03/30/2012 @ 07:00PM
Apple makes some pretty cool products. If you’ve spent any time stuck in the Microsoft Office world, Apple’s office products—Keynote, Pages, and Numbers—are a revelation. The best part is you can open MS Office files with Apple’s products, and save them into Apple’s format, or many others.
01/27/2012 @ 07:00PM
DRM, “social DRM,” and the madness of publishers
Talking with the lower echelon employees of publishing reminds me of a description I once read about the mutual embarrassment of Western and Soviet biologists when they talked about genetics. Soviet-era scientists were required, on pain of imprisonment, to endorse Lysenkoism, a discredited theory of inheritance favored by Stalin for ideological reasons.
12/02/2011 @ 07:00PM
December 10 is Human Rights Day, as designated by the U.N. General Assembly and observed all over the world. In honor of the occasion, I want to address the human rights implications associated with something central to all of us in the publishing industry: copyright policy.
10/07/2011 @ 07:00PM
It's been nine months since the launch of With a Little Help, and, as with most trade books, the action has slowed down. All in all, the book has earned me $2,231.23 over the summer and cost me $167.88 in costs.
07/01/2011 @ 12:00AM
Readers just don't know in advance what's worth paying for. Is the book by an author you've heard of? An author you've read? An author you've seen reviewed?
04/04/2011 @ 12:00AM
When I first conceived of this project, I found myself idly coming up with great new wrinkles on my plan every day. By the time the project was live and the book was for sale, my idle moments had become brutal self-criticism sessions in which I lambasted myself for making stupid mistakes. But , none of my mistakes were terminal.
02/14/2011 @ 12:00AM
At the time of my last column, I was in a three-quarters panic about the book: negotiations with Lulu and my agent had bogged down in miscommunication; Christmas was fast approaching; and I was about to go in for hip surgery. So, what happened? Literally a day after writing that column, I simply launched the book.
12/20/2010 @ 12:00AM
With a Little Help
I write these words on a Friday having just recently finished and sent off my next YA novel, Pirate Cinema, to all the agents, editors, friends, first readers, and fact-checkers who've been awaiting it. I believe it is a good novel. In fact, I believe it is my best novel to date.
10/18/2010 @ 12:00AM
I'm back from my Australian, German, and Dutch tours, and though I've since given three talks, worked on a novel, and delivered two columns in a week, mostly what I've been noodling with is the With a Little Help launch.
09/13/2010 @ 12:00AM
It's here at last—just before I left for my August Internet-free holiday, I managed to produce the first prototype of the limited hardcover edition of With a Little Help.
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Our final piece in Publishers Weekly's Focus on Audio 2012 is a Q&A with comedian, actor, director, and writer Michael Showalter -- narrator of the audio edition of his memoir Mr. Funny Pants and...
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