Worth Reading

Or is that metareading? Reading about reading? Anyway, a bunch of writing about reading:

These first two noted from TeleRead.
CNET: Randal Picker - Buy the book, get the search service.
"Amazon Upgrade is something else entirely: digital access to books purchased through Amazon. This is a really clever move by Amazon. The company is changing the basic scope of the book business, and this will put even more pressure on independent booksellers and even large operators like Barnes & Noble and Borders. And Amazon has come up with a structure that should put meaningful limits on the sharing of digital texts."

Bill McCoy (he works at Adobe): How Not to Make eBooks "Take Off."
"In order to create a compelling eBook user experience, must we abandon an open ecosystem, where publishers and users have choices of different kinds of rights and different channels for acquiring content?"
But read Bill's other posts as well--he has a couple on the future of reading.

Barbara Quint at Infotoday: Books Online: The Fee versus Free Battle Begins.
"For those of little faith when it comes to Microsoft’s long-term commitment to open access (OA), the company’s strategy for revenue generation may be in a general process of change. On Oct. 30, Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s CTO, circulated a memo with a cover letter from chairman Bill Gates, that advocated adjusting revenue generation to the Internet Age. Gates stated, “The next sea change is upon us” and Ozzie advised, “In some cases, it may be possible for one to obtain more (software) revenue through the advertising model than through a traditional licensing model.”
Someone always has to pay the tab, but when it’s O.P.M (Other People’s Money), it feels free to the users."

And finally an excellent explication of the most confusing "Google Print Book Search Publisher Partner Library Project Program" from Siva Vaidhyanathan, whom some of you might have heard at ALA in the summer.