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And now they are engaging in book-burning..... I mean topic erasing. The topic where the authors complained has been deleted. They are trying to cover-up their actions.

I created a new topic here: http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,122736.0.html

According to the DMCA process, the hosting company must take-down "claimed" infringing content. Then the victim has the right to respond and say "This does not infringe copyright. We are following the lending rules laid-down by Amazon, B&N, and the Authors Guild. This ie perfectly legal."

The next step under DMCA is for the complaining authors to sue the web owners/users. Of course I doubt that they will. The authors have better things to do then spend money they don't have fighting a court case they know they will lose.

BTW that KCHawkings chick is a babe. I'd like to be her scribe. :-)
http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,122241.msg1818315.html#msg1818315

OP here. Although the scoop goes to Deadline, Hugh himself made the formal announcement on the Kindleboards (in this thread http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,113999.0.html ). Note that Hugh is a really awesome guy and was taking the time to respond to each and every comment, but the forums have a "no bumping" rule which meant he's now only posting occasionally to avoid keeping the thread at the top of the Writer's Cafe section which it's dominated since the announcement.

I hope you've finished Ghost Story then, because Penguin has removed all of their books from Overdrive: http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,92091.75.html/

I believe that Amazon has the fee in place to provide an incentive to publishers to keep their files small, not because of bandwidth or storage costs, but rather because large files degrade the user experience on the Kindle.

This thread on an end-user bulletin board shows the frustration that users frequently experience because of the device's limited memory. Amazon sells the idea that the Kindle will hold 1500 books despite having only 2 GB or 4 GB of storage, depending on model. Image-rich files, especially if the image compression is not applied with care, can easily exceed the 1-2 MB size that must be reached for that promise to come true.

Rather like the U.S. government rationing gasoline during the second world war despite its abundance. The real goal was to limit tire wear and therefore consumption of rubber.

Here's the list

However, the e-book market share is too small for it to be worth my time as a small publisher to take the considerable effort required to reformat these books for the Kindle. And I check up on the market share every couple of months. If the e-book gets up to 10% or higher of the market share, it will become worthwhile for me to start producing commercial e-books.

I've seen a claim that when both formats (printed and ebook) are available, 10% of sales are ebook. Beats me if that's accurate or not.

The scary proposition for publishers, and in the context of the Cory's article, is that people use e-readers but don't buy books. They go straight for illegal downloads. That is, after all, what Cory is claiming for movies and music. He thinks only the lack of a cheap e-reader will save print books.

I think for sure a good e-reader will be available within 5 years. On the other hand, I'm very uncertain how the ultimate battle for copyright on the Internet will turn out. Anyways, I'm done pontificating. We'll see what happens.