Non-Traditional Publishing

Do you know that blind people use computers? This is not an idle question. Do you realize this? In addition to blind people, there are deaf people, people with cognitive problems, individuals with mobility problems, and, yes, people who are too vain to admit they need help reading tiny print. Normally, we would raise this issue in conjunction with a rant about making your website accessible. Yes, accessibility continues to be a very important issue to us — and, frankly, just about the smartest thing you can do if you want to be found on the Internet. Remember, the biggest […]

Say what you will about the New York Times, but covering the obvious is something the publication never fears. Okay, possibly a bit on the harsh side, but today’s story about audiobooks and technology shift had us giggling. A little. The gist of the story is that as more people get iPods, they turn to digital downloads of books rather than countless CDs. This has naturally been a boon for services like Audible (still the home of a really lousy user experience). It has also been a great deal for books — people are able to enjoy fine reading in

Let’s play a Monday morning game. Read the following sentence and remove the word “travel”. Then read the sentence again: Internet technologies have created new forms of publishing that are making it possible for any wannabe travel writer to see their work in print. Fun, huh? We lie awake all night long thinking of amusements for you. It’s not just travel writers who are finding new opportunities thanks to digital technology — other writers are finding creative ways to sell and publicize their works as well. While there are advantages and disadvantages to publishing your work online (or, horrors!, giving

Before we get started on our topic, we must clear the air. In no way, shape, or form do we support the use of the word “blook”. We demand that this word be stricken from the nation’s vocabulary immediately — think of the children! Do not let this word perpetuate. And with that, we plunge directly into the going-on-years-now phenomenon that is bloggers writing books. Or is it blogs that become books? Nevermind — the source of the material is far less important than the fact that the Wall Street Journal got sucked into the might Lulu.com promotion machine (extra

It is so hard to keep up with Google Book Search news these days. Honestly, we’re sitting in a room with the dude from Google — does he mention the new revenue sharing model? That would be a big, fat “No!” Of course, as you’ll recall from our previous posts, it was a busy conversation. So Google is adding a paid component to their searches, allowing publishers to set the price and sharing the revenue between the two entities (assuming a book has only one publisher, and in this modern world, one can never make such bold assertions). Being lazy,