Category: books
-
Ways of Reading, Writing, Learning
A Working Library’s Ways of Reading could be called the nine rules of reading, writing, and learning. My favourite three: Always read with a pen in hand. The pen should be used both to mark the text you want to remember and to write from where the text leaves you. Think of the text as the…
-
Anatomy of a Price War
With the recent Amazon–Walmart price war on books and the 1992 airline industry price war as the backdrop, James Surowiecki takes a look at how price wars start, how they can be avoided, and how to (possibly) win at them. The best way to win a price war, then, is not to play in the…
-
(Preventing) Manipulation Through Irrationality
Through the theories discussed in Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational (and largely based on the excerpts in Chris Yeh’s outline of the book), two articles have emerged on different sides of one topic: our irrational decision-making in terms of products and purchases. One on how to take advantage of our irrationality when marketing products, and another…
-
The 50th Law
Power is greater than happiness, contends Robert Greene in an online discussion with Eliezer Yudkowsky about Fear, Power and Mortality (quality summary thereof), as happiness is fleeting and unremitting. Also discussed in this conversation is strategist Robert Greene’s latest book, The 50th Law: 10 Lessons in Fearlessness, which is the result of an unlikely collaboration with hip…
-
Cory Doctorow’s Experiment: Does Free Work?
For his next collection of short stories to be published, titled With a Little Help, author and blogger-extraordinaire Cory Doctorow will be running an experiment so that he can see whether his strategy of offering his work for free is working. With prices to range from $0.00 to $10,000 for various packages, Doctorow is to track his…
-
Publishing and the Digital Landscape
We’ve talked much about what’s happening in publishing, paper, and digital culture, but let’s talk about what should happen. “Book Oven is cloud-publishing: we are an online toolset that enables individuals and groups to make, improve, publish, and sell print books and ebooks. Book Oven is designed for independent writers and small presses.” Regardless of what…
-
New Authors and the Web
If you do happened to get signed by a publishing house, odds are you won’t get the attention you think you deserve. Once you finish your book and actually get it out there your job is just beginning: “Being an author has become much more of an ongoing relationship with your audience through the Web,…
-
Odds and Ends
A few quick links because this day is moving faster than I anticipated. elimae, pronounced el-ee-may, and standing for electronic literary magazine, was founded by Deron Bauman in 1996 and has published essays, fiction, interviews, poetry and reviews. At the end of 2004, Bauman departed to concentrate on other responsibilities, and the editorship was assumed…
-
Newspaper
In the spirit of self-publishing, Russell Davies et aliud created Newspaper Club, a mostly UK launched collective dedicated to building a service to help people make their own newspapers. One of my favorite ideas is Things Our Friends Have Shot On Flickr which is a beautiful example of the digital world colliding with print media.…
-
“We have broken your business, now we want your machines.”
Russell Davies on what’s been percolating in digital culture regarding print media: It’s not news that the internet has stimulated all sorts of creativity in the real world. From communities and marketplaces of crafters like folksy to new forms of personal manufacture like shapeways; technology is giving regular people access to tools and markets that once they…