Potter & More

I finally had a chance to look at J.K. Rowling's Pottermore, which has been sending shockwaves as well as lots of speculation through the industry since it materialized. Not much to see at this point, although the news folks claim that the author is cutting off publishers and booksellers from taking a slice of the profits while using it to release e-book versions of her phenomenal series and offer some sort of interactive experience for readers. However it turns out, I think it's an interesting experiment, potentially an enormous cash machine, and certainly a great way to hang onto the worldwide online readership and their love for all things Harry.

Amazon.com finally brings the questionable ethics of compensated blurbing out into the open by offering to authors promotion in exchange for cover quotes. It's basically the one hand washing the other approach; you review their book, and they'll promote yours. Which is no different than the reciprocal and buddy blurbing that has been going on behind the scenes in the industry practically forever; they're just being upfront about it.

The bootleggers are now making book videos in order to promote pirated copies via YouTube (and no, I'm not going to link to the jerk I found doing it.) An image of the cover art is shown along with a brief message about downloading the book for free and what kind of formats are offered, and the actual link to the bootleg is listed in the video description area. To find out if your copyright is being violated by one of these pinheads, do a You Tube search with your psuedonym and/or your book title.