TED curator Chris Anderson (pictured, via) has inked a deal with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for Talk This Way! The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking.
Senior executive editor Rick Wolff handled this acquisition. This project will be the first in Wolff’s new line of business books.
Anderson gave this statement in the press release: “Many people have something important to say, but are terrified by public speaking. Yet the skills to deliver a compelling talk are teachable. Over the last 10 years, my team and I have had access to the preparation process of many of the world’s best speakers. It’s thrilling to have this opportunity to share what we’ve learned with a broader public, and I look forward to working with Rick and his colleagues at HMH.”
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Beginning in April, Round Table Companies will offer comic book adaptations of best-selling nonfiction books.
Here’s more from the press release: “In partnership with Smarter Comics, Round Table Companies will release six comic books on April 16, 2011 in bookstores throughout the U.S. and Indigo bookstores in Canada, as well as in Hudson News stores on May 1, 2011. Additionally, readers can download a digital version of the books for free, online or on the SmarterComics Android applications from April 1 to July 1, 2011.”
The titles up for adaptation include The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, Overachievement by Dr. John Eliot, How to Master the Art of Selling by Tom Hopkins, Mi Barrio by Robert Renteria, Shut Up, Stop Whining & Get a Life by Larry Winget, and The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Today's Ypulse Sponsored post is from Kiel Fletcher (pictured below) the events marketing manager at Fuse, anchor sponsor for this year's Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup. This post is part of that sponsorship.
To learn more about Fuse Marketing and... Read the rest of this post
Kevin Kelly, who a couple of years ago wrote this provocative article on the future of books, is at it again, this time asking how it is possible to charge for something in a digital world where the cost of duplication and redistribution is almost exactly zero. While books are not the focus of his latest blog post, he could be talking about the publishing industry when he says 'Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies
promiscuously and constantly.'
The problem for content producers and owners, as he describes it, is that 'Once anything that can be copied [eg ebooks] is brought into contact with [the] internet,
it will be copied, and those copies never leave. Even a dog knows you
can't erase something once it's flowed on the internet.' For book publishers, struggling with
issues of ebook pricing, or looking askance at the record business where copy protection is on the way out and the price of recorded music slides inexorably towards free, working out how to create value and encourage people to pay for digital products is becoming an important issue.
But happily Kelly has a possible balm;
'When copies are free, you need to sell things which cannot be copied.'
He suggests 8 'values', including authority, personalization and immediacy which increase value for the user and potentially could encourage payment for a something which might otherwise have a tangible value close to zero. I'm not going to copy his entire article here (though I could simply reproduce a digital copy at no cost to myself at all) - but I do suggest checking it out, it is a most worthwhile read. Perhaps most usefully (and something that really should be obvious) is his suggestion that business models are considered from the point of view not of the content creator, owner or distributor, but from the users perspective; What, he asks, can encourage us to pay for something we can get for free?
Meanwhile, the O'Reilly publishing conference is today starting in New York. At last years' conference Chris Anderson scandalized attending publishers when he said that he was trying to get his new book, Free, priced as close to, er, free, as possible since for him books were an advertisement for his speaking and consultancy business. As every single publisher said, 'that's great for him, but what about us?'. Kevin Kelly, thankfully, provides ample food for thought.
Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher
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Rory has more information at Library Juice and you can read this earlier post concerning the controversy regarding Elsevier’s involvement in “organizing weapons trade shows attended by representatives of the world’s militaries.” They got pressured, people sent a petition. They backed down. I think this is sort of good news.
armstrade,
elevier,
petition,
reedelevier,
war,
weapons
“Sort of good news”…. Would you explain the implied qualification there? What makes it not simply good news?
I would think the qualification would be based upon these factors: (1) They were in this racket to begin with; (2) When they backed down, it was not from/with any moral realizations, but simply as a business decision; (3) They defended their actions in their press release, with no apologies.
Taking all three of these factors together, if they ever work out a cost benefit analysis which shows the profits they can make by getting back into this racket would outway the financial negatives of it, they would start doing it again in a heartbeat–don’t think otherwise.
“sort of” because of the inevitable backlash that these types of things engender and what Matthew said. I didn’t feel like they were making a particularly strong statement about what their previous actions were, even though I’m pleased with their decision.