For Readers (and Authors, too)
This blog is for anyone that reads my books, as well as for anyone else who is self-publishing, thinking about self-publishing, or just curious about what it’s like to be an author during rapidly changing times. Whenever you visit here, I hope you’ll share your own comments and thoughts. If you’d like to know whenever I post a new entry, please type your email address into the box in the right-hand column and check the appropriate box (and the newsletter one, too, while you’re at it).
ODF vs. OOXML: War of the Words Chapter 4 – Eric Kriss, Peter Quinn and the ETRM
Read this book from the beginning
By the end of December 2005, I had been blogging on ODF developments in Massachusetts for about four months, providing interviews, legal analysis and news as it happened. In those early days, not many bloggers were covering the ODF story, and email began to come my way from people that I had never met before, from as far away as Australia, and as near as the State House in Boston. Some began with, “This seems really important – what can I do to help?” Others contained important information that someone wanted to share, and that I was happy to receive.
What’s Next (and why?)
I expect that the question I’m about to address is one that every self-published author has spent some tough moments grappling with at some point during their creative journey. If you haven’t already guessed what that question is, here’s a clue: another title for this post could have been “What’s the Point?”
Review: The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth (Richard Conniff)
The Species Seekers is based upon two main themes. The first is that the people that became obsessed (or sought their fortunes) by discovering new species were a remarkably strange and interesting lot, and Conniff substantiaties this contention amply through the scores of fascinating sketches he provides throughout The Species Seekers. The second is that the stuffy academics that usually got the credit for new species (by being the first to describe them in the scientific literature) did not give the eccentric discoverers their due. Indeed, they often treated them with disdain.
To Advertise or Not to Advertise?
One of the ongoing quandaries a self-published author faces is whether to dedicate part of her hard-earned cash to advertising. That’s a tough one, since advertising is rarely cheap, and may often fail to generate more in immediate profits than has been spent on the ads. True, advertising may also assist in brand-building, leading to greater sales at a later date, but any direct results in that regard are usually hard to detect, let alone measure.
So when does advertising pay off, and how can you tell if it did?
ODF vs. OOXML: War of the Words Chapter 2
This is the second chapter in a real-time eBook writing project I launched and explained last week. The following is one of a number of stage-setting chapters to follow. Comments, corrections and suggestions gratefully accepted. All Microsoft product names used below are registered trademarks of Microsoft.
Chapter 2 – Products, Innovation and Market Share
Microsoft is the envy of many vendors for the hugely dominant position it enjoys in two key product areas: PC desktop operating systems – the software that enables and controls the core functions of personal computers – and “office productivity software” – the software applications most often utilized by PC users, whether at work or at home, to create documents, slides and spreadsheets and meet other common needs. Microsoft’s 90% plus market share in such fundamental products is almost unprecedented in the technical marketplace, and this monopoly position enables it to charge top dollar for such software. It also makes it easy for Microsoft to sell other products and services to the same customers. read more…
ODF vs. OOXML: War of the Words
My last post – Why Johnny Can’t Format [a book] attracted enough attention (over 900 reads so far, plus many comments, tweets, and other social media pass-along) that I thought those that read it might want to learn more about the standards war I referred to. I started a book way back in 2007 describing that epic battle, and below you can find the original introduction and first chapter. I’ll follow with more if there’s sufficient interest. Enjoy! read more…
Why Johnny Can’t Format [a book]
One of the big frustrations of writing a book is that while Microsoft Word can be used for creating and formatting a book, it’s a real pain in the neck for ordinary mortals to use it for that purpose. In fact, at least one person (Aaron Shepard) has written an entire book telling you how to pull that feat off.
Why is that true, do you suppose?
Millions More Free Images (just be sure to read the fine print)
A couple of weeks ago I reblogged and added to a very helpful blog post by Catana at Tracking the Words. That post included lots of helpful links to sites that had large stores of images that you can use for free in your own on-line (and other) works.
Today brings word that one of the largest trove of digitized photographs – gettyimages – is making 35 million out of its 80 million photographs available for use without charge, but with a few not-unreasonable strings attached. The hook is that you’ll first have to confirm whether the image you want to use is one of the freebies, and then you’ll have to include embedded code in the image that Getty provides when you repurpose it. Getty provides instructions on how to do this, but unless you already know how to add data to images, they probably will just leave you puzzled. read more…
Rediscovering GoodReads
One of the frustrating things about learning your around the self-publishing landscape is that there’s a flood of data but no way to qualify it. Given that for every possible category of interest (print on demand publishers, community sites, promoters, and on and on) there are many, and in some cases even hundreds, or alternatives, that’s a real problem.
As a result, when I started down this path I engaged in the time honored custom of throwing mud against the proverbial wall to see what might stick. The problem is not only that this is indiscriminate and time consuming, but most of the time there’s no way to tell which mud might actually be clinging and which not, since there’s usually no way to track positive results back to the source.
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