MediaWeek (Vol 1, No 37):

CEO of Indigo Books in Canada Heather Reisman answers some questions for Canadian Business. It was less interesting for me until I got to this:

Indigo has a policy created on Day 1. To the best of our knowledge, we will not sell child pornography or material with detailed instructions on how to build weapons of mass destruction. And we will not sell any material that has as its sole intent the incitement of society toward the annihilation of any group. We will sell anything else. Electronic books will have less of an impact on publishing than digital media had on music distribution. People will always want to have traditional libraries. I can’t imagine not being surrounded by my books.

I would say that gives them a lot of latitude! Bonnier is has bought Templar a children's publisher in the UK. The Bookseller The 'F-Bomb' and Batman. (I gots to get my hands on one of these copies). LATimes.

DC Comics has pulled back tens of thousands of copies of "All-Star Batman and Robin" No. 10 due to a printing error that put two R-rated words into word balloons in the story. Which words? Well, one begins with "F" and the other begins with "C" -- and, yes, it's that C word. The issue was written by Frank Miller who didn't even know about the dustup until we called him. "This is the first I've heard of it. I have no idea how this awful thing happened. It's just one of those terrible and glorious things that happen from time to time in publishing."

An interesting article by Bob Guccione Jnr. (yes that one) on the future of media in MediaPost:

Secondly, there is the wisdom of the market, which has been gradually forgotten in the intoxicating Second Coming of New Media. People are presumed to be a guaranteed audience, no matter how many times the cell of an idea divides into multiple copies. But people are not chickens in a yard that you can throw a handful of grain at and watch them scurry around pecking at the dirt to find it all. People try most things that are new for a while and then gravitate to what really matters to them, especially when overwhelmed. They will choose what they want and won't turn up in as many actual places as they do on business plans. The amount of choice will tremendously raise the bar of quality and performance for competing media. Once again, a golden opportunity for experienced brands.

Reed continues to do all it can to off load the magazines with financing. Guardian American Booksellers Association is doing something that may actually benefit their members. They have organized a POD program with Applewood Press. Future Perfect if:Book has a long post on Publishing in a Networked Era.

The emergence of the web turned this vision of the book of the future as a solid, albeit multimedia object completely upside down and inside out. Multimedia is engaging, especially in a format that encourages reflection, but locating discourse inside of a dynamic network promises even more profound changes Reading and writing have always been social activities, but that fact tends to be obscured by the medium of print. We grew up with images of the solitary reader curled up in a chair or under a tree and the writer alone in his garret. The most important thing my colleagues and I have learned during our experiments with networked books over the past few years is that as discourse moves off the page onto the network, the social aspects are revealed in sometimes startling clarity. These exchanges move from background to foreground, a transition that has dramatic implications.

This guy advocates stealing. Is that true for the Boston Globe?

I was heartened to learn that college kids are wielding the same Internet piracy tools they used to bring down the recording industry to download textbooks. Although the textbook oligopolists are fighting back mightily - the Association of American Publishers uses Covington & Burling, a take-no-prisoners law firm in Washington, D.C., to hunt down malefactors - there are at least two sites still around offering books: Textbook Torrents tends to be shut down, and moves around the Web, but the last time I checked, thepiratebay.org was offering such books as - well, you'll see.