Book links roundup: Toronto Public Library’s advertising plans, Jackie Collins self-publishes, and more

• Toronto Public Library goes ahead with advertising sales plans
• Jackie Collins ditches her publisher for self-publishing
• Do video book trailers help sell more books?
• Apple refuses to sell books linked to Amazon
• The Boston Globe reports on the merge of libraries and bookstores

Book links roundup: Guerrilla libraries, Canadian Bookshelf rebrands, and more

• Architecture student John Locke turns New York phone booths into mini guerrilla libraries
• Amazon.ca lead sponsor for rebranding of Canadian Bookshelf as the 49th Shelf
• Musician Kanye West listed in acknowledgements of V. S. Naipaul biography
• McSweeney’s asks Wendy Macleod, what is poetry?
• Novelist Adam Wilson lists 10 best slacker novels

Book links roundup: Police sketches of literary characters, Bookninja’s send-off, and more

• The Atlantic on literary characters’ police composite sketches
• The National Post bids farewell to Bookninja
• Hot off her CBC Canada Reads win Carmen Aguirre performs her one-woman show based on her memoir Something Fierce
• Extremely close and incredibly personal: The Guardian‘s Q&A with Jonathan Safran Foer
• American Booksellers Association’s subsidiary IndieCommerce drops Amazon-published books

Why ebooks in Quebec are a taxing issue

While NPR urges the world to stop the ebook versus print debate, in Quebec, the debate has shifted to how digital titles are taxed, and what constitutes a “real book.”

According to Montreal’s The Gazette, the Quebec government has treated print books as zero-rated for tax purposes since 1996, but ebook sales can still include the 9.5 per cent provincial sales tax.

Robert Hayashi, CEO of the digital publishing advocacy organization eBound Canada, disagrees with the discrepancy. “Just like there is a hardcover (print book) format and a softcover format, ebooks are just another format,” he told the The Gazette. “So if government is not taxing the hardcover book, we believe that government should also not tax the ebook.”

In another Gazette article, Kobo’s vice-president of finance, Daniel Budlovsky, lamented that Quebec consumers who purchase ebooks through Kobo are charged both provincial and federal sales taxes, while those who buy their ebooks through U.S. competitor Amazon pay no sales taxes.

Although Budlovsky said the discrepancy “should be atrociously viewed by the Canadian public,” Kobo isn’t ready to battle the Canadian government to change the tax laws.

“We accept the law for what it is and feel that it should be changed but that is a long and bureaucratic process,” Budlovsky said. “We work in a … fast-moving industry where we need to stay ahead of the competition by working on things that are under our control.”

Book links roundup: Natalie Portman takes on Judith Krantz, beautiful bookstores, and more

• Natalie Portman is behind a new TV miniseries based on Judith Krantz’s steamy novel Scruples
• Take a peek at 20 of the most beautiful bookstores in the world
• The New York Times reports Barnes and Noble won’t stock Amazon-published titles
• Collette, Dorothy Parker, and Anaïs Nin among 10 legendary bad-ass girls of literature
• The Lambda Literary Awards are set for June 4, 2012, at City University of New York

Book links roundup: Oscars get literary, a toast to Robbie Burns, and more

• Thirteen 2012 Oscar-nominated movies adapted from books
• Toast Robbie Burns Day with the Toronto Star’s Scottish beer recommendations
• Amazon Publishing strikes print licensing agreement with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Knopf executive Paul Bogaards’s tongue-in-cheek list of top 100 players in book publishing
• Slideshow: Scott Pilgrim fan captures locations from the graphic novels on camera
• Wild turkey breaks into South Dakota library

Is Apple studying the e-textbook market?

An Apple event scheduled for Jan. 19 has insiders speculating the technology giant will announce its entrance into the e-textbook market.

In advance of the education-themed event, tech website betanews.com compiled a list of Apple’s potential U.S. competitors, which includes Amazon’s e-textbook rental program and online distributor CourseSmart.

Condé Nast tech website Ars Technica suggests Apple isn’t interested in becoming a content provider, but will announce production tools that will allow anyone to publish interactive e-books for distribution on Apple devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Last week, eBound Canada, the digital arm of the Association of Canadian Publishers, announced a partnership with Follett Canada that would give elementary and secondary schools greater access to titles by independent Canadian publishers.

Investigating the dirty business of plagiarized erotica on Amazon

Fast Company has a fascinating article about the volume of plagiarized erotica on Amazon’s Kindle Select self-publishing platform.

According to the story, small press owner and erotica author Sharazade, suspicious of another top-selling author, Maria Cruz, began googling passages from Cruz’s books and discovered most of them were lifted directly from books such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But it’s not just well-known authors being copied. Free erotica-publishing websites such as Literotica are regularly pillaged for content. In fact, Fast Company journalist Adam Penenberg did a “down-and-dirty textual analysis” of author Robin Scott’s 31 titles in the Kindle store, and concluded that all were plagiarized from other sources.

Amazon doesn’t vet its self-published books, putting the onus on the aggrieved author to make claims of copyright infringement. But, as the article notes, it’s not just erotica, or Amazon, that is facing major problems with copyright and plagiarism. Canadian author S.K.S. Perry discovered someone else was selling his fantasy novel Darkside for $2.99 as a Kindle ebook, and several plagiarized titles from various sources have been removed from the Apple iBookstore. Penenberg says we shouldn’t be surprised:

Self-publishing has become the latest vehicle for spammers and content farms, with the sheer volume of self-published books making it difficult, if not impossible, for e-stores like Amazon to vet works before they go on sale. In 2006, 51,000 self-published titles were released; last year there were 133,036 self-published books, and that number is destined to climb. 

Writing a book is hard. All those torturous hours an author has to spend creating, crafting, culling until nonsensical words are transformed into engaging prose. It’s a whole lot easier to copy and paste someone else’s work, slap your name on top, and wait for the money to roll in. This creates a strong economic incentive, with fake authors.

Target to join Canadian book retailers in spring 2013

It looks like Canadian book retailers will have some bright red competition next year.

Toronto Life reports that U.S. big-box giant Target has confirmed the locations of its first 24 stores in Canada. All are in Ontario, scheduled to open by early April 2013. The majority of the remaining 100 to 110 stores planned across Canada will also open next year.

It’s too early to say what impact Target will have on Canadian book retail. In the U.S.,Target.com currently offers almost 6,000 titles in its online bookstore, predominantly in the bestseller, lifestyle, and children’s categories. Price-wise, the chain is competitive with other large retailers; for example, the recently released paperback version of Tina Fey’s Bossypants costs $10.34 (U.S.) at Target and Walmart, and $10.87 on Amazon.

Target recently reported weak December sales in electronics, movies, books, and music.

Book links roundup: 2011 Canadian bestsellers, Apple self-publishing rumours, and more

• Random House of Canada and Penguin Canada lead Canadian entries on the 2011 Globe & Mail bestsellers’ list
• Is Apple launching a digital self-publishing program?
• Kitty lit: reimagined classics from The Sound and the Furry to The Great Catsby
• James Franco sells debut novel to Amazon
  
• Jonathan Lethem has “no stake in defending lame stuff”
• Remembering U.K. illustrator and cartoonist Ronald Searle