Book-Club Smarts in a Nutshell: Get Notes

" 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' was a blockbuster book, spawning blockbuster sequels and a blockbuster movie. Next month, it will achieve that mark of a true classic: the publishers of SparkNotes, a CliffsNotes knockoff, will publish a study guide — also known as a cheat sheet — to the tale of the little boy with the lightning-bolt scar....

Moving far beyond "Macbeth" and 'he Mayor of Casterbridge,' Cliffs and a new generation of competitors are now racing to be the first to publish notes to contemporary titles like 'All the Pretty Horses,' 'Snow Falling on Cedars,' 'Angela's Ashes' and 'Cold Mountain.'

The new selections reflect a change in the kind of books being taught in high school and college literature classes. But they also reveal a new kind of Cliffs user. The guides are now being produced for people who want to brush up before their book club, keep up in conversations with colleagues or at cocktail parties, or read the book — at least, some version of it — before they see the movie." [New York Times, via jardinblu]

Are any libraries buying these? I'll have to sample a few catalogs and see.

It's interesting to watch a web-based product go to print, especially when the stuff online is free. You can also purchase full ebook versions of some titles from Barnes & Noble. They come in Adobe Acrobat PDF or Microsoft Reader flavors, and in a nice change of pace, they're fully printable and you can take them to go on your PDA. Maybe they'll start showing up on file sharing networks. I wonder if they'll go audio, too, and partner with a company like Audible.

I hope the entertainment industry is watching this. I'll bet revenue at SparkNotes will go up, not down. Unlike the numbers at the record labels.

Hollywood, hardware and HTML solutions for REB 110 .... Hollywood, hardware and HTML solutions for REB 1100 owners

"If new PCs have copyright protection built into them, no one will want them and they'll just stick with the old ones. Which is exactly what might happen to those first Rocketbook readers. I remember lamenting how quickly the...RBs became outdated. Now I'm starting to think we might be able to sell them on eBay someday for a handsomely sum." - Jenny "Shifted Librarian" Levine, June 24.

The TeleRead take: Among other things, Jenny is sensibly warning of the damage that Hollywood-inspired legislation could do to the PC industry--or, to be more exact, the users of the machines.

What's more, in terms of the present, she dislikes another anti-user tool, proprietary formats, which Gemstar is trying to herd its customers toward, lest they contaminate holy products with converted HTML and get in the way of gouges for overpriced books.

Are you yourself a Gemstar victim? Do you own the REB 1100, a newer version of the Rocket eBook, and do you want to read HTML files even if Gemstar would rather that you not--and in fact has even posted misleading information online to discourage you? Then go to Miscellaneous Stuff within the RocketBook/RCA eBook fan site for links to some handy conversion tools.

Enjoy your HTML classics, or, for that matter, your own notes or works in progress. Savor your victory over the incorrigible urges of Gemstar boss Henry Yuen to turn you into a consumer rather than a doer. But, hey, enough of that. It's already payback time for him.

posted by David Rothman at 2:40 AM | permanent link [TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home]