Have lots of articles on the open frontiers to comment on. Will break into several posts. Today, the amazing wide open frontier of publishing:
Publishing
3/25 – Amazon – Reaching for His Dream. At 40. – Mr. Barry Davis had a book in him but devoted himself to getting educated, working as an engineer and raising his children. At 40 he wrote his first book. Nobody in the industry would touch the book.
Why? No audience. Nobody will buy it.
Until….
When he put it up on Kindle Direct Publishing, he slowly started gaining an audience. His first novel is #2,718 in the Kindle store on the day I wrote this article. Has since dropped a bit to #25,262 on 4/24. Been downloaded 50,000 times. He has since written 8 other novels.
Mr. Davis, sir, you are an inspiration.
I really enjoyed the book. You can see my review at Amazon here. If you are a Civil War buff, you might like it too. I would caution you to read my review first. Check it out and you will see why. The book is kinda’ rough in places, but not gratuitously so.
2/14 – Financial Times – Lunch with the FT: Glenn Greenwald – Fun interview. Good background on the evolving nature of the new journalism at First Look. Two particular comments: By design, Mr. Omidyar is recruiting journalists he can’t control. Also, the venture will look something like
a series of semi-autonomous digital magazines
with shared editors, legal staff, and tech support.
4/16 – Tech Dirt – Court Declares That, Yes, Bloggers are Media – Court in Florida finds that a blogger is covered by a particular law that protects media. Court won’t go so far as to say every blogger is a journalist, but seems this goes a long way toward establishing that blogs can be media outlets and bloggers can be journalists. Doesn’t seem it should be that tough a conclusion to reach, but it is good that courts are getting there.