Seth Godin announced to great fanfare and hubub in the blog world that he will no longer publish his books through a traditional publisher.
Some see this as a big author shaking off the shackles of evil publishers; some publishers see this as Godin taking advantage of the investment traditional publishing made on his behalf, by [...]
I posted a new thing over at O’Reilly’s Tools of Change blog, Sifting through all these books, here’s the first bit:
The latest numbers from Bowker are extraordinary: In 2002 there were 215,000 books published in the USA, and a further 32,693 print-on-demand title (short-runs, self-published etc).
In 2008, traditional publishers put out 275,000 books; but there [...]
Ever since Book Oven shifted focus in November 2009 to Bite-Size Edits, I have been wanting to write about one of the major reasons for the shift: my realization that:
a) the world needs an open book-publishing platform
b) rather than building from scratch at Book Oven, we should have started with Wordpress, and built atop it.
I [...]
I just posted this to Twitter, but I think it might be important enough to commit in the hard stone of a blog. And the thought is the following:
The distinction between “the internet” & “books” is totally totally arbitrary, and will disappear in 5 years. Start adjusting now.
Intense day of discussion today about truly making a web of books, at the Internet Archive-sponsored event, Making Books Apparent … which is also the launch of the BookServer:
The BookServer is a growing open architecture for vending and lending digital books over the Internet. Built on open catalog and open book formats, the BookServer model [...]
If the object of writing is to deliver to readers a text that is engaging & enlightens, or entertains them in some way or other, then the idea of maintaining a fixed form of a book needs to be reexamined. Writers will probably always want to keep control of their work, but who is to [...]
My colleague, co-founder, and the chief architect and getter-doner at Book Oven, Stephanie Troeth has proposed a moderated panel at SXSW this year called:
Beyond Publishing: When Every Book is Connected to Everyone
We have an all-star line-up who have agreed to join us (if SXSW agrees to give us some space to talk):
Kassia Krozser co-founder [...]
This was going to be a short post. It’s turned into a manifesto of sorts! Ah, well …
I don’t like the term “self-publishing.”
Cloud-Publishing
In the emerging world of “cloud-publishing,” it’s meaningless, and does not reflect what’s coming, what we’re already seeing signs of. Cloud-publishing — what we’re doing at Book Oven — is providing a [...]
Roberto Rocha of the Montreal Gazette has a good article about Book Oven and the new publishing landscape, with a nice pic out the window of the office (with me blocking the view, unfortunately):
Before the Internet, when a writer could not find a publisher to print and sell a manuscript, he could take matters into [...]
Henry Baum of Self-Publishing Review interviewed me the other day about Book Oven. With Henry’s permission, I’m reposting the whole thing below.
Self-Publishing Review: So how’s the site work? What do people do once they create a project and how can writers contribute to other writers’ projects?
Hugh McGuire: Firstly, we’ve just launched and we have [...]
