HP Offers iPad Alternative

Hewlett-Packard doesn’t want Apple to have all the fun when it comes to tablet-style computing devices.

HP said Tuesday it’s readying a Windows 7-powered slate PC that it claims will offer a more complete computing experience than Apple’s iPad.

“With this slate product, you’re getting a full Web browsing experience in the palm of your hand,” said Phil McKinney, HP’s VP and chief technical officer for its Personal Systems Group, in a blog post. “No watered down Internet, no sacrifices,” wrote McKinney.

Information Week

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Young adult lit comes of age

Authors may gear their novels toward the junior and senior high crowd, but adults are snapping up the books, often about misfit teens or fantasy worlds.

But increasingly, adults are reading YA books with no ulterior motives. Attracted by well-written, fast-paced and engaging stories that span the gamut of genres and subjects, such readers have mainstreamed a niche long derided as just for kids.

With books moving online, who will be the gatekeepers

Book publishers have long seen themselves as the gatekeepers of literary culture. But when they’re not looking, the truth has a way of being left at the door.

With the rise of electronic books, makers of reading devices and online retailers are putting pressure on prices and the traditional book publishing business model. And, as with record labels and newspapers, digital media raises the question of what part the traditional book publisher will play in the future. NY Times

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The Fate of Books After the Age of Print

In the United States, brick-and-mortar bookstores continue to disappear at a rate rivaled only by the relentless destruction of the Amazonian rain forest. Twenty years ago, there were about 4,000 independent bookstores. Today, only about 1,500 remain. Even the two largest U.S. chain bookstores—themselves partly responsible for putting smaller stores to the sword—are in a precarious state: Borders is said to be teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and Barnes & Noble is trying desperately to figure out ways to pay the mortgage on the vast real estate it occupies across the nation.  The contrast with Europe is stark. There are important structural differences in bookselling in America and in Europe.

Do it Yourself book tour

With publisher publicity departments backing away from traditional author tours, writers are left to their own devices (and strangers’ couches).

“I learned a lot doing the tour,” says La Ganga, who cold-called bookstores to set up readings. Indeed, with no advance publicity and no connection to local literary communities, it was, at times, a steep learning curve. In Pittsburgh, the pair arrived at a Borders store to discover that the staff, unaware of their event, had turned people away. “I’m going to call it ‘tuition,’ ” she continues, “the money we spent on it.” All told, the tour cost $2,500 — modest for their itinerary but significant for the pair. L A Times

Apple iPad Available For Pre-Order From March 12, On Sale From April 3

Apple just announced that its tablet device, the iPad, will be available in the U.S. on April 3. See announcement below.

When Apple unveiled the device a few months ago, we were told it would be available by March. Rumors began to swirl recently that shipment of the devices was delayed until April. According to the release, the Wi-Fi models of the iPad will be available starting April 3, with the Wi-Fi and 3G models rolled out by late April. S

Pricing has remained the same, with the basic Wi-Fi enabled model starting at $499. Pricing is as follows: $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB.   Tech Crunch

Ads Posted on Facebook Strike Some as Off-Key

Facebook  pages are also home to countless ads from smaller companies that can be funny, weird or just plain creepy — those suggesting you are, say, eligible to get a free iPad because you are exactly 26 years old, or entreaties to see what your offspring would look like if you had a child with a celebrity.

Odd Web ads, like the dancing women promoting mortgage brokers, are not new. But on social networks like Facebook, where people go to communicate with one another, advertisers seem to be trying especially hard to intrude on the conversation.

How Penguin Will Reinvent Books With iPad

As the race to be be ebook format of choice hots up, Penguin is making some bold, experimental bets. These first-look demos of forthcoming books from iPad’s iBook Store, presented by Penguin Books’ CEO John Makinson in London on Tuesday, give an idea how publishers might approach Apple’s tablet…

Many of Penguin’s iPad books seem hardly to resemble “books” at all, but rather very interactive learning experiences, from its Dorling Kindersley and kids imprints – the Vampire Academy “book” is “an online community for vampire lovers” with live chat between readers, and the Paris travel guide switches to street map view when placed on a table.   Paid Content

The Future for Publishing: Hint, It’s Not E-Books

The sale leader that tops book chain stores by 2 percent. What is it? Are these library sales? Probably not. In all likelihood, these are big box retailers like Costco, Wal-Mart , and Targt . Remember the Christmastime price war on best-selling hardcovers? Combined with the mass merchandisers, this 37 percent of the book market represents the heart of the business and the focus of much effort on the part of publishers.

For the big six conglomerates, this represents their future much more than e-books do. It’s a high-volume business that responds well to what the big publishers are good at, acquiring titles for large sums and moving books rapidly through the distribution channel.  The Big Money

Conde Nast betting on the iPad.

Condé Nast is betting hard that it will. Already teamed up with Apple on a GQ iPhone app, the publisher will also unveil an iPad version of the magazine starting with the April issue. The next month will see iPad versions of Vanity Fair and Wired, followed by The New Yorker and Glamour sometime in the summer.

The iPad experiment will undergo some beta testing at first, as editorial director Thomas J. Wallace told The New York Times. “We need to know a little bit more about what kind of a product we can make, how consumers will respond to it, what the distribution system will be,” he explained.