I just read a post from RareBookNews.com stating that the University of Pennsylvania is going to start digitizing the rare books within their stacks. While their intent is to increase access and availability of the contents for scholars, I can’t help fearing for the value of an edition if it is easily read by anyone.

To read the post from Rare Book News, click here

This raises another issue, digitally delivered books. I think we all need to start thinking about how to avoid the same crash the movie and music industries have endured at the hands of file sharing.

While there are ways to try and secure our medium like developing anti scan printing techniques,  the players in the movie and music industries who have been successful have embraced file sharing and altered their business models to fit.

You may want to start thinking how can you alter your business model to sell books digitally - and legitimately

Ka-Zam, an e-commerce solution for booksellers, has prepared a survey to help them build the next version of their software offering.

From Ka-Zam’s website:

“Ka-Zam is a web-based service which enables efficient transactions for bookstores selling both online and in traditional retail environments. Combining point-of-sale, data entry speedups, real-time pricing, simultaneous access via multiple employee accounts, Internet order processing, inventory warehousing, and an individual e-commerce website under an easy to use web-based interface, Ka-Zam provides its community of booksellers with the data-rich feature set they need to maximize profits.”

The survey is located here

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, announced it has signed a lease agreement to open a new Barnes & Noble bookstore in Cumming, Georgia, which is in the greater Atlanta area. The bookstore, expected to open in April 2008, will be located in The Avenue Forsythe shopping center at the northwest corner of Georgia Highway 141 and Ronald Reagan Parkway. The store will stock close to 200,000 book, music, DVD and magazine titles and include a café serving Starbucks coffee.

Barnes & Noble’s bookselling innovations have established it as America’s top bookseller brand. For the fourth year in a row, the EquiTrend® Brand Study by Harris Interactive® named Barnes & Noble bookstores number one in overall brand equity, which is based on a brand’s strength in familiarity, quality and purchase intent. The new store will feature:

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