The mainstream debate on the future of the book is still very much caught up in the print versus digital question: whether we engage in one industrial process or another, to produce one form of technology or another, to essentially deliver the same artefact: a device capable of storing and delivering text-based information. While the […]

Well, it’s official: the (printed) book is dead, long live the (e)book. Or so many political and cultural elites would like us to believe. On the very day of my writing this blog, for example, we were subjected to federal Minister for Small Business Nick Sherry’s apocalyptic diagnosis that Australian booksellers will be annihilated within […]

HarperCollins is committed to the library channel. We believe this change balances the value libraries get from our titles with the need to protect our authors and ensure a presence in public libraries and the communities they serve for years to come. Remember the library card inside the front cover (sometimes the back) that used […]

Without a doubt, the greatest thing about ebooks is their convenience. If it’s 2am and you must read Anna Krien’s Into the Woods because an unexpected need to understand Tasmania’s environmental politics arises, in this day and age, you should be able to buy that book (in much the same way as you could find […]

Ever since I read Jacob Lambert’s piece at The Millions last week, The Paper-Reader’s Dilemma, I’ve been thinking about the possibility of a casual proliferation in electronic reading. How the transition might overtake us without our permission, without, in fact, us even realising. In his piece about admitting digital change, Lambert wrote: I might say […]

Roughly 5 million eReaders were sold around the world in 2009. For the uninitiated, the world of the eReader can be positively perplexing, brimming with assumed knowledge. The Kindle is possibly the most recognised reader, with the much talked about but as yet unreleased iPad a close second. Then again, a quick Google search reveals […]

I read to live. My house is full of books, far more than I could ever read and I have to ration my book buying. (Imagine having an e-reader that could hold another 1500 books!) Last Wednesday I found myself accidentally caught up in the debate about e-books versus the printed book. In the afternoon […]

As a writer, and as a reader, I am daunted by the digital age. Perhaps this is because I am not technically savvy, but I think the fears are more deeply rooted. Writing that is only published in a digital form seems less permanent and more vulnerable to being tampered with or lost and forgotten. […]