Blog on ebooks, publishing, libraries, tech, and related topics
Glasgow 2024 Worldcon ends commandingly
by Paul StJohn Mackintosh
22 Aug 2024 at 6:21am
Glasgow 2024, a.k.a. the 82nd World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), concluded on Monday 12 August, finishing five days of celebrating science fiction, fantasy and speculative writing, in the shadow of the Finnieston Crane, a symbol of Glasgow?s industrial past, at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SEC), a futuristic emblem of its present. By a […]
Highland Hugos deliver a clean slate
by Paul StJohn Mackintosh
14 Aug 2024 at 9:14am
At the Hugo Awards ceremony for Glasgow Worldcon 2024 on the evening of Sunday 11 August, the event overcame any of the earlier issues around attempts to interfere with the judging process, and produced an exemplary and transparent ballot, with a stellar list of winners. Held in the huge SEC Armadillo auditorium of the Scottish […]
Yay LA for Worldcon 2026
by Paul StJohn Mackintosh
11 Aug 2024 at 5:38pm
One of the most hotly awaited, and contested, outcomes of any Worldcon is the location of the next unassigned Worldcon. Competing bids for the next location two years hence are keenly supported by stands and collaterals—for Worldcons to come. And now we know the lucky recipient for 2026: Los Angeles. As officially announced during Worldcon […]
A Cracking Caledonian Worldcon
by Paul StJohn Mackintosh
11 Aug 2024 at 5:12pm
It?s a pleasure to be reporting from the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon, the 82nd World Science Fiction Convention, ?a Worldcon for our futures,? held in the Scottish Events Campus on the banks of the Clyde. Despite Glasgow?s historic reputation as a cast-iron-and-coal Victorian industrial capital, the SEC is a suitably modernistic venue for a Worldcon, with […]
Glasgow 2024 Worldcon: Voting scandal and an excellent, transparent response
by Paul StJohn Mackintosh
31 Jul 2024 at 8:53am
I will report for TeleRead from Glasgow for Worldcon 2024 next month, but as many may know, the news has already started. A brazen attempt was made to suborn the voting process for the 2024 Hugo Awards, and the organizers both spotted and publicized the chicanery. The Glasgow 2024 Hugo Administration Subcommittee promptly issued a […]
How an AI-powered $15 marketing tool could boost your book sales
by David Rothman
6 Jun 2024 at 7:58pm
Artificial intelligence has taken its share of knocks from the creative community—and with good reason. Consider the unauthorized use of a Scarlett Johansson-like voice, for example, or all the flashy, endlessly touted bots that fall short of their hype. But what if a humble little $14.99 AI service could help you market your next book—cranking […]
Strasbourg: On the ground in the World Book Capital City
by Paul StJohn Mackintosh
26 May 2024 at 4:52pm
A few days ago, I was in Strasbourg, designated in April 2024 the UNESCO 2024 World Book Capital City (WBCC). And that?s a fitting award, because for lovers of books and the printed word, Strasbourg is to some extent where it all began. It was there around 1440 that Johannes Gutenberg purportedly developed the principle […]
Oh, those irritating citations! Might blockchains help?
by Paul StJohn Mackintosh
4 May 2024 at 2:29pm
I?ve recently been head down over the keyboard filling in the endnotes and other citations for my upcoming historical work, The Liberation of Strasbourg. It?s my first brush in forever with academic citation, and I?m not relishing the experience. Aren’t those citation requirements a headache? Could blockchains rescue us? Honestly, the pain isn’t just from the tedious task of creating citations; […]
A portable Bluetooth speaker that ?sings in the rain?: The Tribit XSound Go
by Paul StJohn Mackintosh
4 May 2024 at 12:45pm
I can hardly pass a moment at home without an audiobook or an audio podcast playing. But I haven?t invested in a new Bluetooth speaker for a long time. So the Tribit XSound Go, selling for $36.99 USD, was a welcome generational upgrade. No more Micro-USB charging—instead, the Tribit has a USB-C socket, exactly the […]
Build your own chatbot to promote your book: Lessons from my ScandalsBot
by David Rothman
26 Apr 2024 at 11:14am
I call it the ScandalsBot. If you ask what Washington sleaze inspired The Solomon Scandals, the bot will oblige. The bot can also compare my corruption novel with All the President?s Men and other Washington books, or it can explain why I mixed genres rather than just writing suspense. What?s more, it can lay out […]
Create a spiffy auto-narrated book for free?and reach Apple, B&N, OverDrive, ...
by David Rothman
13 Dec 2023 at 6:23pm
Can humans be better audiobook narrators than bots? Of course. Like the amazing Dion Graham, who narrated my Drone Child novel, the best vocal whizzes don’t just read. They act. If only I could afford to use Dion on all my titles! But for nonfiction and the right novels, auto-narration is now good enough as […]
Scribe faces a strong Chinese rival able to turn handwritten notes into searc...
by David Rothman
5 Jan 2023 at 10:51pm
Could this be one reason why the Kindle Scribe has gone on sale? For $400, Lenovo later this year is to sell a Scribe rival able to record lectures with two built-in mikes and turn handwritten notes into searchable text. Handily, you can sync the audio recordings with notes. Perhaps a tool for journalists, too, […]
Sherlock Holmes ?Case Book,? Virginia Woolf classic, others added to public d...
by David Rothman
5 Jan 2023 at 8:15pm
“On January 1, 2023, copyrighted works from 1927 will enter the US public domain.?1? They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. These include Virginia Woolf?s To The Lighthouse and the final Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, the German science-fiction film Metropolis and Alfred Hitchcock?s first thriller, compositions by […]
Kindle?s 10.2? Scribe drops to $295 on sale: I got one
by David Rothman
5 Jan 2023 at 3:56pm
Eager to try out the Kindle Scribe?s handwritten-note capability, I gambled $419 on the 64GB version with the deluxe pen. Loser! I was up against such nuisances as a 50MB cap on PDF files transferred online, and I didn’t want to mess with workarounds. Not to mention the Scribe screen being too slick for me […]
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