Awards: 2010 Shirley Jackson Nominees

The nominees for the 2010 Shirley Jackson Awards have been announced. The Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.  The Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented at Readercon 22, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts.

Novel

• Dark Matter, Michelle Paver (Orion)
• A Dark Matter, Peter Straub (Doubleday)
• Feed, Mira Grant (Orbit)
• Mr. Shivers, Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)
• The Reapers Are the Angels, Alden Bell (Holt)
• The Silent Land, Graham Joyce (Gollancz)

Photo: Final Fate of the Britannica

Finally, a good use for all of those old volumes of Britannica laying about.

Quote: On DRM

Let’s say my goal is to sell 10,000 copies of something. And let’s say that if by putting DRM in it I sell 10,000 copies and I make my money, and if by having no DRM 100,000 copies go into circulation and I still sell 10,000 copies. Which of those is the better outcome? I think having 100,000 in circulation and selling 10,000 is way better than having just the 10,000 that are paid for and nobody else benefits.

People who don’t pay you generally wouldn’t have paid you anyway. We’re delighted when people who can’t afford our books don’t pay us for them, if they go out and do something useful with that information.

I think having faith in that basic logic of the market is important. Besides, DRM interferes with the user experience. It makes it much harder to have people adopt your product.

- Tim O’Reilly in an interview with Jon Bruner. "Tim O’Reilly on Piracy, Tinkering, and the Future of the Book" by Jon Bruner, March 25, 2011.

Link: Open Library

Open Library offers over 1.7 million public domain books in PDF, ePub, Daisy, DjVu and ASCII text through its affiliation with the Internet Archive.

At its heart, Open Library is a catalog. The project began in November 2007 and has been inhaling catalog records from some of the biggest libraries in the world ever since. They have well over 20 million edition records online, provide access to 1.7 million scanned versions of books.

Holiday: Public Library Appreciation Day!

Happy Public Library Appreciation Day!

"National Library Week is April 12 this year, and this week-long celebration gives individuals a chance to truly recognize all the great things these ancient institutions have to offer. From free books to career courses, libraries are a source of information and inspiration for young minds and can be a lifesaver for those facing tough economic times. Whether you choose to honor your college library or one in your community, here are a few ways that you can use this week to promote, appreciate and praise your local cornerstones."

Celebrate the day by browsing photo galleries of The United States’ Most Beautiful Libraries and The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries. Learn more at the Public Library Appreciation Day wiki or read a list of 50 Great Ways to Celebrate on Library Appreciation Day.

Book Reading: Serpent's Storm (NSFW)

Amber Benson and Patrick Rothfuss read a sex scene from Serpent's Storm, Benson's newest novel, with hilarious results. (NSFW)

There are plenty of other related videos taken at the event, but if you're a fan of Rothfuss and Benson, their discussion of the difference between Epic Fantasy and Urban Fantasy is particularly interesting.

Cover Art: The Magician King

At long last, Lev Grossman has unveiled the cover of The Magician King, the sequel to his excellent 2009 novel The Magicians. The book doesn't hit shelves August 9, 2011, but you can pre-order it now on Amazon now.

The image one the cover is actually a photograph of a highly detailed model built by French artist Didier Massard. You can read an interview with him The Morning News.