February 2008
21 posts
Penguin go innovating again →
Interesting
Not happy with the biggest and bravest attempt at storytelling experiments, A Million Penguins (Discussed on this blog here & here), Penguin are going to take another crack at it with a new site and a new project. I signed up for the project here:Pengrin
Not sure what it means, but Jeremy Ettinghausen, Penguin’s Digital Publisher has some words on it here:
All of which is a...
Thank you The Dubliner →
Eoin Purcell
I posted recently about The Dubliner’s post about blogs and the media: here
I commented on the blog and thought little about it after until I got an e-mail from the Editor to say they had printed some of the responses as letter and had chosen mine as the letter of the bunch. Apparently that means I get a free meal in Rolys. SWEET!
Pleased and looking forward, Eoin
...
The 19th Cork French Film Festival →
Cork French Film Festival
I should have mentioned this before now and several people beat me too it but it looks like a good festival this year. They have a blog here and the program is here.
My favourite upcoming Documentary is this one but sadly I’ll not be able to attend! Sugar.
The Simple Mechanics: Comments on the caucus blog... →
Eoin Purcell
Sometimes its the simple things that cause the most trouble
The Caucus Blog is one of the best innovations I have come across in the US Election* (And by picking it I don’t mean to diss any of the dozens of other Main Stream/Net Native and Personal Election blogs out there). The New York Times has accomplished a lot with this blog, posting just enough to keep interest alive (look...
Links of Interest (At Least to Me) 18/02/2008 →
Eoin Purcell
As per usual Kassia gets it right where other just try (I include myself in the others category) Here
Why this is news to anyone I really, really do not know: Discounting Can Be Detrimental! Here
John Scalzi (New Favourite Author - I’ve read the Old Man’s War trilogy in less than a week taking out the delivery times) has a rant of epic and amusing proportions about the SFWA...
Too many possible meanings (not all of them rude!) →
Won’t someone please think of the children
And stop using words like emissions?
For the record the story is here and the goal is noble!
Such as it is, Eoin
[Hat Tip to a certain industry exec who showed the way!]
I’ve got books, anyone want them? →
Eoin Purcell
It pays to work for a publisher
in what can be described as a moderately innovative trial I have been given some books to disperse
3 Copies of The Wordmdigger’s Daughter by John Farrell
Molly and her husband Frank work on a large country estate in the 1920s. Hardship has already claimed the lives of three of their four children. Their remaining child, twelve-year-old Angel, is...
Guest Blogger: Richard Charkin →
Eoin Purcell
They Can’t Eat You*
One thing I have learned since I started blogging is that asking can result in only two answers; Yes or No. The rest is variation on a theme.
I first learned this when I cheekily asked to meet Richard Charkin, then CEO at Macmillan, for a meeting at a point when I needed advice and direction. he was very active in the blog world, being at the time the only CEO...
Tools of Change - times they are . . . confused?? →
Eoin Purcell
I’m an ordinary man
And in many ways I think I represent the crux of the problem the publishing industry faces. I’m an atypical book buyer (I buy many, perhaps too many books) and I also consumer digital content voraciously.
Books, books, good for the heart
I love books. By that I mean printed, bound, paper books. I like hardbacks of old books. Ones that smell musty and have...
Blogs and Journals →
Eoin Purcell
What’s the line: Brevity is Clarity?
Whatever it is, The Girl Who’s Afraid of Foxes has a wonderfully brief and pointed postabout scholarly journals. It promted me to have a look around and see what people were thinking in this field which I think will move that direction very soon anyway purely because it can and still profit.
Obviously places like Peter Suber Open Access blog...
Go on the Strange Maps →
Eoin Purcell
Strange Maps
By a long long way one of the quirkiest and best sites on the web Strange Maps today announed it had reached both a landmark 5,000,000 visits and signed a book deal.
Talk about blog to book in style. The book will be called The Atlas of Strange Maps and I will be buying a copy!
Happy,
Eoin
More about novels on cellphones →
Eoin Purcell
Or as we call them Mobiles
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece on Cellphone novels in Japan in case you missed the recent NY Times piece:
According to industrywide data cited by Japan’s largest cellphone operator NTT DoCoMo Inc., sales from mobile-book and comic-book services are expected to more than double, to more than $200 million from about $90 million last...
More about novels on cellphones →
Eoin Purcell
Or as we call them Mobiles
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece on Cellphone novels in Japan in case you missed the recent NY Times piece:
According to industrywide data cited by Japan’s largest cellphone operator NTT DoCoMo Inc., sales from mobile-book and comic-book services are expected to more than double, to more than $200 million from about $90 million last...
Oh to be a gentleman publisher! →
Eoin Purcell
I often hear references to Gentlemen Publishers
And I wonder what exactly is meant. Is it an implication that companies were badly run by people with little head for business, or that the publishers were male and generally wealthy (either as a product of their labours or independently one way or the other casting doubt on the first question) or perhaps that the culture was more...
Max McGuiness on Irish Online Media →
Eoin Purcell
Great piece (whatever your view) by Max McGuinesson Irish Online media over at The Dubliner Blog:
No matter how much we enjoy the smell and feel of a freshly-printed broadsheet, there is no going back; the internet genie cannot be put back in its bottle. The web has demystified journalism while mystifying editors and publishers, whose panicked response is to spout shallow...
To my genuine surprise →
Eoin Purcell
I have made the Shortlist Best Specialist Blog
And disappointingly I’ll be at the Booksellers Association Conference in Galway rather than there!
Eoin
A great video from upcoming authors →
The Murphy Brothers strike gold I think:
Enjoy. The Book will be out soon. Eoin
Lots of book initiatives today →
Eoin Purcell
Random House selling books by chapter according to the Wall Street Journal: (Gated and unlikely to change)
Random House will post “Made to Stick,” written by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, at www.randomhouse.com/madetostick. Customers will receive a digital link via email enabling them to download the chapter onto their computers. Random House expects that eventually users will be able...
The Friday Project for sale? →
Yup this The Friday Project
If this is true I will not be enormously surprised though a little part of me will certainly feel dissappointed that a really exciting and fresh independent has joined the ranks of so many that slipped in to the thick ranks of imprints within the majors.
That said, Pan Mac have been innovating a far bit themselves recently so the fit between the two would on a...
Lessig Library: This is very cool →
From Exact Editions:
Exact Editions now provides open access to a Lessig mini-library, an account with 3 of Professor Lawrence Lessig’s published books in it.
Go there
Read more here
WOW Eoin
Our Grannies’ Recipes Launches →
Eoin Purcell
Something web-to-print sir?
About eight weeks ago we had a brain wave in work. Why not publish a book of favourite traditional Irish recipes, the recipes that our grandmothers, mothers, fathers and grandfathers cooked for us when we were young (or even when we were older and just home for some spoiling).
The issue then became, how will we collect all those recipes? And with a bit...
