressors in a spur of the moment. There were many abuses of power leading to the Boston Tea Party; however, it is most important to historically note that it was not the Americans who signaled the first rebellion. It was Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawa Indians. And Benjamin Franklin, in 1754 then published the “Join or Die” cartoon.

Although the rough picture of a snake separated into eight pieces marked with the initials of New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, was first used in an attempt to unite the colonies as early as 1754 as the Albany Plan of Union, it was premature and not supported by the Colonists until revived by Pontiac’s attack upon the British in May, l763, and made a standard by the Tea Party patriots two years later when the British passed the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act, thereby allowing British soldiers to be quartered throughout the colonies.

Alarmed, the Colonists prepared to unite as they struggled to peacefully remain a colony of English rule. It simply did not work. On May 10, l773, England passed the Stamp Act claiming sovereignty over America, and resulting in Patrick Henry’s famous resolutions: the fifth summed it all.

“Resolved, therefore, that the General Assembly of this Colony have the only and sole exclusive right and power to lay taxes upon the inhabitants of this Colony.”

It was now clear: every attempt to vest such power in any…persons…other than the General Assembly would destroy British as well as American freedom. No taxation without representation. America would have to assert its exclusive rights.Suddenly, with this speech, Patrick Henry became a spokesman for the common people, and the two parties: Patriots, or Whigs; and Loyalists – those who remained loyal to England – also called ‘Tories”, were born.

Henry’s words became the general outcry for the Tea Party and was the beginning of the revolutionary movement in the American colonies.

The Patriots were the backbone of the Republic. The Boston Tea Party formulated between 1773 and 1776. Our country is that Nation uniting all of the colonies into one nation: the United States of America embracing a Republican form of government wherein man, the citizen, was to become the ultimate law of the land possessing original ordained rights.The Boston Tea Party was known as the “Destruction of the Tea”; but when the Patriots, as Mohawk Indians marched into town, with axes and tomahawks on their shoulders, a fifer playing by their sides, within a few days, a Boston street ballad called: “The Rallying of the Tea Party” not only identified the two leaders—Warren and Revere—by name, but gave the Tea Party its origin and history in protecting common rights.

It is no wonder, then, that this is the hallmark of liberty and freedom for every man as foreseen and upheld by our forefathers when creating the ninth and tenth Amendments to our Constitution.

“The enumeration In the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

The people, again, were the ultimate beneficiary of all rights and powers within a Republican form of government. They were protecting their voice and guarding the limited powers to be relinquished to a federal government after granting it federal authority to govern, and to become a nation subservient to the desires and wishes of the sovereign states, ultimately, represented by the people as: sovereign man.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, or prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The Tea Party of yore is very much alive today. All over America the strong desires and morals which our founding fathers clearly laid down in 1776 return for all mankind to re-assert and claim once more.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that amount these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

The expression reverberated in the hearts and minds of all men then, and needs to be restored today. Its effect, as expressed by the concluding paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, is as much alive in meaning and intent for all mankind as when expressed in 1776. The Spirit of ’76, which was so near exhaustion at Valley Forge, was kindled by such resolve.

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved, and that as Free and Independent States they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things, which Independent States may of right do — and for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

According to book publishers, US Talk show host and actress Ricki Lake has signed with Atria Books for a book about herself which is due to be released in the spring of 2012. The 42-year-old Lake is expected to appear on the small screen again in the fall of 2012 with a new talk show – that has now been confirmed by memoir and poetry book publishers.

The plans of writing her book publishing memoir are however at the very beginning. Atria’s representatives stated that the book doesn’t even have a title yet, but the story will be like an emotional rollercoaster ride “through the glum and the glamour”. It will include the actress’s career life in detail as well as aspects of her personal life.

Born in September 1968, Ricki Pamela Lake comes from a Jewish family. Her mother was a common housewife and her father was a pharmacist. She grew up in New York and attended Ithaca College.

Her professional acting career debuted with the role in the original Hairspray movie in 1988, where she got the role of Tracy Turnblad, the lead character. She then starred in numerous movies, such as Working Girl in 1988, Cookie, Baby Cakes and Last Exit To Brooklyn in 1989, Cry-Baby in 1990, Inside Monkey Zetterland in 1992, Skinner in 1993, Serial Mom in 1994, Mrs. Winterbourne in 1996, Park in 2006. She got a role in the 2007 version of Hairspray ( w. John Travolta), where she was the talent agent. She was executive producer of the movie “The Business of Being Mom” in 2008.
She won an Independent Spirit Award for Best female Lead in Hairspray in 1989 and a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host in her talk show, Ricki Lake, in 1994.

Despite her success as a career woman, Ricki Lake opened up about her abusive childhood. “I was a victim of childhood sexual abuse” she said back in 2007 while talking about her weight problems. She said she had been in therapy and had worked on her personal problems for years. “I didn’t talk about it for, like, 15 or 20 years.” She continued, explaining that she wanted to pretend it didn’t really happen to her. After the abuse she started gaining weight and was once 260 pounds. Lake said she never confronted her abuser but when she told her parents about what had happened, the abuser disappeared rapidly from her life.

These days a heavy weight has lifted from her body and hopefully, it will be lifted from her chest, too, when he will get to put on paper all the things that she has been through.

Media firm Bertelsmann, owner of book publisher Random House, has purchased a digital agency specializing in putting books on devices like Apple’s iPad. Bertelsmann acquired Smashing Ideas, a Seattle-based agency focused on developing entertainment content for digital devices.

About a year ago, Smashing Ideas, which also has an office in Newcastle, England, began working with Random House to develop iPad apps and e-books. Thus far, digital versions of two children’s titles have resulted for “Pat The Bunny” and “Wild About Books.”

“As a company, we’re fairly focused on youth and family,” said Stephen Jackson, president and CEO of 15-year-old Smashing Ideas. Now, he said, his firm is working on projects for young adults and adults with the new owners, and expects to work on projects targeting all demographics.

The digital agency has 70 employees and counts Disney, Mattel, Nickelodeon, Hasbro, GE, and Microsoft among its clients. Smashing Ideas will continue serving those clients, and will remain a standalone shop. “The beauty of it for us is [Bertelsmann] leaves all of their acquisition companies fairly independent. We will retain our independence as a standalone company,” he said. Jackson added that no changes to staff, office locations or management are planned as a result of the deal.

When ClickZ News asked whether Jackson anticipates tie-ins between current clients and Bertelsmann publishers properties, he said, “It makes total sense. It’s something we would love to explore.”

According to a press release, “The acquisition adds significantly to the set of Random House capabilities and further signals the intention of Random House and its parent company to be leaders in digital content creation, and demonstrates their commitment to expanding revenues from mobile and interactive online products and services.”

Markus Dohle, chairman and CEO of Random House, added in the release, “We intend to provide our new Smashing Ideas colleagues with abundant resources to help them grow as a profit center, as well as a creative force.”

Jackson said he intends to help the publisher determine the most appropriate platforms for distributing its titles. “The buzzword of the day is transmedia,” he said. “I think we’re really starting to see that come to fruition.”

However, he continued, “The content has to be appropriate for that device. Should the content be equal and the exact same [on all devices]? My answer is no.”

As for children’s book publishing content, Jackson said the iPad is the clear winner. “Right now the device of choice in terms of enhanced e-books is the iPad…. It has demonstrated it is a really child-friendly device.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was created in 1996 to promote literacy, celebrate the written word, and bring together book publishers with those who create books with the people who love to read them. Between 130,000 and 140,000 people attend the event annually. The Times has launched its first mobile interactive guide to help attendees explore this weekend’s Festival of Books. Through ebook publishing, the festival is now available for free download for iPhone, iPod Touch and Android users, it includes the following features:

• Customizable schedule of events
• Special section for poetry book publishers and christian book publishers
• Detailed “search” by activity, author, book title or genre and descriptions of all panels, participants, performers and exhibitors
• Maps of the Festival grounds, including information about dining options, parking and public transportation
• Integration with users’ Facebook and Twitter accounts for posting photos, status updates and tweets
• Easy access to up-to-the-minute news from the Festival’s Facebook and Twitter feeds as well as USC traffic updates

All attractions, including the Festival’s eight outdoor stages, hundreds of panels, exhibitors, book sellers and live entertainment, will be comfortably located around the USC campus’ central Trousdale Parkway. Other conveniences added this year include additional information booths, sit-down dining and more concession stands, a shaded rest area, an increased number of parking spaces and valet parking option for panel pass purchasers. Triangular shuttle service between Union Station, Los Angeles Convention Center and USC will also supplement existing public transportation.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is presented in association with USC, presenting sponsor Target, major sponsors Buick and GMC and official ticketing provider Eventbrite.

Leaders in digital book publishing are in New York at the InterQuest2011 Digital Book Printing Forum to discuss the latest trends and opportunities in an industry beset with change during the past few years. At the event, Kodak’s Eric Owen is speaking about the role Kodak is playing with its customers by providing effective counsel and comprehensive solutions.

“The publishing industry is in a dynamic period and Kodak is helping customers profit from developing trends like short-runs, automation and self publishing,” said Eric Owen, Vice President, Sales and Business Development, Kodak Digital Printing Solutions group.  “Kodak is well positioned to help guide printers and book publishers with a blend of offset and digital technologies and comprehensive workflow offerings.”

Kodak is a leader in digital book publishing, bringing many innovative solutions to market in recent years. Book publishers constantly seek more efficient and economical ways to produce short-run book titles and streamline processes. By printing digitally with the KODAK PROSPER Press Platform, the need for inventory is reduced, waste can be minimized, and the number of available titles increased. The KOKAK PROSPER Platform integrates with a wide-range of leading finishing equipment offerings to ensure that customers can produce books in a manner that best fits their businesses.

Kodak is fully committed to helping its customers capitalize on industry changes and recently assembled a panel of independent experts for an expansive roundtable discussion about the future of book publishing companies. Held at the New York Public Library, the roundtable brought together executives from book publishing, manufacturing, retailing and distribution companies, as well as an author. Topics and insights from the events discussion included:

- High-speed inkjet printing will have a significant impact on book manufacturing-”the biggest development in publishing in the past 50 years,” according to one panelist.

- Inkjet printing will allow for more and shorter production runs, saving on inventory, waste and obsolescence costs, and providing a means for niche books to be printed that otherwise wouldn’t get produced.

To view video highlights from the roundtable, go to: www.kodak.com/go/changepublishing

The 2011 Digital Book Printing Forum will be held Tuesday, April 5, 2011 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Marriott Marquis New York in midtown Manhattan during the annual Publishing Business Conference Expo organized by Book Business magazine.

Imagine quitting your job to pursue your passion, and becoming a millionaire nearly overnight.

That’s what a Southern Minnesota author is experiencing, now that her books are becoming must-reads.

Amanda Hocking has been writing stories for years, but when she started putting her works up for sale online, her whole life turned upside down.

The author said, “When I started publishing I thought that I would maybe sell 100 copies or something.”

Amanda’s book publisher estimates however were not even close. In just a matter of a few months, she didn’t sell 100 copies, she sold around 100 thousand copies.

Hocking added, “It was very exciting and surprising. I couldn’t believe I was selling so many books and people were reading and responding to them.”

For those close to the author, her rise to stardom may not come as a surprise.

“I started writing when I was really young,” Hocking said. “My eighth grade teacher Ms. Smith, she thought that I was a really really great writer.”

So the young author wrote and wrote, but was rejected several times by publishing companies.

“I feel like they didn’t reject me, they just didn’t know me,” she answered.

However, once Hocking’s work became an online sensation, she was signed and she took a leap of faith to follow her dream.

She said, “When I quit my job, it was both really exciting and really scary. I knew this was something that I always wanted to do, but it’s scary to think, what if this stops working.”

However, the gamble has paid off and Hocking has sold more than 600 thousand books just this year, as has become an overnight celebrity.

“My mom is totally crazy ecstatic.”

But the additional popularity brought on more challenges.

Hocking admitted, “Finishing up a series I feel a lot of pressure because they have expectations on how it’s going to end.”

Even with the difficulties Amanda maintains the added book publishers‘ pressure only makes her a better writer.

”I think that each book I write is better than the last so if you liked the earlier stuff, you’re definitely going to like the stuff that comes out.”

Just when do books wear out?

That the big question, especially after Book Publishers announced this month that libraries will only be able to circulate its e-book titles 26 times before they’ll have to buy a new copy.

It set 26 as the cap, arguing with an average two-week borrowing period, it works out to a year — the length of time when printed books wear out and popularity wanes.

Technically, e-books will never fall apart. And librarians argue many printed books circulate far more than 26 times, and are still in good shape after more than 100 checkouts.

The new rule, which went into effect on March 7 for new titles, has upset librarians, sparking some in the United States to call for a boycott of HarperCollins books.

While Canadian librarians aren’t making such threats, the Toronto Public Library is holding off on any new HarperCollins purchases until the new restrictions are clarified.

“This announcement was discouraging,” said city librarian Jane Pyper. “We respect the publishing industry. We want a viable and vibrant Canadian publishing industry, in particular. We want Canadian content.

“We also want something that’s fair to public libraries and viable and sustainable for the library sector.”

While e-books represent less than 1 per cent of the 32 million items that the Toronto library circulates each year, they are growing in popularity. The library currently carries about 11,000 e-book titles, and they are checked out about 17,000 times each month.

On Christmas Day and Boxing Day, after people had ripped off the wrapping paper on new and self publishing reading devices like Kobos and Sony readers, the library had an unbelievable surge in hits on its website for patrons wanting to download e-books, Pyper said.

With each e-title, the Toronto library can only circulate that single copy to one borrower at a time. Patrons can borrow 10 books for up to 21 days. After the due date, the book disappears from the individual reader and the item can circulate again.

The New York Times says nine million devices are in use in the United States, according to Forrester Research. Market research firms here estimate 500,000 Canadians had readers by the end of last year.

“It’s important for the future to understand that the public libraries will be in e-collection market,” said Pyper. “We want to own books, we want to preserve them, and we want the public to have permanent access to them.”

E-books range in price from $20 to $30 and there are no library discounts — unlike print versions, she said. And given the library’s financial woes, pricing or the need to repurchase books has an impact on the budget.

When asked for comment, a spokesman with HarperCollinsCanada said no one was available.

In an open letter to librarians, Josh Marwell, president of sales at HarperCollinsPublishers in the United States, explained that the company’s previous e-book policy was almost 10 years old, developed when there were few such readers.

“We have serious concerns that our previous e-book policy, selling e-books to libraries in perpetuity, if left unchanged, would undermine the emerging e-book ecosystem, hurt the growing e-book channel, place additional pressure on physical bookstores, and in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors,” Marwell wrote.

He added the 26 checkout cap can provide a year of availability for titles with the highest demand and much longer for other titles. “If a library decides to repurchase an e-book later in the book’s life, the price will be significantly lower as it will be pegged to a paperback price point.”

The ease with which consumers can borrow e-books makes book publishe

The public library has long attracted avid readers with an unrivaled pitch: Check out a best-selling book for free and renew it multiple times.

But as more people ditch printed books in favor of e-books that can be downloaded directly to a computer, the rules are changing.

As of Monday, HarperCollins, book publisher of authors such as Anne Rice, Sarah Palin and Michael Crichton, will not allow its e-books to be checked out from a library more than 26 times.

After that, the license on the e-book will expire and libraries will have to decide whether to buy a new one.

For library users, that could mean longer waits for popular titles, tighter limits on how many times an e-book can be renewed and the possibility that e-books that are not repurchased would be available at the library for only about a year.

Librarians across the country are outraged and fear other publishers could adopt a similar model. Some have organized a boycott of books published by HarperCollins. They argue the restrictions place an additional burden on financially strapped public libraries, some of which have reduced their inventories because of budget constraints.

The added expenditures on e-books, they said, will make it more difficult to compete in an industry that is quickly becoming dominated by electronic readers such as the iPad, the Nook and the Kindle.

“This strikes at the heart of what we do,” said Chicago Public Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey, who described electronic media as the new virtual library. “With limited financial resources affecting all libraries across America, people are asking, ‘Why would you do this?’”

For HarperCollins, it is about balancing the benefits to book publishers, authors and libraries in a rapidly growing segment of the publishing industry that has left many newspapers, magazines and booksellers scrambling to catch up.

Nearly 10 years ago, when HarperCollins began offering e-books to libraries, the number of e-readers was too small to measure, the company said. Now, it is projected that more than 40 million e-reading devices will be in use in the U.S. this year.

“We have serious concerns that our previous e-book policy, selling e-books to libraries in perpetuity, if left unchanged, would undermine the emerging e-book eco-system, hurt the growing e-book channel, place additional pressure on physical bookstores, and in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors,” HarperCollins said in a statement.

Librarians also have serious concerns. At the Naperville Public Library, the new policy would be an additional strain on a materials budget that has shrunk by about $200,000 in the last three years, said deputy director Julie Rothenfluh.

“It’s a balancing act for us,” Rothenfluh said. “We have to be that much more careful to make sure what we purchase provides the best benefit to our users.”

For most libraries, e-books are only a small percentage of the items circulated but represent the fastest growing segment.

About 10,000 e-books are circulated in Naperville. The Chicago Public Library, which has experienced slight increases in its budget, doubled the circulation of e-books from 17,000 in 2009 to more than 36,000 in 2010.

Librarians said HarperCollins’ decision failed to factor in the role libraries play in promoting reading, which benefits the book industry and christian book publishers. Some said the book publisher should have included librarians in discussions about the checkout limit.

E-book checkouts are “a growing percentage, and it definitely reflects a trend that people want to take their e-reader and upload it

Bargain hunters were out in force this weekend as liquidation sales began at 200 Borders locations slated to close as part of the company’s bankruptcy filing.

The affected stores — about one-third of the bookseller’s locations — are expected to close by the end of April. Twenty-one underperforming stores in Southern California will be shut, including stores in Sherman Oaks, Century City, Long Beach and Orange.

Huge “store closing” and “everything must go” posters covered the windows at Borders in Pasadena and Glendale, which were bustling with customers Sunday. Many sections were already picked over, including from christian book publishers, with shelves left bare and items such as notebooks, journals and photo albums strewn about.

Most items were discounted 20% to 40%, with markdowns expected to increase in coming weeks.

“As long as there’s a deal, I’m going to take advantage of it,” said Jordan Francke, 27, who was checking out the games section at the Glendale store.

“It’s just the changing landscape of literature these days. It’s all electronic,” Francke, a children’s book publishers and television schedule coordinator, said of the chain’s bankruptcy. “I can only imagine it’s a struggle for a place like Borders to stay relevant.”

That’s a harsh reality for regular customers such as Kathleen O’Reilly, 52, who was at the Pasadena Borders carrying a shopping basket laden with discounted stationery and magazines.

The Pasadena resident said she was “old school” and enjoyed seeing and touching books before making a purchase. She said she would miss visiting the store with her teenage daughter.

“I spend several days a week here,” said O’Reilly, a self-publishing counselor at a high school. “I actually debated whether I even wanted to come because I was worried I’d be too upset to see the store torn apart.”

Business is expected to continue as usual on the company’s website and at stores that aren’t closing.

After a slew of competitive blunders and missteps in the last decade, Borders Group Inc. found itself in trouble and had to cut staff, shut stores and shake up its top management.

Critics said the company botched its move into the book publisher digital age, causing sales and earnings to plummet. At the same time, mass merchants including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp. became major players in the book-selling market, often offering lower prices than Borders and rival Barnes & Noble Inc.

But Borders maintains it isn’t done for good. In a letter e-mailed to customers and posted on the company’s website last week, Borders President Mike Edwards said the company hoped to emerge from Chapter 11 as “the destination of choice.”

About 6,000 of the chain’s roughly 19,000 workers will be laid off as part of the closures. Among them is Rich Kilbury, a christian book publisher, who was pushing a cart stacked high with books at the Pasadena location Sunday.

“It’s depressing, but we kind of saw it coming,” he said. “Business had dropped off.”

The promise of discounts attracted Victoria Rose to the Pasadena store, where she was browsing mystery and thriller books. The 60-year-old high school English teacher said she was never a regular customer because she could find a better s

In a letter to book publishers, Digg product manager Mike Cieri announced that the troubled social news website will no longer accept content submitted via RSS.

The ability for book publishers to submit all of their stories to Digg automatically using an RSS feed seemed like an efficient way to open up a firehose of content for Digg. However, Cieri says this idea had unintended consequences.

According to Cieri, “Most RSS-submitted content is not performing well on Digg.” He says the site’s analytics show that only a mere 4.5% of Digg’s “Top News” content comes from the RSS submissions. He adds that the ability to submit an RSS feed to Digg “has been heavily abused by spammers and has been a constant drain on our technical resources to identify and fight off spam content.” Cieri praised the manual method of submitting stories to Digg, saying that manual submissions “ensure that quality content appears on Digg.”

With this move, the site takes yet another step back toward the old version 3.0, the site design that was in use before radical changes resulted in a user revolt and a 24% decline in U.S. visitors in the first 11 weeks. In response, Digg has slowly added back features that readers missed, such as the ability to bury stories, andlast month’s overhaul that included the return of user profiles and story statistics. Since that first fateful redesign last summer, Digg has laid off more than a third of its staffers.

I’m just wondering why Digg stubbornly refused to modify its obviously unpopular redesign after it became apparent that it was resulting in large percentages of its readership turning away. After a few days of this, why didn’t Digg simply revert to the old version and its rules that seemed to be working pretty well? If not a few days later, why not a month later?

Here’s the full text of the letter we received from Digg product manager Mike Cieri:

Publishers,

We hope this message finds you well. After a bumpy second half of 2010 at Digg, we are starting to see positive signs of improvement and are optimistic about the direction Digg is headed. In January 2011, we saw double digit growth of diggs and comments, as well as an increase in unique visitors and exit clicks out to publisher sites. We’ve taken a number of concrete steps to stay better connected with the Digg community, and we are taking action to improve Digg based on our community’s feedback. One important point of feedback we’ve heard is that RSS submitted stories are hurting Digg in a number of ways, and in the next week we are going to discontinue the ability to submit content via RSS. We’d like to share the reasoning behind the decision, and let you know what you can do to improve your performance on Digg.

Put very simply, most RSS submitted content is not performing well on Digg. For many of our users, RSS submissions take the fun out of finding and submitting great content. When users try to submit a story to Digg and find that the story has already been auto-submitted via RSS, they lose interest in helping spread the story on Digg by commenting and sharing with friends. Removing a user’s desire to champion a story results in less diggs, comments, exit clicks, and ultimately a much smaller chance of making the Top News section. Our analytics reflect this point – only 4.5% of all Top News content comes from RSS submitted content (95.5% is manually submitted).

At its core, Digg is a community of passionate users who take pride in the content they submit and engage with one another in discussion and promotion of viral content. There is a perception that some publishers don’t participate in the community, use RSS submit as an “auto-pilot” tool to submit content without discretion, and do little to promote submitted content o

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Amazon Kindle users will soon be able to navigate their e-books by way of old-fashioned page numbers, Amazon announced today in a blog post.

Kindle format e-books currently employ “location numbers,” which correspond to a specific block of text, and not the actual page numbers of the hardbound book. Obviously, this makes it tricky for those situations where multiple folks are reading from the same e-book, but at different font sizes. (In a book club, for instance, or in the classroom.)

“Our customers have told us they want real page numbers that match the page numbers in print books so they can easily reference and cite passages, and read alongside others in a book club or class,” Amazon reps wrote. “Rather than add page numbers that don’t correspond to print books, which is how page numbers have been added to e-books in the past, we’re adding real page numbers that correspond directly to a book’s print edition.”

The page numbers will arrive in a new Amazon Kindle software update, which is expected to be issued soon. Users will be able to view both location numbers and page numbers – and for at least one prominent book publishers and tech critic, that’s very good news indeed.

“Bottom line: enough criticizing the Kindle or the Nook for the way it handles page numbers,” David Pogue writes over at the website of the New York Times. “Neither solution is perfect – ‘locations’ or page numbers – because the problem is insoluble. The best we can hope for is a choice – and now the Kindle offers one.”

Last month, Amazon introduced a new e-book format called Kindle Singles, which the company describes as “compelling ideas expressed at their natural length.” The idea is pretty simple: For five bucks or less, users can download a 5,000 to 30,000-word piece of fiction or non-fiction. Among the first Kindle Singles releases are works by Jodi Picoult, Rich Cohen, Pete Hamill, and Darin Strauss.

Stephen King’s book, The Stand, may be adapted for the big screen sometime soon, according to sources in the film and e-book publishing world. Apparently, Warner Brothers and CBS films have formed an alliance to attempt to convert the book, which is over 1,000 pages, into a film.

CBS films has apparently had the rights to the film for several years but recently went searching for a partner company to help them attempt the large task of creating an adaptation.

The Stand was first released in 1978, and then in the 1990s, King edited it, adding even more pages. It was already an ABC miniseries in 1994 and has also been adapted by Marvel into a comic book series.

Another Stephen King novel is being worked on for the big screen as well. Ron Howard will direct The Dark Tower, which is rumored to be getting Javier Bardem to star.

Borders Group Inc may find that filing for bankruptcy is the next plot turn in its many-chaptered struggle to survive.

Bankruptcy court could push the second-largest bookstore chain, its lenders and book publishers to make sacrifices and give the company a chance to keep going. As it stands now, book publishing sources see little progress in financial talks with lenders, and the company continues to need cash.

Borders President Mike Edwards said on Thursday in a statement announcing a conditional credit agreement with GE Capital that while refinancing is preferred, restructuring in court — referring to a bankruptcy filing — is a possibility it is considering.

Borders spokeswoman Mary Davis declined to comment beyond that statement.

The standoff comes after a year in which Borders has cut costs, refinanced and brought in new investors to cope with shriveling sales and market share.

Now the company has stopped payment to some vendors and even asked its most important suppliers — the book publishers — essentially to loan it the money due for books shipped months ago.

Only with those concessions by book publishers as well as other new landlord and vendor financing agreements will the company’s bank replace a maturing credit line.

“Bankruptcy is a wonderful tool for taking the majority of interests and implementing a plan that may be over the objections of a minority of interests,” said Michael Epstein, a managing partner at chess restructuring advisory firm CRG Partners who is not involved in the situation.

The company would be able to close unprofitable stores more easily and book publishers would begin getting paid again in most cases for any products shipped in bankruptcy, he said.

On the other hand, he cautioned, the company would need to have a plan for the changes it wants to ensure that it closes the right stores before the clock runs out.

Since 2005, bankruptcy law has allowed only about 9 months for retailers to easily close stores — a deadline many industry players say is one of the reasons why Circuit City ended up quickly liquidating its assets in bankruptcy.

In a bankruptcy restructuring, the company will likely not be obligated to pay christian book publishers for the books it shipped before the bankruptcy filing, according to Ken Simon, a managing director at Loughlin Meghji restructuring advisory firm who is not involved in the matter.

If the restructuring stays out of court, the vendors will have to be paid back in full or agree to a cut.

“The lack of liquidity is the reason why companies have to go into bankruptcy,” Simon said.

Picking up where Jane Friedman, book publisher of Open Road Integrated Media, left off yesterday at Digital Book World, when she urged book publishers to broaden the participation of libraries in the distribution of ebooks, LJ’s Josh Hadro moderated a panel today that helped publishers understand why, and how, that must be accomplished.

“Consumers and library patrons are two sides of the same coin,” Hadro said to a roomful of publishers, who included execs and others from the big children’s book publishers, smaller houses, university presses, and distributors. The current one book, one loan ebook model “mirrors the print” buying and lending; “DRM [digital rights management] software [protects publishers] caus[ing] the lend to expire at the end of the loan period,” explained Hadro.

Yet many publishers still don’t sell their latest ebooks to libraries. “Current content is king,” New York Public Library’s Chris Platt said, pointing out his frustration that, “We can’t get Freedom (FSG) as a download for our library. And even though Keith Richards made a public appearance at NYPL, “We couldn’t put his epub [Life (Little, Brown)] in our collection,” said Platt. Then Platt held up The Oracle of Stamboul (HarperCollins), due out in February, another book his patrons won’t be able to borrow as an ebook.

Librarians are left trying to explain to their users both that the publisher has not made the book available through the library and that many ebooks won’t work on their users’ ereaders.

Platt further made the case that “We teach people literacy…we point [them] to your new books….Libraries are connected to many of the people you want to reach, on Twitter, Facebook.” As the price of smartphones drop, he said, libraries will be able “to serve all parts of the community.”

Ruth Liebmann, Random House VP, reinforced Platt’s remarks. “A sale is a sale,” she said, noting that libraries are a revenue stream that publishers like Random want to “protect, even grow.”

Baker & Taylor’s VP for libraries and education, George Coe, told attendees that the “acquisition model will change drastically” with the ebook. “Library budgets can’t change,” he said, but users can become buyers with “buy buttons” on library online catalogs. He cautioned, however, that by using different formats, christian book publishers are “confusing our patrons.”

OverDrive’s CEO Steve Potash also said that the idea of a library purchase “cannibalizing sales couldn’t be farther from the truth…we’re converting library borrowers into point of sale users” in the digital world. As for the one book, one user model, Potash said that OverDrive recently made Liquid Comics ebook graphic novels available via a multiple user subscription model.

Digital World Book, known as the DBW is the key conference in the publication of books for publishers in the e-books. All the “big six” book publishers are present in quantities never before. Random House will have more than 40 participants, while fewer than 20 came from the publisher in 2010. The digital book world conference began quietly on Monday morning with three sessions focused for a long time, the official opening ceremony will begin at 17 hours, but despite the digital output cautiously DBW 2011 is just quiet – There are over 1,250 registered twice that last year 600.

Since book publishers are here at DBW, mainstream booksellers are also here. Who is here and what they are selling will be evident when the floor show begins 13:00

The session iPad / iPhone has provided an overview of applications and the Apple App Store. It was the kind of session that felt like it was presented to other audiences – do not publish specific, as the meeting of the e-book design and production. The meeting is followed very still ongoing as I write, shows an interest of people in book publishing companies. How they got out of it, maybe they acquired the interest in book publishing and literary agents and tell us later.

Sessions on the morning of Monday, three were in the design of e-books and production, online content strategy and the iPhone / IPAD strategies. It was the first, most of the screws and nuts, which was the subject key retailers were focused on. Speaking directly to the creators of books and production managers, the session included discussions on programming languages and workflow – which suggests that book publishers are now specifically and actively serious about integrating e-Books, e-book publishing, amazon kindle publishing etc into their business model.

Rubbishing those who hail the digital age as the end for books, book publishers industry players and best-selling authors on Saturday hailed a new dawn for publishing, with India’s voracious readers at its forefront.

Book sales have been squeezed in recent years by e-books and the huge success of Amazon.Com’s Kindle reader, but India’s booming book publishers market is proof of the physical book’s staying power, said participants at Asia’s largest literary event, the DSC Jaipur Literary Festival.

“You read something on Twitter and you know it is ephemeral,” said Patrick French, a best-selling historian and biographer who has written extensively on Asia. “Yet the book is a solid thing. The book endures.”

Regional language novelists and poets rubbed shoulders with Nobel laureates and Booker Prize winners at the seventh festival to be held in the historical pink-tinged city of Jaipur, the capital of India’s northwestern Rajasthan state.

Hundreds of book lovers attended a debate on the fate of printed books in the sun-drenched grounds of a former palace as part of the free five-day event.

“The idea of the book dying comes up all the time. It’s wrong. I think this is a wonderful time for books, to enlarge the audience of the book and draw in more readers,” said John Makinson, Chairman and CEO of the Penguin Group of publishers.

“Books matter more in India than anywhere else we publish them,” added Makinson, whose Penguin Group is one of the world’s largest English-language book publishers.

While book sales slip in most western countries, the non-academic book market in India is currently growing at a rate of 15 to 18 percent annually, as rapid economic growth swells literacy rates and adds millions to the middle class every year.

At the festival, schoolchildren from around the country chased their authorly heroes through the lunch queues to get autographs on newly-purchased books.

Makinson noted that the pressure on physical bookshops in countries like the United States — where bookseller Borders Group Inc is in talks to secure a $500 million credit line — doesn’t exist in India, adding that books have a key role to play in Indian society.

“In India books define and create the social conversation amongst christian book publishers and children’s book publishers. In China, the books that sell well are self-improvement titles. Popular books in India are of explanations, explaining the world. The inquisitive nature of India is unique.”

Indian critic Sunil Sethi, who presents India’s most popular television program on books, said the digital age presented an opportunity, rather than a threat, for printed matter. “Even before I finish my show, the authors are on Twitter to say they are on TV talking about their book. Technology is merging things, but the book is still at the center,” Sethi said.

French agreed that technology, if well-managed, could actually help win books new friends and wider sales.

“Digital e-books have created a space for discussion. Books now have websites and forums, and so reading books on electronic devices has created communities and interaction,” he said.

Nearly 50,000 writers, critics, publishers and fans are expected to attend the festival.