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Category publishing:

People seem to have very strong feelings about digital media. It seems every day I read articles embracing digital media and articles dismissing it. And even within the differing camps there is discord—Kindle vs. iPad vs. whatever the e-readers from Sony and Barnes & Noble are called. Putting aside the nuts and bolts of publishing costs, I just don’t understand what the big deal is. If you want to read books on paper, then read books on paper. If you want to read ebooks, go right ahead. Can’t we all just get along?

One thing on which we can probably all agree is that the traditional publishing model is outdated and needs to be modernized. So, whichever tribe you belong to, you might find some humor in this tongue-in-cheek article from The Atlantic.

I remember back when Giant Robot Magazine first started up. It was some 15 years ago and launched by two young UCLA graduates. The magazine focuses on Asian and Asian-American popular culture, and it introduced me to a brave new world of artists, designers, musicians, movies, trends, food, and more. The magazine has spawned several Giant Robot stores/galleries, as well as a restaurant, gr/eats, and it has launched the careers and boosted the visibility of a number of artists and musicians, including Japanese artists Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara.

I’m always interested to see what Ooligan Press, the student-run publishing house of Portland State University’s master’s in publishing program, is up to. One of its current projects is the launch of Classroom Publishing: A Practical Guide for Teachers. Though the book will not be available in bookstores until March 2010, the marketing for it has been underway for quite some time. This is a good lesson for us here at Thomas Riggs & Company, as it teaches us it’s never too early to start publicizing a book.

A while back I mentioned the popularity of cell phone novels in Japan, the land of the tiny and compact. Well, now the rage seems to be the Twitter novel. It’s probably not really possible to write an entire novel in 140 characters, even if they do happen to be information-packed Chinese characters, but it is certainly an interesting concept, and bully for the Japanese for trying! It is likely that most Twitter novelists serialize their novels.

Steve Almond, author of Candyfreak and My Life in Heavy Metal, among others, has taken publishing matters into his own hands. Though Almond is still a hot commodity (his Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life will be availble April 13, 2010), he found that one of his book ideas was not generating much interest with publishers. His idea was a book that could be flipped over and read in two directions. One side would offer short stories, and the other side would contain essays about writing. The title? This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey.

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