Author Graham Brown

Sainsburys exits digital entertainment, hands over e-book business to Kobo

Once again, a bigretailer in the UK is pulling away from its ambitions to move into digital media. Supermarket giant Sainsburys is exitingthe digital entertainment business. As part of that process, it will be outsourcing its e-book operations to Kobo, the online bookseller and maker of e-readers, owned by Japans Rakuten. The digital entertainment business, which is marketed as Sainsburys Entertainment on Demand, also includes music, movies and TV shows and magazines, alongsidee-books. Ive contacted a customer support rep at Sainsburys Entertainment who has also confirmed that everything will be winding down across all platforms in the next few months.…

Back to school: Design lessons from the world’s smartest education centers

(CNN)It’s easy to dismiss the way a school or university looks. As long as it’s functional, the more pressing educational concerns for parents are usually the curriculum, quality of teaching and exam results. But the way educational buildings are designed — from classroom layout in elementary schools to shared, collective spaces on college campuses — can have a huge influence on learning. So much so that the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has a specific committee — the AIA Committee on Architecture for Education — established to research and share the world’s best learning center architecture. They have…

These students painted their parking spots, and the results are a win for arts education.

A few weeks ago, Martha Caldera tweeted a photo of her parking spot at West Orange High School that went insanely viral because, well … just look at it. The only thing that’s going to motivate me to wake up for school tomorrow is pulling up in my parking spot pic.twitter.com/O88chiYyag Martha Caldera (@ayeitsmarthaaa) August 21, 2016 Martha loves the rapper Drake and is also often late to school, so she decided to paint a clever take on his album titled “If Youre Reading This It’s Too Late.” Obviously, lots of people empathized with her message, with more than 24,000…

Add this library to your travel bucket list because it’s super old and super pretty.

Old libraries are pretty dope. For bibliophiles like me, walking through an old library feels like walking through a cathedral. The way the light filters through the windows, the sound of hushed conversations, the slightly rough feeling of a leather-bound book sliding out of a shelf … old libraries even have their own smell. And there are some really amazing old libraries, like Trinity College Library pictured above, or New York Public Library, or the British Library all of which I’ve either loved visiting or keenly want to. But if we want to talk about old libraries, the Qarawiyyin Library…

This Is Not a Drill! Three New Harry Potter Books Are Coming This Year!

1 J.K. Rowling is giving everyPotterheadan early Christmas gift with the announcement that three new books are going to be released this year. via: Reaction GIFs No, it’s true. According to The Bookseller, Amazon, Apple’s iBooks store, and Barnes & Noble have listed three new e-books under the heading “Pottermore Presents.” 2 For those unfamiliar, Pottermore is the online world that J.K. Rowling createdso that fans could interact even further with the world from the books. via: Giphy “The Pottermore Presents series will launch in September and is intended to supplement the Harry Potter book series with short-form content…

Puzzle Book With Pages That Must Be Solved to Unlock the Next

Some books are hard to read, but few are as difficult as the Codex Silenda. Why? Because it actually won’t let you read it unless you’re smart enough to unlock it. The laser-cut, hand-crafted, five-page wooden book is created by industrial designer Brady Whitney, who’s been raising funds for the project through Kickstarter. “Each page features a unique puzzle that requires the user/reader to unlock the corresponding bolts in order to progress to the next page,” read’s the website. “As the puzzler moves through the book, a story begins to unfold, depicting the story of an apprentice in Da Vinci’s Workshop…

Woman Paints Staircase With Her Favorite Book Covers

Pippa Branham and her husband moved to their first permanent home just last year, which meant it was finally time for Pippa to personalize their home. Her first target was the staircase. Pippa wanted to make the stairs safer for children, so she thought carpeting the stairs (£200) would be a good idea. That was until she stumbled upon a DIY picture on Pinterest… Inspired by it, she decided to decorate the stairs with the covers of her favorite books. She made a list of her fave books, found the original copies that she read for the first time, and…

3 reasons why all the adults you know have started coloring again.

There’s never been a better time to feel like a kid again. For as long as there have been mortgages, taxes, jobs, and speeding tickets, there have been adults who wish they could turn back the clock to simpler times. That’s nothing new. But nostalgia has recently gone next-level. If you want, you can now go away to adult summer camp, where you’ll leave all technology at the entrance and enjoy four days of archery, tie-dye, and hiking. You can also spend a day at adult preschool, where you’ll do arts and crafts, play games, and reconnect with your favorite…

Ever wonder “How to get my book reviewed”?

So you’ve published your book. Its been edited and published, and now you’re trying to figure out how to get to your potential readers. While starting your marketing campaign usually happens well before your book is finished, getting your first reviews can’t happen until your book is done or in a final draft status. Many stores won’t carry a small press or self-published book that doesn’t have reviews from a recognizable publication. So how do you get someone to pay attention to your book among all of the hundreds, if not thousands, of submissions they see every month? City Book…

Stephen King and 600 more U.S. writers come out in opposition to Trump

King at a signing in Austin, Texas. Image: Rick Kern/WIREIMAGE Stephen King is the master of horror but even he has never experienced anything quite as horrific as Donald Trump. That’s the gist of an open letter that’s doing the rounds Tuesday, signed by King and more than 600 of his fellow well-known American writers. The luminaries include Cheryl Strayed, Dave Eggers, Junot Diaz, Amy Tan, Mary Roach, Tobias Wolff, Richard Russo, Michael Chabon and Roy Blount, Jr. SEE ALSO: The literary lives of Donald J. Trump “As writers, we are particularly aware of the many ways that language can…