For those of you in the Portland area, this weekend you ought to stop by the Portland Convention Center to check out Wordstock, Portland’s annual convention of the book. There are going to be a lot of authors and a ton of publishers and booksellers there, so even outside of the panel discussions and presentations there should be plenty of chances for great conversation. Plus, admission is only $5. Ooligan Press will have a couple of tables, with a pretty neat display showing the publishing process and a pitch table for authors to come throw their ideas at us. So come on down, meet cool people, and enjoy book culture for an afternoon!
 Copyleft symbol Cory Doctorow, science fiction author, blogger, and part time super hero, has an interesting article up at Locus Online titled “Why I Copyfight.” Doctorow has been involved with Creative Commons for a long time, and has progressive-to-radical views about copyright law and copyright reform; he asks a lot of very pertinent questions, and asks them well. The thrust of his article in Locus is that copyright laws were created in a time when copying took time, effort, and expensive equipment. As such, he argues, it is out of place in the modern world, where copying is ubiquitous and even necessary. He also brings up the point that copyright law today is at odds with the way that people live their lives; we are all copyright infringers, he argues. More after the break. . . . Registration has just opened for O’Reilly Books‘ Tools of Change conference in New York. As reported in the TOC blog, O’Reilly is offering a chance to win free admission to the conference to four authors of personal accounts about “your experience with a new technology, technique, or strategy based on the shifting publishing landscape.” These accounts can be in any format; text and video are both mentioned. O’Reilly is one of the big names in tech books of the “not for dummies” variety, and it should come as no surprise that they are very interested in new technology and publishing. The conference promises to be fascinating; there’s certainly a lot to be discussed, from what publishers sell to how they sell it. Their site doesn’t have a detailed list of presentations that will be given yet, but I’m sure it will be forthcoming as the date of the conference gets closer.  More of my bookshelf. Clever, no? Well, here it is, hot off the presses both here and over at Ink & Paper: Part 2 of my exploration of ebook world. Again, thanks to Jen, Linda, Bo, and Cam for giving me the green light about posting this here as well as on their site! Welcome back to the world of ebook design. Last time, we talked about the necessity of mutable design for ebooks; specifically, about the need for things like reflowable text and proportional rather than static margins. Today, we’ll be looking at how to achieve that mutability of design.  Image of a newspaper Well, this is some interesting news: Google and the Author’s Guild have settled their dispute over author’s rights and the digitizing of massive collections. Or at least, there is a proposed settlement that’s still pending a judge’s review. But it’s sounding pretty definite. For those not in the loop, the issue here is that Google was working with Stanford University, the University of California and the University of Michigan, to digitize their entire collections. Google would then make these selections available through their Book search program. The selections are not generally complete, though if the copyright holder consents Google will display the entire work. On some of the books I browsed through, there were notes indicating ommitted pages (”Pages 12-14 are not part of this preview”), and other books would let you browse through the entire work, but only for a certain number of pages; The Two Towers stopped about 300 pages in, with Frodo, Sam, and Gollum just taking leave of Faramir. So most of the books was there, but not all of it. Books in the public domain are viewable in their entirety, and are downloadable as PDF files. More after the break . . . .
Yeah, they’re charging enough for it that they can afford to knock over a thousand bucks off the price tag for students. And yeah, I went and bought it. Why? Well, mostly because InDesign and Photoshop are industry standards. And yes, I know and love the GIMP, and I’ve heard good things about Scribus, but I’m just learning how to use those tools right now, and if all goes well I’ll get a job after graduation with a publishing place that has computers of its own. Those computers will more than likely be loaded with Adobe products, so it behooves me to be pretty familiar with them, and I’ll learn how to use them more easily if I’m not more familiar with how another program works. Another selling point for me was the presence of Dreamweaver, which my sister the web designer swears by. So the Design Premium suite came with some other stuff that seemed useful to me. I haven’t had much of a chance to test drive everything yet, and in any case I’m at best a novice user, so I wouldn’t check back frequently for insightful product reviews or anything (actually, check back frequently for whatever you want), but I’ll probably have something to say about my impressions of CS4 in the coming weeks.
I don’t know about most of the rest of the reading world, but I do most of my reading on paperbacks. I pick up hardcovers of books I particularly like, or more rarely of new books by authors I know I like. If I buy a hardcover by an author I don’t know, it’s because it’s either on the discount rack or because I’ve heard amazing things from a reliable source, or both (as was the case when I picked up Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which did not disappoint in the least). The bulk of my reading, though is done in paperback. Read on for more of my thoughts. . . .  Part of my bookshelf Well, I just finished up an internship at a great little Portland publishing company called Ink & Paper. While I was there, I worked primarily with Three Muses Press, one of their imprints, but I also had the opportunity to contribute a couple of articles to the Ink & Paper blog. As the focus of my internship was most on the tech side of publishing, the blog articles that I wrote were about new technology and publishing. In particular, I got to summarize a bunch of the research I had been doing into ebooks, and particularly ebook design. Everyone at Ink & Paper is awesome, so it should come as no surprise that they have no problems with me posting the articles here as well as on their blog (though the second part of the design article will have to wait until they’ve published it on their blog). So, without further ado, here are some of my thoughts on designing ebooks. Check ‘em out after the break. Well, it’s high time to actually put this out there. Construction will be ongoing, and I’m sure many things will change dramatically here, but better that than to never get around to going live at all. So a bit about me: I’m a tall ship sailor, though at this point I haven’t worked in the industry for a couple of years (though people still keep calling me with job offers). I’m also a recently transplant to Portland, Oregon, where I’m a student in PSU’s Masters in Publishing program. While I’m here, I want to study where publishing, writing, and storytelling is going and how tech, and particularly the internet, is shaping it. So hit me up with any resources that you know about. I’m also a reader, gamer, fencer, occasional photographer, and bike commuter, and I’ve done more than my share of traveling. Life’s been good. |
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