INDEX // mb Ideas on Publishing Books in Canada (and other attempts to write good)

Archive for March 2009

If An Author’s Time is The Scarce Resource Why Not Auction It Off?

If I knew anything about publicity I would start a business in Toronto that placed book authors in major corporations during lunch hour. Google has authors speak at their offices and they are generous enough to record them, but I bet other companies would like authors to drop in for an afternoon to share ideas, [...]

What If You Went To An [Online] Bookstore and No One Was There?

Google’s mission is to index the world’s information. Facebook’s mission is to index the world’s population. In five years which will be better positioned to sell books? Hands down — Facebook. As the industry drags its heels on standardizing on ePUB, you have to wonder if it will be any quicker socializing its product. I [...]

Evolution: A Magic Alchemy of Imagination, Power, and GTD

When the New York Times’ Nick Bilton asked where R&D work was happening in the book publishing trade, I understood that to be a rhetorical question. O’Reilly has a lab of course but I still thought that was provocative because the obvious answer was nowhere. My apologies to Jeremy Ettinghausen. Until this morning I was [...]

Heather Reisman Talks Shortcovers with George on The Hour

At the beginning of the month — on the same day as Levar Burton — the owner of Indigo/Chapters Heather Reisman was featured on CBC’s The Hour. At the time I really had nothing to say about this appearance. I still don’t but from the looks of the view count on youtube not many people [...]

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