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Right-reading (adj): Having the proper orientation (used in printing)

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Today is Thursday, March 18, 2010 2:02 pm (U.S. central time).

“The multitude of books is making us ignorant.”
-- Voltaire

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On this date on this blog

03-18-2009 Shakespeare, again

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Tom Christensen
("xensen") ^. tom [at] rightreading.com

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Giving It Away

Tim O’Reilly has posted some observations on whether allowing free downloads of books hurts or helps their sales. This is a question that is difficult to resolve empirically. O’Reilly allowed free downloads of their title Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, by Leif Madsen, Jared Smith, and Jim Van Meggelen. 180,000 copies were downloaded and about 19,000 print copies were sold. It’s hard to be sure how to evaluate this but O’Reilly concludes that, at least, the downloads didn’t hurt sales, and he is probably in the best position to know.

Related News Item: Jonathan Lethem advocates relaxing copyright.

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This companion blog to www.rightreading.com explores the full gamut of print and electronic publication, from conception, research, and editing through design, typesetting, and image preparation, through paper, print, and pixel on to marketing and sales. It seeks to integrate the editorial and design functions, which too seldom communicate effectively. Books, authors, translation, and reviewing are also covered.

Some rights reserved 2010 blog.rightreading.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons (attribution, noncommercial, no derivs: 3.0) License (US), although some of the work this blog incorporates may be separately licensed.