Category / Inspiration

by Roger Dennis

The book publishing model (and how it works in New Zealand)

I was listening to an interview this morning on RDU with a new author called Rachel King who has written a book called the Sound of Butterfly Wings. She mentioned that in New Zealand – a country of around four million people – you have to sell five thousand copies of a book in order for it to be classified as a best seller.

Five thousand.

That’s using the traditional methods of using a publisher and distributing via retail outlets. What would happen if she changed the model?

How many books would be downloaded if she wrote it online, gave away some teaser chapters free and blogged about it? How viral would it become? What would it take to change the model and exceed five thousand sales? There’s an increasing number of very successful musicians which launched via MySpace and completely ignored the old industrial-powerhouse-centralised business model.

There’s a challenge here, and I’m going to rise to it. If I write a book – admittedly not a novel – and place it online – how many will get downloaded?

Watch this space. I’m sharpening my pencil. Or should that be “cleaning my keyboard”?

by Roger Dennis

Podcasts of interest…

If a picture tells a thousand words, then a podcast tells…err…lots more. The beauty about them is that rather than attending various expensive conferences, you can use sites like IT Conversations to find gold nuggets without having to endure cattle class seating, endless taxi rides and bad hotels.

What’s more, nobody minds if you listen to their presentation while munching a bag of really noisey crisps.

Here’s a selection of some recent favourites :
IT Conversations: Clayton Christensen – Capturing the Upside

IT Conversations: Malcolm Gladwell – Human Nature

IT Conversations: Tom Kelley – Tech Nation

by Roger Dennis

The Conversations Network (podcasting supremo)

One of the first and most useful podcasting sites – IT Conversations – has now morphed The Conversations Network. While it started as a storehouse of IT related conference podcasts, it now carries material from a vast range of different events from pure IT geekfests through to PopTech.

When you cannot get to an event, this is a great way of hearing some of the worlds most interesting speakers on all sorts of topics.

While it was initially donation supported, the concept has grown to the point where the model now require subscriptions to grow the site. It’s a mere US$5 per month – great value.

The network states it’s mission as follows :

Every day scores of educational, inspirational and entertaining conference sessions, lectures and other spoken-word presentations are lost. They simply evaporate because no one records them. Some of these presentations are by the greatest and most inspiring minds of our time, and many would be important to people in the far reaches of the planet, if only they could hear them.

The Conversations Network (a California non-profit corporation) captures presentations, processes the recordings, and publishes them online for free under Creative Commons licenses.

by Roger Dennis

Pandoras Juke Box

As a ‘discerning music consumer’ (or should that be music-snob?) I’m always looking for new sources of interesting music. A few years back there was this great site called GigaBeat. It sadly shut but was replaced by was then usurped by other similar services such as MusicPlasma

However the new champion of music referral does not just point out new sources of music/influences, but actually customises a radio station based on these.

Beware, it’s addictive. And inspirational for discovering new sounds.

Pandora
Pandora

UPDATED – 22 Dec 2005
After using Pandora for a while, it strikes me that it’s a shining example of the web-as-a-platform. In the dial-up world this type of application would not be possible. However in the broadband world it’s a virtual jukebox anywhere you can get a fast connection. When mobile devices get fast wireless connections, it’s bye-bye iPod. The idea of carrying your music on one device, and only accessible from one device will seem quaint.