Dostoevsky, meet Dungeons & Dragons: Can video games promote reading?

In another installment in its series about the future of reading, the New York Times ran a piece this week about the tie ins between video games and books that some publishers and authors are beginning to explore. One author of a science fiction book for teens remarks:
“You can’t just make a book anymore,” [...]

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PIRG claims e-textbooks are due for “Course Correction”

In a stinging critique of its recent foray into the field of digital textbooks, the publishing industry was taken to task in a report released this week  by the Student Public Interest Research Group. The study, entitled, “Course Correction: How Digital Textbooks Are Off Track, and How to Set Them Straight”, outlines the findings of [...]

The new social: reading a book

It has been noted by some observers that Amazon has not really taken advantage of the Social Web in building a community of Kindle lovers and ebook readers. This failing was described in a particularly succinct post, in which the blogger describes a scenario in which she has just finished reading a great book, and [...]

Getting kids to read: Take them to the movies

Yesterday the New York Times ran a story headlined: “To Reach Children, Publisher Tries Films”. It starts off:
When the children’s book series “The Spiderwick Chronicles” became a popular Hollywood film, its publisher, Simon & Schuster, enjoyed a subsequent lift in book sales — and little else. But under a new deal with the Gotham Group, [...]

Blood, Guts and Books: WSJ says boys prefer ghoulish, not girlish, lit

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting Page One article about the lengths publishers are going to in order to interest pre-teen boys in reading. Citing an academic study that:
tracked boys’ reading habits for five years ending in 2005 and found that schools failed to meet their “motivational needs.” Teachers assigned novels about relationships, such as [...]

NY Times asks: “R U Really Reading Online?”

Yesterday The Times ran an article on Page One that was the first of a series that will investigate how the internet and other technological and social forces are changing the way people read. The article features several families with children who prefer to read on the Web rather than with books, [...]

Does “Reading First” put reading last?

Several weeks ago the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to eliminate funding for the Reading First program, the groundbreaking but controversial Bush administration program that has given states $1 billion a year since 2002 to teach low-income elementary schoolers to read. A House committee also had voted to eliminate funding; if money is not restored [...]

College Textbook Economics 101: Pay, or Pirate and Party?

With a new semester starting in a little over a month, the media is full of coverage of the cost of textbooks, and what publishers, colleges and students are doing about it. As you might expect, the solutions and strategies vary depending on which segment of the market they are coming from.
The first article comes [...]

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