Smartphones will shake up paid content debate

Media companies longing to bring a paid-for culture to the Internet might just get what they want if they pay more attention to the smartphone revolution that is changing the way people access the Web.

Huge numbers now use mobile phones instead of desktop computers to get online — a development that has spawned whole new business models in China, the world’s biggest Internet market.

Paying to read content on the Web, an outlandish idea as recently as a year ago, is slowly but surely establishing itself as the next business model in the Western media mainstream, spearheaded by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp

Barnes & Noble: A besieged giant

The world’s largest bookseller faces an unwelcome stock fight while trying to deal with radical market shifts.

The story line for bookstore giant Barnes & Noble Inc. is growing ever more dramatic, with falling store sales, increasingly stiff competition and a fierce battle over the company’s shares led by a billionaire Los Angeles investor.

Barnes & Noble changed the face of book retailing in the 1990s with its aggressive rollout of hundreds of superstores nationwide. Today, the New York company sells about 300 million books a year and accounts for roughly 18% of U.S. book sales, making it the world’s largest bookseller. L A Times

New York Times to offer Book Review as a standalone e-reader product

The New York Times has big digital plans for its Book Review supplement — one of the most popular and influential book review publications. The paper is planning to make Book Review an individual product (separate from the rest of the NYT’s e-reader content) on the three major e-reader platforms — Sony’s e-reader platform, Amazon’s Kindle, and Barnes and Noble’s Nook.

Poynter Online reports that the NYT is carving out Book Review as part of a larger “disaggregation” effort to figure out which content it can sell individually. The paper’s $13.99 Kindle edition, for example, also lacks the famous NYT crossword puzzle. The puzzle was originally excised because of difficulties implementing it on e-reader platforms, but as its implementation becomes more of a possibility, it’s also being looked at as a ripe standalone offering.  Venture Beat

Trend is toward specialty content and away from social networks

The current trend is users 35 and older are spending more time on social-networking sites, while the younger are more mobile based. So the average age of Facebook users is increasing, with users 55 and above growing the most rapidly, but the inverse is true for Twitter, where the most rapid growth in the 2 (!) to 11 year old segment. But the mobile social-networking scene is also more fragmented than the computer-based one, and there’s a new raft of mobile-based services that are growing rapidly, such as social-networking site Gowalla and dating site Flirtomatic.

Do You Really Need an Editor ?

Writer are going electronic directly online, bypassing the editorial process in a traditional publishing setting.  “Why not? There is no editing anymore.” Not only is that not true, but it certainly didn’t understand the complex role of the editor in a publishing house.

True, with the economies of today, there is so much for the editor to do and the workload is so great, that in some cases, writers might get short changed. But in general, the editor today is working very hard, late at night and on the weekends, trying to get the best possible book from the writer.  And I am happy to say that as many as there are who complain, there are just as many who acknowledge the good work that editors can and do for a writer.  Huffington Post

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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Playboy teams up with Video Game Maker 2K