Water wars in California are in the news as cities fight over this most precious of resources.  So we want to remind you that E-Reads carries the classic account of one man’s vision of transporting water a preposterous distance so that a town called Los Angeles could flourish.

William Mulholland’s vision of an aqueduct to carry water from distant mountains and across trackless desert to the dusty little town of Los Angeles rivaled the visions of Rome’s engineers or the architects of China’s Great Wall. Indeed, Mulholland’s aqueduct was and to my knowledge still is the longest in the Western Hemisphere. Rivers in the Desert, the story of his inspiration and the execution of this amazing construction, is as stirring an adventure as any you will ever read, thanks to scholar Margaret Davis.

Amazon reviewer Michael Chadwick reminds us that “Fans of the movie Chinatown, Roman Polanski’s classic detective melodrama, will love this true account of how desperately needed water was brought hundreds of miles to Los Angeles,where growth in the early 20th century was rapidly outracing the city’s meager water supply. Like the 1974 movie with John Huston and Jack Nicholson, the real story has villains and heroes worthy of the big screen.”

– Richard Curtis

The rabbis and Jewish scholars who created that fountain of wisdom called the Talmud could not have imagined the force called electricity and the challenges it would one day create for modern Jews. Yet the same logic and common sense that used scripture to guide the perplexed of the fifth century or the twelfth is now being applied to the use of modern electronic devices – such as the Kindle.

When electricity was discovered and harnessed, Jews applied the strictures against working on the sabbath to electric appliances and determined that activating them was a form of work. Today, observant Jews will not flip a light switch, turn on a stove burner or press an elevator button. (Some hospitals and other institutions visited by Jews on the sabbath have elevators that automatically stop on every floor.)

Now consider the Kindle. Though it’s commonly referred to as an electronic device is it an electric one? The prevailing Jewish wisdom is that it is, and reading a book on it is the equivalent of turning on an electric light. But there’s more…

Because the screen of a reading device is not a fixed medium – it is a blank matrix on which words are produced by running a tiny electric current through it – orthodox Jews believe that the act of turning a page is a form of writing. And writing is prohibited on the Sabbath. But there’s still more…

Even if one were to read the Torah – the core Jewish scripture – on the Kindle on the sabbath, it would still be unacceptable. Why? Because Kindles, one modern orthodox rabbi pointed out in an article in The Atlantic, “in epitomizing our weekday existence, aren’t appropriate for the Sabbath.”

Thus blogger Morris Rosenthal’s brainstorm – “a special Kindle that can bypass Sabbath prohibitions by disabling its buttons, turning itself on at a preset time, and flipping through a book at a predetermined clip” – would not get past rabbinical scrutiny. You can read scripture on your e-book six days a week, but on the seventh you have to give it a rest and read the p-book instead. Sorry, Kindlach, you’re out of luck.

Of course, you don’t have to be Jewish to put your Kindle down on the sabbath. Many moderns of all faiths observe Internet Sabbath, a day off from the frenzy of electronic communications and social media. Blogger Nat Friedman tried it a year ago and wrote “After just a few minutes, it felt like a vacation.” Somewhere a rabbi is smiling with satisfaction.

Read People of the E-Book? Observant Jews Struggle With Sabbath in a Digital Age by Uri Friedman. And here’s a fascinating Wikipedia entry on use of electricity and appliances on the Sabbath.

Richard Curtis

This blog post was originally published on Digital Book World as Talmud Scholars: OK to Read Scripture on E-Book on the Sabbath?

“Is this a joke? Are we being punked?” That’s what we asked when we cautiously reprinted an alleged email thread setting up a dinner among executives of major publishing companies to discuss “The $9.99 Problem”, a coded reference to Apple’s entrance into the e-book business in competition with Amazon’s $9.99 e-book price ceiling. (See The Restaurant Wasn’t Kosher, and Neither Was the Conversation)

It looks like it was no joke.  The Justice Department’s brief against five publishers and Apple, accusing them of colluding to fix prices, alludes to “private meetings”. “Prior to the formation of and throughout Publisher Defendants’ agreement,” states the DoJ filing, “their CEOs and other high-level executives frequently communicated with each other in both formal and informal settings. From these communications emerged a pattern of Publisher Defendants improperly exchanging confidential, competitively sensitive information.” (If you’re a trial junkie you can read the complete brief here).

Though three publishers have settled with the government and two are fighting back, Apple’s role may hinge on whether Steve Jobs or another representative of Apple actually attended that dinner or any other group meeting of publishers to discuss pricing.  The legal principle seems to be that setting the same terms for everybody is fine if you deal with them unilaterally, but dealing with them as a group is conspiracy.

Says Bloomberg News: “Apple Inc.’s best defense against accusations it conspired to fix e-book prices may turn on its absence from meetings in Manhattan restaurants where publishing executives allegedly worked out the scheme.”

Details in Apple e-books defense may hinge on absence from dinner meetings

Richard Curtis

This blog post was originally published on Digital Book World as Was Steve at the Table? If Not, DoJ Case against Apple Could Crumble

There are eight novels in Barbara Parker’s gripping series of legal thrillers featuring Gail Connor and Anthony Quintana, who are frequently on opposite sides of the courtroom but seldom on opposite sides of the bed. For reasons too tiresome to relate E-Reads published volumes #1-6 and #8 but the seventh book, Suspicion of Madness, got left out.

Until today.

But now, Gail and Anthony are together at last and Parker’s “Suspicion” series is complete.

In Madness, a romantic trip to the Florida Keys turns deadly when a young former client of Quintana’s comes under investigation for murder. It seems like an open-and-shut case of innocence. But strange lies and more dead bodies lie hidden in the lush landscape of the Keys. As Gail and Anthony meet the island’s odd assortment of inhabitants, they find that everyone has a scheme of their own. Now, a tropical storm looms overhead, trapping them all in a tinderbox of explosive danger and deep passions.

Parker’s series really should be ready in the proper sequence to see Gail and Anthony’s relationship in all its ups and downs.  So click here to see them all.

The Department of Justice’s suit against publishers and Apple introduced terms like “Collusion” and “Conspiracy” into the discourse of people whose legal vocabulary seldom ventures beyond the language of warranty and option clauses. The words are jarring enough to rattle teeth in the hushed corridors of one of the most civilized of professions.

And yet book publishers themselves are not wholly innocent of the practices that attracted the attention of the Justice Department. The scale of their malfeasances may be infinitely smaller (a Wall Street Journal writer described publishers as “plankton”) and the issues more prosaic, but there are occasions when “C” might stand for something more ominous than Coincidence.

Did you ever wonder for example where it is written that the “standard” hardcover royalty for a trade book is 10% of the retail price on the first 5,000 copies, 12 1/2% on the next 5,000, and 15% on all copies sold thereafter?  Why the “standard” e-book royalty offered by all major American publisher is 25% of net receipts?  Why the “standard” division of territories in the English-speaking publishing market is US and Canada for American publishers and the United Kingdom for British publishers?  Is it not wonderful how the same terms just seem to pop up on everybody’s boilerplate, and if one publisher changes its terms, the changes magically spring up overnight on everybody else’s, like mushrooms?

Of course, we recognize that boilerplate is made to be negotiated, and though almost all major publishers seem to be marching in lockstep, we know that many of their standard terms are flexible if you ask and if you have the clout to alter them. Nevertheless, a conspiracy theorist with a taste for the flesh of publishers (stringy fare at best) might be tempted to go after some if he thought a cabal was afoot.

In fact this very thing happened in 1974 when our old friend the United States Department of Justice brought suit again against twenty-one American publishers for their tacit consent to what appeared to be an unwritten treaty among British publishers to carve up the English-speaking book distribution market.

As the University of Chicago’s Library Quarterly explains it, “Claiming a group of about seventy countries as their ‘traditional market,’ signatories agreed to neither buy nor sell publication and distribution rights to American publishers unless the rights for that market remained intact in British hands. In effect, the worldwide English language book market became divided into two spheres, the British and the American. While this division worked reasonably well for many years, by the 1970s the system was crumbling under the pressure of worldwide changes in book production, distribution, and consumption.”

As a result of the DoJ’s antitrust suit, the so-called Traditional Market Agreement was ended.

Or was it?  Though the Consent Decree will be found in the legal archive of the 21 American publishers that signed it, if you negotiate a book deal with an American publisher today and ask for the traditional territory, I guarantee it will be identical to the one that prevailed until the DoJ threw a spanner in the works in 1974.

But maybe that’s just a Coincidence.

Richard Curtis

This blog post was originally published on Digital Book World as C for Coincidence?  Or Conspiracy?

In Dragon’s Winter, dragon-lord Karadur Atani – lately returned from a deadly battle – was finally able to take his true dragon form. But, can the peace he found in defeating his treacherous brother translate to peace within himself? In order to rule his kingdom, Karadur must find a balance between his desire to be a merciful leader and the destructive power of his dragon-changeling nature.

Perhaps love can provide the answer. As a lover, Maia–an herbalist from the Unamira clan of outlaws–can produce a dragon-changeling heir for Karadur. But, her half-brother Treion poses a threat to the kingdom. Can Karadur find compassion for the outlaw, or will his dragon aspect drive him toward the vengeful madness that overtook his father?

With Dragon’s Treasure, World Fantasy Award-winning author Elizabeth A. Lynn continues to build an imaginative medieval world filled with both magic on a grand scale and the very human complexity of daily life.

“Features full and pleasing measures of Lynn’s graceful prose and world-building talent.” — Booklist

In another coup for its book publishing enterprises, Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint has acquired fourteen novels in Ian Fleming’s James Bond thriller series, plus two nonfiction books by Fleming.

If Amazon’s policy holds true the books will be carried exclusively on the Kindle e-reader.  As Publishers Lunch‘s Michael Cader points out, however, the news “brings attention again for Barnes & Noble, and whether they will carry the print editions. Since Amazon says the ebooks will be Kindle exclusives at the outset, and BN has already declined to carry titles from Amazon Publishing in their physical stores, the policy is unlikely to change.”

B&N has stated its position about Amazon Publishing’s books in no uncertain terms.

Richard Curtis

This blog post was originally published on Digital Book World as Amazon’s Fleming Acquisition May Not Bond with B&N

Whenever there’s a high-profile crime it’s only a matter of time before someone belittles the victim.  That’s what seems to be shaping up in the Justice Department’s indictment of file-sharing behemoth Megaupload on charges of massive copyright infringement. Stuart P. Green, a Rutgers Law School Professor blogging in the New York Times, writes “Whatever wrongs Megaupload has committed, it’s doubtful that theft is among them.”

Well, Professor Green, unless you have a better word for it, I’m sticking with theft.

Green argues that the complexities of modern intellectual property law have obscured the simplistic legal standards by which theft is measured. Those standards were set in 1962 when the American Law Institute issued the Model Penal Code defining property as “anything of value.” “Henceforth,” says Green, “it would no longer matter whether the property misappropriated was tangible or intangible, real or personal, a good or a service. All of these things were now to be treated uniformly.”

Green’s beef with the Institute’s definition is that contemporary media and services like the Internet blur moral and legal principles. “We should stop trying to shoehorn the 21st-century problem of illegal downloading into a moral and legal regime that was developed with a pre- or mid-20th-century economy in mind. His authority? “Lay observers draw a sharp moral distinction between file sharing and genuine theft, even when the value of the property is the same.”

We don’t know who these “lay observers” are, but they don’t seem to have spent much time speaking to victims. If they had, they might have heard something like this from an author: “If I was in a bookstore, would I just drop this book in my purse and walk out of the store? Because that is exactly what you are doing when you download a book without buying it.” (See Are Downloaders Better Than Muggers?)

The subtle intricacies of modern life make it easy to rationalize crimes like stealing and call them something else.  But calling theft a non-crime doesn’t make it a non-crime. Green may have many other words for the deed (the book that he and a social psychologist are writing is called 13 Ways to Steal a Bicycle: Theft Law in the Information Age). But for victims there’s only one way to say it: “I’ve been robbed.”

Judge for yourself: When Stealing Isn’t Stealing by Stuart P. Green.

Richard Curtis

For a full archive of postings about piracy, visit Pirate Central.

Clay Shirky, a professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU and author of two books about the interrelationship of social and technological networks, was interviewed by Findings.com on the subject of social reading, the act of sharing books with other individuals and groups. Shirky’s views coruscate with insights and epigrams. But like a thriller movie that grips you while you watch it but does not hold up subsequently, some of Shirky’s glittering observations don’t quite withstand analysis.

But first the epigrams:

“Publishing is not evolving,” he says. “Publishing is going away.” As for the act of publishing itself, the complex and costly enterprise that brings books to readers,  “That’s not a job anymore. That’s a button.” That act “doesn’t take any skills. It takes a WordPress install.” Given that digital technology enables us to print out the PDF of a book in our home or office, the only raison d’etre for the publishing industry today is to save its own jobs. “Publishers are in the business not of overcoming scarcity but of manufacturing demand.”

Shirky is at his most interesting in addressing social reading, which stems directly from the universal need for readers to talk to somebody after reading a book. Until now, if you noted a thought-provoking passage in a book, your underline or highlight or marginal exclamation held no interest to anyone else – because it was unlikely it would ever be seen by anyone else. But now digital technology empowers us to communicate our response to scores, hundreds, thousands of people by simply enabling the social default on your e-book reader so that others reading the same e-book can see what captured your attention.”By switching to default public,” he says,”the aggregate value of that information is so much larger than anybody believed it would be in the 1990s.”

It’s on this point, however, that the thrust of Shirky’s bon mot engine starts to sputter. For, in order for a publicly shared comment to mean anything it’s vital to know the source of the comment. Take “Miles to go before I sleep”, an iconic line that is undoubtedly on every poetry lover’s bucket list.  If it was highlighted by undergraduate Joe Shmoe does that tell me anything about Frost’s poem? About Joe? Does it make me think differently about Robert Frost?

But if I were to learn that line was highlighted by, say, Dick Cheney or Angelina Jolie or Mike Tyson, I would certainly pause to wonder about the association.  “Cowards die many times before their death” is a Shakespearean cliche, yet when we learn that while imprisoned in South Africa Nelson Mandela wrote his name beside it we utter a thoughtful “Hmmm.” In March 2011 a symposium on “association copies” of books owned or annotated by famous authors provoked many such utterances when we learned what Abraham Lincoln said about Alexander Pope, or Walt Whitman about Henry David Thoreau. (See Book Lovers Fear Dim Future for Notes in Margins.) It’s only because it’s Lincoln or Whitman that the marginalia makes us sit up and take notice

But all in all Shirky is right: by making your own responses to a passage visible to all readers, you are “extending the radius and the half-life of its value.” Another gem of an epigram to take away from a thought-provoking interview.

How We Will Read: Clay Shirky

Richard Curtis

This blog post was originally published on Digital Book World as NYU’s Clay Shirky: “Publishing is Going Away”