A friend of mine rolled through town the other day... he was only going to be in Montreal for 36 hours before heading to New York (next stops Stockholm and Paris) and asked if I had time to do a little photo shoot with my family, since one of the things he does is take pictures. Oh hells to the YES!!
Martin is never home at this hour, for these kinds of shenanigans, but we manage without him. We just went outdoors, and Greg just clicked away for close to an hour in the park across the street from our house, and in the surrounding area before he had to leave. I served him freshly baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (from a mix, yo - don't get all excited) and apple juice to drink, since he doesn't drink wine or spirits of any kind. (What the...?!)
Anyway, what I love about rare experiences like these, is seeing how my kids look - indeed, how we all look - in front of someone else's lens. I take just about every single photo we have of ourselves, and it's amazing how different it all is when someone else's shutter is whining.
Amazingly great. And fun. And beautiful.
We laughed and we laughed, my delicious boy and I...
Thank you so much, darling Greg Wong, for the late afternoon fun! Please promise to come back soon!! (I promise to make more cookies...)
Do you have family photos taken, professional or otherwise? Where do you go? What do you do?!
Quadruples Previous Record with Nearly 4 Times More Shots in One Day
PASADENA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Kaiser Permanente?s seasonal flu clinics set The Guinness World Records today with 47,259 vaccinations given in an eight hour period at multiple sites throughout Southern California. Averaging the tally, that?s almost 100 arms a minute being offered to receive protection from influenza.
More than 600 Kaiser Permanente nurses and medical staff administrated vaccines to members at 48 Kaiser Permanente facilities throughout the Southern California region today, and having reached 20,000 vaccinations by 2 pm, easily surpassed the previous record of 12,851 set by Vanderbilt University. A real time tote board tracked the progress throughout the day and was confirmed by a Guinness World Records adjudicator.
This year?s flu vaccine will protect against three strains of influenza, including the 2009 H1N1 strain, plus a different H3N2 and B strain. The flu shot is recommended for all individuals ages 6 months and older, but certain groups are at higher risk of developing complications from the flu and are highly encouraged to get immunized, including young children, pregnant women, people 65 years and older, or anyone with heart or lung disease or chronic health conditions like asthma or diabetes.
According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, each year approximately 5 to 20 percent of U.S. residents get the flu and more than?200,000 people?are hospitalized for flu-related complications.
Kaiser Permanente members in Orange County are encouraged to visit the Drive-Thru Flu Clinic tomorrow, Sunday, September 30, at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.
Kaiser Permanente San Diego's clinics confirmed a total of 12,085 vaccinations, exceeding their previous record set in 2010 of 6,215 in one flu clinic day.
The Guinness World Records plaque presentation for the Kaiser Permanente Southern California regional record took place this afternoon at 4:30 p.m. at the Vandever Medical Office Building, 4405 Vandever Avenue, San Diego, CA 92120.
Seasonal flu clinics are free of charge to Kaiser Permanente members. For a complete list of clinic locations and times, and for more information about preventing or treating the flu, visit www.kp.org/flu.
Pictures and interviews for each medical center areas are available upon request by contacting Mayra Suarez, cell 310-710-8479.
About Kaiser Permanente Southern California
Kaiser Permanente is committed to helping shape the future of health care. We are recognized as one of America?s leading health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. Founded in 1945, our mission is to provide high quality, affordable health care services to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve. We currently serve more than 3.5 million members in Southern California. Care for members and patients is focused on their total health and guided by their personal physicians, specialists and team of caregivers. Our expert and caring medical teams are empowered and supported by industry-leading technology advances and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the-art care delivery and world-class chronic disease management. Kaiser Permanente is dedicated to care innovations, clinical research, health education and the support of community health. For more information, go to: www.kp.org/newscenter.
MYANMAR: President Thein Sein told the BBC's Hardtalk that he "would accept" Aung San Suu Kyi as president
Burmese leader Thein Sein has told the BBC he would accept Aung San Suu Kyi as president if the people vote for her
The president insisted that the will of the people would be respected whoever they chose in an election due in 2015.
He reiterated his commitment to the country's reform programme, and said he and Ms Suu Kyi were working together.
Thein Sein, a former leader of the military junta that ruled Burma for decades, has overseen a dramatic shift towards a civilian-led government.
Two days ago he spoke at the UN General Assembly, congratulating Ms Suu Kyi on receiving the US Congressional Gold Medal.
In an interview with the BBC's Hardtalk programme, he went even further by talking about the possibility of the Nobel Peace Prize winner becoming president.
"Whether she will become a leader of the nation depends on the will of the people. If the people accept her, then I will have to accept her," he said.
"There isn't any problem between me and Aung San Suu Kyi. We are working together."
But he added that the army, which retains many of the seats in parliament, will continue to play a central role in the country's politics.
Ms Suu Kyi was kept under house arrest for 15 years and repeatedly denounced by the former regime.
Thein Sein's remarks this week have been the warmest from Burma's political leadership since the junta was formally dissolved in March 2011.
But Burma still faces many problems, including a recent outbreak of fighting between Muslim Rohingya people and Buddhist Rakhine people.
The president has repeatedly pledged to end internal strife, but neither he nor Ms Suu Kyi have provided a possible solution to the problems in Rakhine state.
Meanwhile, the president also renewed his appeal for economic sanctions placed on his country to be lifted.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already said the US would ease its import ban on Burmese goods.
Many other targeted measures have already been lifted by the US and other Western countries.
MIAMI (Reuters) - Election officials in Florida were scouring their records for fraudulent voter registration forms on Friday after the Republican party said it had fired a company hired to gather new voters because of reports its employees may have submitted bogus forms.
The Palm Beach County elections office first reported finding 106 potentially fraudulent registration forms earlier this week that had been submitted by Strategic Allied Consulting (SAC), a Virginia firm hired by Florida's Republican party.
Since then scores more suspicious forms have been detected in at least five other Florida counties where election officials say SAC worked to register voters.
Federal Election Commission reports from the state Republican party show it paid SAC more than $1.3 million this summer for voter registration services.
SAC was also hired to do voter registration work for the Republican party in four other key swing states - Nevada, Virginia, Colorado, and North Carolina - for a total of $2.9 million, according to the Republican National Committee (RNC).
"When we learned on Tuesday about the instances of potential voter registration fraud that occurred in Palm Beach County, we immediately informed the Republican National Committee that we were terminating the contract with the voter registration vendor we hired at their request because there is no place for voter registration fraud in Florida," state Republican Party Executive Director Mike Grissom said in a statement.
The RNC also severed ties with SAC. "We have zero tolerance for any threat to the integrity of elections," RNC spokesman Sean Spicer said in a statement.
SAC did not respond to requests for comment. The company was formed in June by Nathan Sproul, a conservative Arizona political consultant and a former executive director for the Republican Party, according to The Los Angeles Times.
In 2008, ACORN - the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - registered more than 1 million mostly low-income voters, who tend to vote Democratic. Thousands of those registrations ended up being fake, submitted by ACORN-hired workers who were paid based on how many names they registered.
The scandal led to the demise of ACORN and inspired some of the anti-fraud laws impacting registration drives this year.
'EQUAL OPPORTUNITY OFFENDERS'
The alarm over the latest potential fraud was first raised by Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher, who flagged 106 "questionable" registration applications turned in by SAC this month. Bucher said her staff had raised questions about suspiciously similar signatures and incorrect addresses and dates of birth on the forms.
Some of the applications were for new voters while others were for changes to address or party affiliation, Bucher told Reuters. While the 106 application forms all bore the Republican Party of Florida's identification number, there did not appear to be an overwhelming partisan bias in the forms.
"They were equal opportunity offenders. They were being paid an hourly wage so I think that was the motivation," she said.
In a few cases the party affiliation was changed from Democrat to Republican and in some cases the addresses of real people were altered, potentially affecting their ability to vote.
Bucher, who was elected on a non-partisan platform but supports the Democratic party, said she turned over copies of the applications to the State Attorney's office earlier this week. Officials have not said if an investigation of the company's actions is underway.
Election supervisors in at least five Florida counties were checking forms submitted by the Florida Republican Party for similar problems, she said.
Paul Lux, supervisor of elections in Okaloosa County, located in the northwest Florida Panhandle, wrote an email on Thursday to other state election supervisors warning them "to be on the look out," for bogus forms.
More than 2,600 registration forms were submitted to his office by SAC, said Lux. He said dozens of forms contained suspicious data including fake-looking signatures and phony addresses, and had been turned over to the State Attorney's office. Others were still being reviewed.
About 100 suspect forms also showed up in nearby Santa Rosa County, he said.
Submitting deliberately false voter registration information, or altering information on an application without consent, is a third degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
(Additional reporting by Michael Peltier in Tallahassee and Deborah Charles in Washington; Editing by Claudia Parsons)
"Everyone has to find their own path; there is no set way," says director Alison Maclean. Photo courtesy of Maclean
Alison Maclean is one of those rare directors who has made a name for herself creating original, offbeat indie films while also directing episodes of some of network and cable television?s most successful shows. She will share her unique experience and perspective tonight at the BU Cinematheque series, a College of Communication program that brings accomplished filmmakers to campus to screen and discuss their work.
?Alison Maclean is an extraordinary feature filmmaker whose vision might just be too intelligent and artistic for today?s mercenary Hollywood,? says Gerald Peary, a COM lecturer in the film and television department and longtime film critic for The Phoenix. ?I?m curious to see how such a visionary talent negotiates the world of television. TV has been much kinder to bright, talented women filmmakers than the studios have. BU film students seem as attracted to making television as they are to directing films.?
Maclean, who was raised in Canada and New Zealand, first garnered attention with her 1989 short Kitchen Sink. The imaginative 14-minute horror film opens with a young woman pulling a piece of hair out of her kitchen sink. She keeps tugging, and in the process pulls out something terrifying (and hairy). The critically acclaimed short was nominated for the Palme d?Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Her 1992 feature-length film Crush, starring Marcia Gay Harden, was also nominated for the Palme d?Or. She followed that project with her 1999 film Jesus? Son, starring Billy Crudup and Jack Black, a story about young man?s redemption following a life of crime and drug addiction. That film was nominated for the Grand Prix at the Paris Film Festival, and won the Little Golden Lion and OCIC Award at the Venice Film Festival.
Those two films established Maclean as a director with an unusual eye. It wasn?t long before television came calling, and in the last decade, she has been busy directing episodes of Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, The Tudors, and The L Word.
BU Today spoke to Maclean about her career, the directors who inspire her, and her advice for students hoping to break into film directing.
BU Today: Crush and Jesus? Son were critically praised and appeared at film festivals like Cannes and Sundance. What impact did they have on your career?
Maclean: They opened some doors, definitely, but I would say that a short I did before either of those opened more. I did a short called Kitchen Sink and that sort of indirectly led to me coming to New York. I got an agent, and I had a development deal with Touchstone Pictures and they paid my overheads for a year. That changed everything for me.
It?s about seizing those moments. I didn?t have another project ready to go, and neither of those films earned much at the box office. It was more about gaining a certain respect in critical circles, but it didn?t translate into people lining up to make your next project.
As a freelance director, how do you approach directing episodes of shows that are already well established, like Sex and the City or Gossip Girl?
I always watch every single episode leading up to the one I am going to do to immerse myself. Then I try and get a sense of the style, the vocabulary, and look at what episodes stand out at as being very strong, whether that is visually or dramatically. I ask myself why I consider them to be good, why I think they are better than other episodes. You have to analyze them, and some definitely stand out, and you have to learn from the good ones in a way. My own preparation is scene by scene, and I try to have an idea of something that will make the scene interesting. That might be an idea in the blocking, or a key image, or finding the main event or turning point, and try and prepare myself for what I might say to the actors.
The interesting thing, when you direct a show that?s been going on for awhile, is that the actors are so much more deeply involved with the characters and their history, so they are way ahead of you, the director, who is just coming in. You have to rely on their instincts and their memory and what they have done before. You are guided by them.
It?s quite intimidating in a way, and you have to do your own prep without necessarily knowing some of the tricks of how to streamline things.
Can you give an example?
I directed an episode of the HBO show Carniv?le, and I really liked one of the episodes directed by Rodrigo Garc?a, the same man who did In Treatment and Six Feet Under. He is a wonderful director, and was the main director of Carniv?le. His episodes always stood out. They were elegant and simple, but the storytelling was very clear, and the episodes were beautifully blocked and just seemed effortless. I tried to mimic that.
Does your approach to directing change based on the project?
I guess. With Gossip Girl, for instance, you are filming eight pages a day, and so fast. A lot of that is about how to block. It?s technically very challenging to do that, so you go through the set over and over and with the director of photography. You try to figure out where people are and if they are moving, and how to cover that in a very efficient way that is still interesting. Last summer I did a Canadian television show called Michael: Tuesdays & Thursdays, a very original comedy and drama. With that show, I had much more freedom to put my own stamp on it. I could prepare for it a little bit more, like I was doing a film. It could be a little odder, which is my own particular taste.
Who are some of your favorite filmmakers?
In the States, Gus Van Sant and the Coen brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson. There are a lot of Europeans, like Claire Denis, the German director Christian Petzold, a Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and Julia Loktev, director of a great film called The Loneliest Planet. She makes films that are very low budget, but she is an artist.
You directed the music video ?Torn? by Natalie Imbruglia. I heard that you didn?t let her know when you were filming. Is this true?
I got the idea for that while visiting an actor friend on the set of a big studio movie. I was just waiting for her and sitting by the monitor, which is what I?m used to doing. Somehow I just became fascinated with that monitor, which is on all the time, so it?s capturing wherever the camera is pointing. Sometimes it?s very planned, like when you are shooting a frame, but otherwise it?s everything in between.
So I had the idea to use a camera and build a set around it. It was really fun. There were certain things we knew we were going to do, like sing the song, and we prearranged story fragments. After awhile, we would turn the camera on or off. Natalie wouldn?t know if we were filming, and I?d make her do normal things, like do her hair. It was a really fun process.
What are you working on now?
I did a short for the first time in years, and it was completely liberating. It is so exciting to do something that is my own project. It?s adapted from an Olivia Davis short story about a college professor who dreams of marrying a cowboy. I shot that earlier this year, and I?m editing it right now. I?m prepping a low-budget feature I hope will shoot in January, and I?m also in the early stages of planning another feature that I will shoot in New Zealand, and also doing commercials.
What advice do you have for students?
Everyone has to find their own path; there is no set way. The main thing I would say is keep making things, keep shooting, and follow the thing that you really care about and try to make something particular. Always have that pragmatic side, an inkling of what can be done simply and cheaply. I know so many people, including myself, who get so bogged down in ambitious projects that finally don?t happen. Five or ten years can go by and you?re still trying to work on something. I?ve done that, and that is one of my regrets. But I?ve had the experience of making a short film that has been life-changing. Even directing webisodes, which is what [HBO?s Girls creator and star] Lena Dunham did early in her career, can be useful. If you have a voice and something unique or particular to offer as a filmmaker and artist, that can get seen and capture attention and lead to something else.
Shows including Gossip Girl and Sex and the City will be screened tonight, Friday, September 28, at 7 p.m., followed by a talk by Alison Maclean, at COM, Room 101, 640 Commonwealth Ave. The event, part of the BU Cinematheque series, is free and open to the public.
This afternoon I?m giving a departmental journal club. This is where I find a scientific article and present it by dissecting, analyzing and critiquing the data. I feel pretty good about my talk. I?ve been preparing for it all week so I?m confident that I?ll do a good job.
There was a time where I dreaded speaking in public. In high school and college I hated standing in front of a class or being put on the spot. Things started changing around the second semester of my junior year or college. During that time I was pledging my fraternity while campaigning for the crown of Mr. University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
Going through the pledging process gave me a lot of confidence. Also, while campaigning I had to talk at various events around campus. We also had a pageant where I had to swallow my fears. I had to perform a talent as well as answer questions on the different topics. I finished pledging (not by the end of that semester) and I won that crown.
I thought I had overcome my fears but that would shortly be tested. That next semester I had to prepare for coronation. This is a big event on campus where the Miss and Mr. are presented to the campus. The production is huge. I forget our budget but it was large considering we had a horse and carriage, fireworks and am assortment of other things. During one part of the event I had to write a speech and give it to the audience. Speaking in front of a crowd that large was very nerve racking. I did it though.
Last year I gave my thesis defense to a crowd of about 70-80 people and it wasn?t that I was nervous about size of the crowd. I was more so concerned that I would be speaking for over an hour in a subject that I was expected to be an expert. Although I had spent seven years in school I was still worried someone would ask me the simplest question and I would draw a blank. I got through that too.
Now I have a different challenge all together. In October I will be traveling to an international conference where I was selected to give an oral presentation on my research. I?ve presented at international conferences before but they have all been poster presentations. These allow more one on one interactions. I?ll be speaking to an audience from 500-600 people. Although I?ve talked to audiences that size (my coronation) it wasn?t on a subject that I was expected to be an expert (my thesis defense). Also, I only have 15 minutes (with 5 min of questions) to get a whole year of research across.
I?m feeling nervous like I?m in high school and early college again. I hope I can get through this as well.
eBook Pricing: Help Support Jo Rowling / Owen, Tait
New Moves and Models: Rogue & Brightline / Shatzkin
Libraries: Fingers Pointed / Gonzalez
Penguin Sues Authors: Your Advance, Please
Conferences: Friedman at LitFlow in Berlin, and more
Books: Reading on the Ether
Last Gas: Saltwater Nooks? / Reilly
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Suppose you knew nothing about publishing today. (Blissful thought, isn?t it?)
What if you walked into Digital Book World?s (DBW)? Discoverability and Marketing Conference this week, sat down in New York?s spacious Metropolitan Pavilion with its gleaming-shipboard floors, and spent two days with us?
Hashtagging #DBWDM with the best of us on deck.
You might have come away from Monday and Tuesday?s conference with an admiration for our industry professionals? capacity to withstand?confusion.
You might even think we enjoy it; eagerly checking our box lunches to see if any good confusion is in there, scarfing it down with the pasta salad, asking for more.
Because that?s what we discovered at Discoverability ? we discovered there?s a lot of confusion about how to get there from here.
Febreeze and Angry Birds will help us understand how books are sold @? #DBWDM
Rich Fahle
You know Rich Fahle of Bibliostar.tv and Astral Road Media, right? He?s a videographer and works in author marketing. He regularly tapes on-site conference conversations for Digital Book World.
In a DBW Expert Blog Post, Discoverability Tools and the Writer?s ?Fight for Time,? Fahle has this? observation about the confab:
This, finally, is the important next phase of the digital transition?the industry is ready to address discoverability with its full attention? Those focused discussions?(are) possibly the best news to come out of the conference.
Fahle?s concern in his post is on writers. But the whole community of publishing is at sea until it can sort out the pivotal problem of how you make a book discoverable when, as Laura Dawson tells us, there are 32 million active titles in Books in Print.
I?m going to propose here that the Discoverability and Marketing Conference didn?t quite get it ? or didn?t always get it, let me put it that way. As Fahle writes, the best thing is that it happened at all. And plenty of good experiences in the conference?s debut will mean an even better gathering the next time.
Perils of Twitter: I took a mid-afternoon nap, and dreamed I was at #DBWDM. Woke up very confused? I blame @.
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Don?t get me wrong.
I?m not saying that this wasn?t a valuable conference. It was.
I?m not saying it was badly put-together. It was not.
And I?m certainly not saying it was presented by anything but great folks with a good idea and a lot of talent and hard, long work ? if anything, I was lucky to be part of the team, as I live-tweeted and wrote about the confab.
Kate Rados
No, what I?m saying is that host Kate Rados, DBW Community Manager Gary Lynch, DBW Editorial Director Jeremy Greenfield, and their many colleagues created a conference the very makeup of which reflected the confusion with which a transition-traumatized industry is facing this problem.
Rick Joyce
After all, that?s what Perseus? Rick Joyce told us in his fine opening keynote on Monday:
If you came here looking for a map, good luck.
Your GPS is useless this time. To follow these trade routes, we have to find them first. And in that regard, the exhilarating opening block of presentations in the conference on Monday ? as I wrote in my Day One wrap for the DBW Expert Blogs ? was right on the money.
Joyce?s curtain-raiser, ?The Next Wave of Discoverability,? was themed on Old World exploration and it included these gems, which I?m drawing from my tweeterie:
Context Optimizers, ?tools yet to be invented.? We must enhance metadata with new categories, reinvent browsing.
We need to ??Understand the Natives??what seems to motivate anybody?..connect, collect, compete, accrue, assist??
Needing ?new instruments,? Joyce says we?re trying to find ?assets that are built to travel (as) behavioral enablers.?
Assets that travel include ?links with headlines, images, personalization, humor, inspiration?authenticity.?
The final New Territory is Big Data: ?At any given moment 1% to 2% of all pages on #book-retailer sites are down.?
For its eloquence and point of view, Joyce?s presentation was never topped during the conference?s two days. In the easy glow of hindsight, I can say now that I?d love to have seen Joyce return with a final, shorter observation on what we?d seen and heard in the two days. This excellent opener deserved a benediction.
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And there were more strong entries from other folks to follow, high points throughout the two days. By midday Monday, however, hints at the confusion were starting to show in our own experience in the room. And by Tuesday, the conference was ? nobody?s fault, mind you? adrift in a slow current that felt almost as baffling as our over-arching theme.
Partly the effects of fatigue, of course, and partly the product of a low-energy presentation or two, things felt more scattered than conclusive as we finished up.
The last sessions seemed to be ?all over the place,? one attendee put it. Nothing fell apart, by a long shot. But it was as if we lost our breeze and the good ship DBWDM was idled in the calm.
Sharing the #DBWDM love-glow with the team: We?re crashing ways to incorporate more images/video content into our work.
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Do you know the nautical term ?tacking?? Not tacky. Tacking is zigzagging, a pattern a sailor might use to take advantage of a wind, changing direction with the helm alee.
This conference did a lot of tacking in its two days. That?s not necessarily bad. It just requires your crew to know where they?re going with each shift.
Kelly Gallgher
We veered mainly between brightly informative conceptual overviews to course-like instructional sessions. Not a thing wrong with either. It was the juxtaposition that was a little hard to read.
There were the bracing data arrays of Bowker?s Kelly Gallagher (whom we?ve just learned is headed for Ingram ? congratulations, Kelly) and Google?s Gavin Bishop. And then there was a? presenter telling us what happens when you start a tweet with an ?@-symbol? handle. If you don?t know about that use of the ?@-symbol? ? it?s the ?reply? protocol ? that?s OK, don?t feel bad. But in a Manhattan conference of professionals in publishing and/or marketing, that?s an awfully basic fillip of one social media platform.
Rados ran a nice, tight ship, agreeably moving things along precisely on time. And the parade of presentations went off with precious few technical glitches, also no mean feat.
And fanned by the efficiency with which Joyce sustained his keynote metaphor ? our need to brave terra incognita and search for new answers ? we had two very valid, major winds of trade, if you please, cross-cutting the conference:
Theoretical and/or conceptual issues of publishing?s response to a content-drowned market; and
Technical approaches to online procedures in modern marketing.
Even within the second group, the more technical presentations, we tended to veer from the open water of sophisticated schooners to the paper-boat shallows ? from glimpses of the scope of what?s out there to handy-but-basic material.
Come, shall we tack?
huge congrats to @ on joining Ingram!
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Marshall D. Simmonds
Schooner: This is a keenly domesticated geek, the Greystoke of ?Authorship and SEO.? Marshall Simmonds told us not to ignore Google+ because the wider Google-verse is integrating so many of its assets there. Our social graphs sailed when he quoted Othar Hansson: ?We know that great content comes from great authors.??
Jessica Best
Paper Boat: She is a vivacious and well-dressed presenter. And Jessica Best?s ?Back to Basics: Email Marketing Still Works!? made the most of that exclamation point: ?Your email should be permission based,? she said, and she?s completely right. But somehow we?d tacked over to workshop mode ? from principle and precept to the special needs of mobile emails: look out for the ?fat thumb? of the recipient.
Dan Lubart
Schooner: Dan Lubart and Angela Tribelli of HarperCollins make ?team teaching? interesting again. They brought a competent, shared delivery to? ?Marketing Analytics: You Can?t Grow What You Can?t Measure.?
Angela Tribelli
Among the best messages delivered in this survey of philosophy:
?Dig Deep ? or why creatives need to sit with quants,? and
Prepare to be surprised,? because If you go into analytics with bias, you?ll see only what you want.
Clinton Kabler
Paper Boat among the Schooners: Clinton Kabler of BookRiot has the drop on Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood. There?s nothing here at the Ether but highest regard for His Sandmanfulness and for The Great Lady Who Tweets, I love both writers. But, dude, Kabler showed us how neither of Gaiman nor Atwood has a ?buy? button on her or his home pages. Get out, right? But it?s true. I clicked over and looked.
From my tweeterie: ?What do you anticipate achieving with this landing page??You?ve got about two seconds of their attention.? And he?s right.
Kabler was an instant hybrid in our little regatta here. He came in with some schooner-class observations, but operated (in the conference?s setting) in the workshop/paper-boats mode, starting with that overlong title for his presentation, a bit of titular verbosity shared by many presenters in this show: ?Creating Landing Pages That Don?t Suck: Converting Click-Throughs to Buyers.?
Note for future confab presenters everywhere: Your title need not be a Kindle Single.
Let me show you how close Kabler came to getting us into deeper waters of healthy debate in ethics, efficacy, or both:
What bundling (ebook + print book) does is?destroy the correlation users have between value and price.
That statement involves the ?default bias? with which marketers can drive consumers to choose the ?best value? option among prices. ?Destroying the correlation users have between value and price,? for some, is a pretty questionable pastime. Presented as a commercial coup, it might leave a bit of guilt gnawing at your conscience.
Fauzia Burke
It was FSB Associates? president Fauzia Burke who, at lunch Monday, was the first I heard to renounce such marketing modes as something some of us feel is incorrect and/or at the least unnecessary. We?d glimpsed a grand, worthy debate there, thanks to Kabler, standing as we do on the edge of a flat world suddenly gone round in marketing.
But instead of entering a conference forum that could test such? considerations of what?s right and what isn?t (and who says so) , we were off again that afternoon, on a series of associated topics.
We?d missed the chance Kabler had held out to us to explore the white-sand beach that lies between Discoverability and Marketing.
But for Kabler?s part, even within the crass cartography of such salesboy technique, we must credit him for making something more of his session than it might have been. I like him for that.
Add a like button, post more photos, reply to every comment to quickly increase FB reach #DBWDM @
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Paper Boats: In a purely praiseworthy effort to include authors in the program, the conference presented Elle Lothlorian and Erika Napoletano in the mix, and the organizers are to be commended for that.
It turns out that these two writers? presentations turn on some very negative experiences.
Elle Lothlorian
Lothlorian has attracted condemnation from some for her practice of engaging with negative review-writers:
My goal is to make it right, treat the customer the way they should be treated when not liking the product.
Erika Napoletano
Napoletano pictures herself as a poster redhead for the publicity support she believes publishers don?t provide authors:
Authors believe their publishers are partners?
?only to find this may not be how a publisher sees it.
Both these handsomely ambitious, committed, publishing writers opened with somewhat rambling expressions of their displeasure at how they?ve been treated, either by critics of their reader relations or by publishers? publicity efforts (or lack thereof). And their complaints seem valid and understandable.
But ?look how badly I?ve been treated? doesn?t engender a lot of audience support in any setting, not just in a publishing arena.
And while coarse language may seem a fun way to offer one?s fiery-redheadedness to an audience of peers gathered in a professional conference in New York, it actually doesn?t play that well out in the house.
Someone referred later to this as ?colorful.? I?ll go with that, too.
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Schooners, quickly: Among more of the stronger high-view presentations at DBW?s Discoverability and Marketing, the standouts included:
Gavin Bishop?s ?How Searchers Become Readers: Audience Insights from Google? (the lead on a coming white paper about search as a gateway to for consumer interest): Google?s study shows some 1.5 billion searches each year related to books.
Mike Grehan
Mike Grehan of ClickZ?s ?The Future of Digital Marketing? I?m told is a 45-minute presentation compressed into 30 minutes. That?s too bad because the breathless speed at which Grehan raced through it left a lot of it hard for the attentive crowd to catch, and this was good stuff, I?d love to have heard more. ?We move away from ?influentials,?? he said, ?and start to focus on small groups of connected friends.?
Jon Fine
Jon Fine?s fine presentation from Amazon, ?Secrets to More Effectively Marketing and Promoting Your Books on Amazon? contained only one real secret, it seems (or at least one bit of info few of us had heard) ? that Facebook elements will ?soon? be added to author pages. Sounds like yet another smart move among the industry?s largest apparatus of smart retailing moves. And I want to congratulate DBW on having both Fine and B&N?s Sasha Norkin on the program. In terms of presentational presence and informational value, there was no comparison who was the stronger, but the presence of both companies onboard gave us the conference its even keel. Good programming.
Fine is a thoroughgoing asset to his company. He presents without snark or hubris Seattle?s formidable assets, made available to some 40,000 publishers. He spoke of how authors are considered ?the other customer? because of their importance to the operation. Of everything heard in the conference, Fine?s statement may have been one of the most meaningful to the topic in terms of discoverability:
For better or worse, Amazon has become the common ground for publishing.
So, @ and I are starting a band called ?Milkshake in My Fanny Pack?
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One fine paper boat: Corey Hartford?s ?Marketing Results via Keyword Research? made the F+W home team look even better (as if it needed help).
Corey Hartford
Here, we were squarely in workshop/how-to mode, yes. But put aside the seeming friction between such sessions and more conceptual presentations, and what you have is a winningly devoted master of metadata.
He?s hardly the only presenter from DBWDM who could use some stage-presence coaching. In any field, the experts may not be the most natural front people. But in Hartford?s case, this was no problem because the guy?s sheer love of his keywords and how he makes them dance was a pleasure to see in action.
Richard Nash
Schooner, explained: Tucked into the second day?s afternoon was a chat led by Greenfield with GoodReads? Patrick Brown and Small Demons? Richard Nash. In that conversation, we got a succinct and useful delineation from Nash about Small Demons and what it?s meant to do.
While the point of GoodReads, of course, is to connect books with other books that readers may enjoy and want to share, Nash said the point of Small Demons is to connect books with other parts of our culture, to draw those lines of reference and revelation that enrich our understanding of a ?storyverse? (his phrase) that goes beyond our books and deep into our lives.
And in wrapping this wrap, I want to point out to you the importance ? in our industry?s storyverse ? of the Discoverability and Marketing Conference?s newness. There are pitfalls in creating new events of this kind, as any producing organization can tell you.
Gary Lynch
I spoke in May for the Ether with DBW Community Manager Gary Lynch about his plans and concepts for this new vessel from F+W Media on our annual journey of major publishing conferences.
I liked his candor:
There?s always a risk when you launch a new event on a subject that?s still very much in the early stages of acceptance in the market. If you do it too soon and the market doesn?t think they need it, then the conference doesn?t work. If you wait too long, then competitors fill the void and your conference becomes a ?me too.? My sense is that our timing is spot-on.
Lynch?s sense for timing, clearly, is right.
And if the organization of the conference seemed to lurch at times between the ?tutorial?-style sessions he had envisioned in the spring and the 30,000-foot overview presentations that to me seem more useful at this point, I can?t help but feel that getting this critical component of the digital dynamic, discoverability, squarely onstage as DBW did was an important, worthy, and salutary exercise.
Joe Pulizzi
And some of the best insights moved fast, the program so rich that catching it all was tough.
Joe Pulizzi of Content Marketing Institute, for example, captured a lot of attention with his fly-by question about why publishers aren?t the ones platforming. He called the current model flawed ?? authors madly platforming, shouldering ever greater loads of PR and marketing burdens while writing less and less.
And he asked publishers, rhetorically:
Why don?t you get authors involved in YOUR platform?
As part of his own conference coverage, DBW?s Greenfield wrote Book Discovery Landscape Becomes More Complicated as Reader Behavior Fractures, based on? Gallagher?s presentation from Bowker, ?Looking Beyond the Book.?
Bowker Market Research, from Kelly Gallagher?s DBWDM presentation
Gallagher deftly drove home for all of us just how complex this moment is in book discoverability today.
During his presentation, he was tweeted saying:
How do tablet owners discover books? We find that an excerpt becomes very important for tablet owners.
How do overall readers discover new ebooks? Again, the excerpt online is a key but also an author site, as well.
A female YA reader, 30-44, relies on social network tips, a teaser chapter in a print book, and online retailer recommendations.
And as Greenfiled writes it:
Tablet owners discover new books through free excerpts about 15% of the time; but readers of young adult fiction discover new books through the same way about 6% of the time. So marketers of young adult fiction have a lot to think about when they want to reach readers who read on tablets.
Jeremy Greenfield
Or try on this challenge for marketers, see how it suits you (this is Greenfield again):
A 27-year-old female romance reader from suburban Indianapolis who reads on a tablet computer but spends most of her time browsing the Web on her laptop versus a 43-year-old female romance reader living in Los Angeles who reads and buys exclusively on her e-reader. They?re both romance readers and female, but couldn?t be more different otherwise when it comes to how they discover and read books ? and reaching them takes different marketing tactics.
Then look at how blogger ?Ellen? at Word Thief writes up what struck her from Jon Fine?s presentation, in her post Digital Book World: Books vs. Everything Else, recalling his line:
?It?s not about Print vs. Digital. It?s about Books vs. Everything Else.?
Ellen goes on to write:
So our real enemy is not the e-readers popping up in every direction. Our real enemy is every other activity that distracts people from reading nowadays: TV, movies, video games, Facebook, the internet, blogging (ha), etc. Later in the day, Charles Duhigg gave a talk on ?Using the Power of Habit to Market and Sell Books.? His thesis, briefly?
Angry Birds is your biggest competition.
I miss being at #DBWDM ? where people understood the jargon and didn?t just throw around buzzwords.
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As for my desire (this is just my opinion) for a more conceptual understanding of what we need and want in discoverability, over at Harvard Business Review, Irfan Kamal writes in Metrics Are Easy; Insight Is Hard:
It isn?t uncommon to see reports overflowing with data and benchmarks drawn from millions of underlying data points covering existing channels like display, email, website, search, and shopper/loyalty?In contrast to this abundant data, insights are relatively rare. Insights here are defined as actionable, data-driven findings that create business value.
That?s the seaworthy promise of DBW?s Discoverability and Marketing Conference in its next iteration.The promise, and the challenge.
No conference can be all things to all people, and the more brightly a line is drawn around what?s wanted in a given confab, the more assuredly it will draw its audience, its speakers, and its conclusions. In that world of abundance our friend Brian O?Leary loves to tell us about, I believe that the victory belongs to the selective, the discerning, and the focused.
DBWDM has had a fine start, something to be really proud of. I?m so glad I was there on the first outing.
And now, it?s time for it, too, to take to the higher seas. I think there?s a good chance that if some smart decisions are made and honored, this conference will, itself, be an admired schooner in our annual fleet of confabs.
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If you?d like to look further into issues of discoverability and marketing in the industry! the industry! consider joining the free webcast on October 4 at 1pET / 10aPT / 1800BT for the Bowker Consumer Presentation on ?Beyond the Book ? Marketing in the Right Place at the Right Time,? presented by DBWDM.
Information and free registration at Free Webcast: How Social Networks and New Media Are Changing the Ways Readers Discover New Books.
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In the US? What?s that globally? RT @: B&N?s @: Barnes & Noble now 30% of the e-book market #DBWDM
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Why is the ebook edition of J.K. Rowling?s new novel, ?The Casual Vacancy,? $17.99? Thank the fact that publisher Hachette is in a sweet spot between the ebook settlement?s approval and the time that it actually takes effect at non-Apple retailers.
Laura Hazard Owen
Yes, Laura Hazard Owen at paidContent expertly parses the pricing on JK Rowling?s new ebook,The Casual Vacancy, as it Hachette releases it to the digi-verse.
In Why JK Rowling?s new ebook is $17.99, Owen ? with a nod to attorney and Dear Author blogger Jane Litte for some assists ? writes it this way:
The settling publishers have longer to terminate agreements with other retailers (than Apple), like Amazon: ?Starting 30 days after the Court enters the proposed Final Judgment,? they may terminate those contracts??as soon as each contract permits? (i.e., when it expires), or the retailers can terminate the contracts on 30 days? notice. That adds up to about sixty days of wiggle room.
And as luck would have it for Hachette, that wiggle room includes the release of La Rowling?s eagerly awaited new aria.
In the meantime, Hachette?s in a sweet spot where it?s no longer limited by Apple?s price bands, but non-Apple retailers like Amazon also aren?t allowed to discount its books. So if you want?The Casual Vacancy (now) you?ll be paying $17.99.
Owen includes the caveat that should Apple now be on a new contract with Hachette, it could discount ? and Amazon and other retailers might then be able to discount, as well.
But even more interesting, Owen includes a footnote to get at the usual emotionals around such issues as this:
I?m aware this post is likely to engender a lot of ?greedy publishers? comments. The fact is that the ebook pricing settlement incentivizes publishers to set higher ebook list prices. Depending on the new contracts that Hachette works out with retailers, there may be little difference between the money that Hachette gets from?Casual Vacancy sales now and the money it gets once those new contracts are enacted.
J.K. Rowling?s new book on Kindle: Literally unreadable http://t.co/NcAFegqm (via @) wow how can they screw it up so badly
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And if you?re eager for early reviews, Theo Tait is out at the Guardian (which also has one of only two reviews Rowling did prior to the book?s release).
Tait does address the ?Harry Potter and the Miraculously Unguarded Vagina? joke. One probably has to. And then he goes on to deliver himself of an opinion you?ll have to read for yourself, I won?t tip it here, other than to note that he uses the odd phrase ?artificial contrivance.? I?m wondering how many times one encounters a natural contrivance.
Perhaps we?ll find out in Rowling?s book.
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On the internet, everyone knows you?re not funny.
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Two new partnerships announced last week suggest the emergence of new commercial models for publishing.
Mike Shatzkin
Mike Shatzkin, has a followup to comments he?s been making since 2007 about what he called then ?The End of General Trade Publishing Houses.?
He goes into his telling new essay, New publishing companies are starting that are much leaner than their established competitors, to size up the new Diller-Rudin Brightline announcement and the Movable Type Management initative, The Rogue Reader (currently in soft-launch beta), which we introduced last week in WRITING ON THE ETHER EXCLUSIVE: ?Rogue? Authors on a New Route.
The publishing ambitions here are quite different, but the point they make about the direction of publishing?s future are very much the same.
While pointing to the Diller-Rudin-Coady operation?s ability ?to compete with major publishers for major books,? he rightly contrasts The Rogue Reader project of Jason Ashlock and Adam Chromy for its entrepreneurial dexterity in ?a young and developing literary agency.?
The message here is that we see a similar answer coming from the opposite ends of the continuum of investment and power of what the genesis of a successful future publisher might look like. Both an ambitious well-funded highly-commercial list headed by a publishing veteran and fledgling authors publishing in a niche under the direction of a young entrepreneur with much less seasoning are being launched on new publishing platforms which have copious capabilities to do digital publishing efficiently.
A clarification occurs in the comments under Shatzkin?s good piece ? there, Ashlock echoes the point he made in our piece, that the Rogue authors are self-publishing as part of a collective curated by Ashlock and Chromy.
But Shatzkin says very well where the trend can lead:
We are getting closer to the day when all a publisher really will need to ?own? is the ability to acquire and develop good books and ways to reach the core audience for them persuasively and inexpensively.
And the other side of that coin has to do with author-initiated versions of this kind of formulation. In time, more variants on these models may involve an authorial direction of? publishing functions hired as needed.
Even in terms of the place of print in the future, Shatzkin sees the same mechanism others are understanding:
These new publishers can treat the diminishing print-in-store marketplace as a bit of an afterthought because there are more and more sources from which to purchase those capabilities for as long as they are needed.
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The AAP?s response to ALA?s open letter to publishers re: ebooks is fascinating for what it DOESN?T say.
That?s the Association of American Publishers and the American Libraries Association.
As usual, they?re not happy with each other. This time things are a bit more strident. And in Dear Libraries: No more free handouts for you freeloaders! Guy LeCharles Gonzalez ? former Ether sponsor and an employ with Media Source/Library Journals ? picks up on the latest exchange, taking issue with the implications he sees in the AAP?s widely decried letter.
Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
He cites this passage from the publishers? letter:
Publishers and local libraries have had a lifelong partnership dedicated to increasing literacy and nurturing the love of reading. The publisher members of AAP provide libraries with innumerable free resources, programs and services ? all designed to serve their cardholders, inform their librarians and sustain the vitality of their institutions.
And Gonzalez then follows up, emphasis his:
Based on that, you?d think publishers view libraries as social marketing endeavors, making zero reference to the fact that libraries BUY BOOKS, and that a significant percentage of patrons who borrow also BUY BOOKS.
Critics hammer JK Rowling?s ?Casual Vacancy.? Will it earn back its (rumored $7 million) advance? http://t.co/YBlLJMsY
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If you need to catch up on all this, Gary Price at InfoDocket can help you.
Here is a part of Monday?s open letter from ALA chief Maureen Sullivan, in which she writes, emphasis hers:
If our libraries? digital bookshelves mirrored the New York Times fiction best-seller list, we would be missing half of our collection any given week due to these publishers? policies. The popular ?Bared to You? and ?The Glass Castle? are not available in libraries because libraries cannot purchase them at any price. Today?s teens also will not find the digital copy of Judy Blume?s seminal ?Forever,? nor today?s blockbuster ?Hunger Games? series.
Sullivan?s intent seems to be to push the long-running standoff between libraries and publishers on ebooks to something of a head:
We librarians cannot stand by and do nothing while some publishers deepen the digital divide. We cannot wait passively while some publishers deny access to our cultural record. We must speak out on behalf of today?s ? and tomorrow?s ? readers.The library community demands meaningful change and creative solutions that serve libraries and our readers who rightfully expect the same access to e-books as they have to printed books.
The publishers? side was, in a phrase, not amused, referring to Sullivan?s letter as ?a harshly critical open letter to the US publishing industry about e-lending.?
The AAP, as trade organization representing some 300 publishers, writes back ? and note the reference at the end of this passage to a caution about ?antitrust restrictions?:
Publishers support the concept of e-lending but must solve a breadth of complex technological, operational, financial and other challenges to make it a reality. Each publishing company is grappling individually with how to best serve the interests of its authors and readers, protect digital intellectual property rights and create this new business model that is fair to all stakeholders. And while the 9000-plus library systems? non-profit status permits them to convene, debate and reach consensus on these issues, commercial publishers cannot likewise come together due to antitrust restrictions.
And the publishers? side signs off with regret about the sentiments of the libraries? camp:
At a time when individual publishing houses are more actively engaged than ever in exploring viable solutions to e-lending, we are disappointed that the new leadership at ALA chose this path, with this particular timing, to criticize those efforts.
What may be in the offing here is an effort by the library community to take the ongoing crisis public ? or, at least, more public than has been done so far, in order to pressure more movement from the publishing contingent. It?s likely, after all, that libraries, rather than the publishers, will enjoy the favor of the public in almost any outcome.
Ugh. ?Limn,? along with the verb ?keen,? is one of the most annoying words ever: http://t.co/j5CfnWiw
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As we continue to watch things develop ? talks have been going on since last winter ? Andrew Albanese at Publishers Weekly in Macmillan Poised to Test Library E-book Model has this:
Macmillan officials have confirmed to PW that the publisher has developed a pilot project that would enable e-book lending for libraries?a potentially major development. However, details of the pilot remain undisclosed.
There?s hardly a sense of big smiles and high fives anywhere, though. Text from Macmillan, quoted by Albanese, reads:
We are currently finalizing the details of our pilot program and will be announcing it when we are ready, and not in reaction to a demand.
Good times.
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@ Fiction trailers have to compete with Hollywood trailers in quality. Not cost effective ROI #DBWDM@ Honey, I?m not talking about fiction book trailers. You are. Why are you dead set on embroiling me in this?@ It was just FYI for the larger conversation. No broiling or embroiling intended.
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I guess my primary criterion is ?engagement.? Am I engaged/captured/gripped by the words and deeds on the page, by the emotional reaction they create in me?
Ray Rhaymey
When Ray Rhaymey judges manuscripts for contests, he writes, he has a list of elements that go into that sense of engagement he?s looking for.
And in his post Here Comes the Judge for Writer Unboxed, he works up a three-point list of what goes into the engagement he looks for:
Story. Something is happening, a story is taking place. It?s in a place I can see, and there are people doing things.
A scene: That?s how a good writer shows what is happening, what I call an ?immediate? scene. It?s not a summary of information, it?s not exposition, it?s not what happened then, it is what is happening now.
Voice: I frequently read where agents name ?voice? as the number one thing that pulls them in. I can see that. Voice can translate into a personality of the story, and we all react to likeable personalities.
One reason I?ve included this post on the Ether this week is that I like how forthright Rhaymey is about the speed with which an experienced judge can recognize whether what?s needed is in place or not.
I spent a part of my career ? back in the 18th Century ? judging actors who were auditioning for university graduate programs in the theater arts. And what actors never liked hearing (understandably!) was that an experienced audition judge or casting director can tell within seconds whether someone is right for a role or a spot in an ensemble. Normally, by the time an actor has said her or his name and which monologue she or he is about to perform, you know. The ?acting? part is almost secondary.
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Rhaymey is getting at a similar phenomenon here when he writes:
Many of us have faced the toughest judges in the business, literary agents. I think my take on what is good storytelling/writing comes close to theirs?I?ve judged over 600 opening chapters?and, let me tell you, your eye becomes quickly trained to see what works and what doesn?t work. Agents and editors will tell you that they can usually reach a yes/no decision on the first page. I believe them.
None of this should be taken by authors as depressing or hostile to their work and dreams and efforts. But it helps us all to face the fact that the kind of work we really want to do ? the stuff our own dreams are made on, to paraphrase a line I heard frequently in those stage auditions ? is work that arrives with its soul intact, its presence in place, its story, scene, and voice down pat.
And all this you hear about ?good writing? being the key? Here?s Rhaymey again:
The main criterion isn?t, really, good writing. That?s the price of entry, the foundation upon which a good story can be built. You don?t get any credit for good language/grammar/etc. from me or an agent or an editor. It makes a ?yes? decision possible, but that?s all.
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Hey @ could you please devote an entire column to why Michi loves the word ?limn? so damn much? Thousands of minds want to know!!
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Sometimes we lose perspective with our stories.? The plot and the characters become wallpaper to us.? We know we need an extra set of eyes to find the problems with our book?the plot holes, the echoes of repeated words, the loose ends we forget to tie up.
Elizabeth Spann Craig
Elizabeth Spann Craig?s output? in cozy and traditional mysteries is admired by many of her blog readers. It?s likely that many people think Craig is always entertained by and engaged with her characters and stories.
On the contrary, in Discovering What Delights, Craig tells of how a neighbor child?s thrill over seeing hummingbirds ? at a backyard feeder that, for Craig, becomes ?wallpaper to us? ? reminded her how remarkable the birds are.
And because writing, editing, revising can become so grueling, of course, one?s story and characters and settings can become that backyard wallpaper to a writer.Craig has the answer:
It?s just as important to have that extra set of eyes to find what?s right with our story?what?s special.? A turn of phrase, a genuine character, a well-drawn villain. The hours of editing can make us lose perspective on the good parts, too.? We need to know what works so that we can provide more of it.
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In Book Publisher Goes To Court To Recoup Hefty Advances From Prominent Writers, the Smoking Gun reports:
The Penguin Group?s New York State Supreme Court breach of contract/unjust enrichment complaints include copies of book contracts signed by the respective defendants.
Authors involved in the court action, according to the report, include Elizabeth Wurtzel, Ana Marie Cox, and Holocaust survivor Herman Rosenblat (whose story of concentration-camp love turned out to be false).
Some large advance figures are involved, and commenters include Don Wiggins, who writes:
I believe I?ll write a book about the disintegration of traditional publishing methods. Just send me the 30K advance and I?ll get right on it.
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Ce que les zombies peuvent nous apprendre sur le droit d?auteur et la cr?ation,par Lionel Maurel (@)http://t.co/KPIOzKhE
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Friday and Saturday, Jane Friedman, digital editor with VQR, long-suffering host of the Ether, and hashtag unto her verified self, will be engaging with colleagues in Berlin at the LitFlow conference.
The sessions are conducted in think-tank format, as a kind of big-table debate, which is an exciting and highly immersive format ? I wish we saw it more frequently in the States.
Here?s the LitFlow site, and Jane will be tweeting from time to time as the sessions go forward, keep an eye out.
And for an updated list of planned confabs, please see the Publishing Conferences page at PorterAnderson.com.
Frankfurt-bound folks may want to give special consideration to the Tools of Change (TOC) Metadata Goes Global program with Brian O?Leary and Laura Dawson, and a very promising-sounding Publishers Launch event from Mike Shatzkin and Michael Cader.
Ed Nawotka has announced that his Publishing Perspectives will host a free two-hour session in in Frankfurt on the morning of October 13, an ?ignite?-style round of presentations on the subject of self-publishing. You?re asked to RSVP to warmuth@book-fair.com
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I am lucky because I have a rabbit on my couch. She also matches the couch.
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The books you see here have been referenced recently in Writing on the Ether.
I?m bringing them together in one spot each week, to help you recall and locate them, not as an endorsement. And, needless to say, we lead our list weekly with our fine Writing on the Ether Sponsors, in gratitude for their support.
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Writing on the Ether Sponsors:
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World: Please turn off the tap tap tappy sound on your iPhones and iPads. Thank you.
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A multidisciplinary team led by University of Cincinnati researchers came out Sept. 26 with a paper that aims to help biologists who work with color-changing creatures and engineers who work with e-Paper technology.
Even as the news of Barnes and Noble?s new HD Nooks breaks ? here is Steve Kovachat Business Insider with the (perhaps overstated)? Amazon?s Kindle Fire Just Became A Dud ? this quaint report from ScienceDaily about scientists looking to enhance their concepts of eInk through studies of color-changing sea creatures.
The original story is credited to M.B. Reilly and this write is put together with materials from the University of Cincinnati.
One of the researchers? key findings is that there are numerous approaches to change the reflective color of a surface and that the highest-performance approaches developed by both humans and nature share some powerful common features. Both use pigment, and both change or achieve color expression by either spreading or compacting that pigment. Animals use muscle fiber to spread or compact pigment, and electronics make use of an electric field to do so.
Not surprisingly, we?re being passed like we?re standing still by color-flipping cephalopods.
Overall, animals ?outscore? synthetic devices when it comes to sophistication and integrated systems; required energy use for color change; size scalability (cephalopods? adaptive coloration works over a wide range of sizes in the organisms? class ? from small-size cuttlefish to large-size octopus and squid); and surface texture (cephalopods can selectively adapt or ?crinkle? their skins to match a variety of three-dimensional textures, which provides additional light scattering and shadowing).
Where do we have an advantage? Speed. Our color changes are faster than their color changes. In historical terms, though, we?ve been dragging our pods. As a researcher puts it:
?The highest performance human-made approaches have been only recently developed, well after numerous other approaches were tried. Perhaps in the past, if we had more closely trusted nature?s ability to find the best solution, we would be further along today in creating better display technology.?
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Okay, you?ve all ten hours. NOW have you finished A CASUAL VACANCY? *taps foot impatiently*
Who said vegetarian had to be boring? If you enjoy your meals meatless or you just want to try a few vegetarian dishes to spice up your dinnertime routine, you?ll enjoy Vegetarian Times. Vegetarian Times features some of the most popular vegetarian recipes in the country. You won?t lack for variety with the recipes included in this magazine. You can make your diet a little healthier by adding just one or two vegetarian meals a week and this magazine will show you some tasty recipes that won?t leave you asking, ?Where?s the Beef??
With features that include using food from your garden to after-school snacks, each issue of Vegetarian Times is filled to the brim with healthy and tasty ideas that will save you time and help you feed your family healthy and nutritious snacks and meals.
Are you short on time? No worries, you?ll find a lot of recipes that take 30 minutes or less to prepare. If you are of the adventurous variety, you?ll find vegetarian dishes from around the world. Learn to cook and try a new cultural dish in your own kitchen!
Getting ready to celebrate a holiday party or host a dinner and want to please your non-vegetarian friends too? You?ll find tips and specialty recipes so that everyone?s taste buds are satisfied.
Vegetarian Times is available in print of via download to your computer and Android Phone. Take your digital copy with you to the grocery store and remember to grab all of the ingredients for that new dish you want to try.
Want more? How about these similar digital magazines....
What if you walked into Digital Book World?s (DBW)? Discoverability and Marketing Conference this week, sat down in New York?s spacious Metropolitan Pavilion with its gleaming-shipboard floors, and spent two days with us?
You might have come away from Monday and Tuesday?s conference with an admiration for our industry professionals? capacity to withstand?confusion.
Paper Boats: In a purely praiseworthy effort to include authors in the program, the conference presented Elle Lothlorian and Erika Napoletano in the mix, and the organizers are to be commended for that.
But ?look how badly I?ve been treated? doesn?t engender a lot of audience support in any setting, not just in a publishing arena.
Then look at how blogger ?Ellen? at Word Thief writes up what struck her from Jon Fine?s presentation, in her post Digital Book World: Books vs. Everything Else, recalling his line:
And as luck would have it for Hachette, that wiggle room includes the release of La Rowling?s eagerly awaited new aria.
While pointing to the Diller-Rudin-Coady operation?s ability ?to compete with major publishers for major books,? he rightly contrasts The Rogue Reader project of Jason Ashlock and Adam Chromy for its entrepreneurial dexterity in ?a young and developing literary agency.?
Here is a part of Monday?s open letter from ALA chief Maureen Sullivan, in which she writes, emphasis hers:
The AAP, as trade organization representing some 300 publishers, writes back ? and note the reference at the end of this passage to a caution about ?antitrust restrictions?:
The sessions are conducted in think-tank format, as a kind of big-table debate, which is an exciting and highly immersive format ? I wish we saw it more frequently in the States.
Who said vegetarian had to be boring? If you enjoy your meals meatless or you just want to try a few vegetarian dishes to spice up your dinnertime
routine, you?ll enjoy Vegetarian Times. Vegetarian Times features some of the most popular vegetarian recipes in the country. You won?t lack for variety with the recipes included in this magazine. You can make your diet a little healthier by adding just one or two vegetarian meals a week and this magazine will show you some tasty recipes that won?t leave you asking, ?Where?s the Beef??