Recent
Jul. 11-15, 2011 | Association for Cultural Studies Summer Institute, University of Ghent, Belgium
Mar. 18, 2011 | American Cultures in the Digital Age Conference, Vanderbilt University
Mar. 25, 2010 | Cooper Lecture Series, Swarthmore College
Feb. 22, 2010 | Information Society Program, University of Illinois
Oct. 30, 2009 | Scholarly Communication Committee, Georgetown University
Oct. 22, 2009 | Department of Communication Studies, University of Iowa
Oct. 11, 2009 | Honors Convocation, University of Illinois
OR, HOW TO SAVE INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES ONE E-BOOK AT A TIME Several weeks ago I mentioned the “Cultures of Books and Reading” class I’m teaching this semester at Indiana University. It’s been a blast so far. My students have had so many provocative things to say about the present and future of book culture. More [...]
Last week I blogged about the proliferation of book rental programs, particularly those focused on college students and their textbooks. I raised questions about their promises of savings over traditional purchase and buyback, and asked whether most college students ever truly bought their textbooks, anyway. But there’s more at stake in book renting — beyond [...]
I’ve been struck this start of the school year by the proliferation of textbook rental outfits here in Bloomington, Indiana and elsewhere. Locally there’s TXTBookRental Bloomington, which brokers exclusively in rented course texts, as well as TIS and the IU Bookstore (operated by Barnes & Noble), both of whom sell books in addition to offering [...]
It’s been awfully quiet around here for the past six weeks or so. I’ve had a busy summer filled with travel, academic writing projects, and quality time with my young son. Blogging, regretfully, ended up falling by the wayside. I’m pleased to announce that The Late Age of Print is back after what amounted to [...]
About a week ago Michael Eisen, who teaches evolutionary biology at UC Berkeley, blogged about a shocking discovery one of his postdocs had made in early April. The discovery happened not in his lab, but of all places on Amazon.com. While searching the site for a copy of Peter Lawrence’s book The Making of a [...]
Just before Christmas I blogged here about the closing of the Borders Bookstore here in my home community of Bloomington, Indiana. Friday, January 7, 2011 was the store’s final day of operation. I visited it for the last time on Wednesday, January 5th and snapped a few pictures. Even for those of you who may [...]
Three months ago I blogged here about the plight of the U.S.’s two major big-box bookstore chains, Barnes & Noble and Borders, both of which have been struggling due to the combined effect of the economic downturn and intensifying competition online. Of the two, Borders has been the hardest hit. Thebookseller.com reports that the chain [...]
“Well folks, it’s official: literature is dead,” announces Geekologie, in a post commenting on this photo, snapped at a Barnes & Noble bookstore: Evidently this is a real placard meant to direct shoppers to a new section of the store. It’s capitalizing on the extraordinary success of Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight series and all of those [...]
After more than a decade of dominance fueled by aggressive expansion, the leading big-box bookstore chains in the United States are hurting. Borders is barely hanging on by a financial thread, with an almost $38 million loss near the end of 2009 sending the company into a tailspin. 2010 began with a round of layoffs, [...]
First, a few of updates. I just finished a draft of a new preface for The Late Age of Print, which will be appearing in the (drum roll please!) NEW PAPERBACK EDITION due out in January, 2011. The piece develops and extends some of the ideas from one of my favorite blog entries, “Books: An [...]
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