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Lulu storefront of the day for Tuesday, November 30, 2004: Zem Books, home of the works of Indiana author/spiritualist medium Tom Baker.
Zem Books is dedicated to making available both the fiction and non-fiction works of Mr. Baker, as well as re-printing editions of obscure, antique volumes concerning spiritualism, paranormal phenomenon, UFOS, folklore, mysteries, and classic "gothic" and early science fiction works.
Lulu storefront (and web site) of the day for Monday, November 29, 2004: Toycamera.com. What a cool site--dedicated to photography produced by plastic cameras: "They're cheap, maddening, fascinating plastic pieces of crap. Many people hate them, they think they're junk, worthless, a waste of time. But we love them." The folks at toycamera.com have just published a calendar through Lulu.
On a related note, I just published a calendar yesterday for my father: The Art of Neil Fraser: 2005. If you're planning to make calendars as holiday presents, better get cracking. The $2 discount will disappear on December 1st, and shipping deadlines are looming as well.
Lulu storefront of the day for Tuesday, November 23, 2004: Yesterday's Classics, a creative project that takes advantage of various public domain texts. Judging by the number of books still (as of this posting) in the proofing stage, the publisher has ambitious plans but remains in the early stages of developing his (her?) storefront.
Lulu storefront of the day for Saturday, November 20, 2004: Voices from Beyond, books by Isaac Nwokogba.
Lulu storefront of the day for Friday, November 19, 2004: Chief Cook & Bottle-Washer: The Unconquerable Soul Of Wilkie Clark, a biography of Wilkie Clark of Randolph County, Alabama, written by his daughter Charlotte A. Clark-Frieson.
On another note altogether, I'm off to Philadelphia today to run the Philadelphia Marathon on Sunday. Wish me luck.
In the mixed news category, the weekly paper in Minneapolis, The City Pages, ran a long story this week ("Publishers Sweepstakes"-- possibly a cover story) on an author using Lulu to publish his book. |
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That's great news for the author, one "Jaws" Newberg, author of Two Fisted Cab Driving Tales. The article itself, by Dylan Hicks, is dreadful. I know that the journalistic standard for weekly papers is, generally speaking, low, but this is a particularly bad example. I should know; I provided a few examples of bad weekly newspaper journalism myself back in the day. |
Badly enough, in fact, that I felt compelled to write a response, which you are free to view, clarifying the difference between independent publishing, vanity presses, and print on demand technology.
Lulu is making some headway with the geek press, anyway. Newsforge posted a nice review today, prompted by Lulu's launch of on-demand software publishing...A new venue for selling open source software, by Tina Gasperson.
Not that there is any shortage of online resources for public domain texts and the like, but I ran across this site today by chance, The Baldwin Project, described as a a comprehensive collection of resources for parents and teachers of children. It offers a couple of good indexes of public domain materials, including a page of stories.
Lulu storefront of the day for Thursday, November 18, 2004: Mark Knebusch, author of Fierce When Roused.
Described only as "a novel of the Scottish wars of independence," the author has not yet posted a preview, so I can't tell much about the book. Nevertheless, I'm going to go out on a limb (based, in part, on what appear to be the author's ample credentials) and give this one a thumbs up.
Worthy of mention, too, is the recently published Dream of Cassandra: A Phone Sex Story by Cassandra Winters.
Corante offers an exciting interview with Jeff Jarvis, a blogger and director of Advance.net, on the future of media. While there is an understandable skepticism in the world now towards big ideas like "the-death-of-media-as-we-know-it," I still get a thrill from this sort of thing. Of course I am fortunate enough to have a front row seat on the dissolution of the book publishing industry, via Lulu. Here's an excerpt from the interview with Jarvis:
So now anyone can control, create, market, distribute, find, and interact with anything they want. The barrier to entry to media is demolished. Media, always a one-way pipe, now becomes an open pool. And, most important, the centralization of media -- the marketplace, the network, the monopoly -- is replaced by a decentralized universe. This changes everything. It changes the relationships. It changes the economics. It changes the power.
One tangible result of this is nichefication of media. Some would say that's a bad thing; they wail about the death of great shared experience of American media. But the truth is that the shared experience lived only from the '50s to the '90s as the growth of three networks resulted in the death of competitive newspaper towns and we lived in a world of one-size-fits-all media. That is over. Now you can find the content that suits your needs. And that's good. That's about control. Which leads me to...
I think, by the way, that he is dead wrong about the "shared experience" of media having had such a short life. He is deliberately downplaying the downside of the decentralization of media on the culture, but that's his schtick. He's paid to be optimistic.
Lulu storefront of the day for Saturday, November 13, 2004: 
I have no idea what category these books would fall into, frankly--erotic anime? (If you have a Lulu member account, you must have your preferences set to "mature" to see most of this content.)
Lulu storefront of the day for Friday, November 12, 2004: Paul Proux, expert in prehistoric languages.
Lulu storefront of the day for Wednesday, November 10, 2004: A Guide to Afternoon Tea in Britain's Finest Hotels
Lulu storefront of the day for Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2004: The Hardball Times Baseball Annual, courtesy of The Hardball Times. This looks to be a Lulu bestseller in the making. Just in time for Christmas.
Well, Slashdot finally got around to covering the on-demand software projects launched by Lulu on Halloween. Following the comment thread so far, opinions seem mixed.
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Lulu storefront of the day for Wednesday, November 3, 2004: Light Keeper Photography I thought I'd post a calendar storefront for a change. Looks like good work. |
I was all set to vote for George Bush even after finding out that he wouldn't let me marry Mary Cheney if I wanted to. And when he made the pronunciation of "Lambeau Field" a campaign issue? It seemed fair. After all, he's proved that not knowing the names of foreign leaders is much less important than correctly pronouncing the homes of popular sports teams. Of course, he totally sold me with the debates: any man who explains a mystery bulge as bad tailoring is more than confident enough to take on the Euroweenies. But in the end, with the fate of the free world at stake and all, I've got to go with the guy who would admit that sending thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians to their deaths to protect us from imaginary weapons was, in fact, a mistake.
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