Entries tagged with “recommended reading” from Tools of Change for Publishing
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
October 16, 2008
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In Defense of Piracy (Lawrence Lessig, Wall Street Journal)
The return of this "remix" culture could drive extraordinary economic growth, if encouraged, and properly balanced. It could return our culture to a practice that has marked every culture in human history -- save a few in the developed world for much of the 20th century -- where many create as well as consume. And it could inspire a deeper, much more meaningful practice of learning for a generation that has no time to read a book, but spends scores of hours each week listening, or watching or creating, "media."
Where is everybody? (Joe Wikert, TeleRead)
"If you build it, they will come" only works in the movies. If they really want to succeed Borders needs to do something beyond just making all this technology available in the store. Where are the in-store events (e.g., come let us help you research your family name, come see the latest e-book technologies, etc.)? How about signage in other areas of the store that promotes the tech kiosk area?
Mass book digitization: The deeper story of Google Books and the Open Content Alliance (Kalev Leetaru, First Monday)
Both projects offer the ability to search within a particular work, but only Google offers the ability to search across its entire collection. A search across the OCA archive only searches titles and description fields, not the full text of works. The OCA system thus offers a document-centric model, while Google offers both document and collection-based models, allowing broad exploratory searches of its entire holdings: the equivalent of being able to "full text search" a library. The importance of this difference cannot be understated in the limitations it places on the ability of patrons to interact with the OCA collections.
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
October 9, 2008
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The Future Is A Foreign Country (Timo Hannay, Nascent)
As with my journey to Japan, my personal response to all this internet-enabled weirdness was one of almost unadulterated joy. The fact that it is disrupting publishing is, I think, the single most important reason that I've come into the industry. How boring the last 550 years since Gutenberg have been. Until now.
Ok Entrepreneurs, Time to Step Up (Brad Feld, Feld Thoughts)
When I look back at the dotcom apocalypse that was 2000 - 2002, I realize some of the best companies I've ever been involved in were created during that time. In the midst of this, I remember the endless stream of "the Internet is over" and "the information technology business in now a mature business and there will never be innovation again." Yeah - whatever.
Watching Books (Richard Curtis, TeleRead)
As successive generations accustomed to being diverted by watching, rather than by reading, enter the editorial workforce, impatience with printed text is demonstrably increasing, as we can see in the sharp decline of newspapers and magazines. Books require a commitment of time and attention that we either don't have or aren't willing to give. The temptation to skip or skimp is strong. One editor confessed to me, "I tend to scan manuscripts on screen rather than read them the way I do a printed text." We must therefore ask ourselves whether instead of reading books on screen, we are watching them.
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
October 2, 2008
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The Live Web (Doc Searls, Doc Searls Weblog)
The Web isn't just real estate. It's a habitat, an environment, an ever-increasingly-connected place where fecundity rules, vivifying business, culture and everything else that thrives there. It is alive.
Putting the "book" back in Facebook (Dan Piepenbring, if:book)
Despite the presence of "book" in its title, few critics to my knowledge have construed Facebook as the ultimate electronic yearbook. They focus instead on its broader "social network" applications. That's all well and good, but what is Facebook if not the quintessential model of an electronic book done right? Like its conventional print brethren, Facebook chronicles the lives of a certain network's members. It's teeming with photos and groups; its wall posts are the digital equivalent of those slangy well-wishes from your friends and acquaintances (and maybe a stranger or two).
The Origin Of The CD-Keys, Part Three (Daniel James, Penny Arcade)
Nobody added your business to the list of protected species, despite what your lobbyists and lawyers say. Find a business model that's actually appropriate to the 21st century, and perhaps scale back your expectations of vast profits accordingly (oh, and fire some lawyers and lobbyists, too, please).
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
September 25, 2008
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Direct-To-Fan: Radiohead, Marillion And The End Of Labels (Robert Andrews, paidContent.org)
80s rock group Marillion, hardly a Top 10 draw nowadays, engages its fans so closely that they funded its latest album to the tune of £360,000. Erik Nielsen, who masterminded the strategy as MD of Marillion's Intact Records business arm, told our London EconMusic conference: "About a decade ago, we set out to release the bonds of the record companies over the artists. We worked out that we needed 5,000 fans to finance an album - when 12,000 did, we thought 'well, we can do this now'. We've continued to do that since 1999." By releasing the digital version of that album specifically on to P2P networks this month - "just to see what might happen, because we knew it was going to happen anyway" - the band has tripled its normal sales of physical deluxe copies.
State of the Blogosphere: The How of Blogging (Technorati)
One in four bloggers spends ten hours or more blogging each week. The most influential bloggers are even more prolific. Using Technorati Index data, we analyzed the posting and tagging behaviors of bloggers according to their Technorati Authority. Over half of the Technorati top authority bloggers post five or more times per day, and they are twice as likely to tag their blog posts compared to other bloggers.
Why the Financial Times can charge for metered content (Jason Preston, Eat Sleep Publish)
Those people who are just passing through and "joining the conversation" can be given free access, while those people who are your actual customers will be asked to pay for their content. By metering their content instead of simply throttling it like the New York Times did, FT is able to keep their content out from behind a wall while still charging for it. [Emphasis included in original post.]
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
September 18, 2008
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The End (Boris Kachka, New York Magazine)
The kind of targeted, curated lists editors would love to publish will work even better in an electronic, niche-driven world, if only the innovators can get them there. Those owners who are genuinely interested in the industry's long-term survival would do well to hire scrappy entrepreneurs at every level, people who think like underdogs.
Part Three: Bookstores vs. Online (Joe Wikert, Publishing 2020 Blog)
Why do loyalty programs always just have to be about one store/chain? Why can't there be a loyalty program that includes two or more stores I shop at most frequently? One might be a bookstore but others might be a grocery store, an electronics retailer or maybe a gas station. Points accumulated at all these locations would be pooled together so that one month I might redeem them for a book and the next month I might use them on my gas purchase.
The Future Of Media Round Table (Media Magazine)
Esther Dyson -- I think part of what's happening is that as more and more media becomes possible, different kinds of information find their most suitable venue. Yellow pages are stupid on paper and they make more sense online. Whereas a book, that's linear; you're supposed to read from beginning to end, so it's fine on paper. So I think they'll persist in those forms. And a sort of visual-display kind of magazine makes a lot of sense. Anything that is interactive, where the data changes, like stock prices, again, makes no sense on paper.
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
September 11, 2008
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Digital Newspapers and Digital History (Adam Hodgkin, Exact Editions)
A Kindle for books, a Plastic Logic napkin for newspapers, and no doubt an iMag reader of some kind for magazines. That way lies madness. Google have a better plan [to] try to deliver everything through a web browser. That should work in the direction of universal access. I hope Plastic Logic realise that their device needs to run a standard web browser before they commit everything to a Kindle-like proprietary device.
I Am Trying To Believe (that Rock Stars aren't Dead) (Jim Stogdill, O'Reilly Radar)
... "sell records" was not some complex business model come down from on high. I can't help but think that if there was an equally effective replacement someone would have thought of it by now. That's not to say I don't think new and better music distribution and monetization models won't be invented, I just don't think they will capture and concentrate as much value as the one that is dying before our eyes did. I suspect the balance between linear (touring) and leverage (selling stuff while you sit at home) has simply and irrevocably shifted toward the linear.
A unified field theory of publishing in the networked era (Bob Stein, if:book)
Reading and writing have always been social activities, but that fact tends to be obscured by the medium of print. We grew up with images of the solitary reader curled up in a chair or under a tree and the writer alone in his garret. The most important thing my colleagues and I have learned during our experiments with networked books over the past few years is that as discourse moves off the page onto the network, the social aspects are revealed in sometimes startling clarity. These exchanges move from background to foreground, a transition that has dramatic implications.
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
September 4, 2008
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Create Digital First (Martyn Daniels, Brave New World)
Today we are the start of a digital consumer offer but it is in the main based on yesterday's physical cost model, processes and perceptions. Merely taking the finished book and generating a digital rendition that mirrors the physical one is what music did with CDs. Is it logical to merely replicate the book and create just another rendition? We don't envisage the same demand change as music experienced in selling just fragments (tracks), but it is possible to see the selling of installments or part works, where all the complete 'book' may not be bought.
(Via the Reading 2.0 list)
The Elements of a Perfect eReading Device (Dear Author)
I think that there is a technological gap between what readers would like in the perfect ereader and what can actually be done. If you don't like LCD screens, then you are limited by refresh rates and the inability of eink technology to actually perform some multi function device programs. If you don't like to be limited by refresh rates, want a backlight, and ability to play video, browse the web, and even do a lot of typing (or editing of manuscripts), then eInk devices aren't for you.
(Via Electric Alphabet)
Google Chrome is Bad for Writers & Bloggers (Edward Champion, Edward Champion's Reluctant Habits)
Anyone who uses Chrome will technically own the copyright, but who needs copyright when the Chrome user effectively gives up her right to distribute this content in all perpetuity and without royalties? So if Joyce Carol Oates is using Chrome and types an email to someone, she "owns" the copyright. But Google has the right to use anything that Ms. Oates types into Chrome for any purpose. Google responds. (Via Jose Alonso Furtado's Twitter stream)
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
August 28, 2008
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Transforming American Newspapers (Part 1) (Vin Crosby, Digital Deliverance)
Contrary to myopia of many newspaper executives, advertisers aren't newspapers' primary customers. Although advertising revenues may be sunshine for newspaper executives, the roots of their business are readers. A newspaper with readers will attract advertisers but a newspaper without readers will not. Readers ultimately support and sustain the newspaper business.
(Via E-Media Tidbits)
The Customer is Always Wrong (Richard Nash, Ecstatic Days)
... there is a real tendency in our business to treat the customer as this perverse, mysterious, gullible, arrogant, narrow-minded, slightly thick, imperceptive lug. We largely talk down to him, dumb down for her, expect the least, fear the worst, and generally leave it up to the retailer to figure out how to reach him or her -- we'll get the book onto their shelves, we'll pay them some payola, and then it's their problem. Of course it's not, and not just because we're in the only business where 100% of the product can be returned for full credit. It's because fundamentally a publisher's job is to connect the writer to the reader. Not the book to the retailer, but the writer to the reader. (Via Jose Alonso Furtado's Twitter stream)
On Writing For "Free" (John Scalzi, Whatever)
... the point to make, again, is that "free to the reader" is not the same as "unpaid to the writer." I have gotten paid for the fiction I've put online. I do get paid for it. And, barring a sudden windfall of cash that obviates the need of me having to worry about money ever again, I will continue to make sure I get paid for it. And naturally I encourage other writers to make sure their own economic interests are served when they have stuff put online that is free for readers to view.
(Via TechDirt)
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
July 31, 2008
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This is Not a Comment (Derek Powazek, Powazek.com)
Chastising all internet commenters for the actions of the loudest, craziest ones is no different that swearing off all newspapers because of Jason Blair.
Silicon Valley's benevolent dictatorship (Rebecca MacKinnon, RConversation)
The guys running Google, Apple, Microsoft, and many other companies represented at the Fortune Brainstorm are the benevolent dictators of the global information and communications system. But can we assume they will always be benevolent? What happens when they roll out services in not-so-benevolent authoritarian regimes?
Once More With Feeling: The LATBR Publishes Its Last (Kassia Krozser, Booksquare)
... I still maintain that a book review section in a major newspaper should be reflective of the subscriber base, even if it's trying to maintain a certain level of discourse; you have to bring the larger audience in, even a little bit, if you want to expose your conversation beyond the choir.
Why I Joined the POD People (Richard Grayson, Quarterly Conversation)
Eventually, as print-on-demand technology improves in quality and costs shrink, trade publishers will probably rely on POD for all their books, just as some academic publishers have begun to do. Trade publishers waste a lot of money (and trees) by publishing copies of books, even bestsellers in fourth or fifth editions, that never get sold; no matter how many print runs, publishers always seem to have books left over. After my first book was remaindered I bought 400 copies of my first book for a nickel a copy, then discovered the cost of storing them was so expensive that I ended up throwing dozens of copies into a Miami dumpster.
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
July 10, 2008
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Ebooks and the Iphone (Publishing Frontier)
So by selling books as $5 iPhone books instead of $7 paperbacks, the publisher makes $0.90 per book. And, of course, if the publisher charged $6.99 for the iPhone book, the numbers would be $4.89 received from Apple - $0.70 royalty - $0.05 PPB [printing, paper, binding] - $0.40 art, promotion, etc = $3.74, or a profit of $2.09 over the paper book.
Wikipedia gets fictional (Seth's Blog)
A consistent rule on Wikipedia has been to rely on edited print publications (the mainstream media) as well as physical or unchanging materials (like the DVD of a TV show). This made sense five years ago, but as the world abandons print reference (which Wikipedia largely relies on for verification), are we biasing the entries in favor of Abraham Lincoln (plenty of printed facts available) and TV series characters (we can prove that George [Costanza] worked for Vandalay Industries)?
The difference between media and comms (The Equity Kicker)
The challenge for socnets [social networks] is that people are getting bored of accumulating friends and profile hopping and there is no obvious new entertainment service to build. Hence the platform strategy.
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