Last Friday, April 1st, Google announced a whole new way of enjoying ebooks while keeping many of the characteristics of physical books intact. Brilliant!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-_U92YX7eA
The Worst Proofreading Error of All-Time
Take a close look at the picture above. Read it out loud. The word “not” is missing. As in “Thou shalt ___ commit adultery.” It is from an edition of the Bible published in 1631, now affectionately known as “The Sinners Bible” or “The Wicked Bible.” Adulterers of the realm celebrated! (Just kidding.) The Royal Printers in London, Robert Barker and …
A Year of Reading Dangerously
Be careful what you read. It may change your life! Franz Kafka wrote that books can “wound and stab us… wake us up with a blow on the head… affect us like a disaster… grieve us deeply.” As we move, over the next month, into the Spring, a time of renewal…and this week as we contemplate the Resurrection…think about the books you plan to read the rest of the year. What is on your to-read …
The Bookstore is Outnumbered
We had a client ask why their book could not be found in the bookstores. It is a common question. One that I tried to answer last year in a post about logistics. Today I’ll approach it from a different direction. The sheer number of books that are being published. Let me start with two sets of statistics. Barnes & Noble (B&N) is the largest retail bookstore in the U.S. Their stores …
Fun Fridays – March 11, 2016
This is the perfect illustration on the importance of “voice” in a book. The first version is the way it should be. The second version is how so many books sound to an editor’s ear. Beyond that, the video is simply a brilliant expression of what creativity sounds like! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLhJIFC8xkY HT: Trissina Kear
Mistakes Writers Make in their Queries
The pile of unsolicited proposal, queries, and manuscripts (both email and physical mail) is an unending source of delight and frustration. Delight when an amazing idea from an amazing writer arrives like a special holiday gift. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen as often as I would like. Instead there is a litany of things authors do time and again. If writers would treat their query or book …
Fun Fridays – March 4, 2016
Does this hilarious song describe your day? Sing this tune the next time it happens to you…and it will!
Leap into Word Play
February 29th comes every U.S. Presidential election year. It is called Leap Year day. I pondered what we could do to celebrate this reaccuring phenomenon. Should we sing along with Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance” when Frederic discovers that he was born on February 29th and the whole story turns on a most ingenious paradox? Instead I thought we could play around with all the uses of …
Fun Fridays – February 26, 2016
A lack of gravity doesn’t stop this group from making an amazing video. The combination of music, choreography, creativity, and sheer genius is breathtaking. Enjoy!
Publishing Acronyms
After being in an industry for a while there is a natural tendency to speak in code. Acronyms flow freely and can be a foreign language to those new to the conversation. Below is an attempt to spell out some of the more common acronyms in the publishing industry and some specific to the Christian publishing industry. They are grouped by topic in a rudimentary way but in no particular order. If …