publishing

Thinking about this.

As a reader, how do you find a good book among all the choices out there? As a writer, how do you get your book noticed by readers? Photo by Madhava Enros (Creative Commons) A couple of days ago, Chuck Wendig posted a long expletive-rich rant about the proliferation of low-quality books—which he blames on self-publishing’s lack of gatekeepers—and how that makes it harder for everyone because the signal (quality books) is being buried in the noise (poorly written/edited/packaged books)....

In my years as an interwebs information consumer, I’ve gleaned great insight into one of the mainstays of online content: The top (n) list. Here are some essential tips to creating amazing top n lists that will thrill and excite your readers: Pick a number, any number, ideally the one that takes the least amount of work to fulfill. Top 5 foos, Top 100 bars, doesn’t matter. If you want to cover, say, online apps for a making lists and you have 100 of them to cull through, forget that grunt work and just list them all....

Is the future really free? It seems we’ve entered an age where there’s a land-grab happening for personal data and attention time. Look at all the web start-ups backed by venture capital. They aren’t investing out of philanthropy. There’s value there. YouTube is “free” but Google paid over a billion dollars for it. Why? Here’s a hint: It’s not about the Tube. Chris Anderson’s Wired article was quite bold in its proclamations:...

In doing some catch-up on the Web 2.0 conference that happened a couple of weeks ago, I came across Kaliya’s round up, where she remarks upon the rather inane statement made by television mogul Barry Diller: Dumbest thing said on the stage: Bary Diller dismissed the idea that citizens with blogs and video editing software were major threats to the entertainment industry. “There is not that much talent in the world,” Diller said....