Oct 16th 2007

Books in the landfill

landfill.jpg

So, I signed up for Blog Action Day, and then promptly forgot about it. It was yesterday. Here’s what I’d planned to talk about, with a lot less research than the original idea. Sorry about that:

I’m pretty angry about the environmental state of publishing. We are not, by any extent of the imagination, a green industry.

Let’s start with returns. Returns are the process by which booksellers can return unsold stock to the publishers. It’s been around for a while, but publishers don’t like to talk about the actual figures. Some have admitted that return rates have…

Read the rest of this post →

Oct 12th 2007

Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’, with even less hassle

radiohead.jpg

So, Peter noticed something quite interesting. His attempts to download Radiohead’s In Rainbows failed – he logged in, paid, requested a download key, it never arrived – so he dropped them an email.

After a quick and entirely automated exchange, they gave him an email address to write to for a new authentication key: downloadinrainbows@waste.uk.com.

Drop a blank email to that address and they’ll send you a download link – no honesty box, no email registration. Just the music.

What’s interesting is that they don’t do any checks on this email. They appear to have…

Read the rest of this post →

Oct 1st 2007

Cooking With Booze

cwb-title.png

So. I wrote a book. It’s out today.

Yeah, I know. You’ve been reading this site for ages, waiting for booktech revelations, when you realise it’s just been a plog all along.

Yes, I wrote a book, and if you want to buy it, that would be sweet. It is pretty awesome. But that’s not the point. I did get all booktwo on it as well.

Check out this site I made for the book. I’m sticking to all my principles; I retained full electronic rights to the work, and the whole text is available online, for free,

Read the rest of this post →