Tenebris

SIU KAM WEN

Lulu.com storefront of the day for June 30, 2004: SIU KAM WEN

SIU KAM WEN was born in Chungshan, province of Kwangtung, in China. There he lived until the age of six, when his family decided to move to Hong Kong where they would spend the next three years before migrating to South America and establishing themselves in Peru. When he arrived in Lima, he spoke not a word of Spanish. He managed however to master the new language and, at the conclusion of his primary studies at the Chinese-Peruvian School "Diez de Octubre," entered night school at the state-run "Ricardo Bentín" and then at the San Marcos Experimental School. A technician in computing, he graduated in Accounting at the University of San Marcos in 1978. It was at this time that he started showing promises for writing. He was awarded a Honorary Mention at the 1981 Copé contest with "A Story of Two Old Men" and a similar one at the 1983 A-Thousand-Word Short Story contest with "Azucena". In 1985 he again moved with his family, this time to the islands of Hawaii, where he lives today. Shortly after his move his first collection of stories El Tramo Final appeared in Lima. He has an unpublished collection of stories set in China entitled El Otro Ejército. Note: this book was published in 1988 by the prestigious Peruvian National Institute of Culture under the name of La Primera Espada del Imperio.

Dancing Saddam

Who says Iraqis aren't making the best of a bad situation? From Reuters, comes this encouraging news for the future of free markets in the Arab world: Hip-Swaying Dancing Doll Ridicules Saddam.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqis used to dance to his tune, but in Baghdad toy shops a chubby, gun-toting Saddam Hussein doll now wiggles his hips to the "Hippy Hippy Shake."

Toy stores around Baghdad are doing a quick trade in dancing Saddam dolls -- foot-high battery-powered puppets of the former president, kitted out in full insurgent regalia, who swing their hips to cheesy pop music at the flick of a switch.

Decked out with hand-grenades, daggers, a walkie-talkie, binoculars and an AK-47, Saddam dances to the "Hippy Hippy Shake" when turned on.

More on the open access model for scientific journals

More today from the NYT on the open access model for scientific journals, one piece of the social movement surrounding alternative models for the distribution of intellectual property in the digital age. As they move to either open access or on-demand access to papers electronically, I suspect that more and more of these publications will begin to take advantage of print on demand technology to supply the (currently) very expensive print copies as well.

Misha Stefanuk

Lulu storefront of the day for June 29, 2004: Misha V. Stefanuk

Jazz Time, 15 Pieces for Piano, easy-intermediate to advanced JAZZ TIME is a collection of 15 original Jazz piano pieces representing different styles and eras in Jazz history. The book consists of pieces for easy- intermediate to advanced level pianists. Friendly and charming musical language equally appeals to all age groups from children to adults. Each piece paints a colorful picture of some moment in time, sometimes in the past, other times in the future, and creates a wonderful Jazzy mood. The collection represents Ragtime, Blues, Big Band, Swing, Jazz Waltz, New Age, Funk, Bebop, Boogie Woogie and a Ballad. Titles include Sunny Day Rag, Bluer Than Blue, Doing The Town, Friday Jive, Melancholy Waltz, Water So Clear, Carnaval in Brasil, Necessary Jam, Autumn Dance, Broken Circles, Rocking on Through, Artistry In Rhythm, Flowing Dreams, Canada Rag and Moon Dance. CD Accompaniment is available from www.sheetmusicpress.com

Heeee's back: Dale Peck's Hatchet Jobs

The New York Review of Books publishes a thoughtful review of the bloody-minded critic Dale Peck, who, in the summer of 2002, gave us that rarest of pleasures: a scandal of ideas, a literary brawl. His new book looks to be good reading:

The notorious Moody review ("The Moody Blues") has now been collected with eleven other "writings on contemporary fiction" which Peck has written for The New Republic, The London Review of Books, and The Village Voice. The surprise of the book is that its outré title (to say nothing of its cover, a photograph of the brawny, bald Peck wielding an axe) does it a serious injustice. Whatever its rhetorical excesses (and there are many) and its cramped aesthetic vision, it is an extremely intelligent book, and clearly the work of a potentially noteworthy critic. . . .

The Magic Power of Personal Magnetism

Lulu storefront of the day for June 28,2004:

Welcome to the world of Personal Magnetism.You can now attract anything that you want in your life with the magic power of your fascinating, attractive and magnetic personality on reading these books once.

Bukowkski: A Poet Weaned on Pain

NYT FILM REVIEW: A Poet Weaned on Pain And Reared by Adversity. I'm not optimistic that this documentary will make it to Chapel Hill, but I take comfort in the fact that it is bound to wind up on Netflix sooner or later. I'm a big, big fan of Netflix, by the way. I was also a big fan of Bukowski's poetry as a callow college lad. I still enjoy the poems, to be honest. I enjoy them in the same way I enjoy looking at classic magazine advertisements--a quick, pleasurable sip that leaves little in the way of lasting impression. From the NYT review of the documentary about Bukowski:

''My father was a great literary teacher,'' recalls the famously scrappy, hard-drinking poet and novelist Charles Bukowski, who died in 1994. ''He taught me the meaning of pain -- pain without reason.''

Universal Temple of Anu

Lulu storefront of the day for June 27, 2004: Universal Temple of Anu

The collected spiritual works of V.E.Mills and the Universal Temple of Anu.

Waypoint Media Store

Lulu storefront of the day for June 26, 2004: Waypoint Media

Waypoint Media Store The written word like you've never read it before... Web Site: waypointmedia.org

Red China, a magazine

Red China is a magazine of literature and the arts that offers a “pool” unique by nature. Red China brings with it a pleasantly confrontational attitude. We are fickle and unsure of ourselves. The only thing of which we are sure of is our taste, our confidence in what we believe is good. We are often quite happy with other pools in the neighborhood, we read them religiously, and we think others should read them, too, these pools.

This is a brilliantly designed, tastefully assembled literary journal, even if I'm a bit fuzzy on what it might mean to "read" a "pool" [ought one not to "swim" in a pool? or "wade"?] But at any rate these talented folks are, in a very quiet way, selling their print issues through Lulu.com, and they don't even have a storefront set up on Lulu that I can link to. Highly recommended, however.

Does music piracy hurt music sales?

This discussion is about as close to a burning philosophical question as we modern people get, but there is of course an argument to be made that music piracy does not hurt the sales of CDs.

How could this be? The researchers believe that most downloading is done over peer-to-peer networks by teens and college kids, groups that are "money-poor but time-rich," meaning they wouldn't have bought the songs they downloaded. In that sense, the music industry can't claim those downloads as lost record sales. In fact, illegal downloading may help the industry slightly with another major segment, which Oberholzer and Strumpf call "samplers"—an older crowd who downloads a song or two and then, if they like what they hear, go out and buy the music.

I fall into the category of sampler, in the terms outlined by the authors. But that said, I also buy less music than I used to. That's because file sharing allows me to be a more educated music consumer. It's possible that educating consumers really does work against the industry.

There is no such thing as a self-published book

The most current statistics available on book publishing come from from R.R. Bowker, publisher of Books In Print. Bowker reported that, in 2003, 175,000 titles were published in the U.S., a new record.

The pertinent line from the release is this:

51% of all new titles published in 2003 by the three largest print-on-demand publishers were fiction, poetry or drama. These categories accounted for 57% of all titles published since 1998 by the same POD houses.

As with most statistics, caution should be exercised in reading these. Bowker's definition of "published books" consists of books that have been assigned ISBNs. For reasons open to debate, Bowker is the only authorized source of ISBNs in the U.S.

Reporters frequently ask how many titles are "self-published" annually. But the distinction, as horrifying as it may seem to those in the conventional publishing business, is really a fiction. There is no such thing as a self-published book, because there is no way, meaningfully, to distinguish a 'self-published' book from any other book.

You can distinguish a book with an ISBN from a book without -- Bowker's total of 175,000 titles omits the thousands of titles that are bought and sold that do not have ISBNs -- but you can't really distinguish an author publishing his own book from a friend publishing an author's book for him, or a small company publishing his book. Many authors set up publishing companies just to distribute their own books. And many small publishing companies distribute books by only a very small number of authors.

In book publishing statistics, generally the surveyer groups independent and self-publishers together. In the statistic cited above, Bowker dodges the question by distinguishing POD books from non-POD books rather than self-published books from published books. What they are really counting, of course, is POD books with ISBNs. By "the three largest print-on-demand publishers" they mean Bowker's three largest customers for ISBNs.

Lulu.com provides authors with a way to go around the Bowker monopoly. I would argue that Lulu.com is in reality the second largest POD publisher currently (with around 10,000 titles) and that by the end of 2004 it may be the largest.

Nick Alexander

Lulu storefront of the day for June 25, 2004: Nick Alexander

Nick Alexander was born in 1964 in the U.K. He has travelled widely and has lived and worked both in the U.K. and the U.S.A. He currently lives with two cats and three goldfish in Nice, France. Nick is the editor of the bi-weekly satirical news site www.BIGfib.com and is a regular contributor to the UK magazine reFRESH. 50 reasons to say goodbye is his first novel.

Dirk Gerrit's Sting of Justice

Lulu storefront of the day for June 24, 2004: Dirk Gerrit

Dirk Gerrit served in the United States Navy for twelve years. He flew single seat A-7E Corsair II's for nine years, the forerunner of the state of the art F/A-18 Hornet featured in his novel. He has served in combat ready carrier-based squadrons and wrote for local newspapers as Public Affairs Officer for his first fleet squadron homeported in Japan. He also served as an instructor pilot with expertise in weapon's delivery and battle area tactics, enemy defensive systems and electronic warfare in the high threat arena.

Clueless in Seattle

Interesting Robert X. Cringely column excoriating the Microsoft mentality in a roundabout way. I was especially amused by this:

People who are incompetent are also not competent to measure their own competency. Got that? In other words, people who are ignorant -- I mean really ignorant -- are less likely to see themselves that way and are more likely to fight for their mistaken beliefs. And the Internet has taken this effect to a whole new level because now we can have global discourse in which nobody involved knows what he is talking about.

Overview of Copyright for Writers

Here's a terrific, basic overview of copyright law for writers from Neil Wilkinson, writing at Writers' Weekly. Angela Hoy, who runs Writer's Weekly, is an old-school self-publishing expert who also co-owns Booklocker.com, another company that offers POD publishing services. She knows the field pretty thoroughly and provides some very good resources for writers.

Directory of Open Access Journals

Just ran across this, the Directory of Open Access Journals. As I've been speaking with journalists over the last couple of weeks, I continue to try to persuade them that there is, in fact, a social movement (NYT archives) that has coalesced around the issue of overly restrictive control of intellectual property. Some journalists seem to get it, and others don't. The hub of the movement, if it could be said to have one, is probably Creative Commons. And, being somewhat abstract as revolutionary causes go, most of the activity in the movement takes place in academia. One of the challenges for Lulu.com is to occupy the middle ground--we are a business, but we are a business being built on the premise of doing the right thing.

Along those lines, I heard an interview on Tech Nation the other day with Craig Newmark, founder of Craig's List. He spoke about idealistic entrepreneurship, a theme he repeats in this LA Times article (registration required).

Why Should I Buy Your Book?

Important tips on selling your book from Judy Cullins writing at Publishing Central. Writing for the sake of art is fine, of course. Better than fine. But publishing is another act altogether. If you want people to read what you've written, then you need to be able to explain what it is and why they should read it.

Answer your buyer's questions about how your book will make them richer, healthier, and make their life easier. Memorize these benefits and have them ready to share when someone asks you about your book. Leave the plot or story out. Stick to the sixty-second "tell and sell."

We see the antithesis of this over and over at Lulu.com, actually, wistful authors who publish their novels or their books of poetry and hope that readers will find them. Whether the work is good or bad, that's not the way books sell. The authors who sell books are the entrepreneurial authors, the salesmen, the hustlers. The first step, of course, is to understand your message and your audience. Tomorrow's Lulu storefront of the day will feature one of the more entrepreneurial novelists I've met through Lulu.

German Court court limits book sales on Ebay

Dare I say it? Europeans are obsessed with regulations.

A restriction was enacted on Tuesday by a Frankfurt court. The ruling strengthened a provision in German law that allows publishers to fix the prices of their books.

The Condensed Bill Clinton

The Condensed Bill Clinton - Slate reads My Life so you don't have to. Among the quotes selected by Slate:"I had fantasized from time to time about being a doorman at New York's Plaza Hotel, at the south end of Central Park. Plaza doormen had nice uniforms and met interesting people from all over the world. I imagined garnering large tips from guests who thought that, despite my strange southern accent, I made good conversation."

For good measure, Larry McMurtry on Clinton's biography: "Confessions of a Policy Won," in which McMurtry describes My Life as "a galloping, reckless, political picaresque, a sort of pilgrim's progress, lowercase."

Costa Rica Diaries

Lulu storefront of the day for June 23, 2004: The Costa Rica Diaries

The Costa Rica Diaries is a seven year journal of Hilary Amolins' adventure in Costa Rica. Lawlessness, paradise, self-discovery, triumph and disaster. A word for word account written in the jungles. This book will show you a Costa Rica you have never seen before!

Lulu in the News

Yahoo has picked up Lulu's most recent press release, as have a number of other news organizations: Tale of Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky Romance Republished as On-Demand Book by Lulu.com

Portland Communique Press has formally announced that it has republished its back issues using Lulu.com (see Storefront of the Day from June 20)

The Triangle Business Journal is working on a profile of Bob Young.

The Raleigh N&O wants to write about North Carolinian authors using Lulu.com.

CNet and a few other news organizations are busy following up on Matt Basham and his Cisco certification book, as covered in the St. Petersburg Times the other day.

Documenting The American South

Sanders pointed me to the following link: an interesting digital document collection hosted by UNC. Wouldn't it be nice if they offered some of these documents as print-on-demand books through Lulu.com?

Documenting The American South (DAS), an electronic collection sponsored by the Academic Affairs Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides access to digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture. It supplies teachers, students, and researchers at every educational level with a wide array of titles they can use for reference, studying, teaching, and research.

A Critic's Critic: Menand takes on the grammer queen

Set yourself up as an expert in something and you're just asking to be taken down a notch. The New Yorker's Louis Menand sharpens his pencil and goes to work on “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation."

Hal Torrance

Lulu storefront of the day for June 22, 2004: Hal Torrance

Hal Torrance is a former teacher who has written over two dozen books for the education market. His work has been published by McGraw Hill Children's Publishing, Show What You Know Publishing, Tribune Education, Good Neighbor Press, Instructional Fair, Discovery Enterprises, and a number of journals and magazines.

Father's Day 2004

I let Father's Day pass unremarked, but on Saturday I actually received my first Father's Day gift ever. Kim and Iris gave me the bird you see here. And yes, the bird's body reads Yamaha. I sent my own father an out of print book on the history of Belize that I hope he'll enjoy. He was born in Belize (known at that time as British Honduras), and has the pictures to prove it.

Libraries reveal their favorites | csmonitor.com

"We can determine which books are selling, but how can we tell which books are being read?" Library Journal has undertaken to answer that question--with a list, no less.

Robert Curtis: Dominicana

Lulu storefront of the day for June 21, 2004:

Robert Curtis

Emailing Book Pitches

From the WSJ, Book Idea in an E-Mail Box, how "Unsolicited Pitches, Often Loathed By Publishers, Find Route to Editors' Desks." Of course, the cursed WSJ does not allow links to be accessed by nonsubscribers, but I'll provide an excerpt:

Like many publishing houses, Walt Disney Co.'s Hyperion has a policy against reading unsolicited manuscripts or book queries. But last December, Editor-in-Chief Will Schwalbe opened an e-mail message with "Fireman's wife" in the subject line, thinking it concerned the David Halberstam book he had edited. Instead, it was a brief pitch that read, in part: "I am coping. Often I am lonely, I am surprised, I am underpaid. But in a relationship that defines my identity, I am the fireman's wife."

Mr. Schwalbe was hooked. He reached for the phone and called the sender, Susan Farren, a stay-at-home mother of five in northern California who is married to a fireman. Soon afterwards, a deal was struck for "The Fireman's Wife," which could be published as early as next spring.

Would-be authors, don't get your hopes up. "What happened is really a fantasy," Mr. Schwalbe says. Still, the Internet has provided a new gate of entry for the reams of story pitches, query letters and unsolicited manuscripts that continually besiege publishing houses -- and that most routinely ignore.

This is an interesting phenomenon in more than one respect. While the Internet dramatically facilitates communication, it is also deafening in some respects, producing a kind of communication fatigue. I delete far more emails than I actually open. But at the same time, the access itself is democratic, as the case of The Fireman's Wife illustrates. This article also features a link to a writer's marketing service that sounds suspiciously spammy:

PublishersAndAgents.net (www.publishersandagents.net) maintains an e-mail address database of 1,200 editors and charges $80 to craft a personalized pitch for unpublished authors. For $130 more, the service will send the pitches to an average of 300 to 400 editors at a time.

Professor gives his textbooks for free

The St. Petersburg Times carries a terrific story today about a professor named Matt Basham who is working to provide an alternative to Cisco's ridiculously high certification materials by selling a low-cost textbook of his own making. Basham is one of an increasing number of educators frustrated over the costs of educational materials to students. He's decided to do something about it. And he's decided to use Lulu.com. That has always been the basic idea behind Lulu. Here's the link to his storefront, by the way.

Books printed while you wait?

Instabook is the company that has managed to arouse a fair amount of publicity by putting on-demand book production kiosks in a couple of bookstores, but truthfully this is not progress. A good Kinkos with a binding machine provides the same service. The real story remains the marriage of affordable, fast, print on demand technology with the unprecedented distribution power of the Internet.

By the way, the in-store book printing kiosk was actually the idea at the heart of the POD patent suit that was lost a few months ago by Amazon.com and Lightning Source. Harvey Ross, the founder of On Demand Machine Corporation, originally requested a patent on the idea of an on-demand book kiosk that would produce out of print titles while customers waited. He didn't foresee the emergence of the Internet as a distribution platform for books. But the court upheld an interpretation of the patent that covered the essential system (database, book metadata, printing mechanism--very basic system) being described rather than a particular machine design. Stretching credulity even further, the court then found Amazon.com and Lightning Source--two completely different companies, mind you--to have colluded to create a system that knowingly infringed upon the core idea protected by the patent. This despite the fact that one or the other company on its own would not have risen to the level of infringer, and despite the fact that Ross himself never actually created a sustainable business model based on his idea.

Madness.

Chicago Tribune | 50 best magazines

The Chicago Tribune has undertaken the admirable task of determining the fifty best magazines (registration required).

What makes a magazine great? The writing. The ideas. The photography. The design. Sure. But more importantly, a magazine's worth depends on how it catches readers' glances, and then their hearts. Here, Tempo presents its second annual 50 Best Magazines list. Our selections reflect the periodicals that we pay good money to buy, that we pile on our nightstands, that we devour on trains, that we consider to be the best at what they set out to do. There are more than 17,500 magazines published in this country, so choosing the 50 best was daunting. We argued, we concurred, we scoffed. And we welcome you to continue the debate.

I'll shortcut the registration and provide a preview of the conclusions below, sans links and with one or two editorial comments (I ran across this article, by the way, here). We love lists.

1. Wired
2. Real Simple (vacuous modernism)
3. The Economist
4. Cook's Illustrated
5. Esquire
6. The New Yorker (brilliant)
7. American Demographics
8. Men's Health (the narcissistic women’s magazine for men!)
9. Jane
10. Consumer Reports
11. Whole Dog Journal (as opposed to what? partial dog?)
12. Time
13. Reason
14. People (they’re kidding, right?)
15. Business Week
16. Fine Homebuilding
17. The Atlantic Monthly
18. National Review
19. Conde Nast Traveler (you mean there's actual content in this?)
20. No Depression

The Starr Report, an autoerotic biography

A companion book for the new Clinton biography. Working on a press release.

Portland Communique Press

Lulu storefront of the day for June 20, 2004: Portland Communique Press

Book Expo 2004

From the Rocky Mountain News, one reporter's take on the mayhem that was Book Expo 2004. Lulu.com elected not to attend this year, although I hope to go next year with the intention of making a big splash. One salient note from the story:

And book production overall increased 19 percent in 2003, to a phenomenal 175,000 titles, according to Bowker. Most of that trend can be attributed to the increase in Internet publishing and print-on-demand technology, which makes self-publishing far less expensive than in the past.

The Pastiche of a Presidency

From the NYT, the notoriously sharp-tongued reviewer Michiko Kakutani skewers the new Clinton autobiography: Books of The Times: The Pastiche of a Presidency, Imitating a Life, in 957 Pages.

The book, which weighs in at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull — the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history.

Look for a related title from Lulu.com in the next few days.

Christian dinosaur hunters dig for signs of Biblical dragons

In my mind the scariest thing happening in America today is the acceleration of the cultural movement that includes these people: Christian dinosaur hunters dig for signs of Biblical dragons.

Lecturing to a rapt audience of 20 like-minded Christians after a hard day in the field, Russ McGlenn, a self-styled amateur archaeologist and palaeontologist and head of Adventure Safaris, said: "Heavenly Father, we thank You for the evidence of a catastrophic flood event. We thank You for the time to study Your creation. Heavenly Father, we thank You for the evidence of a catastrophic flood event."

This movement represents a virulent strain of anti-science that, counter-intuitively, is also shared by the extreme left in the US and Europe. For evidence of beliefs every bit as preposterous and unprovable as the creationists', you need only drop by your nearest Whole Foods grocery store and peruse the headlines visible on the magazine rack at the checkout.

Slovkonsult Law Publications Store

Lulu storefront of the day for June 19, 2004: Slovkonsult Law Publications Bookstore

The Human Rights of Companies by Slovkonsult Law Publications Description: ISBN 80-969172-1-8. By Edward Lestrade, MA, LLB, Lawyer, Slovkonsult Law & Consulting. Copyright Slovkonsult Law Publications - a division of Slovkonsult Law & Consulting, Slovak Republic - all rights reserved. The book gives an important summary of the law in respect of the humanisation of corporate bodies for protection against others infringing their rights under the ECHR. (16 pages)

Open Source Novel

This is new to me, surprisingly: Open Source Novel. It's especially interesting to me because just the other day here at Lulu.com we found ourselves arguing (and not for the first time) about whether or not collaborative books are real. Obviously there are collaborative books, as the open source novel demonstrates, but my position is that the concept is essentially a socialist fantasy. Or something along those lines. The book is, at its pulpy core, an ego-driven exercise: one voice speaking one truth. Now my argument is pretty easy to knock down, in some ways (and Henry was giving it his best go), as there are textbooks and reference works of all sorts that are by definition very much the products of collaboration. A magazine or newspaper could be seen as belonging to the family of collaborative books. But the urge to write, the urge to publish--these are in some essential ways declarations of the self. I suppose an evolutionary biologist might even describe book publishing as a mating strategy (secondary, of course, to acting and playing the electric guitar).

The context for our discussion was the addition of Wiki as a tool for authors who use Lulu.com. Henry was enamored with the idea of Wiki books. "But!" I bellowed (causing him to veer off in the wrong direction as he drove us to lunch), "don't you remember...Lulu started out as a tool for creating collaborative books. And no one used it!" It's true. We wasted a lot of time trying to define ourselves as a 'collaborative tool' before launching the open publishing platform/on-demand publishing tool you see now. But the truth was, while there was a great deal of ink being spilled in academic circles about collaborative content, the people who do this sort of thing looked at us, a business, and turned up their noses. Collaboration, after all, was for the good of humanity, not to make money. Which is all fine and well if you work for a university. Thank god for it. But when there is a real demand for something, there's also a business to be made in responding to that demand. In my (humble) estimation, there is no demand for collaborative books.

Practical Restoration Reports

Lulu storefront of the day for June 18, 2004: John Leeke's Practical Restoration Reports

Open source publishing?

From Newsforge, an enthusiastic, if slightly misguided, article: Open source cracks publishing wide open. The author gets hung up on open source tools themselves, but misses the bigger picture (and, somewhat unforgivably in my opinion, completely omits Lulu.com from the discussion) about the knowledge industry itself. She does get the general message, however, about the change in the balance of power:

Once upon a time, publishing was the domain of large corporations. Then came desktop publishing and the tools to produce a book shrank from the cost of an aircraft carrier to the price tag of a PT boat. Now, small publishers on the bleeding edge of technology are fomenting a revolution that may change the publishing market forever. Open source publishing tools, long derided as not being ready for battle, are proving themselves in the trenches of small publishing.

The tools used to format books, of course, are a pretty small piece of the picture. The fact that they are accessible to average people is important, but the truth is that proprietary software for formatting books is also affordable and accessible. I even use Microsoft Word (gasp) to format books sometimes (for example). The more important shift is the distribution power made accessible by the Internet. The successful authors using Lulu.com to distribute their books have purchasers in Australia, in Europe, in Asia--customers that are every bit as accessible to them as those in Ohio or North Carolina, albeit with higher shipping costs. Actually, that will change soon, too--Lulu is about to institue a $7 shipping option for anywhere in the world.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, reconsidered

I was unaware of this (why would I be?), but apparently Oprah recently selected The Heart is a Lonely Hunter for her bookclub. Johnathan Yardley reconsiders Carson McCullers' novel for the Washington Post: Carson McCullers's Sure Aim At the Heart of Loneliness (washingtonpost.com)
Like the author of the Post article, I was deeply moved by McCullers as an adolescent, and the emotions she stirred then do not quite survive a revisitation of the material. But this paragraph, from Yardley's article, did bring it all back for me:

Because he is mute -- a Christ without a voice, ironically named Singer -- he cannot communicate as intimately with others as they wish, but the emotions he arouses are powerful. Mick "loved him better than anyone in the family, better even than George or her Dad. It was a different love. It was not like anything she had ever felt in her life before." It is the love of a human being for God, and in the novel as in the Bible it reaches an unhappy climax. Dr. Copeland's sorrow recalls that of the Apostles: "There was neither beginning nor end to this sorrow. Nor understanding. Always he would return in his thoughts to this white man who was not insolent or scornful but who was just. And how can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?"

OpenTextBook.org

The Open Text Book Project --something to keep an eye on.

American Barefoot Doctor's Manual

Lulu storefront of the day for June 17, 2004: American Barefoot Doctor's Manual

Pew Internet & American Life Project: Content Creation Online -- Report

It's probably poor form to link to an article about blogging so early on, but I ran across the Pew Internet & American Life Project: Content Creation Online -- Report refenced in an article in the Online Journalism Review. From the Pew report:

Content creators break into three distinct groups: Power Creators, Older creators and Content Omnivores.

Power creators are the Internet users who are most enthusiastic about content-creating activities. They are young – their average age is 25 – and they are more likely than other kinds of creators do things like use instant messaging, play games, and download music. And they are the most likely group to be blogging.

Older creators have an average age of 58 and are experienced Internet users. They are highly educated, like sharing pictures, and are the most likely of the creator groups to have built their own Web sites. They are also the most likely to have used the Internet for genealogical research.

Content omnivores are among the heaviest overall users of the Internet. Most are employed. Most log on frequently and spend considerable time online doing a variety of activities. They are likely to have broadband connections at home. The average age of this group is 40.

Michelle Kinter

Lulu storefront of the day for June 16, 2004: Kinter Genealogy Store

Introducing Webjay

A few years ago, a dear friend of mine worked for Uplister, a notable dot-com failure. Notable, that is, because of the fabulous idea at its core. It allowed people to create music playlists for one another, and provided a means for individual list creators (DJs, if you will) to gain their own followings. You could search for like-minded music lovers by means of mutually cherished songs. Amazon.com is among the companies now utilizing this idea to create customer-driven cross marketing.

Great idea. Lucas Gonze, a deep thinker in the music P2P scene, has now created Webjay, a noncommercial application that does something similar. Rock on.

IBM requests court put an end to SCO suit

IBM requests judge throw out SCO suit.

“SCO refuses…to disclose its purported evidence that IBM’s Linux activities infringe SCO’s alleged copyrights, despite two court orders requiring it to do so,” IBM said in its motion for a partial summary judgment.

High time. This is the same issue, of course, that Bob Young weighed in on a few months ago.

Permissions on Digital Media Drive Scholars to Lawbooks

From the NYT: Permissions on Digital Media Drive Scholars to Lawbooks
An upcoming conference in NY will delve into the limitations of fair use for digital content: Knowledge Held Hostage: Scholarly Versus Corporate Rights in the Digital Age The questions raised by these folks are, of course, very relevant. Essentially, all content is digital. But what's also on display in this article is the general temerity of academia. The likelihood of litigation for a use that could reasonably be argued might fall under the fair use doctrine is, as Professor Jaszi, a professor of law at American University's Washington College of Law, points out, quite slim.

Does science fiction breed scientists?

A NYT article profiles Donna Shirley, a former NASA engineer who in her retirement is acting as curator of Paul Allen's new Science Fiction museum. She makes an interesting point:

Ms. Shirley hopes the museum will not only excite science fiction nostalgia, but also excite people about science. "People think, science fiction, that's kind of kooky," she said, "but actually science fiction is how a lot of people like me got into the engineering business or the space business or science."

Anecdotal evidence suggests to me that this is true. I was a science fiction and fantasy buff as an adolescent, moving from C.S. Lewis to Anne McCaffrey to Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert. Not that I became a scientist or an engineer, of course. Perhaps the fantasy side won out in the end.

Project Dominic

Lulu storefront of the day for June 15, 2004: Project Dominic

Jay E. Gell, Red-Blooded American Rebel

Lulu storefront of the day for June 14, 2004: Jay E. Gell, Red Blooded American Rebel, Automotive Technician by trade, Anti-Lawyer, Family Law reform activist, and Pro Se litigant by neccessity

Self-publishing Gay Romance Novels

Here's a great story from the Boston Herald about the success of two self-publishing authors with a niche market, albeit a very large niche market. They didn't use Lulu.com, but there are plenty of niche authors who do, any of whom could 'break-out' in a similar fashion. One such genre author who does fairly well is David-Matthew Barnes.

The Jane Austen Book Club

This New York Times article profiles the author of the current bestseller, The Jane Austen Book Club. It sounds like a good read, but what was most striking to me about the profile were two passages. The first described the author's writing history thus far:

But underneath that Austenesque exterior there beats the heart of a science fiction writer. Ms. Fowler is the author of stories about Carry Nation reincarnated as a hatchet-wielding Amazon, noseless aliens in the rain forest and insect aliens invading the mind of a poet, published in magazines like Pulphouse and Science Fiction. "I did always, when I was home with the children," Ms. Fowler said, "and had that PTA-volunteer, soccer-mom, bake-sale persona, feel that I was passing."

Sounds like a lot of authors I know. The second striking bit was the author's account of herself, of the characteristics that distinguish her from the other people with whom she attended writers' workshops:

But "I was not the most talented," she insisted, "not the most hard working, not the one to whom writing mattered most. I succeeded because I was the toughest."

Indeed.

Mike Lombardo

Lulu storefront of the day for June 13, 2004: Mike Lombardo

Introduction to Tenebris

Well, another weblog is born. My intentions are murky even to myself. I have long lobbied for an 'official' Lulu weblog and/or for individual employee weblogs, and, while this remains a possibility (pending the introduction of new community tools), I've always wondered if the burden of representing the company in a formal sense would kill whatever spark might bring a Lulu blog to life in the first place. The ability to mock the occasional author, for example....or even the ability to hold one up as being especially worthy. Injecting too much personality into the site could rather quickly become a liability. So that said, let me inaugurate this, my new blog, with an admonition not to see it as representing Lulu.com in any official respect. The views expressed herein are my own and no one else's. They may now and then even fly in the face of what the company is trying to accomplish. If so, I beg your forgiveness in advance. If you disagree with me or object to what I write or find yourself offended, please feel free to post a comment to that effect. Or go start your own blog and mock or offend me in turn. That's the beauty of personal publishing, isn't it? Just don't try to get me fired, eh?