tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737Thu, 03 Oct 2024 13:33:17 +0000bookspublishingmediaprintingbooks as souvenirsBookbuilders of BostonGooglecontentpress closingsMarshall McLuhanThe New YorkerWeb 2.0advertisingeducationentertainmentglobal villageinformationlibrariesprint on demandself publishingspecial marketsAspen MagazineBooksquareFrank RomanoMargie DanaPrint Buyers InternationalSociety of PrintersStinehour Pressamazon.comephemerafuture of printingglobalizationgraphic artshoughton mifflinmagazinesmarketsmoviesnewspaperspeer reviewreligious publishingriverside presssocial changetelevisionvanity pressThe tools people use to share ideas and tell stories. Creating new tools, and improving them with lessons learned from the book arts.http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)Blogger21125en-ustag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-5346222231069359527Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:50:00 +00002008-11-08T14:54:13.696-05:00booksbooks as souvenirscontentmarketsprintingpublishingI've set up shop on the Tools of Change for Publishing site. My dedicated readers (both of you) can find my latest post here.http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/11/speaking-of-change.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-5464182370950564769Sat, 13 Sep 2008 17:25:00 +00002008-10-24T14:57:18.677-04:00booksbooks as souvenirsephemeraFrank Romanofuture of printingMargie DanaPrint Buyers InternationalprintingSociety of PrintersI went to the Print Buyers International conference in Boston this week. Margie Dana, the show's organizer, is a combination coach and cheerleader for the printing industry, and boy, do we need one.When I wasn't manning the RR Donnelley booth in the library-quiet exhibit hall, I managed to take in a session by Frank Romano on digital print. Frank's lectures are noted for their imaginative use of http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/09/signs-of-printings-future.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-129382330213911930Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:12:00 +00002008-08-11T06:29:54.055-04:00bookscontentmediapublishingself publishingLast month on Good Experience, Bit Literacy author Mark Hurst wrote about the sometimes-painful lessons he’d learned working with mainstream book publishers. “Drop any illusions about spending time with book lovers,” writes Hurst, “this is business.”“Publishers and bookstores want a book that sells,” he warns. “[I]f your book will sell, it doesn't matter what you're writing about.” Publishers http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/08/what-matters-and-what-sells.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-3264171057509960237Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:38:00 +00002008-07-23T12:47:49.497-04:00bookscontentmagazinesnewspaperspublishingEconomists and environmentalists alike shake their heads at our thirst for bottled water. America has the world's safest water on tap, but we spend almost $12 billion a year buying the stuff in bottles.Most Americans are connected to a grid that pumps fresh, clean water right into our homes, schools, and workplaces. We can use as much as we want, for a fee that's a tiny fraction of the price of http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/07/paper-or-plastic.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-2153763332719123080Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:41:00 +00002008-07-09T20:47:12.267-04:00Bookbuilders of Bostonbookspress closingsprintingpublishingGraphic Arts Online reports that Visant Corporation will close its Lehigh Press plant in Pennsauken, New Jersey. American print shops close at the rate of about three a day, but every one was a place where real people did real work, and every one has stories to tell. Here's one about Lehigh Press.When I was head of a textbook design team at D.C. Heath, a favorite part of my job was to go on presshttp://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/07/accidental-tourist-bids-farewell-to.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-5317841016844678298Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:11:00 +00002008-06-22T11:19:22.325-04:00booksentertainmentmediapublishingAudio geeks of yore used to build their custom stereo systems from expensive German-made components, and the finishing touch was a placard that said something along the lines of:ACHTUNG!Das Machinenwerken ist nicht fur Gefingerpokenund Mittengrabben by das Dumkopfen.Ist easy Snappenspringen und Blowenfusenmit Poppencorken und Spitzensparken.Das Rubbernecken Touristen keependas Hands in das http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/06/grits-at-ritz.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-3684937225985320161Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:09:00 +00002008-06-03T17:19:52.939-04:00advertisingbookseducationmediaprintingpublishingAt the 2007 conference of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO), Anne Valentine, the president of SmartCatalog, gave some suggestions on how to reduce the cost of printing course catalogs. Most were just common sense (cut your page count, use lighter paper, get competitive bids), but one was practically heresy to many of the admissions staffers in the http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/06/go-ahead-show-em-your.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-5643873720517807726Sun, 25 May 2008 15:44:00 +00002008-07-07T14:59:24.030-04:00Bookbuilders of Bostonbooksglobalizationpress closingsprintingpublishingHarris DeWese stepped up to the lectern and took off his sport coat. He pointed to his gaudy suspenders and grinned, "You can see I'm in investment banking."The scene was the Colonnade Hotel in Boston, the annual meeting of Bookbuilders of Boston (on whose Board of Directors I serve). We had finished the evening's business, and were settling back with our dessert and coffee to enjoy DeWese's http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/05/demotivational-speaker.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-1019386351348821941Sat, 17 May 2008 18:17:00 +00002008-05-25T12:28:40.967-04:00Bookbuilders of Bostoneducationgraphic artsmediaprintingOver on the Print CEO Blog last week, Brian Regan and I traded comments on Adam Dewitz's post about educating the next generation of printing industry leaders. The elephant in the (virtual) room was the fear that there won't be any printing industry for the next generation to lead.As President of the Society of Printers from 1995-1997 and of Bookbuilders of Boston from 2004-2007, I was an http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/05/students-and-silos-thoughts-on-graphic.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-75020776213478554Sat, 10 May 2008 19:07:00 +00002008-06-06T16:16:06.988-04:00advertisingAspen Magazineglobal villageMarshall McLuhanmediasocial changeIn my May 4 post, I surveyed Marshall McLuhan's metamorphosis from a nerdy Canadian academic into the very model of an avant-garde intellectual.In the 1960s, avant-garde intellectuals and wannabees liked to spend downtime in Aspen, CO. The resort town had earned its highbrow cred as home to the Aspen Music Festival since 1949, and the International Design Conference since 1951. In the mid-60s, a http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/05/time-capsule-from-global-village.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-4969860448252059067Mon, 05 May 2008 00:39:00 +00002008-10-24T12:48:54.805-04:00global villageGoogleMarshall McLuhanmediatelevisionWeb 2.0I revisited the work of Marshall McLuhan recently. The patron saint of Wired Magazine prophesied the triumph of video over print some 40 years before YouTube, but he died in 1980, too soon to see himself proved (sort of) right.The pop-culture prophet becomes a pop-culture cliché: Marshall McLuhan (right) in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977).McLuhan was an English Literature professor at the http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/05/text-and-television-in-mcluhans-global.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-6203797594877255520Sat, 26 Apr 2008 22:34:00 +00002012-04-26T16:03:18.330-04:00Googleinformationlibrariespeer reviewThe New YorkerThe Guardian recently wrote about a study titled Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, published in January 2008. The report was written Dr. Ian Rowlands and colleagues at the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research. They must have been up all night coming up with a name that fit the acronym CIBER. The study was commissioned by the British Library and the http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/04/getting-it-right-away-getting-it-right.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-3556066233821305691Sat, 19 Apr 2008 19:33:00 +00002008-04-24T17:13:06.669-04:00BooksquareWeb 2.0As an admitted stranger in the world of fiction, I rely on Booksquare to keep me up to date with what's going on. A recent Booksquare post led me to Dear Author, a reader blog about genre (mainly romance) fiction, where unbeknownst to me, "most of the blogosphere has been mouth agape" because an author named Deborah Anne MacGillivray wrote hostile replies to a reader who had posted an http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/04/trash-talking-authors.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-7107722252565106457Sat, 12 Apr 2008 18:34:00 +00002008-04-12T14:36:57.187-04:00. . . this shirt is what I want for Father's Day.http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/04/tell-my-kids.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-676101971556915202Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:16:00 +00002008-04-10T22:43:05.263-04:00booksbooks as souvenirsmoviesspecial marketsRR Donnelley has something like 65,000 employees all over the world, working in businesses as varied as book and magazine printing, market research, and business process outsourcing. For us in the trenches, it would be hard to see Donnelley's full scope and strategy, if it weren't for the company's robust intranet site.The Inside RRD site prominently features a Fact of the Day which showcases thehttp://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/04/rr-donnelley-has-something-like-65000.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-2985684552411052182Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:37:00 +00002008-07-04T12:55:52.514-04:00press closingsStinehour PressThe late August Heckscher, a prominent figure in the arts and an aficionado of fine printing, once gave a lecture at the Boston Athenaeum in which he compared letterpress printing to wind-powered boats, both antiquated technologies that people cling to just because they like them. "They have passed out of the economics of necessity," he said, "and into the economics of delight."We printers in thehttp://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/04/stinehour-press-and-end-of-delight.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-5397439503814053175Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:22:00 +00002008-04-11T17:27:10.304-04:00librariesself publishingvanity pressTim Spalding, founder of LibraryThing, sounds the alarm in a March 26 post about some collateral damage from the demise of traditional top-down publishing. When authors make an end run around publishers by using a self-publishing service like Lulu.com, even if they succeed in reaching a large audience of readers, their books don't get bought by libraries.Publishers used to be the judges of http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/04/tim-spalding-founder-of-librarything.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-1615200069334503613Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:08:00 +00002008-04-10T22:39:09.131-04:00amazon.comhoughton mifflinprint on demandriverside pressBeside the Charles River in Cambridge, MA, between MIT and Harvard, there's a little patch of green called Riverside Press Park. It takes its name from a book printing plant that stood on that site until the early 1970s. Riverside Press was the manufacturing division of Houghton Mifflin (now called Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ).This type of vertical integration was common for book publishers a http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/03/blog-post.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-6810313216231477786Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:36:00 +00002008-04-10T22:40:27.630-04:00entertainmentinformationpublishingreligious publishingWhen civilians talk about publishing, they almost always mean the world of book signings and movie rights. I'm a stranger in that world, although I've spent much of my career in publishing. As I told Jim McCormack's graduate class at Emerson College last year, publishing isn't one business, it's at least 3 very different businesses:The entertainment business, where you find Harry Potter and http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/03/three-faces-of-publishing.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-4740934823538734338Sun, 23 Mar 2008 18:58:00 +00002008-04-10T22:42:43.641-04:00books as souvenirsprint on demandpublishingspecial marketsI couldn't make it to the Tools of Change conference, but last week I had the pleasure of hearing one of the speakers, Phil Zuckerman, give a guest lecture to a graduate class in publishing at Emerson College. Phil is the founder and president of Applewood Books. Applewood has been around since the 70s, and at first glance, they seem positively Luddite. Their web site says they're "fully Y1K http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/03/souvenirs-and-southern-cooking.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7070820616666608737.post-7747820251835295415Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:37:00 +00002008-03-23T15:51:29.168-04:00booksGooglepublishingThe New YorkerIn a 2007 interview Marissa Mayer, the vice-president in charge of the Google Books project, told The New Yorker magazine, "If we provide access to books we are going to get much higher-quality and much more reliable information. We are moving up the food chain." Google's co-founder Sergey Brin echoed this view: "Comprehensiveness [is] about having the really high-quality information. You have http://publishingmojo.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-is-publishing-mojo-in-2007.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (PublishingMojo)0