Eoin's Stuff

Eoin Purcell

Irish Blog Awards
Very surprised and very pleased to have been nominated and to have made the Leaked Long List for the Irish Blog Awards* in the Specialist Category!

Smile on my face today,
Eoin

*Speaking of which the process of authoritative leaks of many of the long lists has been a very clever ruse for building attention. I’m impressed.

Eoin Purcell

I’m quite pleased with how this came out in the end.

The Irish blook

29.01.08

Blogging has been brewing up a media storm in the Irish media. Two weeks ago, well known commentator, John Waters, attacked the entire blogosphere on Newstalk, one of Ireland’s talk radio stations.

Following the lead of Andrew Keen in his book The Cult of the Amateur, John Waters said that blogs were “stupid”, “entirely cynical”, “entirely negative” and equivalent to the “wall of a toilet”. He…

Eoin Purcell

James Bridle always has interesting stuff to say and today’s point is as well made as ever.
Here

When we are on the topic it would be a shame not to mention today’s excellent post about e-book pricing on The Digitalist.
Here

Oh and on the blogger and books Damien Mulley has an interview with controversial blogger Twenty Major (the first Irish Blogger with a book deal if not the first to be released).
Here

And finally Laurence Orbach [CEO of Quarto) has a nicely…

Eoin Purcell

So I spilled the cash for The Friday Project’s tasty looking special edition of The Equivoque Principle and boy does it look sweet. I cobbled together a few pictures into a little video:

Sorry about the naff music, I’m still learning with these slideshows and what not!
Next time I’ll get it right!

I’ll have to hold off reading it for a bit. It is not just the huge TBR Pile:

But also as Penguin have kindly reminded me that I was sent The Waves …

Eoin Purcell

Mike Shatzkin* is clever
If you doubt that, read some of this article [hat tip: Joe Wikert’s Kindleville]. There are so many great ideas there that I almost don’t know where to start.

But I have to because it is so interesting
And two do stand out as being very interesting because one is a trend that seems to be emerging in Ireland and the other is relevant to news heard just a few days ago:

4. Publishers will start acquiring specialized Web sites to get content for…

Walmart hits magazine publishers with a bit of a whammy.
Here

Nice post from Lessig on ideas and the future.
Here

Blurb seems to be rocking the self publishing boat pretty impressively.
Here

How cool are Flickr and the Library of Congress? I wish our own museums and libraries had such an approach.
Here

I’m testing out how well Google Docs works for posting to Wordpress. So if this is a little dodgy pray allow some leeway!
Eoin

Eoin Purcell The video is relevant but more on that below:

I don’t know how I missed this but The Editor’s Corner at The Book Depository has a wonderful interview with one of my favourite History writer: Ian Mortimer. Pick of the words (though I’d like to write more later on some of the great lines to do with keeping non-fiction relevant for 40 years):

How could I not grow to like a man who was trilingual, literate, who read history, was the greatest jousting champion the…

Eoin Purcell

Some great words from a site the provides some of the best resources out there on the web for the current US Presidential scramble, Electoral-Vote.com:

The Republican side is tomorrow and too close to call. However, if Fred Thompson comes in 4th, it’s curtains for Fred. He’ll probably drop out immediately, saying some variant of “I didn’t really want the job anyway.” It’s not sour grapes. He never acted like somebody who wanted the job. Romney has poured tens of millions…

Eoin Purcell

From Consciousness to publishers survival
Yesterday I wrote about consciousness and how the “new” consciousness we see rising is an illusion in my view. It was all kicked off by this article and so it makes sense to go back to the elements in there that I really agree with . For instance:

I foresee a time coming soon when the main edition of most books will be the download, and bookshops will then be the equivalent of vinyl record shops. New and exciting writing, the…

Eoin Purcell

Homework
Emma over at Snowblog set some homework. She asked people to read this piece by Mark Booth over at The Independent online and to discuss it. I’ve much to say on it but for today I’d like to hit on CONSCIOUSNESS. To give you a good idea of what it’s about here’s a quote:

The great new literary form that will replace the novel will, I believe, arise on the net and will take on its wild frontier spirit, its intellectual risk-taking, its two fingers at academic…

Eoin Purcell

1Book a rival to the Espresso Book Machine [hat tip to The BA Blog]
Here

Riverdeep makes CEO Barry O’Callaghan a Billionaire (who was complaining about the pay in publishing?)
Here

JA Konrath offers some smart words for the writer building his web presence.
Here

Eoin Purcell And here it is

I was trying to figure out how to make this discussion relevant, having already mentioned here that i would kick it off. The reason I felt I should touch on it was that way back in 2006 I had read this article in the Wall Street Journal. The bulk of the article highlights the practice of paying huge advance to debut authors. The case appearing to be that it’s a hiding to nothing:

The following week, the book dropped to No. 30 on the New York Times list. Any…

Eoin Purcell An Interview with Hol Art Books publisher, Greg Albers

A little while ago, I spotted Hol Art Books and I was intrigued. The site has been expanded and upgraded and is even more intriguing. So intrigued I thought I’d send Greg Albers (See the bio below culled from his site here), the Publisher an e-mail with some questions by e-mail and see what came of it. The Q&A below is what came of it.

Greg Albers is the founder, and currently sole…

Eoin Purcell Overambitious

So I foolishly announced that I would lay out a plan for blogging in 2008 in response to Bloglily’s tag. Thinking it over it sure offers a challenge. Such a big challenge and the world being so terribly random and unpredictable* that I think I made a foolish promise. So I need to do something else. If I cannot predict the blogging year, I can at least offer some thoughts on what I see playing a role in my year ahead and about which I will probably be writing…

Eoin Purcell

In which Eoin reveals his desperate fantasy addiction

1) So when I hear that Steph Swainston was writing two new books set in the world of the Castle I was really excited. The first one seems to have changed title from Carniss Keep to Above The Snowline but is due in late November 2008.

2) If you haven’t started reading Steven Erikson yet, start now. This is detailed, realistic and epic yet magical and rooted in fantasy in way that makes Jordan look like an amateur (I…

Great speech too. Will it swing New Hamphshire. I suspect this story indicates that age might influence that decision.

Eoin Purcell Rakes of predictions about the publishing trade this week

PersonaNonData:

First, I expect more change driven by M & A activity in 2008. Second, as more companies bound by traditional publishing models migrate online and join those already there, the application of technology in our industry will accelerate. Third, we will see a ‘squeezing’ of the value-chain (from author to publisher to consumer) driven by publishers looking to build community models around content and…

Author beta tests a book on Amazon:
Story Here, link Here

Reporting On is Ryan Sholin’s project. I like the sound of it.
Here

Scott Karp tries to lay out a route map for changing your old media firm into a new media one, interesting.
Here

LibraryThing finishes adding Thomas Jeffersons library.
Blog post Here and library Here

Damn its cold
Eoin