Happy Birthday Adobe InDesign!

August 31, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I remember the world before InDesign. I had PageMaker. FrameMaker was slowly making inroads in the book publishing industry. QuarkExpress commanded a major share of the market. When InDesign appeared on stage it introduced a highly extensible platform based on an object-oriented architecture. It made possible the creation of many custom solutions for publishing newspapers, magazines, catalogs, and other non-book literature. I did wonder why PageMaker, my favorite at the time, was being shunted aside. But I’ve found the change to not only be good, the change was revolutionary. It spawned many third party vendors and service providers. Talk about stimulating an economy.

Check out Rufus Deuchler’s blog 10 Years of InDesign and the original Adobe InDesign 1.0 and InDesign 2.0 press releases.

Some great blogs to read include:

French Creek Press uses Adobe InDesign and FrameMaker for documents and books of different lengths. Our book covers are laid out in InDesign. For the moment our books are laid out in either FrameMaker or InDesign. We are a new publishing house with very deep, old roots in Adobe products.

My faith in Adobe as a company has only been strengthened by their quality products and their response to a customer service problem. Much success Adobe! Looking forward to 2012 when you turn 30!

Filed Under: Tools Tagged With: , , ,

Information Brokers

August 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Chris Brogan in his three hour talk at the Tools of Change 2009 Conference made several thought provoking statements. Aside from being a very funny guy Chris pointed out the obvious. It is so obvious that it escaped my attention. And if he had to remind everyone in the room of the same fact, it must have slipped under their radar as well.

Chris very pointedly states, “This is the business value of this stuff, the blogging and the social media stuff. There’s a business value to understanding and building the relationships around the product. There’s a real business value in having people understand and have access and build affinity to people…[There is a] new currency in the world, currency of attention, currency of trust. And you need to worry about how you are going to get in front of people to actually care about your thing.”

This introduction to Social Media touched on many subjects which I won’t go into here such as understanding books as eco systems and book clubs as the new tribal system. What really caught my ear was when Chris began speaking about distribution and the Mafia. Books are a distribution problem. eBooks add to the problem even though they command a small piece of the market. Normal channels have a book traditionally marketed, carried by the brick and mortar places along with Online stores. The book is printed and distributed to outlets, bought by the customer, and then shipped. eBooks jump the queue. They are often sold directly from the publisher or even the author.

Just as the Mafia took over distribution systems to deliver basic services to the villages in the face of government corruption, albeit with their own interpretation of the law, the Mafia continued forays into society in other distribution channels. Their choice to distribute alcohol, drugs, slaves, and cigarettes may not be the distribution problem of a publisher, but today’s publisher needs to understand the basic common element. Publishers are not in the book business. Publishers are in the information distribution business. And anytime the distribution is bogged down by bureaucracy, “mafia-style” elements step in to ease the problem.

Social Media works like the Mafia – it sets up new paths, new mechanism to deliver information to the people who want it. And it’s not as complicated as drug traffic-ing. Information brokers need to do things in a “ridiculously different way”. Chris suggests mass customization based on shopping preferences and other information gathered about a customer. Product placement or settings in books can be used to draw people in, and it can be used to enlist outside forces in the marketing campaign. Social Media presents opportunities to work with potential routes that are not traditional marketing.

I choose to reorient my position in a “grassroots” movement instead of the Mafia. Social Media is not as coordinated or structured as the Mafia. It is, however, the perfect expression of the average person grouping together with other average people to effect change.

French Creek Press is starting a social media campaign September. I’ll be writing about this effort and any tips that I can pass along as a result. In the meantime, check out Chris Brogan. Who knows, maybe he’ll do a standup comedy routine to augment his salary.

Filed Under: Social Media, social media marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Using Social Media as a Marketing Strategy

August 17, 2009 By 5 Comments

There are many publishers out there. And there are many using the print on demand model. At French Creek Press we made the decision to use a combination of print on demand and social media marketing to make the publishing exercise affordable. Whether a book is vetted and published under French Creek Press or is self-published using our services and tools, print on demand eases the pocket and using free Social Media outlets for marketing gets to the readership faster than traditional marketing.

          Yes, traditional ad campaigns still have a place. After all, not everyone is on the web (are you kidding? – I actually know them!). Getting an author and a book name in front of a librarian is still very important. Getting that book onto the up-and-coming book review list is crucial. However, people do like to shmooze. And Social Media is nothing if not the expression of a grassroots movement – of any kind. Social Media personifies what make the Western spirit so strong – the gut-level knowledge that I as an individual make a difference. My one vote counts. In Social Media, that one vote spreads so fast through other one-voters that a movement is born in hours. What used to take months to develop is now almost instant. And in our instant culture, our social media culture, we zoom to the tipping point, and reach critical mass faster than traditional marketing could ever foresee.

            In our sister division, Pixel/Point Press, we run a series of classes teaching people how to use social media outlets as marketing tools. These tools are free. The only expense is the time the individual invests in the tools. In the spirit of “rising waters raise all ships” we teach our students the hows and whys of Social Media Marketing. They benefit because they can create and implement their own marketing strategy, We benefit because these same students may want to outsource their Social Media Marketing campaign.

              For more information about our classes click Pixel/Point Press classes.

              Filed Under: Social Media, social media marketing Tagged With: , ,

              Women (Publishers) Can Be Heroes Too

              August 5, 2009 By 3 Comments

              As a girl growing up I didn’t have many female role models to choose from. Either the woman was the Florence Nightingale type, or a teacher. My sister, whom I worshipped desperately, was interesting because she was at least in science, even if it was nutrition, and she a terrible cook. I knew no female scientists, no female engineers. I met a few artists, but they were on a different planet. Even my high school teachers in an all girls prep school left the interesting subjects, Physics, Chemistry, History, to the men. I had one teacher, my biology teacher, who was single, beautiful, brilliant, and a scientist. Unfortunately, the first time I cut into a frog I passed out from formaldehyde – turns out I was allergic to the stuff. That ended my budding career as a biologist.

              I’ve since met many women in the Computer Sciences, and admired many from afar. The Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, San Jose corridor offered up many women with brains and personality. And now that I’ve turned my sights towards information, and specifically, the publishing there of, I’m seeking out the women publishing heroes. In one place, the Tools of Change 2009 online seminars have two panel discussions: one on Publishing house CEOs and one on women digital publishers. These women all have one very special quality in common – they love being women. They advocate for women. They market to women. To them women are interesting and distinct from the other species that walks around on two legs. And they are very vocal about it. While three, Kassia Krosser, Angela James, and Malle Vallik all spoke about digital publishing, Eileen Gittens talked more about social publishing. In all cases they were speaking about emerging markets, and the buying power of those markets. These ladies and other like them are to be watched. They are moving, and I expect will be a major influence on future publishing of any information.

              Kassia Krosser, Booksquare
              Kassia Krosser moderated the panel “Smart Women Read eBooks”. Kassia is the main voice behind BookSquare and a founding partner of Medialoper. While her job on this panel was to facilitate the members, her spark and humor came through. I look forward to hearing more of her voice.

              Angela James, Samhain Publishing
              Angela James was a panel member on “Smart Women Read eBooks”. Women are very “adventurous readers”. They like the immediacy of ebooks and delve into non-traditional ideas in reading and technology.

              Malle Vallik, Harlequin
              Malle Vallik was a panel member on “Smart Women Read eBooks”. An ebook is a reading experience. And women readers experience “reading emergencies” – they want a book and they want it now. The American woman is an adapter, she can mold herself to any technology that is good. By doing that, she can purchase and download an ebook easily, quickly, and fill the reading emergency.

              Sarah Wendell, Smart Bitches Trashy Books
              Sarah Wendell was also a panel member “on Smart Women Read eBooks”. While not a publisher, Sarah is a mover and shaker in the digital publishing world by way of her website. The statistics she sites should cause anyone in the book industry to pause and think. 80% of fiction in the market today is read by women. And women buy in bulk. And they are very loyal readers, loyal customers. And as she says, (paraphrased) if you gain a woman as a consumer you’ve gained someone who will speak about you /your product everywhere she goes. Your woman consumer is a natural marketer, and you don’t even have to pay her for it.

              Eileen Gittins, Blurb.com
              Eileen Gittens was a panel member on “CEO Roundtable: The Changing Role of the Publisher”. Eileen took a “social” approach to publishing. She create Blurb.com where anyone and everyone can create and published their photos albums, family books, you name it. More importantly, the books are affordable. One outgrowth of the Blurb concept, in keeping with “social” publishing, is BlurbNation. This collection of professionals are available (at an affordable price) to help pull the book together with a professional edge. And not least are the Blurb forums, groups/discussions on publishing tips, ordering, printing, anything worth discussing as relates to publishing your book.

              Filed Under: women heros, women publishers Tagged With: , , , ,

              DocBook, Publishing Tools of the Trade

              August 2, 2009 By Leave a Comment

              DocBook came into being in 1991 through the efforts of HaL Computer Systems and O’Reilly & Associates. They created a model, a schema, based on SGML and XML to define the structure of a document. Originally intended for technical books, DocBook has become one of the prevalent tools in the publishing industry. Why?

                First, DocBook is not a definition of how the book looks; it is a definition of the structure of the book. Instead of saying that a paragraph is displayed with Times New Roman type at 12 points, with 6 points before, DocBook marks the text as a paragraph. Later a style sheet can be applied to the document which says that any paragraph is represented by Times New Roman, 12 point type, with 6 points before. This is not so important if the book is only published in one format, ever. But, if the book is published in different formats, for example, as a printed book and as a eBook, the same DocBook file, with two different style sheets, can perform the two different tasks. This is a tremendous savings.

                  I know I’m coming at this from a technical writer’s point of view. Using something akin to programming is not scary in the technical writing world. For traditional publishers this might be a little daunting at first. The payoff, however, is tremendous.

                    I heard a great Tools of Change panel discussion (2009) with members from Blurb, Greenleaf Book Group, Thomas Nelson, Lulu.com, and O’Reilly Media about the future of publishing. Phrases like, “nothing but NET”, and “we’re on the cusp”, [we have to] “get it out to the world” point to a revolution in publishing. It doesn’t take much to note the number of publishing houses that are folding or are undergoing immense transformations to stay in business. The publishing industry is no longer about books. It is about information.

                      DocBook is one example of how information can be stored, retrieved, and disseminated to the public. It has the advantage of being Open Source. Open Source is self-regulating and constantly moving forward to meet the needs of its community. DocBook is well-established. It has almost 20 years of experience under its belt. And because it has so much history, it is comprehensive.

                        Are the drawbacks? Yes. Using DocBooks is not “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” (WYSIWYG). For an author that is a daunting prospect. To take an author’s manuscript and port it into DocBooks does take time; it is not instantaneous. Designers, book layout artists, anyone involved in traditional book publishing may have difficulty at first adjusting to tags, elements, and style sheets.

                          Are there any WYSIWYG front-ends to DocBooks? Yes. oXygen is one. As time goes on more will emerge.

                          Filed Under: DocBook, Uncategorized, XML Tagged With: , ,