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Resolutions (Image via Wikipedia)

Cheers to a razzle-dazzle 2012! I’m saluting the new year with a confession: I failed my top resolution for 2011.

There it is. I tried. I failed. Period. But last year is history, and the new year is my story!

That’s right, I’m totally undaunted. Humbled but not discouraged. Perhaps I was overly ambitious. Perhaps my resolve faltered. Perhaps I needed humility, checked ambition, faltering resolve. Perhaps I needed to unlearn and relearn and regroup and refocus…

One year ago today — with all the hubris and fanfare of a precocious adolescent — I threw caution to the wind and sang out across the interwebs.

I do hereby firmly resolve to publish Rosslyn Redux in multiple formats and to share my experiences over the next year while moving toward this goal.

My most important 2011 new year’s resolution was to deliver Rosslyn Redux to its audience. And I failed. Mostly…

But rather than sulking and groveling and begging absolution, I’m going to double down. My timing was off, but my goals were spot on. Last year whistled past like a downtown express which sucked my clutch of papers and carefully coiffed do down the tube in its wake. After standing on the platform for a while I learned to read an iPad and wear a hat. Now when the train bullets past I don’t blink.

My 2011 resolution numero uno eluded me, but I made strides and learned plenty over the last twelve months. Now I’m ready to deliver on my promise. I’m gambling that new year’s resolutions (like wine and cheese) tend to improve with proper maturation!

But good cellaring alone won’t be enough to deliver the goods. Dreams are dandy, but it takes good fundamentals and process to mature goals into accomplishments. Here are a few pointers I’ve collected to help guide me.

• pick very small resolutions, measurable actions that you can fulfill… You want small goals you can meet in a short time. (abc7.com)
• make your resolution specific, with a tangible, achievable outcome. (forbes.com)
• create a timeline… that gives you enough time to make the right choice. (How to keep your New Year’s Resolutions)
• Get back to scrappy… and do fewer things, better. (inc.com)
• outline the small, manageable steps you’ll need to take in order to achieve [your resolutions]… [Create a] a step-by-step plan…  (forbes.com)
• [When you encounter] setbacks, don’t throw in the towel. Pick yourself up and start again. Setbacks are not a sign of failure; they are opportunities to learn and start again. (huffingtonpost.com)
• Counterbalance all of these resolutions with a resolution that inspires you. Something you just want to do… Something that just makes you happy to be alive for another year. (psychologytoday.com)

Not bad coaching, right? So far I’ve got goal and guidance. What’s missing? Inspiration. For the rocket fuel of success, no better place to turn than Seth Godin.

The thing is, we still live in a world that’s filled with opportunity. In fact, we have more than an opportunity — we have an obligation. An obligation to spend our time doing great things. To find ideas that matter and to share them. To push ourselves and the people around us to demonstrate gratitude, insight, and inspiration. To take risks and to make the world better by being amazing.

You get to make a choice. You can remake that choice every day… you have the power to change everything that’s to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the one question that every organization and every individual needs to ask today: Why not be great? (fastcompany.com)

I always and forever agree: we live in a world filled with opportunity. And we have an obligation to find, create, inspire and share greatness. In order to do so, we have an obligation to take risks.

I mentioned earlier that I mostly failed to deliver Rosslyn Redux to its audience. There are two exceptions. Last April the Rosslyn Redux blog was born. Nine months and four dozen posts later readership is growing and the chronicle/adventure is evolving. While working through the book manuscript the blog offers an open workshop to learn from my readers what is working and what is compelling and what is not. Reader comments and feedback have become an invaluable measure of my storytelling and focus, and I’m excited to ramp up the posts in the new years.

The second exception was Redacting Rosslyn, a solo performance at The Depot Theatre of readings, storytelling and vignettes ranging from a wader-wearing Amazon named Rosslyn to a perennially pickled bathtub yachtsman. Turning my book inside out for a capacity audience was scary and thrilling and addictive. I wanted to stay in that collaborative space, that creative tension between storyteller and audience forever. It was the first time that I’ve invite the public into the story, the first time I’ve shared the characters and scenarios with which I’ve been obsessed for years. The performance explored the uncanny parallel between renovating Rosslyn and redacting the Rosslyn Redux manuscript.

Renovating Rosslyn was an adventure. Writing and editing Rosslyn Redux is an adventure. Redacting Rosslyn is an interstitial adventure tucked into the folds of both, a wander into the unfamiliar. And it demands new methods and rhythms, new risks, new exploration. (rosslynredux.com)

In this world filled with opportunity, this world in which we have an obligation to take risks, the blog and the live performance were my first two forays into the fulfillment of my 2011 new year’s resolution. In 2012, they will serve as the foundation upon which I find, create, inspire and share greatness.

I do hereby firmly resolve to publish Rosslyn Redux in multiple formats in 2012. In the weeks ahead I resolve to define small, measurable actions and to arrange them into a viable timeline in order to produce specific, achievable outcomes. I’ll organize a step-by-step plan and reduce it to the fewest, most necessary elements in order to succeed. I’ll get scrappy when necessary, and I’ll turn setbacks into lessons that will propel me toward my goal. One year from today I will celebrate success.

Thank you for your confidence!

Related articles

• Konrath’s Resolutions for Writers 2012 (jakonrath.blogspot.com)
• New Year’s Resolutions (Inforgraphic) (funtasticus.com)
• Making And Keeping Your 2012 New Year’s Resolutions… With Social Media! (socialtimes.com)
• My New Years Resolution (elleswim.net)

Storytelling from Cave Fire to Kindle Fire (image by virtualDavis)

Isn’t digital storytelling just enhanced storytelling? It’s just the newest chapter in humanity’s quest to improve the way we tell stories. We instinctively yearn for better communication, for storytelling innovation. And yet digital books, audio books, multimedia books tend to meet resistance despite their obvious appeal.

New scares old. Old doesn’t quite understand new. Or doesn’t want to…

In “Is It A Book, Is It A Movie…No, It’s Movie-Book!” we get a glimpse at the book world’s awkward response to digitally enhanced storytelling.

Many eBook writers shy away from multimedia publishing, preferring instead to stay with straight text… An eBook that features multimedia is not an eBook, they say. It’s… an app… What IS an eBook with multimedia? Can we continue to call an eBook an eBook knowing that now it may feature multimedia? … What about audio books? … [Or] movie-books… (Technorati Entertainment)

Let’s call it digital storytelling. Or storytelling in the digital age. Maybe we should just call it storytelling, because — no matter how resistant the publishing industry and book critics and schools and libraries may be — the public is embracing (and will continue to embrace) storytelling in all of its innovative new forms.

Let us imagine the first time a storyteller added innovative new technologies to their bag of tricks. Picture the proverbial caveman standing by the bonfire with his family, talking about the hunt from which he’s returned with a week’s food. In telling the story of creeping up on his prey, he describes his cautious steps, following the fierce Bigmacosaurus, slowly, quietly all afternoon. Until afternoon turned into evening. As daddy caveman describes the fall of night he slowly extinguishes the campfire leaving his wife and children sitting in the dark around the glowing embers. They pull closer together, absorbed in the story. Now dad begins to pace around them in the dark as he speaks, so that they are never quite sure where he is, and he begins to breath deeply, hoarsely, imitating the sounds of the Bigmacosaurus. And suddenly he leaps across the embers and pretends to drive his spear into the Bigmacosaurus, just barely illuminated as he writhes on the ground, bathed in the dull red glow of the embers.

The end.

“Time for bed, cave kiddies!” he bellows. But they don’t move. They cling to their mother, scared to death.

So dad adds kindling and blows on the embers, resuscitating the fire. Within a few minutes the interior of the cave is once again illuminated. The children are less afraid, but still too nervous for bed.

“But what if the other Bigmacosauri followed you home?”

“Yes, what if they come and get us tonight while we sleep?”

Dad takes a charred branch from the fire and proceeds to draw a picture on the cave wall. In the crude illustration a hunter with a spear crouches in tall grass beside a herd of Bigmacosauri. He explains to his children that he discovered the heard around mid-day, far away. He draws the sun directly overhead, and adds wavy water to portray the lake located half a day’s journey from the cave. Then he moves down the wall and draws himself in the mountains pursuing a single Bigmacosaurus, the sun much lower to the horizon now. He explains to his children that he successfully split the heard, forcing the biggest Bigmacosaurus to run toward the mountains which lay between their cave and the lake. He draws a herd of stampeding Bigmacosauri running off into the distance where the sun sets on the far side of the lake. His next drawing is of the the hunter right next to the Bigmacosaurus, spear high in the air about to plunge. A crescent moon is high overhead. He explains to his children that he wanted to drive the Bigmacosaurus as close as possible to home so that he could minimize the distance he would need to carry the meat. He explains how hard it was because wild Bigmacosauri are scared of cave men and don’t like to come near them. But daddy cave man succeeded, and now they have plenty of food. But the next time he wants to hunt a Bigmacosaurus, he will have to go all away around the lake to the far side where the sun sets. He draws one last picture, looking across the vast lake at tiny Bigmacosauri no larger than ants speckling the horizon beneath the setting sun.

The children have fallen asleep in their mother’s arms, so the parents carry them to their beds and tuck them in.

So far, nothing’s unusual about this, right? Just another evening at the cave.

But when the parents tuck themselves in, the cave man’s wife rolls over to her husband to whisper.

“I don’t know what you thought you were doing tonight, extinguishing the fire, making all those beastly noises, reenacting the hunt, drawing on the walls. Look how much you scared the children.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare them so much. I always tell them stories…”

“I know. Stories are good. But all that other stuff, it’s just, I don’t know. Not right. Can you just stick with storytelling? Just words?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Thank you. Good night.”

“Good night.”

But the next day the cave kiddies beg for a story. “Like last night, daddy. Not the boring old way.”

“Yes, like last night. Pleeease?”

Mother grimaces.

Father looks at mother and shrugs.

Fast forward. YouTube, Audible, Vook, iPad, Storify and SoundCloud blur past. From cave fire to Kindle Fire… Onward!

Related articles

• Storytelling Is Just The Beginning (virtualdavis.com)
• Smile! I’m blogging you… (virtualdavis.com)
• A Brief History of Storytelling (virtualdavis.com)
• The technology of storytelling: Joe Sabia on TED.com (ted.com)

Johannes Gutenberg… introduced modern book printing. His invention of mechanical movable type printing [circa 1439] started the Printing Revolution and is widely regarded as the most important event of the modern period. It played a key role in the development of the Renaissance, Reformation and the Scientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses. (Wikipedia)

Gutenberg’s printing press introduced a practical, cost effective means for the mass production and distribution of books permanently revolutionizing the accessibility and control of information and ideas. Forgive this run-on sentence for a run-on idea. A half millennium later digital publishing is once again revolutionizing the production and distribution of information. I refer to this transition as the Post-Gutenberg Paradigm, and I am attempting to curate some of the digital content related to publishing in the digital age below. I welcome your input. Please contact me with additions and feedback.

We’re plunging headlong into the post-Gutenberg era, and it’s a thrilling, alarming and somewhat unpredictable ride. The wild west of content creation, packaging, interface and distribution. The familiar and profitable Gutenberg Paradigm that has guided content creators, consumers and the publishing industry through the decades (through the centuries in some cases) is becoming increasingly obsolete. A new paradigm is emerging. What follows is a digital scrap book of one man’s adventure in the post-Gutenberg era, an attempt to curate the artifacts of my social media journey.

http://storify.com/virtualdavis/postgutenberg-paradigm

Amazon Kindle (Photo credit: agirregabiria)

Would you arm wrestle a two-ton gorilla? What if your life depended on it?

Mike Shatzkin tackles the two-ton gorilla in the publishing room in his post “Competing with Amazon is not an easy thing to do”.

According to Shatzkin, traditional publishing has no other choice but to belly up to the bar, prop their elbow on the sticky surface and palm-to-palm it with the furry behemoth. Daunting but unavoidable. Shatzkin identifies the foundation of Amazon‘s power play:

1. Amazon is, by far, the most book-industry-focused company that is actually active in endeavors much larger than the book business…
2. Amazon executes. Their hardware and software and platforms and content delivery all work just about perfectly…
3. Amazon is the runaway market leader in the only two segments of the book business that are growing — ebooks and the online purchasing of print — and they are cleverly leveraging the leadership position they have to make challenging them even more difficult in the future… (The Shatzkin Files)

Amazon sounds more like a three-ton gorilla! Shatzkin acknowledges that competing with Amazon won’t be easy, and his perspective may oversimplify the equation for the sake of painting a clear picture, but — let’s face it — the picture’s clearer every day!

There is really only one way for publishers to compete with Amazon for authors in the future and that’s to find book customers Amazon doesn’t have, either by working through other retailers or by creating direct publisher-to-customer contact. The percentage of sales which go to Amazon is the single most important barometer of a book publishing company’s future. Of course, every publisher wants to make their Amazon sales grow. Their challenge is to make other sales grow faster. (The Shatzkin Files)

And with Amazon’s newest venture, the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, that proposition is growing even more challenging than it already was.

Related articles

• Competing with Amazon is not an easy thing to do (idealog.com)
• Mike Shatzkin: Publishers should change method of e-book accounting and pay authors more (teleread.com)
• Bookseller Backed by Big Publishers Advocates Abandoning Digital Rights Management (digitalbookworld.com)
• Shatzkin: Big-Six Run By Smartest, Most Innovative Publishers (Video) (digitalbookworld.com)
• Will Amazon.com Stores Be Good for the Book Industry? (digitalbookworld.com)

Seth Godin is turning the page on The Domino Project following publication of Sarah Kay's poem "B".

“Projects are fun to start, but part of the deal is that they don’t last forever.” ~ Seth Godin

A year after Seth Godin launched The Domino Project he’s calling it quits. He summed up the takeaways in his post, “The last hardcover” which merits more rumination (preferably with several friends including an author, a publisher, and editor, an agent and a bottle of eighteen year old Laphroaig,) but absent the minds and the bottle of Scotch at 9:00am in my study, I’ll limit myself to an invitation and a few amuse-gueules.

First off, why’d he quit? What did he learn. And why’d he do it in the first place?

“The plan was to build a publishing imprint, powered by Amazon and filled with thoughtful books by inspired authors.” ~ Seth Godin

Right. So it was an experiment, Godin’s a laboratory for testing “what could be done in a fast-changing environment. Rather than whining about the loss of the status quo, I thought it would be interesting to help invent a new status quo and learn some things along the way.” (“The last hardcover”) Did you catch that? Godin stepped away from the traditional publishing world which had become increasingly bogged down in neigh saying and resisting the rapidly evolving publishing industry in order to help reinvent the publishing industry! That’s an ambitious experiment by my yardstick. And by his own estimation, it was a largely successful experiment.

It’s worth noting that even envisioning, announcing and launching The Domino Project was a successful experiment. The impact was real and the aftershocks are still tickling the tummies of the publishing industry. But catalyzing debate, driving change and incubating/publishing “twelve bestsellers, published in many languages around the world” is only part of the equation, you can bet on that. Savant Seth’s projects are rarely so tidy. They have tentacles and afterlives… He’s experimenting again. Authors need closure. Start a book; finish a book. Go on to the next. You can be sure that the phoenix already incubating amidst The Domino Project ashes will rise again, will rise soon, and will awe/shock many.

Prime time to reference Sarah Kay‘s short poem B, The Domino Project’s dazzling caboose and one of TEDTalks’ most riveting performances. Did you see it?

“There are plenty of things that I have trouble understanding, so I write poems to figure things out. Sometimes the only way I know how to work through something is by writing a poem. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and look back and go, “Oh, that’s what this is all about.” And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and haven’t solved anything, but at least I have a new poem out of it.” ~ Sarah Kay

I understand this as if I’d written it, spoken it, myself. I wonder, wander and write to figure things out, to discover and ponder and sometimes even untangle the mysteries and adventures which swirl around me. Sometimes, not often. But at least I have the poem, the story, the journey. I suspect that Godin nodded his shiny pate when he first heard Sarah Kay explain what compels her to create poetry. I suspect that he realized Kay’s poem was the perfect way to conclude an experiment that had succeeded before it began, an experiment that discovered more mysteries and more adventures than it untangled or resolved. Whether a book, another project or a still unfathomable experiment, I’m confident that Godin’s next experiment will both awe and shock in the tradition of the best poets and oracles.

Until then, I offer you several remaining bite-sized-but-brain-busting amuse-gueules to challenge your own experiments.

“The ebook is a change agent like none the book business has ever seen. It cuts the publishing time cycle by 90%, lowers costs, lowers revenue and creates both a long tail and an impulse-buying opportunity. This is the most disruptive thing to happen to books in four hundred years.” ~ Seth Godin

“There is still (and probably will be for a while) a market for collectible editions, signed books and other special souvenirs that bring the emotional component of a book to the fore. While most books merely deliver an idea or a pasttime, for some books and some readers, there’s more than just words on paper. Just as vinyl records persist, so will books… because there’s something special about molecules and scarcity.” ~ Seth Godin

“If you’re an author, pick yourself. Don’t wait for a publisher to pick you. And if you work for a big publishing house, think really hard about the economics of starting your own permission-based ebook publisher.” ~ Seth Godin

“Publishing is about passion and writing is a lifestyle, not a shortcut to a mansion and a Porsche. Bestselling authors are like golfers who hit holes in one. It’s a nice thing, but there are plenty of people who will keep playing even without one.” ~ Seth Godin

By the time you read this post, the publishing industry will have already changed again. It’s changing that fast. Faster! If we learn nothing more from The Domino Project it is to stop lamenting, denying and resisting. Start inventing.

“This world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily, but don’t be afraid to reach out and taste it… never stop asking for more.” ~ Sarah Kay

I invite you to stop whining and start inventing!

Related articles

• Seth Godin ends successful Domino Project publishing imprint (teleread.com)
• Publishing News: One publishing experiment ends, another begins (radar.oreilly.com)
• Is Seth Godin Right About Book Publishing? (digitalbookworld.com)
• Seth Godin: What I Learned In My Year Of Revolutionizing Publishing (psfk.com)
• The last hardcover (sethgodin.typepad.com)

Johannes Gutenberg (Image via Wikipedia)

If you write or in any other way participate in the world of book publishing you’ll enjoy reading “Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal“. Wait, enjoy is probably the wrong word for what some will feel… Angst, perhaps?

It’s an update on Amazon’s publishing inroads. Major inroads!

Of course, Amazon execs are playing down their recent victories, and they’re dismissing traditional publishers’ doomsday moans and groans.

“It’s always the end of the world,” said Russell Grandinetti, one of Amazon’s top executives. “You could set your watch on it arriving.” 

He pointed out, though, that the landscape was in some ways changing for the first time since Gutenberg invented the modern book nearly 600 years ago. “The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader,” he said. “Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity.”(NYTimes.com)

Risk and opportunity. Amazon risks pissing off the old guard while gobbling up their lunch. But I, as a storyteller/writer/reader/listener/watcher, the increasingly intimate writer-to-reader relationship that stands to grow stronger, closer and less complicated. Right?

Not so fast, suggest some critics.

Amazon’s publishing program… positions Amazon as agent, editor, and publisher… putting Amazon in direct competition with the world of publishing.(ConsumerReports.org)

And this full frontal assault stands to complicate writers’ situations, at least for a while. Kiana Davenport’s story serves as a warning to writers who try to straddle the opportunity with one foot in traditional publishing and the other in the Amazon world of publishing. I suspect her story is not unique.

Davenport’s infraction was ostensibly innocent enough. While Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin, prepared to launch her novel, The Chinese Soldier’s Daughter, she attempted to beef up her platform by self publishing Cannibal Nights, a collection of twenty year old short stories, as an Amazon ebook. Penguin promptly spanked her by pulling her book deal and demanding that she return her $20,000 advance.

“They’re trying to set an example: If you self-publish and distribute with Amazon, you do so at your own risk,” said Jan Constantine, a lawyer with the Authors Guild who has represented Ms. Davenport.

The writer knows her crime: “Sleeping with the enemy.”(NYTimes.com)

While Amazon is busy rewriting the rules of book publishing the old guard is lashing out, trying to preserve an increasingly unsustainable business model. Time is a reliable resolver of such conflicts, and though we may one day lament certains aspects of the transition, making examples of industrious, self-promoting authors strikes me as a desperate and futile exercise.

As Amazon accelerates it’s challenge to traditional publishing do the opportunities outweigh the risks? Or should self-publishers cower in fear?

I conclude with a thoughtful (but unfortunately unacredited) reflection posted at Instapundit:

Amazon isn’t getting rid of publishers, it’s becoming a publisher. This means the group that controls the distribution also controls the content selection. Not exactly a blow for the Army of Davids in my opinion — when all the publishers are gone, who will publish the books critical of Amazon? Bottom line: It’s not getting rid of middlemen, it’s just muscling them out so it’s the only middleman. It does however reveal that in the age of digital publishing, discoverability and promotion on the digital storefront is the only thing that actually matters. The role of publishers in curation is almost totally abrogated to the sellers. When anyone can publish a book, it’s no longer the publishers that are the gating factor to what we read, it’s the digital storefront. It’s a very interesting shift and definitely good news for Amazon and the like. (Instapundit)

Hat tip to Kathryn Reinhardt for referring the article, “Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal“, to me.

Related articles

• Amazon’s moves into publishing business cause traditional publishers to feel threatened (teleread.com)
• Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal (nytimes.com)
• Amazon Bypassing Publishers By Signing Authors Directly (news.slashdot.org)

“Like it or not, a digital you is out there.”
~ Lawrence Joseph

Lawrence Joseph’s latter day truism is sandwiched between layers of post-9/11 offal like a slather of mustard or a thin slice of onion, a piquant but ancillary ingredient trying to mask the repugnant meat of the poem.

Digital display 2 (Image via Wikipedia)

It fails. The poem “So Where Are We?” (Granta, Issue 116) and most of the other sketches and reflections in Granta’s Ten Years Later, edited byJohn Freeman, are deeply disturbing. But that’s the point, I suppose, looking back on a decade that scrambled and irreversably transformed much of the free world.

And yet Joseph’s assertion about digital redundancy clung to me. The notion of digital clones has become ubiquitous. It needs no explanation. It is a contextualizing, familiar point of reference that justifies the grotesque world conjured in this collection.

Like it or not, there’s a digital you out there. In fact almost every aspect of your life is probably reflected in some computer somewhere. You could say that information, that data, has a life of its own. If you have anything to do with modern society, you are no longer a purely biological, analog being. (New York Times)

I’m not altogether uncomfortable with this idea as the name of my blog plainly suggests, but I am fascinated with the implications of this analog/digital duality. I’ve said before that we’re living through a storytelling renaissance. Though we don’t always see it that way (teachers lament ever shortening attention spans for reading and literature; publishing executives panic as books become ebooks become Vooks become…), the proliferation of digital selves and the near universal acceptance of digital identities suggests a convergence of real world and narrative world. We are becoming our stories. Or vice versa.

The one big idea from the original “Tron” that maintained relevance was that some binary version of you is running around out there in all those ones and zeros, to a certain extent under your control but also, in a profound way, forever beyond your reach. Now we can all have multiple identities all the time: just make another user name, and you’re someone else, right? That conceit is not always accurate… (New York Times)

Are you keeping track of your digital selves? Are they still in your story, or have they defected? I’ve seen a few new faces wandering around in my own stories lately after all.

Related articles

• Your Digital Legacy (Part 1) (sixestate.com)
• Avatars with your body language get your point across(newscientist.com)
• When Virtual Sex Becomes Real (passionatereads.com)
• What is a Vook? (virtualdavis.com)
• The Ever Evolving Social Media Revolution (virtualdavis.com)
• Digital Storytelling: A New Paradigm (virtualdavis.com)

Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Chef

While word warriors continue to battle over the death/rebirth of publishing, I’m inclined to agree with Paul Carr that the “the golden era of books isn’t over. The golden era of books is NOW!“

In terms of both unit sales (up 4.1% from 2008) and revenue (up 5.6% from 2008), American publishers experienced a bumper year last year.

And the good news doesn’t stop there: thanks to the Kindle and the iPad, people who three years ago would never have strayed within 500 feet of a bookshop (and still wouldn’t) can now buy the latest James Patterson as easily as downloading Angry Birds. People who weren’t reading for pleasure, now are. This is good.

Even more interestingly, Amazon has extracted from amber the DNA of pamphlets and short stories (and maybe even serial novels) and given them a chance at new life in the form of Kindle Singles…

So, yes, given that the publishing industry is thriving, new formats are emerging, dead formats are coming back from the grave and top flight authors are making tens of millions of dollars a year, it’s something of a stretch to argue that the golden era of books is over. Moreover, it’s considerably less of a stretch to argue that the golden era of books is now. (TechCrunch)

And what better proof than Alison Flood’s announcement in The Guardian on Wednesday: “Amazon strikes first ‘major’ publishing deal“?

Amazon.com has made the first “major” acquisition for its New York-based publishing imprint, snapping up rights in bestselling self-help author Timothy Ferriss‘s new book The 4-Hour Chef.

Ferriss is author of the New York Times bestsellers The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Workweek… The 4-Hour Chef will, said Amazon, build upon the “4-hour” philosophy “by transforming the way we cook and eat”. It will publish the book in print, digital and audio formats next April.

Ferriss, whose previous books were published by Random House imprint Crown, said that his decision to move to Amazon Publishing “wasn’t just a question of which publisher to work with. It was a question of what future of publishing I want to embrace.

“My readers are migrating irreversibly into digital, and it made perfect sense to work with Amazon to try and redefine what is possible,” said the author in a statement. “This is a chance to really show what the future of books looks like, and to deliver a beautiful experience to my readers, who always come first…” (Guardian)

Amazon, who’s publishing imprint is headed by Larry Kirshbaum (formerly the CEO of Time Warner Book Group), stands to dominate the future of print, digital and audio publishing, and veteran book creator/peddler Tim Ferriss has now driven this message home once and for all!

Ferriss has opined on the state of the publishing industry before, often defending his choice to work within the traditional publishing industry, but he’s a savvy thinker, investor and self promoter, so I wasn’t surprised to discover that he courted Amazon rather than vice versa.

The opportunity to partner with a technology company that is embracing publishing is very different than partnering with a publisher embracing technology. (TNW Media)

Could the message be more clear? I’m looking forward to reading The 4-Hour Chef!

Related articles

• Amazon strikes first ‘major’ publishing deal (guardian.co.uk)
• Tim Ferriss’s deal with Amazon is both an outlier and a harbinger (idealog.com)
• Amazon boosts its publishing credentials by signing self-help guru Tim Ferriss (thenextweb.com)
• Amazon Publishing Signs Up Timothy Ferriss’s Next Book(online.wsj.com)
• Amazon Set to Publish Pop Author – New York Times(nytimes.com)
• Publishing News: Amazon launched the HTML5 Kindle Cloud Reader (radar.oreilly.com)
• Amazon’s publishing arm signs up Timothy Ferriss (guardian.co.uk)

Electric Type's Drew Frish on digital/audio book integration

Drew Frist is the founder of Electric Type (@electrictypeco), a digital book publisher who just released their debut digital children’s app, Jungle Book: The Story of Mowgli & Shere Khan. It looks delicious! Check out the promo video, and I’m guessing that if you have kids you’ll head over to iTunes before long.

In a recent video response to the question, “What are your thoughts on audio books?”, Frist expressed a wish that I’ve been trumpeting for months: it’s time for user friendly digital book and audio book integration. Print books are familiar and nostalgic. Digital books are cheap, quick, frictionless and they eliminate paper cuts. Audio books are perfectly portable and they expand our reading opportunities to the car, the gym, the ski slopes.

Why aren’t we bundling all three? This value-added merchandising play is not only good business in an increasingly competitive publishing world, it’s actually better than all three. In short, bundling digital, audio and print is better than the sum of its parts.

Most of us still love paper and ink. Bindings. Smells. Easy marginalia. Worn pages. Dog eared corners. It’s a habit with some enduring benefits (ever read your iPad in full sun?) and a viable long tail. In short, many readers still want print books.

Digital book detractors have not immersed themselves in the experience. Just my two cents, but I find it hard to believe that print book purists don’t accept that there are some amazing opportunities with digital publishing. Instant access to almost everything no matter where you are. Did I mention instant? Did I mention cheap? Did I mention searchable content? Okay, the technology is still new and rather clunky, but progress is being made at warp speed.

I admit that once upon a time I scoffed at audio books. Remember when they were recorded on tapes? When they were almost all abridged? When the audio book technology and availability were more hindrance than help? I changed my tune almost a decade ago when my then-fling-now-bride and I were commuting between the Adirondacks and Manhattan. Five hours in the car wrestling with tailgators and snow storms was transformed into five hours of “reading” books that we might not otherwise have taken the time to squeeze into our busy lives. Outstanding recordings, many by the authors themselves, and none were abridged. In those early days we listened to CDs. Remember those? The advent of compact disks reduced the need to abridge books because they could hold so much more data than tapes. Before long we transitioned to MP3 downloads from places like Audible.com and enjoyed the dilated offerings and the instant access. Driving bliss. It wasn’t long before audio books crept into my workouts, flights, train rides, etc.

So spoiled! So many choices. So much bickering about which one is best.They’re all best! Do you remember this video?

We have so many amazing resources at our fingertips, and yet we live in a culture where opinions are celebrated without necessarily stopping to evaluate or analyze them. Remember debate? No? It was a logical, quasi-methodical framework for constructively addressing differences of opinion. Weird, right? I know. Now we just shout opinions, whine opinions, burp opinions, snore opinions, regurgitate opinions, sweat opinions and generally excrete opinions around the clock. It’s cool. It’s social…. ;-)

An avalanche of opinions. But are we evaluating and analyzing this avalanche of opinions, or are we just scrambling to keep our heads up and our opinions spouting? Is anyone stopping to ask if print books, audio books and digital books need be mutually exclusive? With such distinct merits and appetites for all three, it would make a world of sense to zip them all up together in the same pair of pants so that they could audition for the lead roll in our storytelling opera.

Some of my best book experiences lately have resulted from buying all three formats, and in many cases re-consuming large sections of the work in multiple formats. Active writers, researchers and thinkers would relish the opportunity to:

• buy a bundled, multi-format title from their favorite seller
• tuck into the hammock to read the print book in the shade of a towering oak tree
• continue the story on their iPod while mowing the grass
• bookmark a quotation while listening to the audio book so that they can send it off via Twitter or email
• sync the audio book with their digital book reader to pick up where they left off
• quickly locate and share the bookmarks via email, blog post, Facebook, etc.

So often while I’m listening to an audio book I’ve yearned for a quick and easy way to bookmark, quote or share a passage. So often while reading a digital book I’ve yearned for a high-quality audio performance to pick up where I need to leave off to drive to a meeting. So often while reading a printed and bound book I’ve yearned for an efficient way to search for a passage…

Isn’t it time that we integrate digital books and audio books seamlessly in a single, user-friendly app? And wouldn’t it be great if this integrated digital app were bundled with a print copy? It’s a win-win-win proposition!

Related articles

• Blowing Out the Digital Book as We Know It (downes.ca)
• Digital Reading: To Do Digital Books Right, Writers Will Learn to Talk Tech (digitalbookworld.com)
• Digital book sales soar in the UK (bbc.co.uk)
• New Releases in the Digital Book World, 5/13/11(digitalbookworld.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Ready to turn your damned-good-doggerel into an ebook? Or that collection of your grandmother’s delicious desserts? These “Six eBook Formatting Tools” from eBookNewser will get you started:

• Calibre: This free tool will let you create an eBook for all of the major eReaders, including Kindle, Nook, iPad and Sony eReaders as well as a bunch of others. You can transform news from websites into readable files on eReaders and even make DRM-free eBooks. But note that it does not support Word files.
• Aspose: Using Aspose.Word plugin, you can convert a Word file into an ePub file. It is a pay service, but you can test drive the application with a free trial.
• Mobi Pocket: This free tool lets you create an eBook from HTML and Word and image files. Image files –GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP– get automatically optimized for a PDA viewer.
• Jutoh:This $39 tool lets you make books for Kindle, iBooks and Nook, among other formats. It can ePub, .mobi, .txt and .odt files through its in app text editor. It works in Windows, Mac and Linux.
• Feedbooks.com: This free tool lets you create your own ePub, Kindle and PDF files from within its software platform.
• BookGlutton: This free tool lets you turn HTML books into ePub files

Did I miss your favorite ebook creation tool? Please tell me about it, and I’ll add it to the list. Thanks!

Related articles

• PDF/ePUB to Kindle Tool 1.3 (techappz32.com)
• Kindle Books Now Outselling Print Books (digitalbookworld.com)
• Kindle 2012: Wish-list features for the next model (radar.oreilly.com)
• A New Frontier: Independent eBookselling and the Google Experience (digitalbookworld.com)
• Is Barnes & Noble Gearing Up to Completely Kill eReader and Fictionwise? (geardiary.com)
• How do you convert PDF to ePub for iTouch (wiki.answers.com)