The traditional role of the publisher as gate-keeper between author and distributor is being challenged. The book industry is presently undergoing major change and many comparisons have been drawn between the music industry of 1999 and the publishing industry of today.
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POD… its time has come: it’s green; it’s simple; it’s efficient; and it’s profitable. Independent authors, musicians and artists have a practical means of promoting themselves and their product to a world market. There will always be a place for big business, big publishers and big distribution, but getting there (and them) requires hard work, connections, promotion, and… time – lots of it.
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A Kick Bike is a chain-free greaseless alternative to the bicycle. The front tire is mountain bike-style (26 inches) and the back tire is smaller (16 inches). It is equipped with standard front and back caliper hand brakes and weighs in at a mere 25 pounds. There is no seat. There are no pedals. The centre step platform is low to the ground and provides the optimum position for pushing forward with the foot.
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Today, February 12, 2009, marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. Darwin’s theory of natural selection has inspired breakthroughs in everything from financial analysis (genetic algorithms) to cosmos development (galaxy formation).
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Here is your FREE ticket to success. Alright, the URL is about $10, and you will have to do a lot of work, but it is your time and it is, after all, all about you. Everything else is FREE.
This sounds too simple but with the tools available on the internet today, it is amazing what can be accomplished with little or no money. Linking the various freebies together is key and sometimes embedded html links are required in the less-than-smart webpage editors, but with a bit of fooling around, the end result is a professionally networked marketing package of you, complete with an on-line publish-on-demand storefront to sell your stuff.
Need help? BIT Studio
Lulu.com is a great website. I am not sure where the name came from, but I speculate that it has something to do with the past tense of the French word for “read” – Lu.
The service they provide is self-publishing. The really cool thing is that the old “print-on-demand” has evolved into “publish-on-demand” and almost any kind of product (books, documents, music, art, etc.) can be promoted and sold on-line in an independent and free environment.
Where most publishers seek to have 100 authors selling one million books each, Lulu’s strategy is to have one million authors selling 100 books each. They’ve targeted their market well because much less than one percent of all independently published books sell more than 100 copies each.
“To be clear, Lulu is not a publisher. It’s a digital marketplace guided by a vision of empowerment and accessibility, and built on a business model that has proven wildly successful. The rapid growth of Lulu, which is being driven by over 15,000 new registrations a week and more than 100, 000 unique visitors everyday, is built on its proven ability to grab hold of the long tail of user-generated content and provide an empowering outlet for creators of all types.” – Lulu.com, Corporate Profile
Lulu.com is one of the self-publishing industry leaders and provides a solid return on investment for time and effort. Check it out at http://www.lulu.com/.
Sir Karl Raimond Popper (1902-1994) is recognized as a leading 20th century philosopher and is best known for establishing a practical philosophy of science with a framework and system for accepting scientific truths.
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SNOT - Sycophantic Narcissists Offloading Themselves
Facebook is a scary 21st century phenomenon. Glorifying mediocrity in the pursuit of fifteen minutes of fame can be a rewarding boost to the ego, but it is hardly a noble or practical use of time and effort. As a logical extension of today’s instant-gratification/Idol-driven society, Facebook has found its niche as the premier hub of shallowness on the internet.
The hilarious picture of you talking to Ralph on the porcelain telephone is not so funny when taken out of context. These classic “faceplant” entries rarely represent an individual’s lifestyle or accomplishments, yet they can affect personal and professional lives for many years. Requesting the removal of compromising photos or anecdotes rarely eliminates the evidence. As all conspiracy theorists are aware, any photo appearing on the internet for even a short time will end up in an archived file somewhere and will be available to anyone with the determination to find it. The show-and-tell-all repercussions have extended to the courtroom where, for example, a defendant’s apparent lack of remorse provided grounds for a prolonged internment.
The dictionary defines snot as nasal mucus or phlegm. Snot is also defined as an annoying, arrogant or impertinent person. Although the concept of a nose (snotty) as the centre of a face (book) draws an interesting parallel, Facebook SNOT are typically not annoying, arrogant or impertinent by nature. Misguided, perhaps; everyone in society has a responsibility to think just a little bit beyond self-gratification.
Facebook members cannot be held responsible for the relentless dumbing-down of society as they are much less cause than effect. The social website is pervasive and addictive and we can only hope that it will soon be relegated to the novelty-item shelf where it belongs.
The superimposition of human characteristics on inanimate objects is called personification. The character of God, in the compilation of short stories called the Bible, represents personification of the unknown. By definition, all of religion can be reduced to a simple literary technique.
Providing human behavioral traits to non-human occurrences is a device for improving understanding. Personifying good and evil creates a format whereby the masses can relate, on a very simplistic level, how and why events occur: Misfortune is due to someone’s disapproval; Success is a result of conforming to someone’s desired behavior; Unexplainable events are attributable to someone’s incredible and mysterious powers.
The Bible uses standard metaphorical techniques to accomplish its message. The “Good Book” is a literary work complete with colorful plot line and fictionally believable characters. The melodramatic activity is enormous and the reader is presented with extreme positions of good and evil leaving no doubt about how one should judge each character’s behavior. The message is simple; conform or rot in Hell.
God, as personification of the unknown, is an excellent example of the quest for a comprehensive Theory of Everything. Einstein worked his entire life toward this fundamental idea for simplifying our existence and felt failure in the end as he realized it would not be attained in his lifetime. When religion provides human characteristics to the unknown, the Big ToE is then simplified into “He did it”. How convenient. How simple. How comforting. How ridiculous.
Religion uses confirming instances (such as those used by Freud) as proof of its existence and ad hoc excuses (such as those found in astrology) as its alibi when expected results fail. Karl Popper, creator of the falsifiability criteria and main contributor to today’s Philosophy of Science, dismisses both of these practices as inadequate. The fickleness of human personality allows religion to selectively choose how to justify God’s “reaction” to everything; sometimes good, sometimes bad, but whatever happens is appropriate and undisputable.
Personification is a powerful literary technique and the Bible may be one of the first published documents to use it successfully.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) gained notoriety during the late 20th century for his views on compassion and the role of his Übermensch hierarchy in modern society. As an author, Nietzsche is very accessible. His 1882 book The Gay Science (politically correct translation being “The Joyous Wisdom”) is a relatively easy read and contains Nietzsche’s first reference to “God is dead”.
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