Um, if you want to get me a late birthday present or an early Christmas present this book would be an excellent choice:
Where Good Ideas Come From
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Category Archives: Books
Seth on Publishing
I pretty much agree on Seth Godin's assessment of the current state of the publishing industry:
Traditional book publishers use techniques perfected a hundred years ago to help authors reach unknown readers, using a stable technology (books) and an antique and expensive distribution system.
The thing is–now I know who my readers are. Adding layers or faux scarcity doesn't help me or you. As the medium changes, publishers are on the defensive…. I honestly can't think of a single traditional book publisher who has led the development of a successful marketplace/marketing innovation in the last decade. The question asked by the corporate suits always seems to be, "how is this change in the marketplace going to hurt our core business?" To be succinct: I'm not sure that I serve my audience (you) by worrying about how a new approach is going to help or hurt Barnes & Noble.
My audience does things like buy five or ten copies at a time and distribute them to friends and co-workers. They (you) forward blog posts and PDFs. They join online discussion forums. None of these things are supported by the core of the current corporate publishing model.
Libraries Building Out Digital Loan System
An interesting article (subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal about libraries' efforts to lend more books electronically.
Starting Tuesday, a group of libraries led by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library, are joining forces to create a one-stop website for checking out e-books, including access to more than a million scanned public domain books and a catalog of thousands of contemporary e-book titles available at many public libraries…
With its latest project, the organization is making inroads into the idea of loaning in-copyright books to the masses. Only one person at a time will be allowed to check out a digital copy of an in-copyright book for two weeks. While on loan, the physical copy of the book won't be loaned, due to copyright restrictions.
The effort could face legal challenges from authors or publishers. Paul Aiken, the executive director of the Authors Guild—which challenged Google's scanning efforts—said "it is not clear what the legal basis of distributing these authors' work would be." He added: "I am not clear why it should be any different because a book is out of print. The authors' copyright doesn't diminish when a work is out of print."
Mr. Kahle said, "We're just trying to do what libraries have always done."
Bringing Books to Life
I love this video produced by the New Zealand Book Council to promote Maurice Gee's Going West and the Council's "Where books come to life" message. (h/t to Guerrilla Marketing for the lead).
The Life Magazine Published the Week I Was Born
Here'sa link to the issue of the Life Magazine that was published the week I was born. Check out the cool products being advertised, like the "New Admiral 25" Rectangular Color TV in slim new cabinets" or the Fujica Single 8 the "only instant load movie camera that fits into your pocket." Groovy!
By the way, you can check out the entire Life magazine archive at GoogleBooks.
Thriving on Less – Free eBook for Dealing with Tough Times
Leo Babauta has written a book titled The Power of Less and has also released a free companion ebook titled Thriving on Less. You can read about the ebook here and download the free version here.
I did a quick read of the 27-page ebook and it's chock full of common sense hints on simplifying your life and living frugally. As you'd expect it's a teaser for the print book which the author recommends that you buy, but the ebook is of value in and of itself and is a good quick read for tips on simplifying your life.
Babauta also writes a blog at ZenHabits that you will probably enjoy if you like the book. In these times I think we can all benefit from a little more simple living.
RIP, Gregory McDonald
When I was a teenager one of my favorite authors was Gregory McDonald who wrote the Fletch and Flynn series of books. Most people know the Fletch movie but most don’t know that it was based on McDonald’s series of mystery novels. That’s too bad because the books were much better than the movie. BTW, the movie probably would have been much better if it hadn’t starred Chevy Chase.
The Mirical Worker
Available today, hot off the presses is my first e-book. Actually it’s more like an e-booklet. Whatever, it’s the compilation of the comments that I’ve gotten on a short piece I did on telepreacher Ernest Angley over two years ago. I titled the book "The Mirical Worker" based on the spelling of "miracle" used in one of the earliest comments to the post. Following is the introduction and a link to download the PDF file if you’re interested.
Download The Mirical Worker.pdf
Introduction
On April 10, 2006 I posted a short item about televangelist Ernest
Angley on my blog. Little did I know that of the 1,440 posts on my
blog (to date) that this would be consistently among the most
popular. I also had no way of knowing that the post would also draw
the most interesting and strange comments I’ve received on any post.
Since this post is buried in the archives of my blog and is generally
found only by people who are actively searching Google for things
about Angley I thought I’d re-produce the post and comments in a
handy little booklet.
On the following pages you will find the text of my original post
and the text of every comment that I’ve received on that post. I
have not edited or altered the comments in any way and simply copied
and pasted them from the blog. You’ll notice that Angley’s
supporters have a tendency to misspell and over-use upper case text.
In fact you’ll note that the title of this booklet comes from one of
the early commenters who misspelled “miracle”. With patience I
think you’ll find yourself entertained as you scroll through them.
For your information the original post can be found here:
http://www.jonlowder.com/2006/04/ernest_angley_s.html
I’ll be updating this booklet as more comments come in. Believe
me, more will be coming.
Enjoy!
Smart Publishing
Cory Doctorow, he of BoingBoing among other ventures, has put Little Brother, his latest book online and once again shows some very smart publishing practices.
- The book can be downloaded for free under a Creative Commons
license. Many people won’t want to download and print a book themselves
so lots will buy it anyway. This is like the ultimate dust jacket
sales pitch. - He invites readers to convert the files to other formats and send
them to him to host on his site. So he basically gets his audience to
participate in the publishing process and he gets other people to do
the work of converting his work to various formats and then provide
links to readers for those formats. - He invites readers to re-mix his work.
Lots of people enjoy putting their own spin on stories and Cory
embraces and encourages this. Again, he’s engaging his audience and
creating an interactive experience. Even better he invites them to use
multi-media to do it, so people can write their own stuff or create
unique audio or video based on the story.
If you’re looking for smart ways to succeed in publishing I highly
recommend watching Cory and his ilk as they work their magic. And keep
in mind that important ingredients in his recipe are interactivity,
multi-media, and user generated content.
Mrs. Tarmey at Bookmarks 2007
Danielle Tarmey was one of my daughter Erin’s 5th grade teachers the year we moved to Lewisville and she was one of our son Justin’s 5th grade teachers this last year. She and her husband, Joseph Mills, co-authored A Guide to North Carolina Wineries and they will be appearing at the Bookmarks 2007 festival this Saturday (Sep. 8) at Historic Bethabara Park. Unfortunately Justin will be out of town, but Erin’s soccer game is in that neck of the woods on Saturday so we should get the chance to swing by and check out the festival and say hi to Mrs. Tarmey.
Befuddled 