slamboard

Seth Godin has at least one book that is basically a hardcover printed copy of dozens of blog posts. I may or may not have one of these. You see, I thought it would be a great idea to have it with me while I was in a long lineup at the bank. I accidentally left it there. While the information in the book was just like a blog, the hardcopy medium enabled me to leave it somewhere. Two things happened, this information is no longer accessible to me AND the information is sitting in the bank being readily accessible to its employees and customers. This is not how blogs work.

The seven figure sales at Kimkins.com were due in no small part to the favorable coverage in Woman’s World Magazine. This publication has huge circulation, and the print versions will often sit in waiting rooms and salons enjoying months or years of repeated perusal. People seeking to expose the Kimkins fraud did not get very far in trying to convince Woman’s World to make any kind of reversal or apology. We personally received no answers to our questions last year and instead got a cease and desist order. In response to the letter, I made changes to the cover image that I was using to make it arguably transformative. There was no follow up from the magazine. I didn’t send any further correspondence to them. Many, many interested people did.

After a long wait, the magazine has finally apologized in detail, on their website. A print apology is also forthcoming. I thank them for it.

I just discovered a really great debate about the much touted and oft doubted death of print as an important medium of communication.

The original publication was in 2005. I this corner, we have Jeff Jarvis, who blogs at BuzzMachine.com. In the other corner, we have National Geographic’s John Griffin.

The entire piece is well worth a read, but here are a couple of cherry picked quotes:

I’ve argued on my blog that in our post-scarcity world, distribution is not king and neither is content. Conversation is the kingdom, and trust is king.

The wild, wild west of the Internet will evolve to more consolidation of the biggest brands at the top and an infinite number of tiny fragments at the bottom. The public will have neither the time nor interest to consider all of the options available to them–so the role of editor, both human and electronic, will increase in importance as people look for experts to help sift, validate and organize the infinite sources of content.

I have to say that I agree with both of these points.

I am very much dependent upon online sources of information. I don’t watch television and I don’t even have a radio in my house. I don’t subscribe to a newspaper. I have purchased two Sunday papers this year. There are a few situations where I do read print media. I will spent 20 minutes leafing through a complimentary paper at a cafe. I have all the out of date magazines at the doctor and the dentist pretty much memorized. I think that lingering nature of print has real value for advertisers and content providers.

I think I have mentioned once before in a blog that my first exposure to the horrors of war came from looking at Time Magazine in the waiting room while my mother was in the doctor’s office for my infant brother’s checkup. I think those shocking and powerful images had some influence over who I am today.

James Frey is the man who almost made Oprah give up on books. I am embellishing a bit. When TSG revealed the fact that his memoir was in large part, fiction, she was not happy with the man who had previously received the magical gift of her endorsement.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that HarperCollins is set to publish a novel by James Frey next summer. Novels are, by definition, fiction. I’m not sure what will transpire if portions of it are later revealed to be true.

It is not surprising that this man was only untouchable for a short time. I’m sure most major publishing houses had closed door meetings to decide how long to wait before approaching him.

When I was in college, my required humanities course included some study of the works of Henry David Thoreau. While researching his life, I found out that he paid to have his first book published. He had 1,000 printed and four years later he found himself the not so proud owner of 706 copies. He is rumored to have carried them home on his back.

An optimist would say that he sold 294 books and that some of those readers may have ended up as longtime readers and benefactors. I would like to point out there weren’t that many potential readers back then compared to today. I often here about authors being too cautious with their first printing and actually selling exponentially more copies than they had anticipated. The book Skinny Bitch that I blogged about earlier was one of these. this might be the only post in the blogosphere that mentions Henry David Thoreau and Kim Barnouin in the same sentence.

Self Publishing is a great option for an author that wants to establish themselves and it has become an easier process as a result of the internet. I don’t think Thoreau would have been the same person had he been possessed of broadband. AuthorHouse.com is a full service site for self published authors. It includes great features like a personal Author Center that you can use to track publishing progress and then sales.