Scurrilous Amazon Reviews

Back to another of my favourite topics, online book reviews! Some Amazon reviews get attacked by paid hackers.

It all started when Rosie Alison’s novel The Very Thought Of You, was nominated for the Orange Prize, a prestigious award given to women authors in the united Kingdom whose books are passed over for other prizes. Alison’s book had not only been passed over for prizes but for any attention at all. But all that changed when the nominee list was announced: suddenly The Very Thought Of You was assailed by a barrage of nasty reader reviews on Amazon. “I feel cheated!” “One of the worst books I’ve ever, ever read.” “This book is so irredeemably awful that I didn’t get past page 58.”

HarperCollins, Big Tent Librarianship, Annoyed Librarian and Agnostic, Maybe

Now that you're familiar with the term 'big tent librarianship', here is an article by Andy from Agnostic Maybe entitled HarperCollins and Big-Tent Librarianship in which he discusses an Annoyed Librarian post about Public Library Privilege. Compare and contrast!

'Big Tent' Librarianship

'Big Tent' librarianship was mentioned in another article I found interesting and will shortly post, and since I had to look up what it was, I thought I'd share.

Under this big tent philosophy, I believe it is time for librarians to reach out and get to know the issues that face other types of libraries. It is time to bring down the misconception of professional separation and remember the core beliefs that are shared across the occupation. The mindset I propose strives for nothing less than unity of vision and sense of greater purpose within the profession. While we all attend to our own niche in the overall library picture, as peers we should work together toward the bigger picture for the continued vibrancy of all of the various roles of libraries of all types.

The theory is that our motivations for joining this career path are similar and we should unify and build from there. Stronger together than a lone, that sort of thing.

More on Amanda Hocking

More news concerning Amanda Hocking, discussed in the blog post Ebook Millionaire: she has signed with St. Martin's Press.

“I’ve done as much with self-publishing as any person can do,” Ms. Hocking said in an interview on Thursday. “People have bad things to say about publishers, but I think they still have services, and I want to see what they are. And if they end up not being any good, I don’t have to keep using them. But I do think they have something to offer.”

Michael Geist: How to Vote for the Internet

Of interest to Canadians: Michael Geist explains How to Vote for the Internet by asking a few questions of the candidates on subjects including affordable broadband, usage billing, and copyright legislation.

Movie Streaming Run-Around

Oh, blog. I have not forgotten you. Either I have been unintrigued by library news or hammered by schoolwork, but I can change. I promise.

Of interest: a new streaming-movie service allows you to rent remote access to a DVD player, thus sidestepping some copyright stuff.

Zediva has set up hundreds of DVD players. They’re automated, jukebox-style. You’re not just renting a movie; you’re actually taking control of the player that contains the movie you want. The DVD is simply sending you the audio and video signals, as if it were connected to your home with a really, really long cable.

It’s kind of hilarious to think that this arrangement is the solution to the future of online movies: data centers stacked to the ceiling with DVD players... Zediva is just buying dozens of copies of each popular movie on the day it comes out, and presto, it’s yours to rent by long distance.

Are Book Genres Being Replaced by Tags?

From io9: Are book genres being replaced by tags? Eric Rosenfield debates whether or not standard genres like 'fantasy' and 'sci fi' (and, one assumes, 'romance') can still be used to classify books when books have been splintered into tiny little niches that potentially cross over into multiple designations. Have an excerpt:

The thing is though, the handful of categories that fiction is still sold under-as classified on Barnes and Noble.com, "Fiction & Literature", "Mystery & Crime", "Science Fiction & Fantasy", "Teens", "Romance", "Horror", "Thrillers", "Westerns" (and lumped in is Poetry which is not fiction, and Graphic Novels which are another medium altogether)-are accidents of history and technology, and even these clear demarkations are of recent vintage; bookstores did not even have separate science fiction, mystery or romance sections until the 1980s or so, and books specifically marketed to niche groups were relegated primarily to book clubs, mail order, specialty stores, and if one was lucky, newsstands, all except the latter being where the modern genre categories really emerged after the implosion of the pulp magazine markets in the 1940s and of the bulk of the science fiction magazines in the 50s. And yet we now take these categories for granted and talk about "transcending" them as if they had such impenetrable physical form that they can only be passed over metaphysically.

The world that gave rise to these categories is fading rapidly into nonexistence. The new bookstores are not circumscribed by retail space, they're the limitless possibilities of a search box. We live in a world in which most any book you can think of can be downloaded to your home, and where anyone with an Internet connection can fill a blog with reviews, interviews, news items, and free-form ramblings about whatever she thinks is important. That is a paradigm shift on a level we don't fully understand yet.

I no longer believe we should stop using terms like science fiction and fantasy and so on; those terms can be useful in describing certain things, certain ways of reading. But their status as hard-and-fast slots into which we plug in all of our books is already starting to fade, as the once nebulous megacategory of science fiction and fantasy splinters into steampunk, urban fantasy, paranormal romance and so on, subcategories that once upon a time might have been merely commented on but which because of the 'Net have blossomed into subcultures all their own, distinct and often non-communicating with the groups reading the space opera or sword and sorcery that since Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings have dominated science fiction and fantasy respectively.

It is a big excerpt.