Author: Glenn Hauman

Storm clouds are indeed on the horizon. Technologizer reports that Midway Games filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy yesterday.

Chairman, President and CEO Matt Booty called the filing “a difficult but necessary decision,” adding that it buys the company time to figure out how to proceed from here. For now, business continues as usual, and Midway has filed several First Day Motions in hopes of keeping it that way as restructuring takes place.

Midway Games Inc., the creator of the Mortal Kombat video-game series, most recently came out with Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.

From TechCrunch via Tom Galloway:

Last October, Google signed a $125 million settlement with the Author’s Guild to pay authors for copyrighted works it has scanned and made available on the Web through its Google Book Search project. More than 7 million books have been scanned by Google so far, a large portion of them out of print. Today, the Google Book Settlement site went up, which allows authors and other copyright holders of out-of-print books the ability to submit claims to participate in the settlement.

What do they get? Authors, publishers, and other copyright holders will get a one-time payment of $60 per scanned book (or $5 to $15 for partial works). In return, Google will be able to index the books and display snippets in search results, as well as up to 20% of each book in preview mode. Google will also be able to show ads on these pages and make available for sale digital versions of each book. Authors and copyright holders will receive 63 percent of all advertising and e-commerce revenues associated with their works. With Google Book Search now available on mobile phones, downloaded e-books could become an interesting digital side-business for Google. (But please Google, convert the scanned text into something more easily legible on the screen).

Remember, this settlement is only for the millions of out-of-print books that are making zero revenues for authors and publishers today. So it is not a bad deal all around. Copyright holders have until January 5, 2010 to make a claim.

There don’t seem to be many comics scanned in, but you never know. One wonders how they apply it to periodicals alike magazines and comic books.

Challengers Comics is holding a kid friendly event this Valentine’s Day to celebrate the release of  the Tiny Titans "Welcome to the Treehouse" collection by renowned artist Art Baltazar.  The event will run from 12:00-3:00 on February 14, 2009 and will include free Tiny Titan themed sweets, valentines, signings by the artist and anyone who shows up to Tiny Titans Day in costume, kid or adult, gets a free Tiny Titans comic signed by Baltazar.   As if that isn’t enough, fans can come get their picture taken with characters from the book for free as well.  Challengers Comics is located at 1845 N. Western Ave in the West Town neighborhood of Chicago.

     “We know everyone is having a tough time right now and we wanted to do something to give back to the neighborhood we now call home”, explained co-owner of Challengers Comics Patrick Brower. “Tiny Titans are the kid friendly version of the Teen Titans a fan favorite book from DC Comics.  It’s been a hit with comic book readers young and old and is a great way for whole families to enjoy reading together.” The other co-owner of Challengers Comics, W. Dal Bush, commented “Art Baltazar has been working on various major comics for over a decade and is a downright nice guy. He’s a hometown Chicagoan who is a great example of what hard work and persistence can achieve.”