Having trouble writing? Try this famous author’s technique “Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall,” says Pulitzer Prize winner John McPhee. “Blurt out, heave out, babble out something – anything – as a first draft,” he says in an article called Draft No. 4 now in The New Yorker magazine where he’s been appearing regularly for 48 years. McPhee, the author of 32 books, says he first wrote these words of advice in a letter to his daughter Jenny years ago when she was starting out as a writer herself. “The way to do a piece of writing is three or four times over, never once,” he told her. “You work it over and alter it, you begin to shape sentences that score higher with the ear and eye. Edit again, top to bottom. The chances are that about now you’ll see something that you are sort of eager for others to see.”

http://www.incidentalcomics.com/ Just found this great site for publishing peeps.

How To Run A News Site And Newspaper Using WordPress And Google Docs - 10,000 Words

The workflow integrates seamlessly with InDesign, meaning the paper now has one content management system for both its web and print operations. And if you’re auspicious enough, you can do it too — he’s open-sourced all the code!

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Randomness at play

I liked how this

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2011/06/17/137221886/yes-those-people-ar...

Led to this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/arts/design/01tino.html

which led to this:

 

http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2010/03/against_writingthis_prog...

and now I feel so much smarter.

 

 

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You are a dog ....

I just read a blog post from Eoin Purcell where he uses the saying 'people don't know you're a dog online' to make a point. It occurred to me that with google talk, skype, social networking etc.,that that old trope about nobody knowing you're a dog online just isn't true anymore.  The internet is not about being anonymouse anymore. The digital space has changed dramatically since the time of the cartoon that Purcell mentions was drawn, (New Yorker 1993) 

Of course the point he was making was about how backlist competes with frontlist because now no one knows that it is backlist. It just is. And while I agree that digital distribution has changed the game for frontlist and backlist I still think that pubdate is extremely relevant and that it will be pubdate that influences purchases. Pubdate is what creates backlist and media is going to still push/review new over old. So while backlist is no longer constrained by material space it is still very much constrained by it's actual original existence and the way dialogue happens around books. 

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This was cool: http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

Words:

ebooks format and perception

Hi there:

A couple of problems I wanted you to be aware of. I was enjoying reading The Girl Who Played with Fire on my iphone with the kobo app. Then I upgraded to the 4.0 kobo app and you lost my bookmark. A bit of a pain with an ebook for sure but I forgive you.

Then I was reading along when I came to a passage that is supposed to be an icq exchange with Plague and Salander and the text in tags ran off the screen. I changed the font size to the smallest possible but it still didn't fit. I would have loved looking at the epub to see what was what but I didn't. Not sure who is at fault here - your conversion or publishers but I can say I blamed your app. Also, wondered how I get a new ebook if there is a fix for this? (As an aside I did go to the source! the pbook to see what I was missing)

Anyway I know there is a lot of crap that goes on in ebooks but because this is such a high profile ebook I thought I would write.

Oh yeah, you lost my bookmark again when I went back in the book to find where the passage was so I could take a photo of it (attached)!

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If you want loyalty don't piss me off ...

I recently read a tweet from @NicholasHoareTO and there was something about it that bugged me.

The tweet went like this:

"Dear customer, please don't use our store and staff to put together your online shopping list. :("

First of all how do you know dear store and staff that that is the reason a list is being made? I use my iphone and write notes about books I see all the time and I never or at least rarely order them online - and so what if I did? Don't you sell books online? Well you have a website but I can't order anything from it so perhaps I will just "steal" "your" catalogue and order them from somewhere else? Is that what you want?

Secondly, yes I am your customer - I might even be following you on twitter and you might even be pissing me off with your snotty tweets therefore I may not buy those books from you after all.

I know you have a reputation to keep up Nick Hoare but if you are going to use social media and your website presumably for the good of your business - don't complain when others use you to benefit their consuming. Be gracious, be helpful and all that other stuff that good retailers do who want to gain customer loyalty and then perhaps you will get customer loyalty.

 

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The real story behind Stieg Larsson and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Times Online

It has gone on rising. On a French beach last summer Mark Lawson, the critic, noted that “almost every sunbather of every nationality was reading one of Larsson’s novels in the numerous translations”. His three books, the Millennium trilogy, have been filmed in Sweden, and Hollywood is planning its own versions.

via entertainment.timesonline.co.uk

This is the kind of reporting that will no longer be available when people are reading on their iphones, ereaders and such - like the way I read Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and am now reading The Girl Who Played with Fire.

That aside - pretty good article on the author Steig Larsson who died at the age of 50.

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What a view.

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

Yesterday was a big fail on the part of Amazon and all of the other ebook providers, but mainly I suppose the fail was on the part of the publishers. I only think of the Kindle as the fail because this is what I had at my disposal as an ereader other than my iphone and computer. I have had the Kindle since christmas and I have yet to use it for anything other than a conversation piece.

Well as I said below, yesterday my daughter was home "sick" from school and slightly bored. (In actual fact the Kindle is hers - she was given it by one of early early early adopter friends and when she got it I thought cool, I can use that.)

So back to the story. She was home "sick" and we decided we should get the next installments in the series we were reading - Anne Mazer's Sister Magic. A fun read, lightly illustrated with line drawings and not something you need to have hanging out taking up shelf space. Perfect, I thought, finally a use case for the Kindle. In my oh so confident fatherly voice I told her we could get the series and start reading right away. Here I was willing to invest in about 5-6 books at one stop! Talk about impulse shopping.

Well the Kindle disappointed, Amazon disappointed, did publishers ever disappoint? No, not unless I pursued the reason why the ebooks weren't available. And this has to be a concern for any ebook vendor out there - perception! Who gets blamed when a book is not available?

Now I happen to know the behind the scenes story with agency pricing and publisher preparedness for the digital age but my impulse was still to think the Kindle sucks! Not only could I not get these books I wanted, but I also couldn't find about 4 other titles I wanted to read in digital. I am on an apocalyptic bent of late. I saw a table display at an Indigo store filled with fascinating titles like Slynx, and Battle Royale - and decided I would read these books in their digital format. Somehow it seemed appropriate to think the apocalypse would be brought to me on my iphone. I did decide to check Kobo first, Stanza's catalogues next and finally Amazon (don't like Amazon drm and that is that). Nowhere to be found -(note - I did not blame the iphone for not having the books).

The apocalypse would have to be provided by trees if at all. I may just forget this latest trend in my reading and if I do too bad authors, too bad publishers and too bad bookstores - my money is going to go toward investing in a good concrete bunker and a subscription to popular mechanics.

ebooks wherefore art thou ebooks?

Old age is something that crawls up on you. It can appear as hair loss, muscle mass decline, lung capacity limited, chronic back ache or underserved demographic in the ebook market.

With all the talk of dedicated ereaders being targeted at older people I find it odd that I am unable to find the books I want to read. Maybe this has absolutely nothing to do with my age but just my reading habits and the reading habits of my children.

It was not long ago that I over-enthusiastically commented in a tweet that I thought it was interesting how the conversations around the digitization of publishing were no longer about content but about price etc. Well I admit here that I was naive. It is still about not having content. I have avoided using the kindle because I don't like the drm. I don't like being tied to their device, even though I can synch up with the Kindle app on the iphone and my laptop and apparently on the ipad as well. But still come on Amazon what is it with this silly propriatary format? You really should know better. And that aside where are the books I want to read!

In the digital world I find I am mostly being sold romance books or business books or classics. But when you step outside of the digital mainstream you are in a wasteland. I just recently was influenced by a display in a bookstore that showed a lovely theme of reading that I was willing to delve into, but for practical reasons -including the aforementioned old age and a recent back problem, I wanted ebooks. I have been able to be a more focused reader on my digital devices than ever before. Don't know why I just am. So I could see myself ripping through these titles -but alas not to be. I just can't find the books anywhere. And who do I ask to special order them for me?

Another disappointment came when my daughter was home sick from school and we wanted to continue reading a new series we had discovered. We have avoided the ebook world for kid's books thus far because the books we were reading were richly illustrated but this series would have worked perfectly on the kindle. Yes I was even willing to buy the books from Amazon in the infamous "60" second download to get going - but once again not to be had. And again who the heck to ask to get a special order around here? No one!

So ebooks - publishers, I beseech you and wonder at your dismal failure to reach the masses with your so called vaunted content. Get your content out there so we can read it when want where we want how we want!

More about me and my reading:

I am struggling with my reading right now. At the side of my bed I have the last in the Harry Potter series - you know that book about those wizards and muggles and things? I bought this trade paper copy of the book at Hanukkah to give to my nephew but he already had read it so I kept it. Mind you I had bought a hard cover of the book when it first came out and my wife read it then we gave it away to my mom - who is a voracious reader.

I finally picked up Harry after just having read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on the iphone and I have to say I was torn and maybe even disappointed. Here I thought -ok back to the format I love -pbooks. But what I am experiencing is how crappy pbooks can be. I am finding the type dim, the margins crowded, the feel of the paper inadequate and the binding threateningly flimsy, not to mention I don't always have this book with me.

So what I am finding is that I want to read on the iphone again! I tried to prevent this, god knows I tried -but really the reading on the iphone is so much better than especially this trade paper version. I feel ripped off that I bought this piece of crap that probably won't make it through one reading. Sure I can loan it out but there won't be anything to loan out. And in that spirit of loaning without expectation of getting the thing back - I would just have to buy another copy of this book again anyway.

So what is my point? ebooks ebooks ebooks. Get me the content - I am ready to pay. Get me the ipad - I am ready for a slightly bigger screen. Get me out of Kindle drm prison! Let me read anywhere on any device and get me away from these smelly lousy paper things!

There is an occupational hazard in my role as the retail liaison for BookNet Canada - this hazard is that I have to go to a lot of bookstores. This is a hazard because inevitably I end up buying far too many books. There is something seductive about seeing all of these beautifully designed objects placed in seductive positions on lovely shelves.

This past week I went to the University of Waterloo bookstore and since I was in Waterloo I later dropped in on Words Worth Books - a general trade bookstore. Although I was tempted to buy something at the University I did escape wallet intact. But I was blown away by the aggressive position that the bookstore is taking toward ebooks. The university is in an enviable ,or unenviable depending on how you look at it, position of being embedded in a highly sophisticated technology environment. This means they need to stay up on technology and to this end they have been running an espresso machine (for books not coffee) as well as selling mobile phones (they are a rogers dealer and licensed to sell!) Soon the university will be selling ipads and ereaders alongside their laptops and iphones -and oh yeah blackberries too. If the ipad had been in Canada I surely would have been hooked and bought one here.

We all know that the road is not that smooth for this kind of mix of products - books and ebooks. However early signs indicate to the managers of the store that students want bundles and that ebooks do not cannibalize pbooks but actually enhance the reading experience by making those books available at all times in all places. Who wouldn't want to be dancing up a alcohol enhanced storm at ....... and suddenly when the conversation has room to happen and the arguements begin to fly being able to whip out your medical reference text and supporting your position?

My next stop was the general trade bookstore. The difference between visiting an academic bookstore and a trade bookstore cannot be too finely stated.  I sat leisurly in an office discussing a wide range of issues at the university and then left two hours later while at the general bookstore I inserted comments in between customer transactions at the bookstore till. Comments about ebooks, or software, the digital catalogue project and more. Occasionally I just had to back away from the till to let the late lunch rush load up on books, which was quite impressive to see. I would wander the store, load up on books of my own, then back to add another point - harried bookseller saying hmmm, ok hmmm, edespair, hmmm, ok - more edespair.

But at the end of it all, and the point of this blog post, was that I left the store with four books and three of them would be highly unlikely to see any life as an ebook. In the hopes of spreading a veneer of hope for the booksellers I said as I bought the Andy Goldsworthy and the humungous kid's books that these are books that will never be ebooks. Hmmm, said the bookseller -edespair!

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Top 10 Viral Stop Motion Videos

via socialtimes.com

I do love stop motion! Need stop motion aggregation.

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A great way to look at how movements grow.

Loved this video on how to replace the lcd screen on the MacBook. I am going to try it on my machine but not until I get a new laptop from work!

Clay Shirky

The most watched minute of video made in the last five years shows baby Charlie biting his brother’s finger. (Twice!) That minute has been watched by more people than the viewership of American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, and the Superbowl combined. (174 million views and counting.)

via shirky.com

It is phenomenon like this that blows me away. And apparently according to Clay Shirky is blowing complex business models away. Interesting article comparing the collapse of complex business models to the fall of complex societies.

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