Stupid Nonsense Archives | The Digital Reader

How Kobo Overcame Great Odds & Showed Maverick Thinking, Or, How to Masturbate in Public

18 June, 201630 December, 2016Stupid Nonsense30 Comments

Kobo published a self-congratulatory post on Medium this week which was sorely lacking in any achievements worth celebrating. They’ve posted the text of the talk Rakuten Kobo...

Clickbait: B&N Plans to Close 197 Bookstores by 2022

5 January, 20165 January, 2016Stupid NonsenseOne Comment

There’s a ridiculous little story making its way around the web this week. A certain ebook blog has used bad math, a magic 8-ball, and their own...

The Atlantic: Amazon Just Replaced the Public Library

3 November, 201516 June, 2016Amazon, Bookstore, Libraries, Stupid Nonsense7 Comments

When a news organization has to cover an important story like Amazon’s new bookstore, they can usually either find an expert to write the article, or...

Japanese Readers Spend the Most on eBooks, And Other Unsubstantiated Clickbait

4 August, 201512 May, 2017Infographic, Stupid Nonsense12 Comments

So yesterday Business Insider posted a nifty-looking chart that claimed Japanese readers would be spending the most on ebooks this year, followed closely by Brits. As...

Book Industry Hates Its Biggest Customer, Collectively Calls on DoJ to Investigate Amazon

13 July, 20159 June, 2018Amazon, Antitrust, Publishing, Stupid Nonsense, The Authors Guild30 Comments

Judging by the media circus that just came to town, something huge is about to happen in the book world. The book industry has kicked off a...

HarperCollins Missed an Opportunity With the “Watchman” Excerpt

8 July, 20158 July, 2015Publishing, Stupid Nonsense2 Comments

Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman is due to hit store shelves next week. This is one of the more anticipated releases of the year. The publishers...

New Conspiracy Theory: Amazon to Expand Pay-Per-Page to Entire Kindle Store

25 June, 201525 June, 2015Amazon, Stupid Nonsense4 Comments

I hope you have had your tin foil hat ready because I have a whopper of a conspiracy theory for you today. Update: Before you go...

YOLO Juliet Improves on Shakespeare By Adding TextSpeak

14 June, 20159 May, 2016Publishing, Stupid Nonsense4 Comments

Over the past 400 years Shakespeare’s works have been staged innumerable times, with each new performance making subtle alterations to the original. Few of those productions, however, have...

Girl Ordered to Stop Reading on the Bus Because “She Might Poke Herself in the Eye”

23 April, 20156 September, 2015Stupid Nonsense15 Comments

A Canadian bus driver has starter a one person campaign to save the next generation from becoming a bunch of eyepatch wearing book lovers. The CBC...

Porter Anderson Wants Indie Authors to Sit Down And Shut Up

3 April, 201516 November, 2019Stupid Nonsense16 Comments

In a classic case of concern trolling, noted publishing industry pundit Porter Anderson calls on leading indie authors to stop being so noisy at recruiting new...

Ancestry.com Files Bogus DMCA Notice to Keep Public Domain Records Offline

8 February, 201520 July, 2015DMCA, Intellectual Property, Stupid Nonsense2 Comments

Long the go-to site for declassified US govt documents, The Black Vault has recently faced a setback in its efforts to digitize and upload records from...

France Bans Wifi From Nursery Schools

3 February, 201516 November, 2019Stupid Nonsense9 Comments

If I had to put together a list of all the things I don’t fear, the harmful effects of Wifi would come right after dihydrogen monoxide...

Time Thinks “Amazon’s Dispute With Hachette Might Finally Be Hurting Its Sales”

27 October, 201411 May, 2017DeBunking, Stupid Nonsense9 Comments

Over the past 6 months I have read many questionable arguments about the Amazon-Hachette dispute, but few rose to the level of sheer unsubstantiated clickbait as the...

Apple Just Shipped the 500 Millionth iPhone, But if They Don’t Ship an iWatch in the Next Couple Months They’re Doomed

25 March, 201425 March, 2014Apple, Stupid Nonsense2 Comments

In the past 7 years Apple has sold more smartphones and more tablets than anyone, but according to one analyst none of that matters if Apple...

The “Book as a Luxury Item” is not the Future of Publishing

31 December, 201331 December, 2013Stupid Nonsense10 Comments

Do you recall how David Streitfield, Mike Shatzkin, and others have been writing about the general market failure of anything but the more basic ebooks? Some...