Last Male Born: Revenge by Roberto DiVincenzo is joining the "100 Trees Project"!

Have you have considered a revenge attack on an individual or a group? Well, Roberto DiVincenzo did. He is actually consumed with hatred for the South Philly mob for what they did to his family. He wants revenge and he gets it in the most unorthodox way. It's all part of his new book 'Last Male Born: Revenge', published by Infinity Publishing. And the news is that this great book has just joined the "100 Trees Project"!

This joint program was launched by Infinity Publishing, a leading self-publishing company together with Eco-Libris to promote environmental sustainability among its authors. Through the program, authors that publish with Infinity are able to plant 100 trees for the title they publish. These authors also have the option to add a special "100 trees planted for this book" logo to their book's design, as a way to showcase their commitment to environmental sustainability.

What's this book is about?
The only cure for hatred is revenge. In this third installment of his trilogy, Robert DiVincenzo finally exacts his revenge on the South Philly mob. He concocts an ingenious plan that appeals to their intrinsic greed. He doesn’t need thugs or guns to bring then down. His unorthodox weapon of choice is the computer room of a bank run by a corrupt bank president. In this fast paced story, he plays on the mob mentality of distrust to settle the score for the wrongs inflicted on him and his family. Along the way he manages to make amends for other innocent victims whose lives were shattered by the mob and the bank president.

About the author: Roberto DiVincenzo was a kid that grew up on the tough streets of south Philadelphia in the 1940’s and 50’s. Although the world was perhaps a more innocent place at that time, it was Philadelphia’s equivalent of “hells kitchen.” As a young boy Roberto excelled in football, basketball, baseball, drawing and his love of singing.

As he grew into a young adult the street took a shot him. Aside from south Philly girls, the lure of a fast buck through indoctrination with organized crime was perhaps one of the greatest temptations facing a young man in his shoes.

But somehow there were stronger principles in his make up that led him down a very different path than those of his “wise guy” contemporaries so abundant and over sensationalized. Although not many viable opportunities where available to him, Roberto made a self inspired endeavor to advance his education. He ended up on the cutting edge of something called “machine accounting” technology. This was the precursor to what we know today as modern computing.

During the Korean War Roberto was in the United State Marine Corps where his stamina, skills and intellect were challenged and put to thorough use. After the war Roberto along with his young wife founded and operated a business school. Their mission was teaching the intrinsic design and practical application of IBM equipment in the business world of the early 1960’s. This evolved into Computer Programming, System Analysis and his tenure as manager who developed ground breaking commercial computer systems for a corporate giant.

Roberto, still married to the same wonderful woman, has enjoyed sharing the parenting of four children, all of who are now adults with diverse careers. The children possess many of Roberto’s principled beliefs and practices as accomplished adults. In fact in some ways, Roberto reflects some old world principles himself. He believes in honesty, knowing his ancestry and social origins, close family ties and the ongoing education of his offspring and the family’s generations to come. After all, I should know, ... I’m his First Male Born.
Last Male Born: Revenge is available for sale on Infinity's website.

Other books on the "100 Trees Project":

My Name is Grace

The Last Original Idea: A Cynic's View to Internet Marketing by Alan K'necht and Geri Rockstein

Buffalo on the Ridge by Deanna Meyer

What Love Is...A-Z by by Elle Febbo

Raven Wings and 13 More Twisted Tales

Ishift- Innovation Shift

Good Management is Not Firefighting

Play on Words

This is Your Brain on God

DRIVEN! Remembrance, Reflection, & Revelation

X-POSED: The Painful Truth Behind Yoga & Pilates

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

Free webcast - Digital Textbooks: Innovations from the Academic Business Model

I wanted to share with you an update I received on an interesting free webcast entitled Digital Textbooks: Innovations From the Academic Business Model that will take place next Tuesday. It is presented by Digital Book World and Publishers Weekly and sponsored by Aptara. You can register here.

Here are the details:

In the trade, the digital transition has upended the marketplace, changing the entire publishing process. In academic publishing, the challenges of digital are no less seismic. Factors like piracy, a growing secondary market, and an environment that demands greater customization and speed to market present real tests to academic publishers. There are also great opportunities: ebooks, enhanced and otherwise, offer academic publishers a chance to make textbooks more relevant to students and potentially increase adoption rates. In this free WEBcast, Digital Textbooks: Innovations From the Academic Business Model, academic and trade publishers can learn from the lessons of big and small innovators at the forefront of digital.

We'll talk to start-ups and large publishers to find out how digital innovation has reshaped the academic marketplace.

Join us on Tuesday, August 9th at 1PM ET / 10 AM PT for this free WEBcast presented in partnership with Publishers Weekly and sponsored by Aptara.

AGENDA

• New business models for selling content to educators and students by the chapter and by the format.
• What "open textbooks," or free online versions of course material, have done to curb attrition rates of textbook purchases by semester.
• How academic enhanced ebooks have added video, audio, and interactive features that go beyond bells-and-whistles publishing and improve the learning experience.

This WEBcast will primarily appeal to publishers in both academic and trade who are interested in new ways of selling and delivering content.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

Matt MacInnis
Raised in rural Nova Scotia, Matt attended Harvard University where he earned a degree in Computer Engineering and Chinese Language. He moved to California and pursued an eight-year career at Apple where he managed the company's international expansion into international education markets. During that time, Matt saw a lot of misuse of technology in the classroom, and in 2009 his frustration drove him to start Inkling. With a vision for reinventing the textbook, Matt has led Inkling into partnerships with the world's largest publishers, building engaging, interactive learning content from the ground up for iPad. Both Matt and Inkling are based in San Francisco, CA.

Eric Frank
Eric brings an 11 year track record of success in higher education publishing to Flat World Knowledge, an eTextbook customization firm. He has held positions in sales, editorial, and marketing at Thomson and Prentice Hall, a division of Pearson Education. Recently, Eric was Director of Marketing for Prentice Hall Business Publishing, a division with annual sales in the hundreds of millions. There, he managed a team of marketing managers and marketing communications staff, and had overall responsibility for strategy, budget, staffing and execution. Eric's group had dotted line responsibility for training and supporting over 160 sales representatives.

Sponsor
Apatra provides digital publishing solutions that deliver significant gains in quality, time-to-market and production costs for eBook publishers. Having converted tens of millions of pages to eBook formats for the world's leading publishers, Aptara offers end-to-end solutions across all content source types and delivery media, including the Amazon Kindle, Apple iPhone, Sony Reader, and Blackberry devices. With partnerships that span the entire production and distribution supply-chain, including relationships with mobile channel partners, Aptara helps publishers stay ahead in this rapidly changing market space.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant one tree for every book your read!

Have paper books become just an intellectual decoration in the age of ebooks?

Nick Bilton has an interesting piece on the New York Times' Bits, where he's presenting his dilemma - he's moving from NY to SF and not sure what to do with all the hundreds of books he have? Should he take them with him or not?

He's explaining:

"Although I love my print books, e-readers, in one form or another, have become my primary reading device over the last few years. I barely touch my print books, although they are still beautiful and important to me. But they sit on my bookshelf as a decorative and intellectual art form...

As I packed for the move, I questioned whether it made financial sense to ship my several hundred books across the country, and more important, if I went through the trouble of doing this, what was the point when they would only sit untouched in a different city, just as they have for so many years in New York?"

This is a dilemma I'm sure many readers who are became mostly e-readers share. I find it a very interesting as this is not just a question of space and technology - I believe it's a much broader question about our culture and identity because for so many of us, the paper books are still a significant part of who we are. So can we move on and leave this part behind us now that we can have these books in an electronic version within seconds? Tough question.

So what Bilton did eventually? He reports: "In the end, I decided to leave 80 percent of the books behind, donating them to bookstores and even throwing some old, tattered volumes in the garbage. I still feel guilty about it, but I also feel vindicated by the practicality of my actions."

I can understand Bilton, although I really wish he would put the old, tattered volumes in the recycling bin instead of throwing them to the garbage.

What do you think? What would you do or have done in similar situation? Please comment and share your thoughts with us!

Photo: Books on the floor, Flickr Creative Commons, Toni Girl

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant one tree for every book your read!

Amazon presents a new e-textbook rental service - Does it make the Kindle any greener?

Three months after Amazon announced it would allow Kindle users to read e-books from more than 11,000 public libraries on the devices, it is going even further and launching Kindle Textbook Rental.

According to Amazon's press release, tens of thousands of textbooks are available for the 2011 school year from leading textbook publishers such as John Wiley & Sons, Elsevier and Taylor & Francis.

Interesting feature of the new program is its flexibility - Kindle Textbook Rental offers the ability to customize rental periods to any length between 30 and 360 days. Students can also easily extend any rental period in increments as small as one day or choose to purchase the book they are renting at any time. The electronic textbooks can be downloaded to and read not just on Amazon's Kindle, but also on other devices such as PC, Mac and iPad using Kindle reading software.

The company claims that students can save up to 80% off textbook list prices by renting from the Kindle Store. This element will be very effective in getting more students to use the program. For example, Ryan Judy of Ohio University told msnbc.com that he "would, and probably will, use Kindle's service because I have an iPad and you can just download the Kindle textbooks on there, which makes it really convenient. It's also cheaper. I normally try find the cheapest way to get my books."

It is very interesting development in Amazon's services, but only a natural one as we see a growing interest in digital books among students. My question is whether this new service also helps in making the Kindle greener?

It's obvious that renting textbooks is more eco-friendly than buying new ones because this way you maximize the usage of already printed book. Just like with books, after reading a number textbooks on an e-reader, this practice is becoming greener than the alternative - buying paper textbooks. As the length of textbooks is usually higher tend to be longer (500-600 pages in many cases, if not longer), their footprint is larger than the one of 'regular' books and hence the breakeven point of e-textbooks is smaller than the one of e-books.

So we can definitely see that it would be relatively easy to establish e-textbooks rentals as a greener option with a smaller footprint, but does it make Amazon or the Kindle any greener? It's a difficult question because there is no difference in terms of e-reading if you buy an electronic textbook or rent it. Either way, you're using one electronically instead of its paper version. Nevertheless, the fact that renting might be cheaper for students makes etextbook rental more attractive and increases the chances students will move to textbook e-reading.

This service won't change the carbon footprint of the Kindle - it doesn't change anything in the device's production, transportation, usage or recycling. Also, there's actually a good chance many students will use a Kindle reading app to read it on their iPad or even just read it on their PC.

As you can see it's complicated to estimate the impact of the new service, but there are two things we can say for certain: 1. Amazon's new service might lower eventually the breakeven points of e-readers and tablets as the usage of textbooks electronically will be increased due to the new rental service. 2. Amazon's new service will help eventually in making textbook reading more sustainable. Hopefully it will also help students to get better grades!

To read more on how green is your (and my) Kindle, visit our website at http://www.ecolibris.net/kindle.asp

More resources on the ebooks vs. paper books environmental debate can be found on our website at http://www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant one tree for every book you read!

Will consumers reward going green? Examining the case of the book industry

This is the subject of an article I wrote for the Independent, the magazine of the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA). The article was published last April and was added now to the public archive of the magazine.

The challenge the article is talking about is of course not unique to the book industry, but nevertheless due to the unique characteristics of books (not two books are the same), it makes this challenge even more difficult.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Do most book consumers care about the environment? Definitely. Do they prefer buying books printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper because of that? It depends.

Eco-conscious book consumers need to deal with the same issues that green consumers in general deal with, but they also have special dilemmas. Imagine, for example, a book reader who would love to read Freedom by Jonathan Franzen and who finds out that this great book is not printed on eco-friendly paper. Will the reader decide not to buy it and wait to get a copy in the local library? I doubt it.

A book is not a vegetable, a toothpaste, or a car. Book buyers can’t just choose a “green” book over a “regular” one and still get their needs met, only with some green added value. Each and every book is a unique product with distinctive features, which makes greening book purchases more difficult than greening almost anything else.

You can read the whole article on the Independent's website. I hope you will find it interesting!

Yours,
Raz@Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books

RIP Borders - The bookstore chain is closing its doors

Now it's official - Borders Group announced on Monday that it will close all of its stores and sell the company to a group of liquidators led by Hilco Merchant Resources. It means that almost 11,000 employees will lose their jobs and the chain's 400 remaining stores will close their doors by the end of September.

This is a very sad day to any book lover, no matter if you're a Borders customer or not. The fact is that this isn't just an isolated case, but an indicator to the change in the industry, where brick and mortar stores can't find an adequate reply to the online competition as well as to the growing demand for ebooks and are losing customers until they can no longer stay in business.

NPR report explained the problem:

"Indeed, outside a Borders bookstore in Arlington, Va., shoppers say they rarely buy books the old-fashioned way."I'll go to Borders to find a book, and then I'll to go to Amazon to buy it, generally," customer Jennifer Geier says. With so many people going online to buy books, Borders lost out. The last time it turned a profit was 2006. "

According to NPR the case of B&N is different, but we believe it's actually no different than Borders, at least in the sense that B&N hasn't find yet the way to transform its brick and mortar stores back into an asset. If they won't find the way to do it, they will be left with BN.com and the Nook, but without stores. They still have time to figure it out, but they need to remember their time is running.

Borders stores will begin closing as early as Friday. The New Yorker gives a good advice to spend your gift cards this week. (Please buy books, rather than calendars, lattes, or Moleskine notebooks.) It adds that liquidation will continue through the summer and is likely to be complete by September.

For more news and updates on Borders post bankruptcy visit our website at http://www.ecolibris.net/borders.asp.

You can also find more resources on the future of bookstores on our website at www.ecolibris.net/bookstores_future.asp

Yours,
Raz@Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books

Borders is moving towards liquidation - is this the end for the bookstore chain?

Today is an important day for Borders. According to Boston.com, a US bankruptcy court in New York has given Borders today as a deadline to find another bid or its assets will be sold at auction on Tuesday. In other words, the company might be moving towards liquidation which might be the end of for it as a book retailer unless some sort of miracle will happen today.

You can find more details on the latest development on Bloomberg's report (Borders to Seek Court Approval for Liquidators’ Bid Over Offer From Najafi) and the WSJ video report below.



We'll keep you posted with further developments and bring you further analysis later on this week.

For more news and updates on Borders post bankruptcy visit our website at http://www.ecolibris.net/borders.asp.

You can also find more resources on the future of bookstores on our website at www.ecolibris.net/bookstores_future.asp

Yours,
Raz@Eco-Libris
Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books