Publishious - The Future of Publishing

Husband-ry 101, How to Train Your Husband to Be the Spouse Youve Always Wanted Him to Be

2009-05-08T12:11:00.001-07:00

Marketing Tips For Authors: 5 Tips On Offering Free Samples Effectively

2009-04-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

Here is a very nice article by Tony Eldridge on Marketing Tips For Authors: 5 Tips On Offering Free Samples Effectively.
The heart of Tony's strategy is to offer a free sample of your book. Our BookBuzzr tool (available at fReado.com is one of the most effective ways to market your book on the Internet because it's shareable on over 60 different networks (Digg, Facebook, Orkut etc.) and the pages flip like in a real book.

Sea Fare

2009-04-13T03:12:00.001-07:00

Echoes of Silence

2009-04-09T03:46:00.001-07:00

My Last Post on This Blog

2009-03-22T07:23:00.000-07:00

As some of you know, we've created a new venture called fReado. Consequently, I've created a new blog on Ning and will continue to post my thoughts related to the Future of Publishing there. This blog will most likely not be updated in the future. If you need to contact me, please send me an email to vikram (at) freado.com

Thanks for your support!

Building a Better Web-Based Book

2009-02-26T06:12:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting panel discussion from the TOC 09 Conference about Building a Better Web-Based Book. This really looks like the future and it also looks like a platforms war brewing in the coming years.

Facebook Races Ahead of MySpace in US

2009-02-12T02:14:00.000-08:00

According to this report from Compete.com, Facebook has moved ahead of MySpace in the US market.

Way to go Facebook!

Lessons from Hulu

2009-02-11T04:31:00.000-08:00

Here's a great article from the Economist that talks about how Hulu positioned itself against YouTube and has now become a realistic contender for the #1 slot in the online video market. Referring to the approach that the CEO - Jason Kilar took, the article states, "It therefore appears that Mr Kilar has, in effect, answered a lot of the questions. He contemplated user-generated content, then decided that “the world didn’t need yet another” YouTube; so Hulu has only professional content, and advertisers love it. He also talked with his bosses at NBC Universal and Fox and agreed that aggregating the content of many was “something potentially much larger” than piping out the videos of just two. Hulu now offers content from more than 110 partners."

Very instructive indeed. Well done Hulu!

An iPod Moment for eBooks

2009-02-10T02:40:00.000-08:00

Chetan Dhruve sent this article where the new Kindle 2 ha been hailed as the iPod equivalent for digital books. While the Kindle may or may not succeed in the long run, it's quite clear that electronic books are here to stay. Amazon is offering 230,000 books for digital download. And Google is making available 1.5 million public domain books available on a new Google e-book reader for iPhone and Android G1 phones. And Amazon is also working on making Kindle books available on a range of mobile phones.

These initiatives are likely to help other players (Yahoo, Microsoft and other nimble start-ups) as they attempt to introduce innovative book publishing and distribution services. It's heartening to see the big boys taking the lead in convincing the publishing behemoths to try new delivery channels and business models. Way to go Amazon!

Is "Free" Enough to Make Money?

2009-02-03T22:48:00.000-08:00

I received this interesting article today from Thad McIlroy (thanks Thad) who runs "The Future of Publishing" blog. In the article Chris Anderson who earlier made waves with his article - "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business"talks about the economics of giving it away. While the article is rather short and does not provide any definite new ideas over his previous article about how to make money in the "freeconomy", it does reiterate some of his earlier ideas:

- Just giving stuff away (be it content or software) will not make you money. The Web 2.0 wave of giving it away, building a user base and hoping to get acquired is over. Now companies are having to seriously think about cash flows. Advertising rates at present (Facebook gets only $1 CPM while big media websites get $20 CPM) are not sufficient to help support many of these businesses.
- You need to figure out who is the economic buyer. It's possible that the economic buyer and the user are two different sets of people (as in the case of Google.)
- Or you can try the freemium model (where the minority of premium, paying users subsidize the majority of non-paying users who get a slightly diminished experience.)
- You need to pair up the free part of your offering with an expensive complimentary offering (for example, free Internet + really expensive coffee.)

The last section is particularly insightful for new media entrepreneurs where he says, "the marginal cost of anything digital falls by 50% every year, making pricing a race to the bottom, and "Free" has as much power over the consumer psyche as ever. But it does mean that Free is not enough. It also has to be matched with Paid. Just as King Gillette's free razors only made business sense paired with expensive blades, so will today's Web entrepreneurs have to not just invent products that people love, but also those that they will pay for. Not all of the people or even most of them -- free is still great marketing and bits are still too cheap to meter -- but enough to pay the bills. Free may be the best price, but it can't be the only one."

The Publishing Industry is Dying. Long Live The Publishing Industry!

2009-01-28T03:50:00.000-08:00

In this recent Time Magazine article, Lev Grossman argues that the traditional publishing industry is dying. The article states: "Publishing houses--among them Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt--are laying off staff left and right. Random House is in the midst of a drastic reorganization. Salaries are frozen across the industry. Whispers of bankruptcy are fluttering around Borders; Barnes & Noble just cut 100 jobs at its headquarters, a measure unprecedented in the company's history. Publishers Weekly (PW) predicts that 2009 will be "the worst year for publishing in decades.""

But the article also provides a few interesting data points ...
While there has been a drop in hardcover sales in the US in 2008 of 3.6%, there has been a rise of 3.5% of adult readers of literature since 2002. Further, the percentage increase in revenues at Author Solutions, a self-publishing firm, in 2008 has been 10%. Most interesting of all is the fact 4 out of Japan's top 5 books were written on cell phones.

So the question is: Will 2009 be the worst year for publishing, or, will it be the beginning of a new golden age of publishing? A golden age, where the physical book as we know it has been transformed into free (or nearly free), re-mixable digital bits with a huge amount of reader participation & input that reshapes the book-reading experience ...

My bet is that this golden age has already begun!

The Universal Library

2009-01-16T04:04:00.000-08:00

This excellent article talks about the vision for a universal library that will house all of the books, movies and songs ever created. While the article is a little old, it's still relevant. I love the vision and with Google's settlement of it's lawsuit with the publishing industry, it looks like it may become a reality sooner than expected. One interesting fact that is mentioned in the article is about the fact that there are 25 million orphaned books (where copyright ownership is uncertain or unknown) out of the total 32 million books estimated to be in print. Kudos to Google Books for successfully opening this can of worms!

Google Books Agrees for $125 million Settlement

2008-10-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

I'd written an earlier blog post about Google Books which had received a few enthusiastic responses from my readers. This blog post is a continuation to that blog post. Google has reached a settlement with authors and publishers who were suing Google for digitizing books without the prior permission of copyright owners. While broad terms of the agreement are available in another article, I decided to copy-paste some of the fine print that pertains to authors from the settlement (after my reaction to this development below.)

My Reaction:
I believe that this settlement is a huge victory for authors and publishers. The individual payout amounts appear to be quite small ($60 for each author whose book was scanned without authorization.) However, the event has opened the eyes of the publishing industry towards new revenue streams for their hitherto locked-up assets (in the form of out-of-print books.) It's also likely to make them more aggressive when it comes to protecting their copyrights. Most importantly, a number of business opportunities open up for smaller players to capitalize on
the digitized works. As the settlement document mentions, "Rights granted to Google and the Participating Libraries are non-exclusive only, and Rightsholders have every right to authorize, through the Registry or otherwise, any individual or entity, including direct competitors of Google, to use their works in any way, including ways identical to Google’s and the Participating Libraries’ authorized uses." Could this be the dawn of a new age in publishing?

Excerpts from the notification given to authors:

"Plaintiffs view the Settlement as an excellent opportunity to breathe new commercial life into potentially tens of millions of out-of-print Books, and to provide an innovative marketing tool for authors and publishers of in-print Books."

"The Settlement benefits to the class include:

63% of the revenues earned from Google’s sale of subscriptions to an electronic books database, sale of online access to books, advertising revenues, and other commercial uses.
US $34.5 million paid by Google to establish and maintain a Book Rights Registry (“Registry”) to collect revenues from Google anddistribute those revenues to copyright owners.
The right of copyright owners to determine whether and to what extent Google may use their works.
US $45 million paid by Google to copyright owners whose works Google has digitized without permission as of May 5, 2009."

" Under the Settlement, Google is authorized to 1) sell to institutions subscriptions to an electronic Books database, 2) sell online access to individual Books, 3) sell advertising on pages from Books, and 4) make other uses, all as further described under “Access Uses”"

"The Settlement establishes a not-for-profit Book Rights Registry that will
maintain a database of Rightsholders, collect their contact information and information
regarding their requests with respect to uses of Books and Inserts, and identify, locate and
coordinate payments to Rightsholders. To fund the establishment and initial operations of the
Registry, Google has agreed to pay US $34.5 million. After the funding of its initial operations
by Google’s payment, the Attachment I-Notice to Authors And Publishers Outside The United States 12 Registry will be funded by taking an administrative fee as a percentage of revenues
received from Google (estimated to be 10-20%)."

"Google has agreed to pay a minimum of US $45 million to make cash payments
for all of the Books and Inserts that Google will have digitized as of May 5, 2009 (i.e.,
the Opt-Out Deadline) without Rightsholder authorization (“Cash Payment”).Google
will make a Cash Payment of at least US $60 per Principal Work, US $15 per Entire
Insert, and US $5 per Partial Insert for which at least one Rightsholder has registered a
valid claim by January 5, 2010. Only one Cash Payment will be made for the same
content that Google digitized, regardless of the number of Books or Inserts containing the
same content that Google will have digitized. For example, only one Cash Payment will
be made for the hard cover and soft cover editions of a Book, even if Google digitized
both of them separately, and only one Cash Payment will be made for several
digitizations of the same Book or for content that is contained, as Inserts, in multiple
Books."

"At the Rightsholder’s request, Google will provide a hosted version of the Rightsholder’s Book(s) for use on the Rightsholder’s website."

"Preview Use: In response to a user’s search, Google may allow the user to view up to 20% of a Book (no more than five adjacent pages) before making a purchase decision, but not to copy/paste, annotate or print any pages from the Book (“Standard Preview”)."

"For Books of fiction, Google will block the last 5% of the Book (or a minimum of the final fifteen pages of the Book). Also, for Books of fiction, Google may display up to 5% or fifteen pages
(whichever is less) adjacent to where a user lands on a given page. Rightsholders may also select another preview option, in which the pages available for preview are fixed (up to 10% of the pages of the Book, as chosen by Google and, if a mechanism to do so is developed, chosen by the Rightsholder) (“Fixed Preview”)."

"Rightsholders are also expected to receive advertising revenues from advertisements placed on
Preview Use pages for a Book."

Book Widgets from Macmillan

2008-09-23T19:09:00.000-07:00

Tor Books has a Facebook page where you can download book widgets from your favorite author and put them up on your blog or social networking page. Here's a widget for one of my personal favorite's - the Wheel of Time series from Robert Jordan.

Gary Vaynerchuk's Talk on Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Lan

2008-09-23T04:16:00.000-07:00

This guy is on fire during his talk at the Web 2.0 Expo!

Firefox Vs. Chrome

2008-09-19T00:59:00.001-07:00

Sometime ago, I eagerly downloaded Chrome and loved it. It's fast. It remembers the last few sites that you visited. And it does not crash the whole browser and affects only a tab. Best of all, you can search from within the address bar.

However, I've decided to switch back to Firefox for three specific reasons:

1. GUtil - This is a Firefox add-on from Google that sits on your tool bar and gives you shortcuts to all of Google applications like Blogger, Calendar etc.

2. Alexa - This is an add-on from Alexa that quickly gives you the rank of any website that you are visiting.

3. Yahoo Mail Address Book - This is probably the most important ... The address book on Yahoo mail does not load when you load an email page on Google Chrome. So you need to individually pick a name by bringing up the address book. This probably has to do with some AJAX feature from Yahoo that is not running properly on Google.

I hope the Chrome folks and third-party developers will fix these and other issues and make Chrome into the web-operating system that it deserves to become.

A Quick Review of Freeload Press

2008-09-18T06:27:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, a company called Freeload Press came up with the idea of shaking up the $4 Billion Textbook market by offering free textbooks. The site has been reviewed in this 2006 article in the New York Times.

Here are a few of my observations:

Textbook publishers see Freeload Press as a protestor and trouble-maker who threatens their established business models. Freeload Press needs to refine their business model and communication to allay the concerns of textbook publishers. There is no information on the site that deals with the most important question that publishers ask ("how much money can we make from this thing?") Textbook publishers have their own problems to contend with mainly from the used books market. According to the above article in the New York times, "J. Bruce Hildebrand, executive director for higher education at the Association of American Publishers, said publishers report that sales of a new textbook edition evaporate almost completely after one year, when used copies flood the market." Perhaps the opportunity lies in solving this problem?

Also, the fun factor is missing on the site. There are no opportunities for communicating with authors or with other students on the site. There are no social aspects. The site and concept feels like it was designed by a group of social workers who believe that there are doing students a favor by bringing them free textbooks. While this may actually be the case, giving students a plain-vanilla experience is like rubbing salt on their wounds.

And the site name needs to be changed (the current one seems to suggest that a bunch of beer-guzzling, party-animals are going to eat the lunch of textbook publishers!) Perhaps they need to contact the Name Inspector for a better name?

"Falling prices" and "free" are very powerful ideas that are sweeping the modern economic landscape. It's a matter of time before this happens. Freeload Press has made a bold attempt in this direction. I do hope that they are able to turn around their venture and pave the way for such a business model in the future.

Alexander Smith and Telegraph's Online Novel

2008-09-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

Alexander McCall Smith and the Telegraph are trying a new experiment where he writes a new chapter each week and readers can give in their suggestions as the story evolves. You can also listen to the audio version of the book.

The publishing industry may be changing must faster than anybody believes!

Plastic Logic's E-Ink Device Heralds Future of Publishing

2008-09-14T07:11:00.000-07:00

A company called Plastic Logic has demonstrated a device that uses E-Ink technology (like Kindle or Sony Reader) but which produces more than twice the screen size at about the same weight as the devices from Sony and Amazon.

What most people seem to be missing is that it's only a matter of time before laptop manufacturers like Dell, HP and Sony get into the game with laptops that have E-Ink technology. Thus, I don't see a long-term future for the Kindle reader or the Sony Reader (they may land up becoming short-term hit products.) But I do see them morphing into a full-blown portable computer with large screen size and reading that's easy on the eyes.

Indeed, it's an exciting time to be in the publishing business!

A Review of Google Books (Formerly Google Print)

2008-09-09T03:11:00.001-07:00

According to LibraryJournal.com, Google Books is expected to have 80 to 100 million books in a few years. According to this article by Jonathan Band , "Under the Partner Program, a publisher controlling the rights in a book can authorize Google to scan the full text of the book into Google's search database. In response to a user query, the user receives bibliographic information concerning the book as well as a link to relevant text. By clicking on the link, the user can see the full page containing the search term, as well as a few pages before and after that page. Links would enable the user to purchase the book from booksellers or the publisher directly, or visit the publisher's website. Additionally, the publisher would share in contextual advertising revenue if the publisher has agreed for ads to be shown on their book pages." The reading of out-of-copyright books is similar to Amazon's book preview feature.

From a review of the service and from the video below it becomes clear that the service is best suited for students doing research and journalists.

The basic goal of the service is to scan books, digitize them and make them searchable. However, Google appears to have approached the project on the wrong foot by scanning books that are not only out of copyright but also within copyright. This has raised the hackles of authors and publishers who have voiced strong concerns and followed up with legal action. While librarians hail the initiative for its potential to offer unprecedented access to what may become the largest online corpus of human knowledge,[29][30] the publishing industry and writers' groups have criticized the project's inclusion of snippets of copyrighted works as infringement. In response to criticism from groups such as the American Association of Publishers and the Authors Guild (which represents about 8,000 authors), Google announced an opt-out policy in August 2005. If a copyright owner provided it with a list of its titles that it did not want Google to scan at libraries, Google would respect that request, even if the books were in the collection of one of the participating libraries. However, this has not satiated the publishers and authors. According to Pat Schroeder, AAP President, Google's opt-out procedure "shifts the responsibility for preventing infringement to the copyright owner rather than the user, turning every principle of copyright law on its ear." Google has been arguing that it only shows snippets to searchers at the time of search. Copyright owners however argue that snippets is not a clear term and that Google can begin showing more lines from a book in the future. Additionally, there are fears that somebody may hack into Google's servers and leak all of the available books in the library.

This is probably why others like Microsoft have abandoned their competing projects (such as Microsoft Live Book Search.)

With the Google Publishing Partner program, publishers can upload their books to the service. When relevant to a user's keyword search, up to three results from the Google Book Search index are displayed above search results in the Google Web Search service (google.com). And Google has delivered an API (application programming interface) that allows local library catalogs to link into specific Google Books.

As a publisher, if you enter the wrong country when you sign-up you cannot change your country later. Google shares ad-revenue with book publishers (although as all other things with Google, the ratio of sharing is a secret.) By default, 20% of each book that you upload will be accessible to users (and you can increase this if you like.)

Overall, this is a nice useful service although I would question the ethics of Google digitizing books without the permission of copyright owners. There is a difference between doing the right thing and doing the legal thing. And in this case, Google appears to only have done the legal thing and not the right thing.

7 Steps To Publishing Your Book Through a Well-Known Publisher

2008-09-01T21:29:00.000-07:00

Update on September 9, 2008:

Before you read my post on the 7 Steps to Publishing Your Own Book, it will be very useful to read through a comment left by a highly supportive reader of my blog - Thad McIlroy. I have copy-pasted Thad's message to the main body of this post because of the strong points that Thad makes. You can then read through my post.

Thad's comment made to my original post:

"Hi Vikram,

I think that's a good general outline with a few exceptions. By starting with "Submit Proposal" (which I would re-phrase as "Write proposal", as you can't submit it till step 2, "Find an agent"), you assume that the writer was not sufficiently committed to his/her work to actually write the book before trying to get it published. It's true in some cases that a writer may not wish to commit the time to writing a book without a commitment to its publication, but I think many authors have sufficient passion that the book is written first, from their conviction that it will be worthwhile to publish that the writing may well be the first step.

Further to that, the notion that "You will then take a couple of months to put together the first draft of your book," seems fanciful to me. Not many books can be drafted in two months; many authors take years, and a publisher is unlikely to want to wait years for a manuscript unless of course the author is extremely well-established.

But the most important statement I wanted to comment on is "The publisher will then use it's distribution infrastructure to make your book available in all online and physical stores (in fact, this is one of the major benefits of going through a major publisher, the other one being the credibility that you get.)"

I would argue that the big change happening in book publishing is that for the average author, distribution has recently become the only advantage of going through a major publisher, and even that advantage is evaporating. The success of self-publishing entities such as lulu.com is eroding the hegemony previously held by the major publishers. As I point out in my article on book publishing (http://www.thefutureofpublishing.com/industries/reference/the_future_of_book_publishing.html), quoting a press release from lulu, "Lulu.com is the premier marketplace for new digital content on the Internet, with more than 100,000 recently published titles, and more than 2500 new titles added each week, created by people in 80 different countries."

Many of its authors have become bestselling authors, without the benefit of the imprimatur of a well-known commercial publisher.

The Web, of course is what makes the change possible. An author doesn't need a publisher's half-hearted PR folks to promote his or her work -- they can do it themselves via the Web. You recently quoted my blog entry on podiobooks (http://www.thefutureofpublishing.com/blog/2008/08/first_audiobooks_now_podiobook.php) which points out that this format is yet another way to harness the forces of electronic media to promote your book.

It is probably true that most "bricks and mortar" booksellers still purchase mainly from established publishers. But they represent an ever-declining percentage of book sales, and even self-published authors can often get their books into the big chains (and certainly listed with online booksellers).

It's also probably true that the major reviewers of books still mostly ignore self-published books, because of an obsolete bias, but as newspapers reduce their money-losing book review sections, the influence of book reviewers is ever-declining. It has long been established that strong "word-of-mouth" recommendations are a far more powerful source than newspaper reviews."

My Original Post:

I recently had the chance to speak to a published business book author - Chetan Dhruve. He walked me through the steps in the book publishing process which are outlined below. This is useful to you if you are going down the path of finding a brand name publisher to publish your book. If you are extremely famous or if you decide to self-publish your book, you can bypass most of the steps below.

Step 1 - Submit Proposal
The proposal document is like a business plan for your book. It will have an overview of your book concept along with a detailed market analysis outlining various market segments (fiction, non-fiction etc.) and defining which niche your book occupies. It will also cover other factors such as target market, style of writing, book price etc. Along with the proposal, you will most likely submit the first chapter of your book.

Step 2 - Find an Agent
The major book publishing houses do not encourage you to contact them directly with your manuscripts. The best route is to engage an agent who will work his contacts in publishing firms to sign you a book publishing deal. The agent charges about 15% of your royalties as his / her commission. Your royalties, will be between 8 and 15%.

Step 3 - Land a Publisher and Enter Into Contract
The agent will sell you and your project to publishers. Buying editors in publishing firms will review your proposal and if they believe that there is an opportunity, they will sign you on. They will typically agree to pay you a small advance. The timing and quantity of this advance are usually negotiable and are dependent upon the prospects of the book. The publisher will provide only a few copies of your book to you for free and you can buy the rest of the books that you need at a 40% discount.

Step 4 - Send in First Draft of Book
You will then take a couple of months to put together the first draft of your book and send it in to the publisher. The editor will suggest improvements to the book which you will incorporate. Once the first draft is ready, a portion of your advance is released to you.

Step 5 - Send in Final Draft for Proof Reading
The publishing firm will then send your book to an outsourced proof-reading firm who will check your book for grammatical correctness and for small issues such as spelling errors etc.

Step 6 - Book is Published
Once the cover art is decided, and a foreword and endorsements for the book have been obtained, the book is ready to be published with an ISBN number.

Step 7 - Book Marketing and Distribution
The publisher will then use it's distribution infrastructure to make your book available in all online and physical stores (in fact, this is one of the major benefits of going through a major publisher, the other one being the credibility that you get.) Next, you will work with the publisher's in-house PR agent to create some buzz around your book. This will include appearing in radio and television shows and writing guest pieces in target magazines and publications. The one thing to watch out for here is that the PR firm retained by the publishing firm will provide only minimal support for the promotion of the book (and that too only during the initial weeks of launch.) The publishing firm is usually focused on promoting their big-name authors for whom they've paid large advances since these books are higher risk and higher reward. So, you're pretty much on your own in promoting the book after the initial push.

If you study the process, you may feel that the author is getting a rather raw-deal. But on the other hand, it is this rigorous and time-tested process that gives rise to high-quality books.

Audiobook Market Touching a Billion Dollars

2008-09-01T20:42:00.000-07:00

According to a report by the Audio Publisher's Association, "This year’s survey showed a 6 percent increase over 2005 with audiobook sales now estimated at $923 million."

Other interesting facts are:
- The most popular method of obtaining audiobooks, is via CD (with 77% of respondents)
- Only 14% of the respondents mentioned downloads as a preferred way of obtaining audiobooks

Thad McIlroy has referred to this report in his recent post on Podiobooks. I've personally, been a long time subscriber of Audible and have occassionally used Podiobooks. So this news makes me feel good :)

A Review of Mobipocket

2008-08-31T18:47:00.000-07:00

Mobipocket was a French developer of ebook readers for mobile devices that was acquired by Amazon.com in 2005. This blog is a quick review of the Mobipocket experience. Mobipocket works on a variety of devices such as the Blackberry and dedicated ePaper devices such as the iLiad and the Kindle. Surprisingly, there is no mention of support for iPhone. In fact the forums are full of user requests for iPhone support from Mobipocket.

The installation of the software on my PC was straight-forward. The catalog of books on the site is nice with thousands of ebooks.

The reading experience is also very easy using the Mobipocket reader. The files (with extension of .prc) opens within the Mobipocket reader. Features to facilitate reading include:
1. Hyper-linked Table of Contents
2. Annotations
3. Full Screen View
4. The Ability to Transfer Content to Other Devices
5. Zoom Feature
6. Several Text Options Such as Line Spacing, Font Size, Color etc.
7. Different Types of Display (Full Page, 2-Page, Autoscroll etc.)

You can also access the eBook store from within the Mobipocket reader (like iTunes.)

The Case for Online Professional Content

2008-08-26T20:49:00.000-07:00

Quick! answer this:
'What's the best website to gain instant access to high-quality professional content on a wide variety of subjects?'

Expert Village? The site is focused on short form video content without enough depth.
Zipidee? It shows some promise but is still short of titles and community features.
Wikipedia? It's an encyclopedia and lacks depth.

So here's my point. There's an opportunity for an online site that offers high-quality professional content created by real professionals. So what's my definition of a real professional? Somebody who does something for a living. So a video created by an Aikido master on Aikido is professional content. Or a work of fiction created by a professional writer or author. A video of a smiling pug on YouTube, while entertaining is not professional content. And since I've been meeting some interesting management-consultants over the last few days, I've been inspired to create a management-consultant type matrix diagram which I shall call "The Vikram Matrix" :) It's given below.

My research shows me that there is not a market leading site that allows high-quality professionals to distribute and monetize content. I hope that we're able to remedy this soon.

Blogs on Publishing and New Media

2008-08-11T23:40:00.000-07:00

The following is a list of blogs concerning the publishing and new media industries. I'll keep adding as I find more:

- Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog
- Tools of Change for Publishing
- Steven Poole's Blog
- Mobile Read
- The Future of Publishing
- Publishing 2.0 by Scott Karp
- Paid Content