Tuesday Midday Links: Kobo Delves into Self Publishing, Great Stop Motion Video of Hemingway Classic

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From Reader Lana:

Your midday link about Amazon being evil really got me thinking. See, I live in Canada, you know that place just North of the USA. Really close by in fact. Now, it seems a few authors that I have been reading for years are deciding to only sell their books with Amazon from their backlist. I have asked some of these authors about perhaps listing with KOBO, as that is what is mainly supported up here in Canada. Most authors are more than willing to try this, but within the past few weeks, one author has said, no she wants Amazon Kindle exclusives only. In fact, she just released a new book there as well. This has made me decide that I will no longer be supporting this author at all. Am I alone in this? Are there authors that others have stopped supporting because they are sticking to exclusivity?

Have other readers stopped supporting an author? After all, if she goes exclusive, is she really supporting you the reader?

Kobo to become a publisher – Arts & Entertainment – CBC News – Kobo is offering self publishing services to authors akin to BN’s PubIt! and Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. “Canadian-based e-book seller Kobo is following in Amazon’s footsteps and creating a publishing arm that will deal directly with authors, CBC News has learned. Kobo, whose major shareholder is Indigo Books, will roll out its program sometime next year, according to CEO Michael Serbinis.” I’ve heard that Kobo has been romancing agents so it will be interesting to see if there are some agent firms that begin to utilize (or maybe already are) Kobo’s service. CBC News

Thanks To E-Books, Publishers Find Flat Is The New Up | paidContent – Ebooks are profitable for publishers. More profitable than print books under the current agency pricing scheme. In three cases – Random House, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster – rising ebook profits have helped publishers maintain their profits, although not grow them. paidContent

MIT Develops Self-Sculpting Sand That Can Replicate Objects | TPM Idea Lab – Science fiction authors are going to have to try harder to keep one step ahead of actual science. “On Monday, MIT announced that researchers had successfully developed a prototype of the system out of robotic, magnetic cubes — “robot pebbles” — each one cubic centimeter, or 10 mm per side, that could successfully replicate 2D shapes. Shapes replicated so far include 2 x 2 cubes and 90-degree blocks. The team has also developed algorithms that reliably simulate what the system would be like when scaled down to “sand-sized particles” and it has the potential to be revolutionary, allowing someone to stick a solid object in the smart sand and watch it self-sculpt itself into an exact copy within several minutes.” TPM Idea Lab

A Beautifully Illustrated Stop-Motion Animation of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea – the old man and the sea from Marcel Schindler on Vimeo. Gorgeous stop motion animation of Old Man and the Sea. Gizmodo