The Pew Research Center has catalogued how many web pages we may look at in a given day, week or month, but for my own sanity I have decided to not keep a count. Instead, I typically save the links I like to my Instapaper account, where I periodically look back and re-read many of them.
July was a pretty good month for fun, relevant and interesting links, but it wasn’t too hard to pick five to highlight for you. In no particular order, I recommend:
What publishers and writers can do about piracy right now … and in the future
Mike Boyle offers five straightforward suggestions to fight piracy where it happens. He calls on publishers to offer PDFs for people who want PDFs; up their SEO skills so that the first returned result is a legitimate link; be available everywhere there is demand; exploit opportunities to reach markets that are overserved by existing options; and bundle things like community tools with texts. Check.
ONIX 3.0 – A Gnome’s Perspective on Digital Values for the Faint of Heart
To communicate what’s new (and important) in the ONIX 3.0 standard, Booknet Canada’s Tom Richardson tells the story through the eyes of Biblio, the metadata gnome. Sooner or later, the folks who want to survive in publishing will get their hands dirty with metadata details. I vote sooner, as Amazon is already a few steps ahead here.
This Week: Will Publishing Change The Tone?
Do you support Amazon or Hachette? Independent or traditionally published authors? Let’s hope you’re still thinking about it. Trying to cross the chasm, Porter Anderson uses a rich recent history of reasoned comments as he picks apart the ongoing debate about who to blame. The answer is not “the other guy”. Ask Pogo.
Saugerties collective prepares for a world without money, cheap gas
A small and growing band gathers in Saugerties, NY to develop the skills they think they’ll need to survive a planetwide economic collapse. They want to find ways to help others connect to both their ideas and their bounty. One of them turns out to be an O’Leary. Suddenly these publishing set-to’s seem kind of silly.
I regret to inform you that my wedding to Captain von Trapp has been cancelled
No longer scheduled to wed the father figure in “The Sound of Music”, Baroness Elsa Shraeder reflects on the recent turn of events:
I must confess to being rather blindsided by the end of our relationship. It seems Captain Von Trapp and I misunderstood each other. I assumed he was looking for a wife of taste and sophistication, who was a dead ringer for Tippi Hedren; instead he wanted to marry a curtain-wearing religious fanatic who shouts every word she says.
Any similarity to the situation described in Porter Anderson’s Thought Catalog piece is purely coincidental.
