Texas Schools Ban Author for Book He Didn’t Even Write

When I read things like this it just fills me with despair.  This is the reason the USA is falling apart…  This is the reason why our economy is going to hell, why our politicians can’t get anything done…  We’ve become a nation of flaming idiots.

A school board in Texas was so terrified that their children might learn something about Marxism that they banned all books written by Bill Martin Jr. – who has never written a book about Marxism.

The guy who did write a book about Marxism is Bill Martin – notice the lack of “Jr.” there.  A subtle difference, sure…  But you’d think somebody might have done a little research before banning an author’s books.

All they did is throw the guy’s name at a Borders web search…  And when they saw the Marxism title they banned him.

Nobody read the Marxism book to see whether it was appropriate for children.  Nobody read the children’s books to see whether any Marxist sentiments showed up.  Nobody even bothered to make sure it was the same author.  They just banned him.

Looks like there’s been an update to the nook’s firmware.  I’m not entirely sure when it was released…  I’ve been too busy and too exhausted lately to do much more than crash in bed at the end of the day.  But there’s an update out, and it’s been downloaded and installed on my nook.

The first thing I noticed was a new GUI.  The buttons look more like buttons now…  Everything has a slightly rounded and contoured look to it.  Frankly, I liked the old style better.  The interface was much simpler.

There’s also the ability now to sort your “My Documents” section by author’s name or book’s title.  This is very handy because previously that section was sorted by file name, which wasn’t always helpful.

What I’d really like to see is the ability to organize my ebooks in some way – to be able to tag them, or sort them into folders, or something.

I’ve got roughly 150 books on my nook.  Some of those I’ve read, some of them I haven’t.  And I’d really like to get the read ones out of the way without removing them entirely.

With books purchased on the B&N website you can “archive” them…  This removes the book from your nook, but leaves it in your on-line library, so you can download it again.  And the book’s title on the nook gets grayed-out, so it is obvious that the book has been archived.

With the books that you add from other sources, however, there is no such functionality.  The ebooks all wind up in your “My Documents” section, and there’s no way to categorize them beyond simply sorting by title or author.

Slashdot | Amazon Surrenders to Macmillan on eBook Pricing

Amazon has thrown in the towel and announced it will now sell books at Macmillan’s increased prices; up to $14.99 from $9.99. Said Amazon in a statement: ‘We will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.’ Macmillan has sensed Apple’s iBooks opens the way for higher prices. Perhaps the question should be: do we even need publishers like Macmillian? Publishers have long managed to keep their old business model chugging along nicely despite the Internet; Academics are still forced to give up copyright (PDF) of their work in exchange for publication. Textbook publishers have a history of unethical practices like frequent edition changes, unjustifiable price increases and bribing teachers. For that matter, why do the RIAA’s members still control the music business? Why do these dinosaur publishing businesses still manage to thrive despite the Internet?

I’m really not convinced that this is a horrible thing.

Obviously I’d like to pay as little as possible…  Free is always good…  But I do believe that authors deserve to be paid for their labor.

And it isn’t like this is going to be an across-the-board price increase.  They aren’t going to start charging $15 for some trade paperback that sells for $5 in Borders.  This price increase is going to affect brand new releases and large, expensive volumes.  The things that normally cost $15 or more in paper editions.

But, I do think we’re going to start seeing a shift in book publishing as ebooks and their readers become more common.  Just as the recording industry is becoming increasing irrelevant in the age of broadband and MP3s…  I think the publishing industry is going to have problems with ubiquitous ebook readers.

I suspect that as people become accustomed to reading their books and magazines on the computer, or Kindle, or nook, or iPad, or their smartphones we’re going to see an explosion of authors publishing directly to electronic formats.  And I think the paper publishing companies are going to find themselves in a hard place – just like newspapers and record labels are.

Finished reading Already Dead last night.

Good book.  Fairly quick read…  Not terribly deep or substantial…  But a lot of fun.  I’ll definitely be reading more of these Joe Pitt books.  Which clearly shows the wisdom of making that book available for free…  It really isn’t the kind of book I would ever have purchased for myself.  But, because it was free, I read it anyway.  And now I’m going to go out and buy more.  Smart.

I’ve just started in on DEAD(ish) by Naomi Kramer.  Another ebook I got for free on the Barnes & Noble website.

Honestly, I didn’t even really check to see what it was about.  The cover looked cute, it had “dead” in the title, and it was free.  So I grabbed it.

When I opened it up for the first time on my nook I noticed something interesting though…  In the first few pages, where the copyright notice normally is, it indicated that the ebook is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution and Non-Commercial Use license.

This is interesting, because no dead tree publisher would ever touch such a license.

A quick search showed that while someone named Naomi Kramer does have some other books published…  DEAD(ish) is only available in ebook form…  And is published by Smashwords, Inc.

Smashwords appears to publish only ebooks…  And it appears to be completely free.  Simply create an account, submit your manuscript, and off you go.

So, once again, we see digital distribution breaking down the barriers to entry.  Just like the advent of the Internet, inexpensive computers, good-enough recording equipment, and MP3s made it possible for pretty much anyone to record and distribute music…  The advent of the Internet, inexpensive computers, and good-enough ebook formats is making it possible for pretty much anyone to publish and distribute books.

Very cool stuff.

Corporate Mission Night, Part 2, didn’t happen last night.  I didn’t really plan on attending, since it was TV Night…  But I was logged in and doing my own thing for a few hours last night anyway.  And as the 8:00 mark approached, there were only three of us in corp. chat.  I don’t know if anyone else showed up later…  But the place was looking pretty dead when I logged off for the night.

Of course, TV Night didn’t happen either.  Like I said yesterday, there really isn’t anything that makes Wednesday nights special anymore.  There aren’t any special shows on, and we can watch the shows we like whenever we want.

So, Terri and I wound up reading last night.  Just curled up in bed and cracked open a couple books.

I finished reading The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes yesterday…  Every single story except for The Adventure of the Final Problem seemed familiar to me.  I’m still not sure how I managed to miss that story before…

So, now I’m on to a new book – Already Dead by Charlie Huston.

It isn’t really the kind of book I’d normally read…  It’s kind of a detective story with vampires, and a bit of a noir feel to it…

But it was free on Barnes & Noble, and it looked interesting, so I grabbed it and gave it a try.

So far I’m enjoying it quite a bit.