http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/article/just_for_fun

we can frame "success" in various ways...

so here's a question for you, brian... :+)

of the big6, which dinosaur do you think
will be the first one to fall over and die?

it won't go bankrupt, of course, thanks to
the deep pockets of the parent corporation.

but surely there must be some thought about
"an exit strategy" -- flipping liabilities.

and they'll wanna sell while there is still
a perception business could be profitable,
and not waiting until it's perfectly clear
that the whole thing's goin' down the drain.

so which of the big6 do you think will be
the first one to throw the "we quit" switch?

and if you have any kind of an idea about
who'd constitute the "big20" of publishing,
which among them will be the first to flip?

a connection with other media companies is
bound to be an important determinant, as
those houses will have incentive to stay.

so which of the big6 are in the same hands
as, say, the television networks?, and the
major film companies?  and which are not?

-bowerbird





or, if you prefer to consider the question
from a different perspective, try this one.

if, long run, the big6 becomes the big3,
which 3 will buy the i.p. of the other 3?

-bowerbird





















http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/2012/03/26/doing-it-for-themselves-libraries-and-e-books

our noble librarians are being led
by a cluster of clowns and fools...

it's now time to bless bittorrent as
the de facto 21st-century library...

they don't seem to have any problem
managing the simple task of moving a
folder of files from one place to another,
with zero budget and no alphabet soup.

do you hear me?  you're fired!  all of you!

-bowerbird















http://www.kk.org/newrules/blog/2012/03/before-the-world-wide-web-ther

ah, memories! Êdialog also had a competitor
-- b.r.s. ("bibliographic research service"?) --
and both of them had "companion" versions
which offered a much less expensive option
nights and weekends, geared toÊindividuals.
the b.r.s. cheapie was called "after dark", and
the dialog one i think was "knowledge index".
but only academics would subscribe to them,
because they were just reference databases...

things closer to the web, as it now exists,Êwere
"the source" and "compuserve", and of course
there was "the well" and all of the b.b.s. sites.

-bowerbird


















http://www.tomabba.com/otherthings/?p=769

you're right.

an app is not a book.

well, it _could_ be one,
if it consists primarily
of a reading experience
with a long commitment.

but if it does not,
an app is not a book.

now.  so what?  who cares?

should that app roll over
and die and cease to exist?

of course not.

apps will take over some of
the roles books used to play.

because they do them better.

so what?  who cares?

the object is to do it all
-- the books and the apps --
in the best way possible...

-bowerbird



























http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/04/paragraphing-style

joel said:
>   IÕve seen countless books in the past year 
>   that have both a paragraph indent 
>   and an extra line space between paragraphs. 
>   As a professional book designer, 
>   that looks like an error.

well, i wouldn't intend any disrespect to you, joel,
especially since you're a professional book designer,
but...  who are you to designate this as "an error"?

(because, in typography, if it _looks_like_ "an error",
it most certainly _is_ an error.  typography is surely
about "the look" of type as much as anything else.)

have you asked people why they're employing both?

if you did, you'd find that they say that they _want_
to use indentation, because that's what makes a book
_look_like_ a book, and they want their book to do that.

but they will also tell you that, because readers are now
accustomed to the "blank-line" style, from the internet,
indentation all by itself creates a "far-too-crowded" look.

i'm not saying they're "right".  i don't think _anyone_ can
say that they are "right" and another position is "wrong".

but that includes you, too, joel.

if we trace back the reason for the original decision of book
typographers, we see a choice of closed-up paragraphs was
driven as much by _pragmatic_ matters as "design" ones...
and perhaps more.  vertical space was a costly commodity,
because it impacted pagecount, and thus printing expense.
boiled to its essence, they chose indentation to save money.

but online, vertical space is free, so why not use blank lines
to separate paragraphs?  you must admit that it's effective.

so i'm not about to let the past dictate the future on this one.

let us raise the issue with readers, and live with their decision.

-bowerbird

p.s.  i must say, joel, that it is a pleasure that _someone_
-- namely you -- is bringing up these interesting issues so
that we can talk about them.  you'd think that cyberspace
is a big place, and lots of people would be talking about the
myriad issues around the nuts-and-bolts of publishing today.
but for the most part, nope.  just joel and bookdesigner.com.












i'm not here as an advocate, for _any_ position...

personally, i couldn't care less what anyone does.

i like the look of indents, but i also like a bit of spacing
between paragraphs -- not a full line, but half is nice...

but that's just me, and you might be different, and
personally, i couldn't care less what you like or not,
just like you couldn't care less what i like or not...

i don't even mind if you castigate some other position
as "an error" just because it is "redundant", although
it's _not_ a sin to be redundant with your typography;
otherwise we wouldn't make headers big _and_ bold,
_and_ center them, _and_ start them on a new page.

but if you think "redundancy=error", i really don't care.

so do whatever you like.  it's fine with me.  sincerely.

here's the rub, though.

the readers -- you know, people who _buy_ your book,
pay their hard-earned cash for it -- _might_well_have_
a preference as to whether they want indents or blocks.

and indeed, even though joel might lack the ability to
"look into their minds", _i_ know what they are thinking,
because i have taken the novel approach of asking them.

and if you asked them too, you'd find that it's roughly
split right down the middle between indents and blocks,
with a good portion from each side leaning to a hybrid.

which means that, no matter which way you decide,
you're gonna make _some_ people unhappy.  sorry.

now, in a print-book, you could have an option, with
print-on-demand, of creating two different versions,
so as to make all of your customers happy, which is
usually a good thing for you to do, don't you think?

in an e-book, it'd be spiffy if our e-book viewer-apps
gave the end-user a choice as to which style to use,
and there's no reason why this wouldn't be possible;
it just hasn't been done by most of the programmers.

anyway, like i said, do it however you like, people...

you can even feel free to call other positions "wrong",
if it makes you feel better.  but then don't be surprised
if you find that the other side starts calling you "wrong".

i say whatever's right for you is right.  for you.  only you.

-bowerbird
























http://billhillsblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/110-makes-new-ipad-best-writing-system.html

richard fink, bill hill, and joe clark!
i'd better take a dip in this whirlpool.

richard, a "book" is a coherent chunk of
words that number roughly 40,000-120,000.
or, filesize-wise, from 150k up to 1.2meg.

i give you the numbers, because they are
objective, but "coherence" is the real key.
the whole story; can't add, can't subtract.
there will always be topics that need to be
exposed with this kind of level of detail...

and yes, as to the point being made here,
i can confirm that -- for me -- the ipad
is already a very nice writing machine,
and it will get even better once i ditch
my current keyboard, which only works in
portrait mode, for one that does landscape.

and i'm so glad we now have the ipad3, so
we no longer have to listen to bill whine
about how we need higher resolution.    :+)

-bowerbird









http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2012/04/these_drawings_date_from_1982.html

bob said:
>   We came up with these scenarios 
>   of how the (future) encyclopedia 
>   might be used

fantastic and prescient, bob.  thanks.


>   and commissioned Glenn Keane, 
>   a well-known Disney animator 
>   to render them.

these illustrations are simply superb.
can't say enough good things about 'em.

are there more?  if so, please reveal!


>   we completely missed 
>   the most important aspect
>   of the network -- 
>   that it was going to 
>   connect people to other people.

perhaps that's because you were using
nothing more than "mere" imagination?

because along about this same time,
i was absorbed in "network nation",
by starr and turoff, who reported that
the one most compelling aspect of the
networks they'd examined was precisely
that people on them hijacked them to
engage in communication with each other.

even when the "purpose" of the network
was to coordinate planetary destruction,
people ended up using it to _chat_, and
ask each other how their day was going,
and inquire about spouses and children.

from that to facebook would, seems to me,
be a rather short and fully obvious leap.
certainly not a business worth $100 billion.

then again, i had assumed a "search facility"
would be built in to the information network,
not be the basis for a monster like google.

-bowerbird






alan kay said:
>   But this didn't happen, and 
>   we wound up with a pop culture.
>
>   We can see this so easily by 
>   looking at comments on these pictures 
>   on various blog sites. I could only 
>   find one person who was unlazy enough 
>   to see if there were other opinions 
>   about these ideas (and did they 
>   really come from 1982 or earlier).
>
>   That's a pop culture, mostly trying to 
>   admire itself in every shiny surface 
>   it can find, and leaving behind 
>   the equivalent of "I was here" graffiti.

hey, did alan kay just diss us?       :+)

man oh man, i've been dissed by many people,
but to be dissed by alan kay is a real honor!

if it makes a difference, alan, i do believe
you missed the key "in these images" phrase.

bob was saying that _these_images_ fail to
portray much people-to-people communication.

the social interaction that's being depicted is
happening within face-to-face groups who are
using screens to access _info_ from elsewhere.

i don't believe that anyone discounted that
interpersonal communication would take place
across the network.  that was well understood.

but still, it's not being shown in these images.

we don't see any illustrations that we could
label as facebook, or twitter, or instagram.

and, as bob points out, those usages are the
ones that are _most_ common on the web today.

are they shallow?  well, yeah, you can say so.

but that's really beside the fact of popularity.
(or perhaps popularity always will be shallow.)

i already asked if there were more images, and
requested that they be revealed, if there are.

so if there _are_ images which show such usage
-- people sharing their lives with each other --
i would certainly love to see them.  but if not,
then i'd have to say that bob is right about it.

and i surely don't want alan kay to say i'm lazy.
i'd work very hard to have a good chat with you.
perhaps during a visit to the santa monica pier.

-bowerbird
























http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2012/04/14/2b2k-too-big-to-knows-network

>   IÕm surprised that Amazon hasnÕt picked up on it 
>   as a way to sell more books

what do you think is the purpose of
doing the work of computing and
presenting that specific information?

and it's called "collaborative filtering'.

-bowerbird
















http://www.pakman.com/2012/04/16/why-should-ebooks-cost-15

let's take it a step further...

what is the right price for selling a file?

that's all you get with an e-book -- a file!

keep in mind that you must cover the costs of
storing the files, and squirting them to many
machines, over the lifetime of the customer.

you also have the costs of customer service,
updates, cross-platform viewer-app development,
engines for both recommendations and reviews,
site maintenance for tens of millions of files,
management of user annotations/notes/highlights,
and perhaps even digital rights management...

you've got to handle complaints from the public.

you must be able to take payments, from customers
all over the world, and manage the money to pay
authors on a regular basis, with transparency...

and you've gotta keep the government happy too.

so don't underestimate the cost of selling a file.

but don't overestimate it either.

because at base, that's what we're talking about:
selling a file.

and let us be clear: amazon is willing to sell
a file for $1, a sale on which it takes $.70.

and apple, in its app store, is willing to sell
a file for $1, a sale on which it takes $.30.

let us also be clear that -- in the past, even
up to recent days -- there have been many authors
eager and willing to sell their books on the basis
of receiving a royalty of $1 or $2 or $3 per sale.

and indeed, there are many self-published e-books
in the amazon store that are being sold for $1.99.

if it really costs big6 publishers a lot more
for them to make their books, then maybe it is
because their workflows are not cost-effective.

-bowerbird















http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120417/03333118519/if-publishers-cant-cover-their-costs-with-10-ebooks-then-they-deserve-to-go-out-business.shtml

well, of course they are lying assholes...

but i do believe they are stupid as well.
they coulda got out in front, with e-books,
and used near-zero marginal costs to _boost_
their profits, even while lowering prices...

cannibalize yourself, so nobody else _can_.

maybe they went to college, but they slept,
so it was just a big waste of daddy's money.

-bowerbird



























http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2012/04/18/pitfalls-of-wysiwig-self-publishing-hell

much has happened in the last 9 months,
-- if you live in the mac world anyway --
so let me catch all of you up on the latest.

check out "multimarkdown composer"...
multimarkdown is a version of markdown
that addresses the original shortcomings.
and "composer" is a dedicated editor that
shows you a formatted preview window,
for the two-pane format described above.
in the mac app store, for less than $10...

if you like the idea of a formatted preview,
but prefer to use your favorite editing app,
you must grab "marked" from the app store.
it's the "second pane" for _any_ text-editor.
unfortunately, the latest version is lion only.
but in the mac app store, and less than $5...

there are lots of other markdown editors
around today, and always more coming,
but those two will take care of you nicely.

but let's get back to the top of the article...

i've invented a form of light markup that is
even lighter than markdown.  i call my baby
"zen markup language" -- z.m.l. for short --
and i'll be releasing apps for it very shortly.
my apps are cross-plat (mac, p.c., and linux),
and i will also have a version up on the web...
(it'll go live at "zen magic love dot com" soon.)

my workflow is aimed squarely at doing books,
and the needs of books (rather than websites),
so the output formats are .html (for the web),
as well as .pdf and .epub and .mobi (kindle)...

-bowerbird
















http://blog.devontechnologies.com/2012/04/read-our-documentation-on-your-favorite-ebook-reader

administrator said:
>   WeÕre a small company and have to focus our resources.

if you download the free amazon kindle previewer,
you just drop an .epub on it to convert it to a .mobi.

-bowerbird




















http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/the_under_served

could the message be any more clear?

the imperative of the digital world is
to decrease friction as much as you can.

corporate publishers, on the other hand,
want to _increase_ it.  ergo, dinosaurs.

i know you keep wondering, brian, when
these corporate guys are gonna "get it".

the answer is _never_.

and so what i keep wondering, brian, is
when are you going to understand _that_?

you're simply wasting your time trying to
educate those backward dinosaur brains.

-bowerbird













http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/its_down_to_drm

both stross and mikey are confused.

couldn't you find someone smart to write up?

yes, that's a trick question, because
it's much harder than you might expect.

still, try this:
>   http://eoinpurcellsblog.com/2012/04/14/i-think-publisher-have-lost-the-battle-war

-bowerbird








or maybe even better yet, this:
>   http://publishingperspectives.com/2012/04/publishers-beware-more-creative-destruction-on-the-way

that has good information pertaining to
a question i asked you a while back...

-bowerbird



















https://americaneditor.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/the-amazon-conundrum-competition-in-ebooks

>   the playing field becomes perfectly level. 
>   Now ebooksellers will have to compete on 
>   other factors, such as customer service.

amazon got its lead in the first place on
"a level playing field"...  now you want to
penalize amazon to make it "level" again?

well, guess what? amazon will win _again_.

everything it does, specifically including its
"customer service" wallops its competitors.

and coddling those competitors will _not_
help them to compete any better, sadly...

-bowerbird





















http://ljndawson.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/the-long-game

we need books.  (rather, we need the extended and
coherent expositions which can be found in books,
not to mention the stories often residing therein.)

but we no longer need an "industry" to publish stuff,
or decide that some material _won't_ be published.

publishing is now a button, and anyone can push it.
just like you just did, laura, to share this eloquence.

believe me, books, and the people who author them,
are more than strong enough to survive the crumbling
of the publishing "industry".  indeed, they will thrive...

-bowerbird
















what a silly article.

i decided to get a good laugh at whatever "analysts"
made up that "13 million" number you seem to take
so seriously, alex, so i followed the link you gave us.

curiously, i found no such number on that page...

indeed, it says "consensus is for about 12 million".

and another article linked there, at forbes, said "the
average estimate from this group was 11.87 million".

so you've got some explaining to do, alex.

did those other sites change their numbers?

or did you intentionally misrepresent them?

or what?

never mind the fact that the foundation for your
entire article here just got blown out of the water.

at stake now is your credibility and integrity as
a journalist who can tell the number 13 from 12.

-bowerbird

















http://www.technologyreview.com/web/40210

>   the thorny tangle of legal,
>   commercial, and political issues

stop mincing words.  call it what it is:  greed.

and there's no way these tired old paper tigers
-- who failed every step of the way for decades --
are gonna be able to do anything but fail again...

they can't even take back the academic journals
they gave away and now buy back at high prices.

unless politicians stand up and _tell_ corporations
that we _will_ have a universal library, we will not.
(as if a comfortable slave can do that to his master.)

these academics are just rich people _pretending_
that there will be a cyberlibrary, so poor people will
keep standing outside the gate waiting for handouts.

it's time to storm the place, and liberate the books...
we're tired of greedy people holding them for ransom.
scanners are the weapons we'll use for this revolution.

-bowerbird























http://craigmod.com/satellite/pointable_01

how about when you cannot point at
a comment you've made in the past
because the blog owner removed it?

-bowerbird






http://craigmod.com/satellite/pointable_02

somehow i read these out of order, so this was
intended to be my comment on your part 3 of 3,
but what makes you feel entitled to point to stuff?

what if i want my stuff to remain out of your sphere?

what if i _don't_want_ you to be _able_ to point to it?

just because it is "convenient" for you to point, and
you've got yourself in the "habit" of doing it, so what?

what if i don't want my stuff to be "useful" in your world?

and what if i don't care to have my stuff "do work" there,
propping up your world-view and giving it _my_ energy?

i don't care if you think this means my stuff is "deflated",
or it "doesn't have legs", or it "isn't adjacent to anything".
i _don't_want_ to be "adjacent" to anything in your world.

i don't care if you think this means my stuff doesn't "exist".
you don't define existence, not in any way, shape, or form.

i hope you grasp the irony when you hit "delete" on this...

-bowerbird










http://craigmod.com/satellite/pointable_03

and what about when you took issue in a comment
with the position espoused by the blog's owner, and
later the blog owner came over to your position, but
nobody knows it, because the blog owner _removed_
the comment where you took issue with him.  what then?

-bowerbird




















http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/tears_in_rain

the irony is that craig mod consistently
deletes the comments i post on his blog.

then, months later, i find that he's now
shifted focus to agree with what i wrote.

and let me just add this, here, for now:

if i choose not to play in your circle,
it does _not_ mean that i "don't exist".

it might simply mean i don't want to
support your particular world-view...

-bowerbird










you're one of the few people in these parts
with an honestly sincere open mind, brian...

you and laura jane and hugh mcguire are
three that pop to mind, but the only three.

-bowerbird


















http://davidsimon.com/introduction2

here's some friendly advice.

your wife is smarter than you are.

ask her to evaluate what you've done here.

listen to her answer.  carefully.

-bowerbird





i guess you don't like being told that 
your wife is smarter than you are!     :+)

oh well, it was friendly advice, meant
for you, so if you don't want to share it,
i can live with your decision, which is
good, because i don't have any choice!

-bowerbird




















http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/what_are_we_about

>   If Amazon is all about scale, 
>   what are we about?

except amazon is _not_ "all about" scale.
that is merely one implementation detail.

amazon's most important asset is that it
works to adopt the customer's perspective.

it moves inside a person's head, and asks:
"what do i want, to be a happy customer?"

the answers are easy, not rocket science.

i want low prices. i want wide selection.
i want info about the products offered.
i want a smooth, trouble-free transaction.
i want freedom from unneeded inconvenience.
i want good customer-service after the fact.
i want problems i experience to be solved,
quickly and easily, and without any hassle.

this is _philosophy_, not "scale", and it's
very difficult to implement unless you are
completely committed to executing the thrust.

and _that_ is why amazon is so hard to beat.

don't get me wrong. their scale is awesome,
and so is the rest of their technical sphere.

but the customer-facing stuff is most vital.
if you can't match that, your back-end will
_not_ save you.  it won't even come close...

-bowerbird








brian said:
>   ThatÕs actually an area 
>   in which publishing could compete

well, i think it's up for debate
whether they "could" or could not.

but i'm quite sure we agree that
if they don't even try, they won't.

and -- far as i can see, anyway --
they aren't even trying, not at all.

-bowerbird















http://mysterywritingismurder.blogspot.com/2012/04/why-one-traditionally-published-author.html

you said:
>   You need to get 
>   as many people 
>   as possible 
>   to read you work,

classic.   :+)

-bowerbird















whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/03/amanda-palmer-kickstarter-and-everything

amanda _has_ done a lot of ground-work...
so everything you have said here is spot-on.

yet i can't help but think you missed the point.

first, many of the astounding success stories
coming out of kickstarter are _not_ cases of
someone having had a pre-existing following.

but even that ignores the most important thing.

which is that -- if you _do_ have a following,
kickstarter provides a great infrastructure for
collecting money from them to front a project.

to the extent that, if you _ask_ for $100,000,
you might end up with _ten_times_ that much.

this is far preferable to amanda running some
twitter auction out of her bedroom, n'est pas?

so it is clear that artists are infinitely better off 
now that that infrastructure is firmly ensconced.

as amanda's sign says, "this is the future of music".

-bowerbird












scalzi said:
>   1. ItÕs entirely possible for a great idea to sell itself 
>   (or to get the attention of others).

right.  that's what i said.  and -- as i also said --
that's not really the most important point here.


>   2. Success isnÕt the funding; 

i never said it was.  but, to that particular end,
not getting funding isn't really "success" either.

funding is merely necessary.  it's not sufficient.
but again, that's still beside the important point.


>   success is the execution of the project. 
>   A Kickstarter project can be very well-funded 
>   but if it doesnÕt deliver on whatÕs promised, 
>   then it will be a failure. 

of course, john, but that's a failure of _execution_.

and i agree with you that it's extremely important to
factor the _execution_stage_ into the full equation,
because far too many artists are ill-prepared there...

but again, the thing that i personally find to be
the most compelling part of the kickstarter vibe
is that it's possible to go to your fan-base to get
the critical mass of funding to up-front a project.

and that's a step that -- up to this point in time --
was _not_ easy at all, even if an artist already
had a fan-base, and was capable of execution.
the handing-over-the-money part was still hard,
especially since it was a chicken-egg problem...

so one of the key obstacles has been removed.

and thus one major pro-middlemen talking-point
-- up-front funding -- has now dissolved into dust.

-bowerbird

p.s.  i also agree with rickg that many backers
think of themselves not as "customers" per se,
but rather as "investors", and even as "angels",
in which case the "execution" is less important.
especially with a well-established fan-base, like
the one amanda has, the payments are as much
for stuff delivered in the _past_ as in the _future_.




















scalzi said:
>   I donÕt we are actually having 
>   any sort of substantive disagreement

um, we're not having _any_ kind of disagreement!        :+)
as i said at the outset, everything you said here is spot-on.

i just thought you left something out -- namely, the blessing
which kickstarter has bestowed on the community of artists.

is it "free money"?  of course not.  but it _is_ up-front money.
and in the hands of a savvy artist, that's a huge advantage...

-bowerbird

















http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/05/set-up-a-workflow-that-starts-with-styles

so much to discuss here, but i'm just too busy, because
i'm -- finally! -- putting out my e-book generator tool...

the workflow for it goes like this:
1. write your book in your text-editor or word-processor,
2. using my e-book tool along the way to make sure that
3. the created formatted display looks like you intended it,
4. and then, when you're all done writing, click a button to
5. auto-generate your .epub, .mobi, .html, and .pdf output.

or, to put it more succinctly:
1. write text.
2. verify formatting.
3. generate e-books.

you can be some of the people to get an advance preview, at:
>   http://zenmagiclove.com/advance.html

i would be particularly interested in any feedback which
you knowledgeable people have on the underlying .html,
should you be interested in viewing the guts of the .epub.

the tool is not open-source, but it is cost-free.  enjoy.

-bowerbird


















http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/05/the-death-of-genre.html

the answer to information overload is
a good collaborative filtering system.

our gracious host (do you people really
call him that?) might dismiss this with
some one-liner, but that just indicates
that he doesn't really know what it is.

but even amazon doesn't grasp how
collaborative filtering would excel --
"buyers who bought this also bought..."
is the kind only a seller could love --
so o.g.h. is not alone in that regard...

-bowerbird
















http://brettterpstra.com/my-ultimate-markdown-editor-wishlist

i'd suggest an option to turn off all of these "features".

they strike me as being like the so-called "smart" stuff
in microsoft-word, which is always screwing stuff up...

i want my text-editor to let me do all the typing, thank you.
i don't want it "helping" me out making its own keystrokes.

-bowerbird








brett said:
>   Then why would you be buying 
>   a Markdown editor in the first place?

for the preview pane?, because "marked"
doesn't work on snow leopard any more?      ;+)

but seriously, that's a great question, and
i see my point needs some more nuance.

first of all, you've created a great list there,
and even though i did not take the time to
think through every one of the suggestions,
i can tell that you probably did, so i would
expect that all of them are well-specified...

and i love the fact that you floated this list
of well-thought-out suggestions publicly...
that kind of push for thoughtful interaction
is something i would like to see more of,
from people in general, so i applaud you.
i can't help but think that we humans are
squandering the communication potential
with which this century has blessed us...

and if we learn to do it with software design,
maybe we can leverage that to ending war,
and hunger, and poverty, and violence, and...

so please understand i admire your list, i do.

but here's the flip side of it.  partly because
this list _is_ so extensive, halfway through
i started getting the feeling that this editor
would be doing so many keystrokes for me
that it would start to make me a bit dizzy...

so if i started at zero, and jumped into _all_
of them, at once, i might feel i'd lost control.

but don't get me wrong.  i can most definitely
see the appeal of the ones that i can grok...

indeed, when i first used multimedia composer,
and had created an unordered list, and hit the
"enter" key, and it inserted the asterisk for me
to start off the next line, i let out a little whistle.
whoa, i said, that's cool, and helpful, and neat.

and i imagine that every one of your features
_might_ be like that -- or even _would_ be --
if i could just introduce 'em more gradually into
my workflow, rather than get hit with all at once.

and heck, maybe i'm wrong, and i really _could_
handle all of 'em at once, i dunno.  but it seemed
to me that the list of all of them was "too much",
that a robot had taken over the machine from me.

so i thought an option to turn any one or more of
them off would be a nice concession to the user.

do i think any of these should be _eliminated_?
no, i'm sure each one would find its supporters,
even if it's one that i might never enable myself.

but i can also say that i'd definitely want to have
an ability to disable each and every one of 'em...

-bowerbird

p.s.  i hate the syntax highlighting in "composer"
for much the same reason.  i don't need it, and
i find it to be a distraction when i'm writing/editing.

p.p.s.  just so you know, in case you don't already,
i created my own form of light-markup, long before
markdown appeared, and i'm a programmer too, so
i'll be releasing my own editor-tool "real soon now".
but in the mode of coding to scratch my own itches,
my app will contain few of the features from your list.
so maybe i'm just jealous that you'll have more shiny.
nonetheless, once again, i admire the thought you did.
indeed, i'm a big fan of all you've done for light-markup.










http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/05/from-writer-to-author-to-publisher-to-marketer

sorry, joel, but i don't buy it.  at all.

most especially not the part where
the "most evolved" position on the
totem-pole is the _marketeer_,
which i see as the scummiest of all.

the "buy my book" obsession which
infests so many self-publishers today
is a big turn-off to the general public.
it is currently the _biggest_ black-eye
being borne by the artistic community.

fortunately, this stage won't last too long,
because it doesn't scale.  once too many
are doing it, it simply won't work any more.

then we will be back in the state where
writers sit down and write because they
are compelled to write, not because they
hope there's a paycheck when they get up.

if y'all want to be businessmen, that's fine;
go start a business, with our best blessings,
because we hope you make a lot of money.

but leave writers alone, thank you very much.
because what _we_ want to make is our art.

that's my opinion...  and i'm sticking to it...

-bowerbird












ernie said:
>   For those writers such as bowerhead 

it's "bowerbird".  but, you know, whatever...


>   who think that marketing is beneath them:

marketeers (and bankers) who lie _are_ beneath me.
they are beneath _anyone_ with a shred of integrity...
(which just happens to be a very handy asset for the
writers who desire to write from a position of truth.)

but that's really beside the point.


>   ÒNothing sells by itself.Ó

i disagree.  even now, there are lots of authors who
are selling far more than they can explain, given the
meager efforts they have made to generate any sales.

we might agree that's because amazon has done a lot,
so none of those books sold "by itself", but the point is
that in the world of tomorrow, with millions and millions
and millions of self-published books, it's going to become
nearly impossible for you to do _anything_ to "get noticed",
except -- of course -- to write a great book that people love,
so they do the word-of-mouth which has always sold books,
without much regard for the size of the advertising budget.

if it makes you feel better to believe you "make a difference"
with your marketeering efforts, then by all means go ahead.
i'm just putting forth the opinion that you're fooling yourself,
and that other people shouldn't waste their own energy by
believing in the same superstitious-based inference as you.

this is a fleeting moment in the evolution of self-publishing,
where it's still possible to believe that our own feeble efforts
at self-promotion are actually _effective_ in making sales...

(and that moment might _already_ have passed us by, with
amanda hocking and john locke as its primary beneficiaries.
even the supersalesman joe konrath has seen slowed sales.)


>   In short, the majority of writers and artists who are 
>   against marketing are broke, have money problems, 
>   and are in denial that they have money problems.

that's quite a picture you have painted there, ernie...       :+)

is anyone buying it?

most artists are broke because they are deluding themselves,
and because the world doesn't value art.  it's always been so.

on the other hand...

the majority of people who believe in the value of marketing
don't have any use for the "silliness" of art in the first place...
you can make a lot more money selling shoes.  or snake-oil.


>   In the end, however, it is much better for the rest of us 
>   truly creative people because we have less competition when it 
>   comes to our using our creativity to market our creative works.

you know, if you really believed that, you wouldn't have to
push your "you _must_ do marketing" message so heavily.

you know who's trying to selling marketing?  the marketeers!

-bowerbird

p.s.  i'll let you have the last word, ernie, but everyone can be
assured that whatever you say won't change _my_ mind!       :+)

p.p.s.  i love all of you!  except the liars.  and the bankers.











jean ann said:
>   If you arenÕt interested in 
>   self-publishing and marketing, 
>   why are you reading 
>   the Book Designer blog?

i'm greatly interested in self-publishing!
individual expression!  yes!  count me in!

i just don't make the awful mistake of
conflating self-publishing and marketing.

take my posts right here, on this topic.
i speak my mind, so you can hear it...

i'm not interested in having you "buy it".
i would much rather have you formulate
your own opinion, and then articulate it.

i certainly won't punish you if we disagree.
as they say, that's what makes a horse-race.

>   We are driven by the desire 
>   to share our books with others.

interesting word you used there -- "share"...

-bowerbird

p.s.  i was promoting self-publishing long before
there was "the book designer" blog.  or blogs at all.
that interest continues.  and i think joel is spiffy...









individual human beings don't want to
be informed that your product "exists",
because millions and millions of books,
quite literally, are published every year.

their time-and-attention is limited, and
thus they do not want you to waste it
with announcements of your "product".

marketeers traditionally _do_not_care_
when they alienate any non-customers,
and are willing to piss off _thousands_
in order to make one sale to a customer.

but in today's world of social networking,
you can't afford to generate bad karma...

if  your book is really "worth purchasing",
the ratings and reviews at amazon, plus
your description and the sample chapters,
will be enough to seal the deal when the
"people who bought this book also bought"
collaborative filtering algorithm kicks in...
that's your 21st-century "word-of-mouth".

i know it's hard for some people to hear this.
you want to take charge, to "do something",
and be active in creating a positive outcome.
and those are good motivations, in general...

but sometimes you have to let your children
go out and make their own way in the world.

-bowerbird













linton said:
>   I have a feeling that went in one ear and out the other.

actually, i'm still listening, and quite attentively.

even though you haven't said anything i haven't already
heard, over and over, time and time again, repeatedly...

(if you think the world ignores your self-published books,
try being a _poet_ and trying to get anybody's attention.
that's the world i live in, where i have had self-promoters
in my face day after day for the last two decades, so i am
acquainted with the phenomenon, thank you very much.
and know pretty much exactly how well it works. or not.)

it's ironic, though, that you think i am the one who is
not open to argumentation...  because, from my view,
the marketeers are the ones who're taking it on faith,
immune to any "attacks" mounted against the religion.

-bowerbird







matt said:
>   Poe, Melville, Blake to name a few, Van Gogh

the world discovered the genius of these artists despite
the fact that they did no self-promotion after they died.

-bowerbird










>  There's your business plan.

actually, i don't need "a business plan",
because i'm not trying to sell anything.

but something tells me that, in this age of
instant communication and social networks,
none of those cats would need one either...
their stuff would go viral before they knew it.
(we might even call it "van goghing viral".)

blake, especially, had multi-media down pat.

-bowerbird

p.s.  and poe would gravitate to the goths...
melville might have a hard time, because we
don't have the attention spans we once had.













i'd say y'all should hire ernie to do your marketing for you.

if he's not available, go find and hire yourself some other
"prosperity life coach".

what?  you say you can't afford it?

how can you afford _not_ to?        :+)

what?  you say, really, you really can't afford it?

then i would recommend you buy a few of ernie's books,
specifically the one that tells how to attain "real success
without a real job" and also get "career success without
a real job", and without any question or hesitation also
"the lazy person's guide to success".  because even though
you can't sell your book without marketing, evidently you
_can_ achieve success even if you are lazy.  strange, eh?

-bowerbird

p.s.  if you're not obsessed with success, you can buy
ernie's "the lazy person's guide to happiness" instead.




















http://blog.dshr.org/2012/05/harvesting-and-preserving-future-web.html

david, thank you, first,
for bringing up the issue.

and second, for standing up
to stress its importance
when people tell you that
your goal is "impossible",
and probably always was...

we're losing "commonality"
_and_ letting history slip
through our fingers like
grains of sand at a beach.

the problem with "lowering
the expectation" of our
preservationists is that
nobody really knows how to
keep it from hitting zero.

because that's where it'll
end up if we stay on this
far-too-slippery slope...

the web is our newspaper.
it is our diary, and our
history book. do we really
want to write them in ink
guaranteed to fade away?

and _sooner_, not later?
to the point that it is
already fully invisible
even when first written?

as you said, david, we
clearly need to rethink,
and do it _fundamentally_.

don't let people
pooh-pooh you...

-bowerbird











david-

i get it.

you're telling us we will
soon be going off a cliff,
and need to change course.

this is very important...

vital, crucial, imperative.

you need to persist.

do not be waylaid by the
people who wanna tell you
that we have always been
on this particular path...

maybe we have.

or maybe we haven't.

but it's beside the point.

because we are about to go
off the edge of a cliff...

i get it. you must persist.

-bowerbird

























http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/apr/26/how-books-will-survive-amazon

as a _decades-long_proponent_ of e-books,
i've seen the importance of print-on-demand
for a very long time now, so i am an admirer
of jason epstein for making p.o.d. a reality...

but even though i'm a big fan, i must say that
mr. epstein neglects to inform us in this article
of his vested interest in these matters, which
seems, to me, to be a bit of an ethical issue.

at the very least, his financial interest helps us
to understand some perspectives he has taken,
with the most apparent being the casual ease of
his use of "monopoly" when applied to amazon.

i'd guess that when mr. epstein starts trying to
enforce his patents on upstart p.o.d. machinery,
he won't appreciate the "m" word used on him.

so maybe he shouldn't be flinging it around now.

at any rate, if you were wondering how the view
that "digital dominates" resides comfortably with
the view that "we'll have plenty of paper-books"
inside the confines of this article, merely look at
how that intersection fattens mr. epstein's wallet.

let's hope the whole patent system mess gets
resolved before we have to start paying a toll
on a laser-printer in a bookstore just because
it happens to be printing out a book, since that
would be a perfect example of "monopoly rent".

-bowerbird

















http://www.zeldman.com/2012/05/18/web-design-manifesto-2012

wow.

two things amaze me about this...

the first is that you have _finally_
said something that makes sense.

the second is that the web told me,
_almost_instantly,_ that you had...
i'd just about given up on the notion
that anything worthwhile is capable
of getting any attention these days...

this double-dose gives me strength
to go on a little bit longer, hoping...

-bowerbird






















http://www.alistapart.com/articles/publication-standards-part-1-the-fragmented-present

>   web developers could help here

um... no.

most emphatically not.

it's 2012, and in the last decade,
web developers haven't even managed
to  "fix" _the web_ yet...  in fact,
in too many ways, the web is just as
screwed up as it used to be back in
the old days of the "browser wars";
it's just that today's incompatibilities
have migrated out to specialized areas
of which the general public is unaware,
because we've all had to give up and
use templates, or hire costly "experts".

so please, just go away, and don't try to
"help" e-books.  we'll do fine without you.

i'm serious.  shoo!

-bowerbird









http://www.alistapart.com/comments/publication-standards-part-2-a-standard-future

oh geez.

i didn't know there was a "part 2"...

after "part 1", i asked you to please
just go away, and not "help" e-books.

now i see that you've already mounted
an effort.  but really, just go away.

you do _not_ know what to do to "help"
-- you've merely regurgitated the stuff
that didn't make the web any better --
so your effort will just confuse people
and fragment the work of the _real_ fix.

i'm still serious.  shoo!

-bowerbird













http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/23551030051/where-all-this-kickstarter-money-is-going-by-amanda

i love it when ideas come.  you rock, amanda palmer.

-bowerbird
 









http://www.brettsandusky.com/2012/05/23/you-cant-have-it-both-ways

brett said:
>   On a completely philosophical level,
>   letÕs start here: 
>   scarcity and digital do not go together. 
>   Now, letÕs add this: 
>   Everything is or will be 
>   available online 
>   whether you want it to be or not.

my word.

i've been waiting about 20 years now
for people to start recognizing that,
saying it out loud, and practicing it.

when your variable cost approaches zero,
the best strategy is to move those units,
as many as possible, and far and wide...

i hope you can get the ball rolling...

-bowerbird

p.s.  although i do not necessarily agree
that we should "out" absolutely everything.
to the extent that individual human beings
do not want something exposed to the world
-- something personal and private to them,
with no real impact on society at large --
we should probably respect their desires...
but i take it that you'd say that that is
not what you're talking about in this post.

















http://www.zeldman.com/2012/05/22/readability-unveils-readlists-behind-the-scenes

zeldman said:
>   For 15 years, weÕve put everything 
>   but content and the reader first. 
>   Readability subverts that. 
>   It puts the reader back in charge of
>   the reading experience, the way Tim 
>   Berners-Lee always envisioned she would be. 
>   Design on the web has been at war with users 
>   and their preferences since the invention of 
>   the FONT tag. I know. I was there. 
>   I was one of the designers who, for a long time, 
>   was at war with what the reader wanted.

wow again.

for the second time, within just four days,
you've said something very intelligent here.

not only that, but you've made an admission
about your past attitudes that makes it clear
why i find this new development so refreshing.

thank you for ending your war on the readers.

you've always been a good writer, zeldman,
but now i can appreciate the meaty insides,
and not just merely the nicely-toasted buns...

now, for people reading this on machines
-- like, for instance, an iphone and an ipad --
where they cannot resize-and-reflow the type,
install some buttons that will resize the font.

if you wanna go further, include a few more
to adjust the measure, margins, and leading.

-bowerbird















http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/05/6-ways-copyeditors-make-your-book-better

>   and there is a right way to type an ellipses!

"ellipses" is plural.  "ellipsis" is singular.
so it should be "an ellipsis"...

***

>   clarify feelings/emotions absolutley make my MS

"absolutely".

***

>   An editor who does know your subject is 
>   likely to insure that all the details needed to 
>   educate readers new to the material are included.

unless a policy is involved, it should be "ensure".

and i suspect there's a "not" missing between "does"
and "know", based on the argument being made...

***

the bottom line is that some writers are capable
of being editors too, while other writers are not...

if you don't know which category you fall into,
the odds are that it is the latter one...

-bowerbird

p.s.  is somebody gonna tell me that it should be
"into which you fall"?













http://threads.scripting.com/52712ByDw/zipperMerge

you haven't specified enough information.

is the traffic still flowing relatively well
at the point where the lane disappears?

are there gaps in the right lane such that
the cars from the closed lane can fill them?,
which means that nobody in the right lane
gets "penalized" by this greater efficiency...

or are the drivers who're going "all the way
to the front" merely trying to cut in line?
(i.e., will they wait patiently if no one lets
them merge, or will they force the issue?)

and, finally, are these important aspects of
the situation relatively clear to everyone?

or is there a need for speculation on them?

or is someone intentionally pretending that
the situation is unclear so they can benefit
themselves through exploitation from that?

there are a lot of complications here, yes,
but if you don't factor them in, explicitly,
any discussion is plagued by imprecision.

-bowerbird







a zipper merge reduces conflicts in merging,
because it's "fair", but if the drivers have room
to merge _without_ conflict, and they _do_ so,
then the resultant single lane of traffic _can_
(and often _will_) be both safer _and_ faster.

you can understand this quite easily if you
think of the situation with very little traffic
and good advance notice of the lane closure,
where none of the cars lose appreciable time.

further, the fastest through-time occurs when
most people can and do merge ahead of time,
with an occasional "cheater" who zips ahead
to "shoot a gap" to repair minor inefficiencies.

but -- as per the word "cheater" -- this is often
seen by the drivers in the queue as exploitation,
even though they have not been materially hurt,
because the "cheater" has clearly "benefited".

which only goes to show that, in addition to the
matters of speed/efficiency and safety, there is
also a vector here related to justice and fairness.
which only complicates the matter even further...

plus, consider the implications of the "cheater"
who then holds the lined-up drivers in contempt
because they're "sheep" who meekly "conform",
voluntarily consigning themselves to a slow lane.

as you can see, there is much in this situation
which makes it a metaphor for life in general...   :+)

-bowerbird





















http://threads.scripting.com/52912ByDw/myFirstScreencast

i'd still like to collaborate with you.
i'd still like to bounce around some ideas.
i'd still like to learn more about world outline.

since you won't write in any space but your own,
-- which is a stance i admire greatly, by the way --
how about you make a place people can do all that?

-bowerbird







i don't need you to "make a place" for me.
unlimited bandwidth with unlimited storage
costs about $10 a month nowadays, or less.
i have more than enough resources available.

i just want some place where i can
interact with you about your ideas,
to see if they can mesh with mine.

you say you want to bounce ideas around.
you say you want to collaborate with people.
you say you want people to adopt your ideas.

great!  where can we discuss the specifics?

-bowerbird













dave-

you're not listening well,
so i'll stop talking now...            :+)

best of luck with your projects.

-bowerbird
















http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/50_shades_of_drm

the i.d.p.f. has always had one mission --
to stall e-books for as long as possible,
to prop up the old p-book business-model.

it's as if we had the r.i.a.a. controlling
development of the digital music revolution.

the only way out is to stop supporting .epub.

-bowerbird












brian said:
>   conspiracies

oh, please, don't get me wrong...

most of the time, these guys
couldn't collude their way
out of a wet paper bag...

(i mean, face it, if you have to
send your co-conspirators e-mail
instructing them to double-delete
all the e-mails, you _will_ fail.)

the thing is, all they have to do
in the current case is sow chaos,
and any group of fools can do that.
it takes no smarts or coordination.

all you have to do is keep introducing
more and more wrinkles without removing
any of the older ones, and... bingo!

take a good hard look at their actions,
at any point in time along the line,
and see if you don't observe "wrinkles".

a head-fake doesn't have to take your
opponent completely out of the play...
it can still work even if it's merely
a momentary and fleeting distraction...

now take a good hard look at your actions,
brian, and see if you do not observe that 
you have been distracted _a_lot_, even if
each time it was momentary and fleeting...

you're a smart guy, who's spending his time
railing against a stupidity.  whatupwitdat?

-bowerbird









brian, you're biting for the head-fake again.

you and i and everyone who thinks about it
knows no d.r.m. can ever stop this scenario:

screenshot, o.c.r., turn the page, until done.

automate that process (i suggest that you
could use a computer for that), and bingo!

so d.r.m. will never work, and they know it.
still, it _does_ do what they intend it to do,
which is to bamboozle us into distraction...

but only if we _allow_ it to...

***

so i'll say it once again, brian, but i must add
that i am getting kind of tired of repeating it...

there is something more important that you
_could_ be doing with your time and energy,
something involving the _future_, rather than
trying to educate the dinosaurs from the past.

it would be really neat if you did that instead.

i don't know what _your_ "something" is, but
if you focus your attention, you'll figure it out.

-bowerbird






















http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669879/can-we-please-move-past-apples-silly-faux-real-uis

ok, we get it...  the skeu stinks.
all of you technoids just hate it.

talk talk talk.

_show_ me something better.

metro?  seriously?  it already
is starting to look tired to me,
just from viewing screenshots.

so show me something better.
heck, it should be _easy_, not?

lead, follow, or get out of the way.

-bowerbird

























http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/strong_of_heart

i'm not sure why "apps" and "html5"
are considered to be different things.

i can take html5 and wrap it in an app,
such that each has good design/appeal.

plus it's button-click cheap (and easy)...

$38,000 an issue?  well, obviously, these
big publishers still have money to burn...

-bowerbird

















http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/06/how-to-test-market-your-book-idea-with-a-blog/#comments

this is good advice for people who want to
manufacture books to sell to customers...
market-testing is a smart thing to do then.

but writers?  creating art?

who cares if anybody buys it, or not? what is
important is that you are true to your muse.

and the beauty of electronic-publishing is that
you can do it without spending a single penny!

oh sure, of course, if you _want_ to spend it,
you can put all kinds of your money up, for
cover-art, editing, formatting, what have you.

but you can also do it without spending a cent.
and don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
if you make money down the line, _then_ you
can reinvest it.  but you can start with nothing.

this realization can be tremendously liberating.
use your freedom, to let your imagination roam.

meanwhile...

consider the best advice you will ever hear
about someone "stealing" your good ideas:
>   Don't worry about people stealing an idea. 
>   If it's original, you will have to 
>   ram it down their throats.

it can be the same with art, baby.  _the_same._

sometimes the better it is, the less uptake it gets.
at first.  but then eventually, people come around.

so don't listen to the audience and parrot back
what they want to hear.  anyone can do that.
but you are the only person who can be _you_.

your muses want you to use your unique voice.
it's why they chose you to receive their blessing.

and they want you to continue to sing even if
nobody comes around at first to listen to you...

if you're a capitalist, fine, do your market-test.

but if you are an artist, just let yourself _sing_.

-bowerbird





















http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/the_liquidation_business

the metaphor you're using is too obtuse.

what you mean is more accurately called
"eating your seed corn", and i do believe
that that makes the situation more clear.

you only eat your seed corn if you know
you won't plant it, to have corn next year.

because you know there is no "next year".

the dinosaurs are dying, and they know it.
so they drag feet, and throw head-fakes...

and -- when their seed corn is all gone --
they will start eating each other, because
the capitalists have always been cannibals.

-bowerbird
















http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/the_farm_system

wattpad has very little traction on the writer side,
as far as i can tell from the chatter.  does it even
_sell_ books?  or just offer them for free reading?

i'm all about the amateur, and i think it's healthy
to have no expectations of profiting from a book,
and i'm certain that authors will eventually come
to offer all their work at an up-front price of $0,
in keeping with digital's absence of variable costs.

but i say it's unwise to put work in a venue where
there is no mechanism for readers to offer money.
when you do that, you are saying that your work is
not _worth_ any money to the reader, and i believe
that is the wrong message to put into the universe.

if the author doesn't value a work, a reader won't.

so i think it's good that amazon has lots of notice,
and smashwords has a reasonably good amount,
but wattpad gets mentioned very rarely, if at all...

-bowerbird








brian said:
>   business models

i suppose we can't really stop the sharks from
sniffing around to see if they can detect blood,
but my sense is that there isn't gonna be _any_
money laying around to support _any_ type of
"business model", unless you've got a very big
audience of real readers who'll pay real money
for books that they will judge to be worthwhile.

which probably means amazon, maybe apple...

but nobody else.

because really, there's no reason the fans and
authors should share money with anyone else.
they should disintermediate all other entities...

and yes, i recognize that you titled this post
"the farm system", but -- as far as i know --
every minor-league team is actually owned by
a major-league franchise, which supports it...

so unless wattpad gets purchased by amazon,
their highest aspiration long-term would be to
be the rough equivalent of the "little league"...

-bowerbird
















http://www.alistapart.com/comments/building-books-with-css3

nellie, after just skimming your article,
my head hurts!  so it's no wonder that
you drink bourbon and play the drums.
if my job was this difficult, i would too.

fortunately, there are ways to do this
that are _much_ simpler to accomplish.
i'm sure you'll learn about them soon...

-bowerbird











jeffrey zeldman said:
>   Snark aside, to which specific methods 
>   of easy epub creation are you referring?

well, mr. zeldman, i will be 
happy to give you a pointer.

but first you should tell me 
if you consider "snark" to 
be a good and funny thing, 
or a bad and nasty thing...

because i just said "i love you"
(yes, _you_, jeffrey zeldman)
in a comment earlier today:
>   http://blog.readability.com/2012/06/announcement/#comment-3418

so... you know, it would be...
ironic if you're criticizing me
while i'm professing fandom.

(but... you're in luck, because 
i like irony as well as snark!)

and even if it was "snark", hell,
i'm sure nellie can take it well.

after all, she uses sticks to beat
an instrument to produce music,
_and_ drinks her share of bourbon,
so i'd guess she's a tough chic...

(and if you're wondering about her
sense'o'humor, grok her twitter pic.)

anyway, you let me know, jeffrey!
i will check back here tomorrow...

meanwhile, these _underscores_
and *asterisks* i have used here,
but not the non-link above, might
give a little clue about my answer.

-bowerbird

p.s.  oh, i should also note that
this article is really on the topic
of turning (x)html into a .pdf,
rather than an .epub, but i will
be happy to give you a pointer
on the overall question of using
a "master" source-text to attain
many different formats we want
(e.g., .epub, .mobi, .pdf, .html5).












still no response from mr. zeldman, over a week later.

i guess he wasn't interested in conversation after all.

-bowerbird
























http://blog.readability.com/2012/06/announcement

i love joe clark.  he always makes me laugh.

i love readability.  scraping _out_ ads is cool.

i love john gruber.  he's all gruff and stuff.

i love zeldman.  he's a relatively good writer.

i love people who gave readability money,
intended for the writers who _claimed_ it
which everyone understood all along was
a requirement for actually receiving money.

i love it when a business tries new things.

i love it when a business admits it has failed.

i love the yapper back-and-forth of comments.

i love the internet.  more fun than monkeys!

i love the sun here in lovely santa monica...

-bowerbird























http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/06/2012-book-sales-strong-for-both-print-and-ebooks

wellÉ the error was an easy one to make, since
he just took the number from an adjacent column.

howeverÉ

in the comments section, someone pointed out
the error a full _three_ days ago, and it _still_
is not corrected. so much for reader feedback.

to me, the initial error couldÕve been forgivenÉ

but the fact that itÕs remained incorrect so long?
even after it had been pointed out by a reader?
that cannot be forgivenÉ

-bowerbird




























http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2012/06/20/emily-and-david/comment-page-1/#comment-659601

even now, there is plenty of free music available
-- enough to last me for the rest of my life, so
i feel no need to "steal" any from musicians who
don't want me to listen to them unless i pay first.

so if i had any david lowery music in my collection,
i would be more than happy to delete it right away.

and any other musicians who'd prefer me to delete
_their_ music should speak up, loudly and clearly,
because i'll be quite happy to accommodate them.

because there are countless bands now trying to
thrust their c.d. into one of my hands, while they
attempt to thrust their gig flyer into my other hand,
while they exhort me to go and visit their website.

and -- based on my past experience -- i'll come to
like (and maybe even love) a few of them very much.

so i'm long on music to listen to.  i'm short on time.

and most of the musicians that i know don't give a
tinker's damn about money; they wanna _be_heard._

but yes, absolutely, i support the bands that i like...
and i _very_strongly_ support the bands that i _love_.

and i don't support 'em so they "keep making music",
because -- honestly -- that sounds... self-centered...

i support 'em because they _already_gave_me_ music
that i love, music that is meaningful to me in my life...

so i give jonathan coulton money because i _love_ him.
and i want, in my own small way, to make his life easier.
i don't want him hungry, or uncomfortable, or unhappy.
i want him to feel joyous, because he lifts up my soul,
by making music i like, which he _gives_ to me, freely!

d. lowery barks at me, and accuses me of being a thief.
so no thanks, i don't think i wanna listen to his music...

but hey, if _you_ are a fan of mr. lowery, do please go
and buy some of his music.  he seems to need the love.

and the money.

-bowerbird


























http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/2012/06/21/please-take-your-hat-off-when-you-enter

>   In other words, communities 
>   subsidize publishersÕ ÒdoorstopperÓ books, 
>   while being forced to pay repeatedly for 
>   titles that are already financially successful.

this was always the case for the big publishers...

purchases by libraries across the country meant
that virtually every book they published enjoyed
a _built-in_ base minimum, from its very start...

and now those publishers have turned their backs
on libraries.  they should be ashamed of themselves.
what they are doing is not simply a mere faux pas;
they have let their greed turn them into monsters.

libraries worldwide should stop buying _any_ books
from these bastards, neither e-books nor p-books...

-bowerbird

























http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/perfect_examples

so brian, just exactly how much change
do you think a dinosaur can embrace?

contrast that with a small furry mammal
who has never known any different way...

scarcity vs. abundance are night vs. day,
where everything you know is _wrong_...

-bowerbird

p.s.  when you decided to write every day
this year, i resolved to read each post, but
it's starting to feel like a merry-go-round,
so maybe i'll end my run after this month,
meaning you don't have to put up with me.
but i thank you for your patience this far...









kahneman won the nobel prize in economics,
so many people don't know that he's actually
a _cognitive_psychologist_.  i studied his work
in psychology graduate school, in the 1980s,
so it has long imbued me quite fundamentally.

-bowerbird
























http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/06/10-quick-tips-to-get-your-manuscript-ready-for-publication

good advice throughout, joel...

except i'm not sure why you say
people only need to worry about
these things when the manuscript
is "final, ready to print", since they 
can guard against these problems
during the normal process of writing.

plus, sometimes doing a "cleanup"
can help a writer overcome a block,
by restimulating their motivation...

and again, good advice throughout.

-bowerbird








i should've added that a macro can be handy, as is
a tool that does these kinds of checks automatically.

but maybe my obsession with keeping my text clean
_all_the_time_ is a bit over-the-top, i dunno...    ;+)

-bowerbird

























http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/the_constant_gardener

brian said:
>   journalism (and more broadly, publishing) 
>   serves a purpose in the United States 
>   that extends beyond commerce. 
>   A well-informed electorate is 
>   fundamental to the success 
>   of a democracy like ours.

brian, you fell for another head-feint, so
now it's nothing but "too little, too late".

specifically, corporate right-wingers have
already greased the propaganda machine,
and robbed _trillions_ from the public till.
("where have all the pensions gone?/
long time passing...")

public opinion goes to the highest bidder,
and increasingly that's the koch brothers.
they don't even need to hide their bribes,
because unlimited funds are now _legal_.
since, ya know, corporations are people!

on the one hand, i admire your optimism,
thinking that this game is still in play, but
the rest of the time i think that's just naive.

the only option we little people have left is
a peaceful overthrow of the government...
(as the rich have a monopoly on violence.)

unfortunately, printing up some handbills
and passing 'em around to your neighbors
just won't work quite as well now as it did
back in the 1770s...

-bowerbird









brian said:
>   We get the government we deserve.

you get the government you buy and pay for.

and if you have to ask how much it costs,
you can't afford it.

-bowerbird



















http://digitalbooktoday.com/2012/06/23/spelling-errors-in-books

anthony wessel said:
>   I agree. The occasional error is quite common 
>   and has not impact on the quality of the book.

you made an error in your second sentence, and it 
most certainly had an impact on the point you were
trying to make -- it showed how _wrong_ you are...

-bowerbird









anthony, that's not really fair to simply
remove evidence that proves you wrong.

your own action of correcting your error
proves that you _do_ care about accuracy.

if it really didn't matter, you'd have left it.

-bowerbird























http://www.thepassivevoice.com/06/2012/you-say-documents-i-say-source-files

i believe i have the solution youÕre looking for.
and iÕm about to take it wide. but if youÕd like
to get an advance preview, you can e-mail me.

-bowerbird


















http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/survey_says

sadly, the report is a .pdf.  enough said.

-bowerbird



















http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/06/ebook-design-today-and-tomorrow

i look forward to observing
how your views change
over the next few years...

-bowerbird






















http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/a_book_of_jubilations

a small correction, perhaps,
but a significant one still...

i was talking about _me_
on that merry-go-round,
not you.  you're doing fine,
covering a variety of stuff,
while i just repeat "na-uh".

i'm fully correct, of course --
the dinosaurs _won't_ change
because they _can't_ change;
they evolved for another niche
-- but that fact does not make
my negative repetition any less
negative, or any less repetitive.

and, frankly, i'm tired of it myself,
and have been for some time now.

at the start of 2012, i too made
a decision -- that it was time to
bring my work out of the lab...

i've held back some of my work --
lots of it, actually -- because the 
e-book world at large has been
distracted by the big6 dinosaurs,
on one side, and the technocrats
(amazon, apple, etc.) on the other.

one side wants to hobble e-books,
and the other wants to put them in
a box which they exert control of...

so nobody is letting e-books _fly_,
and perform the aerial maneuvers
that'll wow the crowd spectacular...

so i've been whipping my projects,
researched over the last 2 decades,
into shape so they can be released.

and now, in the second half of 2012,
it's time to put 'em out and go wide.

a lot of people have the impression
that i actually prefer to be negative.
but nothing is further from the truth.

i was a naysayer because the methods
being imposed on e-books are wrong.
so i said "no" out of a sense of _duty_,
to the long-term interests of e-books.

but i would much rather be positive,
and show the way by being creative.
i'm a bowerbird -- i love to _build_...

i hope that i'm right, and that there
are enough people now who have
become unhappy with the state of
e-books as it has developed so far,
and who will be open to a change...

-bowerbird







brian said:
>   IÕm not going to make apologies for being polite.
>   I think change occurs in lots of ways, not all 
>   of them loud or potentially confrontational.

i don't think it's a matter of manners, not at all.

(and, for the record, i am being _neither_ loud
nor confrontational, merely asserting my take.
i would say the same exact things face-to-face,
and i'd be happy to buy the beers for everyone.)

so no, it has nothing to do with manners.

it's more a matter of organizational blindness,
and deafness, with a full inability to empathize.

i spent years trying the polite approach, and
not only was it unsuccessful, it didn't scale...

there are thousands of these organizations and 
the bureaucracy of each one is hard to penetrate,
in the slightest, let alone to shift behaviorially...

they don't want to listen, or change, or interact.

their mindset is to issue pronouncements, and
their rigidity is reflected well in the .pdf format.

now, if the net was some niche phenomenon,
which only some of us were acquainted with,
such that people running these organizations
had no familiarity with the web, then i _might_
understand how they could remain isolated...

but i'd assume these people use the internet
in other aspects of their day-to-day existence,
just like a few hundred million other americans,
so their disconnect concerning their own reports
seems not just "strange", but truly _inexplicable_.

so i've given up on trying to "change" them at all.

it's enough for me to label their stupidity, so that
innocent bystanders don't question their own take
that there's something smelly about this whole deal.

these bystanders are not confused i'm being "rude".

-bowerbird

p.s.  and by the way, i first picked up on this 
"do they eat their own dogfood?" litmus test
from michael hart, rest his pioneering soul...









ok, so let me try to exit here in a positive manner.

the fact is that, even if these organizations were
_looking_for_ the best way to release their reports
in a variety of output formats while archiving them
in a dependable storage format, it'd be difficult for
them to _find_ that "best way", because the world
has not yet developed it -- unbelievable, but true.

so we find that much of our knowledge content
has been "archived" in .pdf form, which is silly,
as .pdf is one of the worst formats for archiving.

.pdf is known as "the roach motel for documents"
because they can go in to .pdf, but can't come out.

when you copy the text out of a .pdf, you often get
a jumble (sometimes mixed up) without formatting.
(things as simple as linebreaks can be messed up.)

this is preposterous.

my work involves a solution to this problem.

the general outline of this is extremely simple.

1.  a structured plain-text file serves as "master",
meaning it's the sole input and the archived form.
plain-text files are the easiest to edit and maintain.

2.  all other formats -- .pdf, .html, .epub, .mobi,
.slideshow, .app, ad infinitum -- are output forms,
generated by conversion-routine from the master.

3.  you generate the output formats for the users.
each one is considered "canonical" for that format.

4.  but you also give users the _master_, so they
can use the converter to create their own output,
customized to their own preferences and desires.

***

this is the solution that i will soon be taking wide.

i have lab-tested working solutions for all of this,
running code that proves that everything is viable.

i respect your intelligence, brian, and your ability
to engage in level-headed thoughtful discussion,
so if you would like to participate in development
of this solution, i will welcome your involvement.

it's time to declare our independence from the
muddle of e-book file-formats out there today.

-bowerbird





























http://www.thepassivevoice.com/07/2012/source-files-update

i believe i have the solution youÕre looking for.
and iÕm about to take it wide. if anyone would
like an advance preview, you can e-mail me...

>   bowerbird@aol.com

-bowerbird






























http://jwmanus.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/source-files-update

i believe i have the solution youÕre looking for.
and iÕm about to take it wide. if anyone would
like an advance preview, you can e-mail me...

>   bowerbird@aol.com

-bowerbird













http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3645

been working on this problem for about a decade
-- started off with project gutenberg e-texts --
honing a _simple_ solution i'm about to take wide.

gonna use kickstarter to raise money so that i can
put all the source-code, etc., in the public-domain.
so if people would prefer to contribute a few bucks
rather than a few hours of time, i'd appreciate that...

interested people can e-mail me for a sneak preview:
>   bowerbird@aol.com

-bowerbird


















http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/05/an-apple-e-an-ipad-and-jed

any plans to port coda to the //e?

-bowerbird















http://arjunbasu.com/archives/the-story-of-the-my-novel-so-far

once you self-publish it,
and it's a huge success,
you'll wonder why you
waited for so darn long.

-bowerbird


























http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/07/whats-new-at-lulu-com-video-interview-with-sarah-gilbert

lulu was a real pioneer.

so i'd _love_ to love lulu.

but she's so high-maintenance
that she just makes it too hard.

-bowerbird




















http://techblog.safaribooksonline.com/2012/07/09/a-turn-up-for-the-books

welcome back to soapbox corner.

-bowerbird












http://techblog.safaribooksonline.com/2012/07/09/streaming-digital-books-idpf-digital-book-2012-session

if "streaming" is your code-word for
depriving end-users of e-book files,
you will have a fight on your hands.

it was awful enough when publishers
used legalese to remove "ownership"
-- and that pesky "first-sale doctrine" --
but now if your intention is to force users
to say "pretty please" each and every time
they want to access a book they paid for,
well... i'd just say you bent it until it broke.

-bowerbird



















http://janefriedman.com/2012/07/15/extra-ether-will-diy-pay-for-rd

robert said:
>   the "sneering" didn't begin on our side.

bingo.

-bowerbird













jane friedman said:
>   Have we all really devolved
>    into a "He/She started it?"

just putting all the facts on the table.

or did you think that half-the-facts
would be sufficient for your readers?

-bowerbird








jane friedman said:
>   These "facts" are not helpful to progress. 
>   It's the purview of children.

i find it interesting that you are
replying to me, when all i did was
agree with a point that robert made.

but it would be unseemly for you to
continue to go at him, when he has
just pointed out -- quite correctly --
how this article put a nasty spin on
the nature of his accomplishments.

was robert "lucky"?  yes, he sure was.
just like every other artist alive who has
gotten "a lucky break" as a jump-start,
after working their ass off.  every one.

the people inside the publishing industry
spent a long time throwing insults at the
heathens who supported self-publishing.

now they'd like everybody to forget that
they're the ones who threw the first punch.

-bowerbird



















eoin said:
>   If the world of publishing 
>   doesnÕt seem to be moving 
>   very rapidly, thatÕs only because 
>   you are looking in the wrong direction.

i think what you meant to say,
with your final sentence, was:

if the publishing industry 
doesn't seem to be eating, 
that's because it is being eaten.

-bowerbird

















eilon-

my best friend is a collector here in l.a.

some 10,000 albums in his "living room".

he told my girlfriend the other day that he'd 
just had to order more of his custom shelves.

-bowerbird




















http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/06/lightweight-drm-no-drm.html

when bill mccoy gets _all_ of the i.d.p.f. members
to sign on that they will use his "standard d.r.m."
-- you know, the single d.r.m. that's interoperable,
don't believe the people who say it's impossible! --
maybe then people should start listening to him...

of course, my guess -- based on its history -- is
that apple wouldn't tolerate that many "partners".
since apple knows that it's hard to keep a secret
when so many people would need to keep quiet.

until he has this full-slate broad-based mandate,
mccoy is just blowing hot air.

-bowerbird

p.s.  but it might be nice to know now just where
this demand for i.d.p.f. to do d.r.m. is coming from.
bill makes it sound like 95% of the publishers are
pestering him for d.r.m.  how 'bout o'reilly finds out?






















http://www.zeldman.com/2012/07/25/proposed-standards-for-the-care-and-feeding-of-user-generated-content

it will be nice if companies do these things.

but it might not prove to be "profitable", so
i sincerely doubt we can _depend_ on them.
no matter what they might do or say today...

so how about a set of _personal_priorities_?

1.  i will treat my own content/data like it matters.
because if i don't do that, why would anyone else?

2.  i won't upload something without saving copies,
including one located in my own _personal_ cloud.
i will also archive any _other_ material that i value,
such as photos of my loved ones, or zeldman's blog.

3.  i will never leave my content/data vulnerable to
a dependence on a company that might turn flakey,
which pretty much means every company out there.

-bowerbird

p.s.  i also support dave winer's posts on this subject,
which seems especially pertinent since my comments
continue to disappear mysteriously from his threads.   :+)




















http://librarianinblack.net/librarianinblack/2012/08/ebookssuckitude.html

i can probably find about a million authors
who will let libraries have their e-books for
-- tossing a starting offer -- 2 cents per loan.

no d.r.m., no silly 26-uses-and-its-worn-out,
simultaneous check-out to multiple patrons,
online, please kindly delete it when finished,
and whatever else you think is reasonable...

so...  if you're game, i will go round them up...

seriously, it'd be so easy anyone could do it.

because every author that i know has had a
secret crush on a librarian since... forever!...

and the library itself?  more fun than recess!

-bowerbird



















http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/other_peoples_stuff

choire sicha said:
>   you folks with your blog and 
>   your tumblr and your whatever

classic.

-bowerbird




















http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/digital_assistants

brian said:
>   But these data-management services
>   could then provide online retailers with 
>   targeted access to your digital content. 

you envision this as a "service" that will be
controlled by someone other than the user?

no way.

this will be something you control yourself,
located somewhere (s3?) which you control.

or it's just big brother with another name.

-bowerbird




























http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/08/why-self-published-books-look-self-published

cathy said:
>   I immediately noticed that the paper 
>   and print quality seemed subpar.

i would suggest that you inform createspace that
the quality of the book you purchased was subpar.

my guess is that they will do a make-good on it...

-bowerbird








yes yes yes.

authors, if you're gonna make a print-book,
then you _need_ to learn about all this stuff,
or you just might shoot yourself in the foot...

there is another side to the story, however,
in that it is entirely possible in our new time
to forego hard-copy, and go purely e-book.

in fact, it's highly advisable.

although print-on-demand is "affordable"
these days, and requires no up-front cost,
you're still not going to make much money
from your hard-copy sales, not much at all,
especially compared to your e-book income.

and considering all the work you must do to
get yourself in brick-and-mortar bookstores,
a trip along that route will _cost_ you money,
rather than "make a profit" for you nowadays.

but it's extremely glorious to hold in your hands
a printed copy of a book that you have written,
and joy will traverse your full being as you see
a copy on the shelf at your favorite bookstore...

indeed, i've known someone (not saying it's me)
who made a print-on-demand copy of their book
and then smuggled it in to a bookstore to put it
on the shelf, as a form of "reverse shop-lifting"...

...later went in and "bought" it, and said the clerk
didn't bat an eye as she rang it up on the register.

so yeah, yeah, i'll just come right out and say it:

a print-book is the new form of "vanity publishing".

you're not gonna make any money by doing it
-- indeed, you'll probably pay for the privilege --
but it will certainly give your ego a huge boost...

still, if you're gonna go that route, do it _right_.
learn what it takes, and then ensure you execute.
make the kind of print-book that will be enjoyed
by people who know how to evaluate a print-book.

which is not to say that i agree with all the advice
that joel gives here. i myself _hate_ hyphenation.
so as long as you don't have any loose paragraphs,
my suggestion is that you _turn_off_hyphenation_.

and there are other quibbles that i might have with
certain pieces of joel's advice, which is geared to
having a book be sold in a brick-and-mortar store.
because they will soon disappear like the dinosaur,
sorry to say, no matter how much we rue the day.

so realize that some of the advice that you get will
_not_ be as cut-and-dried as the advisor might like.
most of these rules can be broken. some should be.

but learn this stuff, people.  because it'll help you to
have a hard-won feeling of competence when you're
able to look at your book and know you did it right.

-bowerbird

















tracy said:
>   you only stand to lose respect and 
>   credibility for the work with every 
>   inconsistency and omission that 
>   deviates from the expected standard.

the thing is, that Òexpected standardÓ
isnÕt nearly as uniform as people think.

the more books you actually study,
the less uniform that ÒstandardÓ is.

and the variations are _increasing_,
even from the big6 publishers which
Ð in the past Ñ _set_ that ÒstandardÓ.

go to a brick-and-mortar bookstore Ð
while they still exist!, and buy a book!,
because they really need the business!
Ð and look at 100 books on the shelves,
and you will see what iÕm talking aboutÉ

the times, they are aÕchangingÉ

-bowerbird







diane lynn tibert mcgyver, you've
said a lot of stuff that i agree with.

and a lot of stuff i don't.

and i think i'll just leave it at that...        :+)

time will tell...

-bowerbird













stuart said:
>   One I would add Ñ which the author of the article 
>   didnÕt do Ñ PROOF READ for spelling errors.
>   Two that I found (without looking for them) 
>   are ÒcateogryÓ and ÒprospecitveÓ 
>   Ñ these ruin any good article.

don't forget these two:
>   pressses 
>   terminonlogy

then there were also these, in comments:
>   apocolypse
>   wekk
>   retails (for "retailers")

and, naturally, of course, i made an error myself:
>   and i lot of stuff i donÕt.

i spotted mine right off, of course, but this blog
doesn't allow people to edit their own comments,
so i just had to stare at it in horror and scream...     ;+)

(which is why i didn't also note the errors made
by other mere commenters, who cannot edit,
but don't think for a minute that i didn't spot
a good number of errors from them as well...)        :+)

i sometimes wonder if i'd retain this "talent" for
noticing every typo, or choose to lose it if i could
(and thus become a heathen like so many others).

but i've come to find the humor in the situation....    :+)

-bowerbird


























http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/access_to_developers

brian-
>   it has already put the Amazon publishing 
>   initiative in a different light for me.

i'm curious as to this "different light" for you.

what, exactly, is it that seems new to you now?

because i expected you knew all that already.

for me, it's rather simple.  amazon thinks that
it has a good idea about the factors that work
to sell books.  some of those factors are ones
that are within the sole control of the publisher.

so amazon had to "become a publisher" so as to
run some experiments controlling those factors.

so it's not so elementary as some a/b testing,
since some of the factors involve interactions.

it's more like an a/b/c/d/e/f experiment, where
a/c/e is thought to get better results than b/f/d.

-bowerbird
























http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/08/storytelling-is-us

well, yes...

i have been attending poetry open-mikes
for over 25 years.  (my first featured show
was written up in the l.a. times on 7/11/87, 
so i just passed that anniversary last month.)

i've experienced 10,000+ people take a stage
and voice a unique articulation of themselves,
so the notion that "everybody has a story" is
one that has weaved itself deeply into my life.

and indeed, a major portion of the motivation
in my support of self-publishing over the years
was grounded in the importance of our stories.

i know the value of how they can enrich our lives.

which is why i have always bristled when people
(who i grant might've had very good intentions)
preached their "you've gotta _market_ your book"
insistence at new authors.  it's difficult enough to
write a book, and edit it to a smooth state of art,
without being told that "then the hard part begins".

that only places an _obstacle_ into the path of the
person who wants to "tell their story" to the world,
when what we should be doing is _easing_the_way_.

we saw it here just the other day, when we insisted on
strict conformance to the conventions of book design,
with a dissenter countering "it's _story_ that matters".

many people don't even care if their book "sells well".
they only want to ensure that their story can be heard,
when someone out there -- anyone -- wants to hear it.

indeed, my favorite "use case" is the person who wants
to tell the story of their life to their grandchildren, and
grandchildren who are curious about their grandparents.
or their great-grandparents, or great-great-grandparents.

how did they meet each other? how did the courtship go?
what about their early years together? and their old age?
did they have rough times? how did they make it through?
or, if they didn't, how did their lives evolve, as they went
on and found other spouses, to form different families?
what kinds of jobs did they have? what kinds of hobbies?
how did they entertain themselves? what did they think of
their lives, and each other, and the world around them?

so...

at any rate, on the one hand, i am quite glad that even
a "purist" (from the standpoint of book design) like joel
is becoming alert to the idea of people "telling a story".

but on the other hand, i find that -- to a large degree --
i have moved on.  part of the reason is precisely because
it _is_ so very difficult to write -- and then edit -- a book.
even professional writers will confirm it can be _draining_.

moreover, even when an amateur writer can _finish_ a book,
the resulting product will often be less than fully satisfactory.
all of us can use language, true, but not all of us can _write._
so sometimes "the book" fails to do total justice to "the story".

in the past, however, "the book" was the only way your story
could be related with adequate color and in sufficient depth.

but we're in a completely different time and age now.  today,
many of us walk around with a video-camera in our pocket.

so the best way for us to tell our story _nowdays_ is just to
turn on that camera and start talking.  maybe make a script,
so you don't sound totally inarticulate to your grandchildren.

but other than that, just record it.  no need to write a _book_.
the only thing that's gonna give you is some soundless words.

contrast that with a video recording, where your grandkids
_hear_ your voice, how you talk and laugh, your inflections,
how you pronounce words, and phrase sentences, and they
_see_ what you look like, how you move, your mannerisms,
your eyes twinkle, how you "talk" with your hands, what your
smile looks like, and how your belly shakes when you laugh.

it's easy to see this is a much richer gift to your grandkids.
it's _natural,_ without the artifice of a well-groomed book.
and not only that, but it's a hundred times easier to create.

so yes, i'm still a huge proponent of self-publishing a book.

but if what you wanna do is to tell your grandkids your story
-- or tell the world your story -- consider that the best way
just might be to use that video-camera there in your pocket.

-bowerbird

p.s.  as usual, sorry for the length, joel.  but i hope that
it was worth it...






















http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/the_button

brian said:
>   from manuscript through to 
>   finished (published) eBook, 
>   all in the span of 75 minutes.

75 minutes?  what took so long?
did that include the lunch break?

-bowerbird









ok, i get all that.

because, seriously, it shouldn't take
75 minutes to click a button.  right?      ;+)

-bowerbird










scott, that was a very good demo.       :+)

brian, you shoulda said scott used sigil --
it's a program that's been out a long time.

-bowerbird
































http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/08/alan-petersen

i'm a marketeer. therefore you need marketing.
but you must pay me a flat rate, not a percentage
of the sales increase which i implicitly promise you.

i am a book designer.  so you need a book designer.
but again, of course, i will charge you a flat rate.

likewise, i am an editor. so you need an editor.
flat rate, in advance.

cover artist, proofreader, book-tour coordinator,
courses, webinars, the list goes on and on and on.

we'll help you sell books.  you wanna sell, right?

***

remember, you don't have to play the game this way.

you _can_, if you want, and i will _support_ you
-- without charging you any money, i might add --
but you need to know that you don't _have_to_...

-bowerbird











i'm sure glad nobody took my slam personally.

(or perhaps it's just that no one wanted to be
as indelicate as me, which is understandable.)

at any rate, i certainly didn't mean to undermine
the fine individuals sharing their expertise here...

so thank you for having an open mind.

-bowerbird


























http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/the_end_of_scarcity

i first started thinking about electronic-books
around 1980, as a graduate student at u.c.l.a.
i got a phone-call from a colleague in europe,
to inform me about a small error in an article
we were working on together, the text of which
was stored in a file on the university mainframe.

"i corrected that," i said.

"no," she replied, "i just saw it 10 minutes ago."

"yeah," i agreed. "i fixed it 2 minutes ago."

"oh, ok, yes, i see that now. thank you so much."

i realized that anyone, anywhere, could mount
the text of a book, and have it visible anywhere,
around the entire world, in a matter of seconds,
and it could be done at a cost of next to nothing.

boom.  there goes scarcity, out the window.

so i've been thinking about this historic transition
for over 30 years now.

the thing is, i kept predicting it, and predicting it,
and predicting it, but the revolution never occurred.

it made a ton of sense. but it never _happened_.

until it did.

but of course, now that it _has_ happened, 
_everyone_ (and their dog) can see it clearly.

so we have all kinds of "experts" crawling out of
the woodwork to comment on this new reality...
and some of the "experts" think they're prescient.

honestly, how much imagination does it really take
to conjure up a thing you can order on the internet?
i saw all of this before there even _was_ an internet!

but that's not the worst thing about these experts.

the worst thing is that, like fish, they never seem to
notice the very water in which they are swimming...

so people now act like self-publishing is this
magical entity that sprung into life on its own.

and that it now has some irreversible quality...

which is nonsense.

first off, amazon made self-publishing a reality.

without amazon, e-books would still be the tiny
force that they were back a decade ago, in 2002.

without the kindle, there might not be an ipad.
even if there was an ipad, it wouldn't be seen as
a device for books. (some say it isn't even now.)

but even the kindle itself didn't actually start out
as a vehicle built for self-publishers.  au contraire.

jeff bezos gave his suppliers -- the publishers --
first crack at the opportunity...  it was only when
the industry spurned the innovation that bezos
paved a way for self-publishers, to force the issue.

bezos used self-publishers to give a wake-up call
to the big6 specifically, and the industry in general.

if the publishing industry would have accepted the
amazon proposition that e-books will cost $9.99,
the majority of e-books we'd have today would be
$9.99 jobs coming out of the publishing industry.
the k.d.p. program might have never been created,
most definitely not with its current generous terms.

so self-publishing has bezos and amazon to thank.

and, to a very large degree that nobody will admit,
amazon still controls the destiny of self-publishing.

bezos could pull the rug out from under our feet
any time that he decided it was in his best interest.

without help from amazon, very few self-publishers
would even be able to create a sustaining readership,
let alone have a real chance to make a ton of money,
so let's hope amazon does not withdraw its largess. 
(if you look closely, you can see that it already has,
albeit only partially, to rein in the over-run of hype
which was proving too scary to the industry at large;
all it took was a little fiddle with the best-seller lists.)

i don't put you in that class of pseudo-experts, brian,
but it seems to me you started to stray over the line
that assumes that self-publishing is totally robust...

so i thought i would bring you back into line...       :+)

or maybe i just felt like writing this little piece.      ;+)

-bowerbird

























http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/summer_of_69

brian said:
>   Kathy Craven and I never 
>   really fixed the lawnmower

your loss.        ;+)

-bowerbird

p.s.  that's the first time that i've ever
heard it called "fixing the lawnmower".

































http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/2012/08/23/the-kids-are-alright-making-new-stories/

i just said something very similar the other day:
>   http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/08/storytelling-is-us/#comment-26261

compared to writing a book, turning on an iphone camera is easy.

but there is also this, about george r.r. margin and television:
>   he was tired of the medium's limitations. 
>   "Everything I did was too big and too expensive 
>   in the first draft," he told me recently. 
>   He wanted castles and vistas and armies, and 
>   producers always made him cut that stuff. 
>   A line producer for "The Twilight Zone" once explained, 
>   "You can have horses or you can have Stonehenge.
>   But you can't have horses _and_ Stonehenge."
>
>   On the printed page, however, he could have it all. 
>   He recalls telling himself, "I'm going to write a fantasy 
>   and it's going to be _huge._ I'm going to have 
>   all the characters I want and all the battles I want."
>
>   http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/11/110411fa_fact_miller#ixzz24VWABCjd

that resonates strongly with me; i believe in words.
the imagination can compete with any videocamera.

so there's no doubt in my mind that text will persist.
it won't be our only mode, no, but it _will_ continue.

but that's really beside the more important point.

the real fear inherent in a cloud-based approach
is that the books will simply disappear some day.

or that they will undergo silent "modifications".

and yet another fear is that we will be charged
over and over and over again to access them...

so i'm immediately suspicious of any entity that
wants to take away my ability to _own_ a book,
to have it and to keep it myself, in its entirety.

and i will stress that i'm _already_suspicious_of_
the current bosses of the publishing infrastructure,
who've done everything they can to "earn" distrust.
so i will strongly resist any shenanigans from them.

i'm not opposed to cloud-based far-flung e-books;
every book in the world should be on the internet.
but i want 'em on my 8-petabyte thumbdrive too.

-bowerbird



















http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/08/give-readers-what-they-want

it's easy to tell people what they want to hear.

but an artist tells 'em what they need to hear.

-bowerbird






















http://blog.pressbooks.com/?p=81

congratulations!        :+)

it's a big job, making a book, ain't it?

anyway, just one question.

what does _this_ mean?
>   It was indeed a Òbook ideaÓ 
>   in every sense of the word(s)

-bowerbird








but one of the first things you did
was to challenge our notions about
what, exactly, constitutes "a book".

but yet here you were -- and are --
taking full advantage of the shared
understanding about "what a book is".

you did _not_ say "here's an idea for
a website...", or  "a website-in-a-box."

-bowerbird




itÕs probably a big misunderstanding on my part.
i apologize for the kerfluffle. if i could do it, iÕd
just erase my comments. please do that for me.
thank you ever so kindly.

-bowerbird




















http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/09/3-photo-tools

very useful information. thanks joel! :+)

-bowerbird



















http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/the_owners_manual

i would love to hear, from someone here,
they got new, useful, and actionable advice
from the book, and exactly what that was...

-bowerbird








brian said:
>   IÕm assuming you mean 
>   Òfrom someone who read the bookÓ, 
>   as IÕm the only person here.

yes, brian, i meant someone beside you.    :+)

you mean itÕs just you and me? i donÕt think so.

-bowerbird















http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/already_there

all of this still seems so shortsighted it's silly.

or would be, if not so sad and utterly tragic.

let me see if i can summarize the stupidity
into one simple and direct question for you:

where is the cyberlibrary which includes
every book in the world, made available to
every person in the world, on a 24/7 basis?

once we have _that_, we'll have the critical mass
that's necessary for all of us to see and proceed,
and many answers to "what to do?" will emerge.

but _until_ we have that, everything else will
remain in the "too trivial to care about" pile.

tell us, how long are you people "in charge of"
the book world gonna wait just to get started?

-bowerbird










i am asking when we -- all of us, as a society --
are gonna get serious about books in the future.

i'm not in charge of anything either, brian, but
i know that if one isn't a part of the solution,
then one is a part of the problem.  so i choose to
be a part of the solution.  i choose to get serious.

so i'm going to hone in on the important issue,
and not care about stuff too trivial to care about.

-bowerbird






























http://tieguy.org/blog/2012/09/10/formatting-of-forever

markdown-gruber is too primitive, with
too many inconsistent implementations.

i suggest you use multimarkdown instead.
so, on a mac, multimarkdown composer.
>   http://multimarkdown.com/

i also have my own light-markup system:
z.m.l. -- zen markup language -- which i wil
be taking wide soon, with authoring-tools.
my focus is the output of e-book formats,
not just .html per se.

-bowerbird





















http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/2012/09/09/whats-a-library-dollar-worth

please don't tell me that you just learned this.
overdrive has been gouging libraries for years.

-bowerbird

















http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/09/the-hub-and-outpost-method-of-social-media-marketing

thebookdesigner
has turned into
thebookmarketeer.

bring back the old joel!     :+)

-bowerbird






joel said:
>   Thanks for the thought bowerbird.

thank you.

i was speaking from my heart.

-bowerbird


















http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/09/biggest-secret

nobody knows how to market a book.

nobody.

not even the big6, with their vast
experience, and very deep pockets.

and that was true even back in the day
when they controlled the infrastructure
of brick-and-mortar bookstores, and thus
had no competition from self-publishers,
let alone a non-expiring digital inventory.

(and notice that _both_ of those forces
jack the difficulty-factor tremendously.)

if a book won't sell itself, by word-of-mouth,
there's simply nothing you can do to sell it.

nothing.

there are a lot of people who would like to
take your money by telling you otherwise.

but if you pay close attention, you will see
none of 'em give a money-back guarantee.

-bowerbird











if you can, i'd suggest that you
hire ernie to do your marketing.

but my first guess is that
he's not available for hire.

and my second guess is that
you couldn't afford him anyway.

and my third guess is that
his tactics won't help your book.

and my fourth guess is that
your pay will be minimum wage.

and my fifth guess is that
ernie won't offer to give you
any money-back guarantee.

so i guess you're gonna have to
eat that elephant all by yourself.

i hope you're hungry...     :+)

-bowerbird





ernie said:
>   the best in the business 
>   will make a book a bestseller 
>   in no time flat. For instance, 
>   Brendon Burchard just did that 
>   with his book ÒThe Charge.Ó

i'd think the big6 would want to
hire you guys as soon as possible.

because most books they release
struggle just to pay off their cost.

you seem to know things they don't,
or they'd make every book they publish
into a bestseller. and do it in no time flat.

-bowerbird








joel-

this drumbeat for marketing creates a problem
when some people misunderstand, and spamÉ

right now, thereÕs a guy named mark harmon
Ð tweeting under the handle of @epubhelp,
as he ÒhelpsÓ authors with their marketing Ð
whoÕs spamming the #eprdctn twitter hashtag.

(that hashtag is utilized by e-book designers,
who donÕt have any need for marketing stuff.)

among the many tweets that harmon is sending
are some links to your articles, joel. so perhaps
you could help get mr. harmon straightened out?

because heÕs making himself Ñ and you! Ñ look
very bad in the process of doing this spamming.

-bowerbird










joel said:
>   Mr. Harmon seems to be sending 
>   about 3 tweets per day, 
>   not exactly an avalanche of spam. 

um, no.  you're badly mistaken.

just today, he's had the #eprdctn hashtag
on 19 of the 21 tweets he has sent out
in the last 12 hours!  19 spam tweets!

and he is abusing other hashtags as well:
#indieauthor, #indiepub, and #kindle...

several people asked him, politely, to cease,
but he seems to be in announce-only mode,
as he never responds personally to anyone.

joel, when you beat your marketing drum
but you're unwilling to take responsibility
and action when your message goes bad,
then maybe you should think about that...

-bowerbird

p.s.  but even if it was "only" 3 spams a day,
how many do _you_ think are "acceptable"?












joel said:
>   if you want to talk about Òtaking responsibility,Ó 
>   IÕll wait until you drop your anonymity, then we can talk.

well, let's take this last thing first.

i'm not "anonymous".

"bowerbird" is my poetry name, a pseudonym,
and certainly not something i'm using to "hide",
since i've used it, online and offline, since 1987.

if i wanted to hide out, i'd use my legal name.

and here's my cell-phone number: 310.980.9202.
if, you know, you wanna call me to see if i exist...

>   Sorry, IÕm not going to take responsibility for 
>   every spammer or jerk on Twitter who RTs my posts, 
>   that just doesnÕt make any sense.

ok, well, i guess that's where we differ, then.

because if i was putting out a message which i thought
might be misunderstood by people in a way that led 'em
to do something which i would never advocate to them,
and then i was informed that some people did indeed
misunderstand _and_ were pointing to _my_content_,
then i would immediately let 'em know i did not approve,
and if i was unable to correct their misguided behavior,
then i would ask them to dissociate themselves from me,
to protect my own reputation as a non-spamming citizen.

i mean, i assume there's almost no "spammers or jerks"
out there who'd be retweeting my posts, so that this is
not something that would take up a whole lot of my time.
and i wouldn't even do general monitoring to affirm that.

but i'd want to be informed about any that _did_ exist,
and i'd want to take action.  but maybe that's just me.

so, you know, if you feel differently, well... that's what
makes a horse race, as they say...

-bowerbird

















































http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/2012/09/12/scaling-up-doing-it-for-ourselves

the sheer stupidity of having each system go it alone,
reinventing the wheel over and over and over again,
is unfathomable.  yet you represent this as progress?

this is the same failure to organize that allowed google
to plunder society's rich repository of stored knowledge.

growing up, i used to _admire_ librarians.  i truly did.
these days, it's hard to feel anything except _scorn_.
you had the job of protecting the legacy of our culture,
and you blew it, big-time, because you were just stupid.
each time the report-card comes around, you get an "f".

-bowerbird






















http://battellemedia.com/archives/2012/09/am-i-an-outlier-or-are-apple-products-no-longer-easy-to-use.php

amen. apple's apps have been clunky for many years now.
they certainly do not deserve apple's overall reputation for
simplicity, or clarity, and most definitely not "it just works"...

-bowerbird





















http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/lagging_indicators/

i find it somewhat amusing to observe that
you're bolstering a conclusion obtained by
a solid analysis of expensive data by now
citing anecdotal reports which support it...

i guess you have to use the evidence which
your audience considers as most credible...

and if that's anecdotes, then bring 'em on.

but i suspect, for you, it is less "amusing"
than, say, "frustrating".  sorry about that...

still, it's nice to have your parking validated.

-bowerbird













whoa!

i hold your work in high regard.

my comment was a critique on
the audience you seek to reach,
who do not appear to value data.

they seem to make decisions on
the basis of various anecdotes,
or what "makes sense" to them.

my intent was to be sympathetic.

please re-read my comment in
that light, and if you still consider
it to be "a personal aside", then
i will try to explain it once again.

the fact that i am here every day
reading your entries is a sign of
the respect i have for you, brian.

but as you prefer i be read-only,
for the most part, i can do that.

-bowerbird

p.s.  of course territorial rights
are nonsense in a digital world.
it's so obvious that i'd feel like
a silly idiot to have to assert it.
but for _you_, i'll be a silly idiot!









so, brian, do you owe me an apology?

or do i owe you more explanation?

you decide.

-bowerbird


























http://paidcontent.org/2012/09/14/amazon-publishing-shares-some-sales-numbers-in-email-to-agents

laura "hazard to understanding" owen said:
>   itÕs my job as a journalist to point out 
>   what is not mentioned in that letter.

then you shoulda mentioned that
selling e-books through amazon
instead of using a legacy publisher
gives today's authors more money,
not to mention _creative_freedom_,
more readers, enhanced exposure,
a better mutual working relationship,
transparent bookkeeping, _and_ an
opportunity to release more material.

oh, and did i mention _more_money_?

heck, even lee goldberg, who whined
like a baby after 1 month of trying that
"e-books don't work" is now a believer.
and he's worked both sides of the fence.

yes, the legacy guys do sell print books
in bookstores, a lot of them, _but_ they
keep most of the proceeds themselves!

so we can see why they are paying you
good money to keep reminding us that
they sell a lot of p-books in bookstores.
they wanna keep those registers singing.

but as the ratio gradually changes from
70/30 to 30/70, they will pay you _less_
to do their propaganda work for them...

but don't worry.  you can always start
writing books, to sell through amazon.

-bowerbird


















http://ljndawson.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/hitting-the-books

too bad publishers can't buy word-of-mouth...          ;+)

-bowerbird
















http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/10/is-it-worth-converting-an-old-book-into-an-ebook

1.  buy a scanner, assuming you don't have one.
2.  buy abbyy finereader to handle the scans.
3.  scan the book; have abbyy save it as a .pdf.
4.  distribute the .pdf freely, and sell it as well.
=================================
5.  total cost will be under a thousand bucks.
6.  with luck, you'll make that much in sales.

-bowerbird

p.s.  so joel, did you every try out my jaguar?























http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/10/bookjs-turns-your-browser-into-a-print-typesetting-engine.html

ok, this is good.  but now you need to eliminate the need for .html markup.

so people can use plain-text.  _then_ what you have will be revolutionary...

if your workflow requires .html markup, use a form of light-markup to get it.
markdown is one system that you have probably heard of.  so check it out.

or, you know, if you like, you can use my z.m.l.

because, for many years now, i've been proposing (and researching,
and _doing_) the exact set of things which you are now headed toward.

-bowerbird











adam said:
>   I believe HTML is the paper of our time

anybody can use paper, with zero training,
including a child with a _crayon_, whereas
.html takes a lot of training, especially when
it's the specialized type used in your system.

so i'm inclined to be skeptical of that position.


>   it is easier to produce html 
>   than any other format these days

whether or not that might be true "these days",
i can certainly imagine a "new" system that can
take a pile of unformatted content thrown at it,
ascertain the basic structure underlying the pile,
and then display all of that content appropriately.

then, in the places where that system was "off",
one could apply a smidgen of a hint that would
alter the analysis of that pile to make it correct,
such that the degree of work needed to produce
the correctly-formatted output was truly minimal.

and when such a system becomes commonplace,
browsers won't bother to require .html any more.

or, because the purpose of a browser is precisely
to interpret .html, then it is entirely possible that
we'll end up with a _new_ app to display content.

i certainly don't think that the browser/html duo
is the most highly-evolved state we can attain...


>   if you disagree feel free to take BookJS and 
>   make it work with the markdown of your choice.

i admire what you've done.  greatly.

you took this far past what anyone else has done.

so thanks for the offer.

but i've written my own code, thank you, and
i'll be using that...

-bowerbird





adam said:
>   look how far that got us...

true. so true.  so you run with the html/browser duo,
and i will run with the next iteration, and we will see
how far our respective approaches get us.  good luck.

-bowerbird

























http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/10/varieties-of-the-publishing-experience

joel-

as it seems that your target-market for this blog is
"self-publishers" who want to be told they need to
"make it a business", i won't bother repeating again
that it's fully possible to self-publish e-books with an
upfront-cost of next to nothing, because anyone who
needs to hear that message has stopped coming here.

i'll continue to scan your posts occasionally just in case
any of 'em fall under the rubric of thebookdesigner.com,
rather than what should be called thebookmarketer.com,
because i'm a big fan of information on designing books.

-bowerbird
























http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/11/ebook-problem-areas-that-need-standardisation.html

oh geez, baldur.

just when i thought you were getting smarter,
you start writing for o'reilly.

now i have to give up on you again.

by the way, you used "it's" two times here,
and one of them is wrong.

-bowerbird




















Wholesale copying and rampant reorganization make possible a uniquely new style of computer mediated collaborative thought. 
-- ward cunningham, on his federated wiki

















http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/11/author-revolution-day-the-manifesto-part-i.html

i guess publishers finally realized that
your conference is mostly just a con,
so now you're turning to the authors
to become your new crop of suckers...

well, yeah, hey, good luck with that...

-bowerbird














http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/11/gutenberg-regions.html

those blueprints are badly flawed, because they are
too complex, the kind of thing that only a bureaucracy
-- like adobe -- would create.  use a simpler blueprint,
or be hopelessly hindered by unnecessary complexity.

-bowerbird



















http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/10/the-new-new-typography.html

i don't know what to say, adam.  

that doesn't happen to me very often, adam,  
not often at all.  indeed, it is extremely rare!     :+)

and because of that i find it quite amusing...        ;+)  

on the one hand, i know the _excitement_  
that you're feeling, because i feel it too, i do,  
in the work that i'm doing along similar lines.  
there's something bubbling underneath here.

on the other hand, once you look at it closely,  
you realize that the "something" is basically  
that we are using a computer for typesetting.  
yes, we're doing it in a browser, and that is  
novel (excuse the pun), but really, so what?  
is it any surprise that code that can run offline  
can also run online, as javascript?  not really.

but, at the same time, it still _feels_ exciting...

so i am confused.  speechless.  and amused.

likewise with your obsession with making .pdf.

didn't we decide fixed-page formats are over?

i mean, i've always argued that we need to be  
_able_ to support print-on-demand completely,  
and .pdf has always been in my output array,  
but to obsess about it, and treat it like it is some  
_big_deal_ is a little silly and ludicrous, isn't it?  

of course it is.  

so i chuckle about that, but still...  you seem so  
_excited_ that, well, it makes me chuckle more.  

so i can't decide whether to just keep chuckling,  
or to chide you for being so quaint and outdated,  
or instead to cheer you on for your enthusiasm...  

like i said, i'm confused.  speechless.  amused.  

but hey, now that i know you are _working_ for  
o'reilly, my dilemma is over.  i will just ignore you,  
as i have come to ignore all of the o'reilly o'noise  
as exploitation of the death of legacy publishers...  

-bowerbird
















http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/11/weve-got-the-tools-lets-start-using-them.html

what a smug ass!  he's hilarious!         :+)

and calling o'reilly "advanced"?  classic!

and, hey, i was advocating light-markup
for _years_, and the idiots here at o'reilly
scoffed at me.  yet now you use asciidoc!

this is tremendously amusing to me...         :+)

-bowerbird























http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2012/11/30/journals-are-outlines-journalism-is-outlining/

so why didnÕt you and/or winer create such a resource
during sandy, when it could have done some good?

iÕm just askingÉ

-bowerbird










doc-

thanks for the answers.

winer has seen _everything_ as an outline
for about 3 decades, so i'd have thought
that this idea would have occurred to him.
either way, now you know for next time...

i do not think lists on one blog could give
jarvis the full information he's looking for.
he clearly invokes leveraging of the social
that "would let anyone in town annotate"
and keep the information freshly updated.

i'd certainly like to see your idea brought to
reality, as it could be a real breakthrough.

-bowerbird