Social Media

Want some sass with that app? You should, if you want to get noticed in the increasingly crowded app marketplace, where your app needs to be clever, engaging and useful to pique a potential user's interest. Book Business toiled away in the app mines and unearthed these gems in which publishers do creative, fun or powerful things with book apps to really hook audiences.

Like Kobo’s Reading Life, the Subtext app lets readers read and discuss books within the pages of a digital book with a community of friends. Readers can add links and have what the company is describing as “Facebook style discussions” around the book. Authors and scholars can also participate (Think DVD audio commentary for books).

"Due to absolutely no demand, soon I'm publishing a book of my tweets," he wrote on his Twitter account.

"Many of your replies included! All my profits to charity."

The book will be released by Grand Central Publishing in June 2012 with the title: "The Ten, Make that Nine, Habits of Very Organized People. Make that Ten."

The first iPod was revealed quietly at a presentation by Steve Jobs on 23 October 2001 and was in stores a month later. The music industry reacted not by examining the successes of P2P and iTunes and working on their own digital music platform, but with DRM (digital rights management), restrictions that attempted to prevent the buyer from copying music.

The act of highlighting a noteworthy passage in an ebook is being socialized by Findings, an online destination where readers can collect, share, discuss and discover such highlights from ebooks and web texts. Findings’ creators, the folks at startup incubator Betaworks, refer to their creation as a “social commonplace book,” and “a platform for sharing and discovering what people are reading.” The Findings experience is centered around shared passages and user libraries.

This new page is designed to enhance readers experience with books and authors by featuring a variety of activities and events including a spotlight “Book-of-the-Month” title.

This week's mediaIDEAS onPoint chart shows the percent of online users in 2010-2011 using the Internet for e-mail, search, reading news, buying products, content or services, and visiting social network sites.

Is Facebook about to get into the e-book business?

On Tuesday the social network announced that it was acquiring Push Pop Press, a digital book maker that specializes in interactive books for the Apple iPad and iPhone. The e-books built by the publisher feel like movies; interactive graphics with words sprinkled about cross the page.

Could we expect Facebook to start making and selling e-books on its Web site where it would go head-to-head with Apple, Amazon and Google?

Sexy though it may be, social media marketing isn't easy, and it isn't free.

Kobo announced the latest version of its e-reader device at BookExpo America on Monday.