Did you see this?

McCosh is part of an unprecedented surge in e-book sales that’s changing publishing and challenging traditional bookstores.

It’s reflected on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list, which tracks combined sales of e-book and print editions. The latest list, based on sales data from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1, shows a remarkable burst of digital book sales after e-readers were unwrapped as gifts — for 42 of the top 50 titles, the e-book editions were the most popular format. The previous high, in July, was 25 of the top 50.

For e-books, “the two weeks after Christmas is what the two weeks before Halloween is to pumpkins,” says Michael Norris, an analyst with Simba Information, a market research firm. After the post-holiday surge, he predicts, e-books will increase in “short bursts and slow trickles” the rest of the year.

Norris estimates that one in five U.S. adults are reading e-books on a variety of devices, from dedicated e-readers to tablets (like the Kindle Fire) that can be used to download movies, music, video games and more.

Forrester Research estimates that Amazon has sold 5 million Kindle Fires, priced at $199 each, since the device was released Nov. 14. Archrival Barnes & Noble has sold an estimated 2 million Nook Tablets ($249), released Nov. 17.

Both devices are designed, in part, to compete with Apple’s iPad (the latest versions are priced from $500 to $830), which sold about 40 million units last year.

But even as the sales of e-books doubled from 10% of the overall market to 20% in 2011, print books still account for about 80% of the market.

 

In England:

ISLINGTON, LONDON, UK (ANS) – Church attendances in the United Kingdom, in freefall for so long, have started to rise again, particularly in Britain’s capital city.

Numbers on the electoral rolls are increasing by well over two per cent every year, while some churches have seen truly dramatic rises in numbers, according to Peter Oborne, writing for the Daily Telegraphnewspaper.

Oborne says change is afoot in Britain’s churches. He says that with the chill wind of austerity blowing through the country, religion’s warm embrace looks more and more inviting. Oborne welcomes the resurgence of a national pastime: churchgoing.

Oborne writes that for many years it was accepted that Christianity was all but dead, an anachronistic relic of the past whose foundations had been destroyed by modern science and rationalism, before being left behind by the cultural and sexual revolution of the ’60s.

 

From Jeff Goins:

Before beginning her career as a successful author and speaker, Patsy Clairmont did something unexpected. She washed the dishes.

She wanted to take her message to the world, but as she was readying herself, she felt nudged to start in an unusual way. She got out of bed and cleaned her house.

In other words, Patsy got rid of the mess. And it put her in a position to start living more creatively. We must do the same.

Bringing your message to the world does not begin on the main stage. It starts at home. In the kitchen. At your desk. Or on your cluttered computer.

You need to clear your life of distractions — not perfectly, but enough so that there’s room for you to create.

The relationship between clutter and creativity is inverse. The more you have of the former, the less you have of the latter. Mess creates stress. Which is far from an ideal environment for being brilliant.

 

Monday our post was called Paul was Post-Tithing, and I followed through on Rodney Reeves’ fine chapter by supporting it to see where it would take us — and I did so in the comments as well. His view was that the tithe was more or less transcended or outdone by the theme of what I called “pass the grace.” That is, grace given from God leads to God’s people becoming an abundantly gracious people, while the tithe set limits. It seems to me this is a very common view (though many churches advocate a tithe for pragmatic reasons).

But there’s another view, a view that is probably much more a minority view, a view that I had in my mind but thought it would clutter up our post Monday, but it makes sense to me. I toss it out today for your consideration.

Do you find this view more convincing or less convincing? Why or why not?

Here goes: If you accept that Jewish Christians (messianists) lived a Torah observant life and therefore paid a tithe as a matter of course, and if you accept that Gentiles observed the Torah only to the degree and in the details that were for them and that meant they did not pay the tithe tax, then we have another situation: [Read more...]