“The old model was you had to go through an agent, then the editor and publisher, then the bookstore to get to fans,” notes Harwood. “Now you can bypass all those gatekeepers and go straight to the fans online.”
Naysayers insist that the problem with self-published books is that they are not subject to the same standards of quality that conventional publishing houses maintain when they weed out less qualified contenders and put manuscripts through a rigorous vetting and editing process.
“A weeding-out process has to happen,” Harwood grants, “but you can let the fans do the weeding instead of the agents and publishers.”
Posted: May 24th, 2010 | Author:dave | Filed under:design, inspiration | Comments Off
“For thirty-six weeks, a sketchbook was sent in random order between four artists: two in Brooklyn, two in Belfast. Every Wednesday, one participant would receive book. The following Monday it was sent out, giving each artist five days to complete a spread in response to the one that preceded it.”
You can view the book here. There is commentary for each page, recorded while the artists were together and drinking, and it might be the best part of the exhibit. (You might have to click the ‘listen’ button a few times to get it to go.)
Accompanying this page (week 14): “My direct response was: fate can go to hell. You can always work through fate. You can work through good luck, you can work through bad luck, you can work through it all.”
Week 16 has a great story about 29,000 rubber ducks floating in the Bering Straits.
You’ve released For the Win using a Creative Commons licence, giving it away for free. Why?
I give away all of my books. [The publisher] Tim O’Reilly once said that the problem for artists isn’t piracy – it’s obscurity. I think that’s true. A lot of people have commented: “You can’t eat page views, so how does being well-known help you earn a living as a writer?” It’s true; however, it’s very hard to monetise fame, but impossible to monetise obscurity. It doesn’t really matter how great your work is; if no one’s ever heard of it, you’ll never make any money from it. That’s not to say that if everyone’s heard of it, you’ll make a fortune, but it is a necessary precursor that your work be well-known to earn you a living. As far as I can tell, these themes apply very widely, across all media.
As a practical matter, we live in the 21st century and anything anybody wants to copy they will be able to copy. If you are building a business model that says that people can only copy things with your permission, your business is going to fail because whether or not you like it, people will be able to copy your product without your permission. The question is: what are you going to do about that? Are you going call them thieves or are you going to find a way to make money from them?
The only people who really think that it’s plausible to reduce copying in the future seem to be the analogue economy, the people who built their business on the idea that copying only happens occasionally and usually involves a giant machine and some lawyers. People who are actually doing digital things have the intuitive knowledge that there’s no way you’re going to stop people from copying and they’ve made peace with it.
Tristan Jehan, a Ph.D. in the hyperinstruments group at MIT’s Media Lab, put together a bit of computer magic that takes existing recorded tracks and makes them swing! It works by taking a beat and stretching the first half and shrinking the rest. The examples are fantastic. Check out this version of Guns and Rose’s ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’:
Posted: May 21st, 2010 | Author:dave | Filed under:good read, music | Comments Off
New York City is installing 60 pianos in public spaces, so that anyone can sit down and play a bit. Similar installations have been done in Birmingham, England; São Paolo, Brazil; and Sydney, Australia.
I love this idea, and wonder why music-rich cities like Austin, Memphis, Los Angeles, and Nashville don’t follow suit.
This is all kinds of awesome. There needs to be a some kind of Gov. agency in charge of awesome, that would do this kind of stuff all over the country.
The project is called “Play Me, I’m Yours”, and is being run by Sing for Hope.
The April 2010 issue of Oprah Magazine features an article by Melinda Wenner (“Imperfect Harmony”) discussing the upsides to some common “bad behaviors” like anger, procrastination, gossip, and…doodling. Wenner charts both the “old thinking” and “new wisdom” of each behavior based on research showing how these qualities may benefit us after all. In the article Bryan Gibson, PhD, a professor of social psychology at Central Michigan University is quoted: “In certain situations, what is typically a detrimental trait can turn out to be a good one.” Here’s the old thinking and new wisdom Wenner shares about doodling:
Old Thinking: “Scribbling circles on a notepad while your company’s chief inspiration officer drones on about synergy means you have trouble focusing.”
New Wisdom: “Doodling can boost your mind’s ability to notice and remember mundane information by nearly 30 percent, according to research from the University of Plymouth. The theory is that the act of drawing makes use of visuospacial processes in the brain that might otherwise be used for daydreaming, thereby preventing your mind from wandering.”
