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Dan Green is one of my favorite bloggers — smart and provocative — even though we see the world from very different perspectives. I would rather read a 1000 of his words over 10 of most bloggers, even when he takes exception to one my recent comments, one where I was baffled about authors who [...]

It has been suggested that I am in love with new concepts, new media. It’s true. I am absolutely in love with “new” media models (as opposed to new media models, though I am very fond of those as well). As an old media person who has witnessed successes and failures and inefficiencies, I am [...]

Once there was an author who wrote a book. He (though he could have been she) sent the book to his editor who cried at the beauty of the words and published the book and the people bought this book and declared it a thing of wonder and the book was deemed an American Classic [...]

There are sacred cows in publishing. Lots and lots of sacred cows. You have the “smell of books” people. You have “the publishing business model ain’t broke” people. And you have the “advances are divine rights” people. Suggest that advances are not written-in-stone obligations on the part of publishers and you’re considered naive. Ill-informed. Nutso.

HarperCollins [...]

It is rare that I hear something on the radio that makes me go “Yeah, tell it like it is, sister” (okay, brother), but there was a great story on the Marketplace Morning Report last Friday about social networks and mailing lists and who owns your list. If I were a better person (I’m not), [...]

It is not surprising that Amazon has told publishers that it’s their POD (print-on-demand) service or no sales through Amazon. It is surprising that, well, anyone is surprised. Did y’all think Amazon was buying Booksurge for the fun of it? What other outcome did you expect?

Readers don’t care if a book ships from a massive [...]

It is no secret that I hate publisher websites. The vast majority of them can be best described as “suffers from multiple personality disorder”. And I’m not just talking about the fact that publishers can’t figure out who the target audience of their site is. Visiting a publisher site means being subjected to bad design, [...]

I have a serious question for you. What if thousands of kids were reading and writing and nobody bothered to notice? I swear it’s happening. We are raising a nation of readers, writers, artists, and even activists. Better, we are raising a nation of communicators.
Now we have nurture and protect this new wonder.
I’m serious. All [...]

It’s like we invented the written word, and we decided to only write books.

Anyone cringing? Feeling a twinge of guilt? Sort of thinking “that’s me, that’s what I’m doing”? Then, “But, hey, books are the be-all and end-all of storytelling, I’m cool.”
No worries, mates! That quote wasn’t directed at you. Jane McGonigal was talking to [...]

I’m still trying to create some coherence from this year’s SXSW Interactive Festival. Lots of ideas coming in, very few coming out. I think there’s a high level meeting happening in my brain. Presumably, the neurons will let me know when it’s time for me to get involved. In the meantime, one quick thought about [...]