Quick note: If you’re in the U.S., today is MLK Day. Now on to the post. I’m a big fan of Jeopardy!, and though I’m a fan of Ken Jennings, I was more sad than I thought I’d be about Alex Trebek’s death. Anyway, all this to say, I’ve been thinking about Jeopardy a lot, and also new beginnings. With that in mind, here’s a potpourri of resources, news items, developments, tools, tips, and more that I’ve collected over the past year or so. Please peruse at your leisure.
Accessibility
“Ace by DAISY: An Essential Tool for the ebook Developer’s Workbelt ” on Inclusive Publishing
“Building an accessible ebook” on Medium
“How to Create an Accessible Podcast” on Podcast Movement
“Tips to Improve Website Content for Screen Readers” on Content Marketing Institute
Content and Discovery
“What the Ideal Author Website Looks Like” on ALLi
“Embed Words in Your Photos for Discovery” on The Book Designer
“How to Do a Helpful SEO Audit in a Few Hours” on Content Marketing Institute
“Grow search traffic with data science” on Rank Science
“How to Perfect the One-on-One Interview” on Content Marketing Institute
“Readability Guidelines” on Content Design London
“Infographic: World of Typography” on The Digital Reader
“Content designers: you’ll wonder how you coped without them” on UX Collective
“Why content governance is important and how to make it happen” on Gather Content
“What You Need to Know to Get a Wikipedia Page Published” on Content Marketing Institute
“New AP Stylebook includes 100 technology terms, digital security chapter” on AP
“Forget SEO, as a podcaster, its all about ASEO” on James Burtt
“Get It Together: Try the Ideas in the 5 Most Popular Content Planning Posts” on Content Marketing Institute
“UI Copy: UX Guidelines for Command Names and Keyboard Shortcuts” on Nielsen Norman Group
“Getting to grips with user stories” on Gather Content
“Do ID3 tags matter for SEO?” on PodNews
“3 Tips To Improve Your In-App Messaging” on Medium
“To Gate or Not to Gate? Is That Really the Question?” on Content Marketing Institute
“How to get 30k organic downloads and $2m ARR from one ebook” on Fxck
“The Ultimate Guide to Content Repurposing” on ALLi
“Is It Time to Add a New Definition for Content Marketing?” on Content Marketing Institute
“You May be Undermining Your Content Marketing” on Content Marketing Institute
“Overcome a Boring Blog With These 5 Techniques” on Content Marketing Institute
“10+ Buzzwords to Banish From Your Content Marketing Vocabulary” on Content Marketing Institute
“How to write a value proposition for content” on Gather Content
“4 Ways to Get the Most From Your Content Marketing Operations” on Content Marketing Institute
“People talking to people about people” on Pacific Content
“Create and Serve Accessible Content to Your Audience” on Content Marketing Institute
“Why Circular Thinking Works Better in Content Marketing” on Content Marketing Institute
“How to Get Big Results From Small Content Marketing Teams” on Content Marketing Institute
“How to Do Inclusive Content That Helps Your Audience and Business” on Content Marketing Institute
“Should Your Brand Take a Stand? Luvvie Ajayi Jones Offers Useful Advice” on Content Marketing Institute
“How Marriott, NerdWallet, and Adobe Measure Content Marketing” on Content Marketing Institute
“7 Lessons from a 96-Year-Old Content Marketing Tradition” on Content Marketing Institute
“Strategy for Your Personal Brand” on Content Marketing Institute
“This Week in Content Marketing: Lessons from Home Depot, KFC, and Google” on Content Marketing Institute
“The Greatest Title Sequence I’ve Ever Seen” on YouTube
“Time-Saving Tips, Checklists, and Templates to Conquer Content Marketing Goals in 2021” on Content Marketing Institute
“The Art and Science of Emotional Engagement” on Content Marketing Institute
“How to Get Ranked and Read With a Topic Cluster Model” on Content Marketing Institute
“8 Things to Help Your Content Marketing Survive the Pandemic” on Content Marketing Institute
“The Weekly Wrap: Is TV Advertising the Next Frontier for Content Marketing?” on Content Marketing Institute
“How to Create Pillar Content Google Will Love” on Content Marketing Institute
“8 Tools to Optimize Your Old Content for New Conversions” on Content Marketing Institute
“Reinventing With Content: 3 Brands Find New Paths” on Content Marketing Institute
“How to Get Your Content to Stick” on Content Marketing Institute
“Audience Research Led to Tattoo-Worthy Content Marketing” on Content Marketing Institute
“How to Use Live Chat Data to Drive New Content Marketing Ideas” on Content Marketing Institute
Copyright/Rights
“Indie Authors and Copyright Debates” on ALLi
“The Cut and Paste Thief and What To Do If You’ve Been Plagiarized” on The Blood-Red Pencil
“Rights Reversion and What to Do After Reversion” on Author Imprints
“What Writers Need to Know About Morality Clauses” on Electric Lit
“Steal This Book? There’s a Price” on New York Times
“How to Help Combat Piracy in Publishing” on Book Riot
“Self-publishing News: Is DRM Damaging the Book Business?” on ALLi
Tech and Resources
“Scaling a Business: Steps to Ensure Profitability” on Super Scaling
“Great Content Experiences Powered by Tech” on Content Marketing Institute
“Self-publishing News: AI and the Indie Author” on ALLi
“Self-publishing News: Android Update uses AI to create Audiobooks” on ALLi
“Blockchain Technology for Indie Authors Q&A” on ALLi
“You can now edit ebooks in many Onyx Boox Devices” on GoodEReader
“Why Ebook Subscription Services Will Finally Succeed In The Coming Decade” on Forbes
“$58,150 in 5 Months: How to Build a Lifestyle Business Step-by-Step (Emails, Tools, Everything)” on Nat Eliason
“Now You Seem Them… — A CSS Trick for New and Old Kindles” on The Book Designer
“Lessons Learned as a VR Developer” on Medium
“The Human Cost of Tech Debt” on Daed Tech
“How to Study for Exams with Google Sheets” on YouTube
“A collapsible section containing markdown” on GitHub Gist
“This AI-powered autocompletion software is Gmail’s Smart Compose for coders” on The Verge
“Tips for a better developer workflow” on Figma
“Extract links from webpage (BeautifulSoup)” on Python Tutorials
“Adding controls to Community comments from Agents” on Zendesk
“Off Facebook Activity” on Facebook
“Evolving “nofollow” – new ways to identify the nature of links” on Google
“Google Tweaks Algorithm to Highlight ‘Original Reporting’ in Search Results” on AdWeek
“Captivate Sync™, our WordPress podcasting plugin is here!” on Captivate
“The Ongoing Pursuit of Successful Enterprise Search” on CMS Wire
Happy Brackets on GitHub (Downloads)
CueApp on Medium
“The Basecamp Guide to Internal Communication” on Basecamp
“NEW Collaboration with Staples Connect in Boston Area” on Spreaker
“Find your Lean In Circle” on LeanIn
“Product Marketing Tools of Choice” on Product Marketing Alliance
“Get Discovered on Spotify’s New Podcast Charts” on Spotify
“A Virtual Reality Check for Publishing” on Publisher’s Weekly
“Augmented reality promises to rescue dying museums – so why don’t visitors want to use it?” on Phys Org
Deepfake on YouTube
“Storyboard launches the first-ever Listener Commenting system for Private Podcasts and Internal Audio” on PodNews
“How to Set up an Online Bookstore” on Fiction Notes
“How we improved reader habit by 39%” on Medium
“Why Google Shouldn’t Drive Your SEO Strategy” on Content Marketing Institute
“How People Use Google Search (New User Behavior Study)” on Backlinko
“DIY SEO: How To Check On-Page Ranking Factors Using Google Docs” on Search Engine Land
Free SEO Tools, on Moz
“How to Use Google Search Console to Drive More Search Traffic” on Content Marketing Institute
“How to Create an FAQ Page Optimized for Search” on Content Marketing Institute
“Writing High-Quality Website Content? Don’t Forget About SEO” on Content Marketing Institute
“How to Optimize Your Site for Google Carousel Results” on Content Marketing Institute
“What to Know About Google’s FAQ Rich Snippets” on Content Marketing Institute
“How to Get in Your Customers’ Heads for Invaluable Research” on Content Marketing Institute
podcast-rss-useragents, on GitHub
“Build Multi-turn Skills with Alexa Conversations” on Amazon Alexa
“How to Design for In-Skill Purchasing” on Amazon Alexa
“Reach More Customers with Quick Links for Alexa (Beta) and New In-Skill Purchasing Options” on Amazon Alexa
“Alexa Presentation Language Tutorial: Getting Started” on Rocket Insights
“Building Serverless Actions for Google Assistant with Google Cloud Functions, Cloud Datastore, and Cloud Storage” on Programmatic Ponderings
“Building Asynchronous, Serverless Alexa Skills with AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, S3, and Node.js” on Programmatic Ponderings
Clean & Beautiful Line Breaks for IG Captions!
“New Group Board features for more collaborating” on Pinterest
“Driving Downloads From Drive-Bys” on Medium
“A review of Affinity Publisher” on Book Design Made Simple
News and Miscellaneous
Streaming music and book publishing, on YUDU
“Why is there hardly any new ebook stores? The answer is shocking!” on The GoodEReader
“Why Did Interactive Ebooks Never Catch On?” on Book Riot
“ByteDance is investing in ebooks” on The GoodEReader
“Google Play is now renting ebooks” on The GoodEReader
“Thousands of eBooks Have Disappeared from Amazon.com – Were Your eBooks Hit Too?” on The Digital Reader
“The Ultimate Guide to Authenticity for Indie Authors” on ALLi
“Sooner or later, the shark gets jumped” on Seth’s Blog
“Diversity in Publishing in the Age of Black Lives Matter” on Publisher’s Weekly
“‘Bookmarks’ Series from Netflix Spotlights the Black Experience” on Publisher’s Weekly
“Stripe’s remote engineering hub shows how distributed workforces can thrive” on Venture Beat
“Pay the Bookseller! Why C.E.O. James Daunt Won’t Save Barnes & Noble” on Kristen Lamb
“Atlassian ditches ‘brilliant jerks’ in performance review overhaul” on News.com.au
“Here’s the pitch deck that Holloway used to raise $4.6 million from NEA and the New York Times for its online ‘how-to’ manual business” on Business Insider
“Rate Guide: Engineering, Sound Design and Music” on Air Media
“Here’s What I’ve Learned About Transparency & Media Salaries” on Source
“Why You Should Never Eat Food on Planes, and Other Jet-Set Tips” on Bloomberg
“How to Scan Your Airbnb for Hidden Cameras” on Slate
“Science Says the Most Successful Kids Have Parents Who Do These 9 Things” on Inc
“How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger” on NPR
“California Freelancer Law Could Expand Exemptions for Journalists” on Folio
“Scoop: YouTube to fund launch of The Young Turks local news academy” on Axios
“New book imprint will highlight popular podcast” on AP News
“In echo of Mao era, China’s schools in book-cleansing drive” on Reuters
“Editing History: Hong Kong Publishers Self-Censor Under New Security Law” on The Wire
“In U.S., Library Visits Outpaced Trips to Movies in 2019” on Gallup
“Graphix to Publish Dahl’s ‘The Witches’ as Graphic Novel” on Publisher’s Weekly
“Invert. Always Invert!” on Ten Factorial Rocks
“Advice on Learning a New Language From People Who Speak up to 16” on AFAR
“Stars line up for second Folk on Foot Front Room Festival to support musicians hit by the lockdown” on PodNews
“Asians 4 Black Lives: Structural Racism is the Pandemic, Interdependence and Solidarity is the Cure” on Medium
“Activists Turn Facial Recognition Tools Against the Police” on New York Times
“17 Women Who Prove Having Asian Heritage Is Badass” on Buzzfeed
“Phyllis Zimbler Miller – Modeling Good Behavior” on Joylene Butler
Interactive Fiction on New York Times
“Why Now’s the Time for Interactive Content [Examples]” on Content Marketing Institute
“Kahlimah Jones vs Gimlet — the fight for podcast accessibility” on Medium
“‘Would you be willing?’: words to turn a conversation around (and those to avoid)” on The Guardian
“100 libraries will loan out over 1 million ebooks in 2020” on The GoodEReader
“THE UPSIDE with Callie and Jeff Powerful Community of Listeners Fulfills Bucket List and More for Terminally Ill Boy” on PodNews
“What Is Human-Centered Marketing?” on We Grow Media
“From Gut to Plan: The Thoughtful Execution Framework” on Spotify
“Graham Holdings Company to Sell Megaphone to Spotify” on Business Wire
“To Head Off Regulators, Google Makes Certain Words Taboo” on The Markup
“A lesson in automated journalism: Bring back the humans” on Nieman Lab
“The Death of Bon Appétit Is Proof Media Companies Have No Idea What Makes Videos Work” on Gizmodo
“How Big Is the Gender Gap Between Men and Women in SEO?” on Moz
“Premium tier subscriptions for local news: Ad-free and beyond” on Medium
“A New Model To Detect The Thousands of Fake But “IAB Certified” Podcast Downloads I got” on Medium
“The End of Third-Party Cookies: What Marketers Need to Know” on Content Marketing Institute
“How product marketers can get a seat at the pricing table” on Product Marketing Alliance
The Story of Playlists (Nonfiction)
Coretta Scott King Book Award Winners
“What You Need to Know About the Data Party Game” on Content Marketing Institute
“How Pacific Content Pitches Podcasts To Brands” on Pacific Content
“The North Carolina Kid Who Cracked YouTube’s Secret Code” on Bloomberg
“5 Years of SpecFM” on Medium
“COVID-19 and Book Publishing: Impacts and Insights for 2021” on The Future of Publishing
California Volunteers (Managing Stress During COVID)
“New COVID-19 ‘Citizen Science’ Initiative Lets Any Adult with a Smartphone Help to Fight Coronavirus” on UCSF
“21 Proven Ways To Overcome Impostor Syndrome” on StartupBros
“Real, Fantastic Places” on Kate Policani
“The worm that regrows its head, and memories, when decapitated” on The Week
“Missing an Ingredient? Here Are Substitutions You Can Use Instead” on New York Times
“20 Lesser-Known Travel Destinations To Visit Before You Die” on Guff
“Secrets to Booking Cheap Flights: 12 Do’s and Don’ts” on TravelZoo
“When is the best time to buy an international flight?” on CheapAir
“Learn Basic Breakdancing Freezes and Footwork” on Instructables
“Being Successful in Your First 90 Days at a New Job” on BRE Consulting
Negotiate a Severance on Financial Samurai
“To get a job, write your story instead of a resume” on Quartz
“Project Manager vs. Program Manager: A Side-by-Side Comparison” on Liquid Planner
“Are You Asking These 6 Questions in Your Interview?” on Nexxt
“What’s the Fastest Way to Find a Job?” on Break Into Tech
“The Just 100: Companies Doing Right By America” on Forbes
“6 Steps How to Get a Remote Job This Weekend in 2021 (Ultimate Guide)” on Ryan Robinson
“Who’s freezing hiring from coronavirus” on Candor
“Candidates, Companies, and the Matchmaking Problem” on Substack
“The 6 Warning Signs That Your Career ISN’T Recession-Proof” on Work It Daily
“Uncover The 8 Job Search Mistakes That You Should Avoid When Looking For Work Post-Crisis” on Work It Daily
“Uncover Your Valuable Hard Skills That Will Help You Impress Employers And Get Hired FASTER Post-Crisis” on Work It Daily
“Part 1: How To Be An Adult— Kegan’s Theory of Adult Development” on Medium
“Integral Leadership: Vision, Purpose and the Evolutionary Path” on Coaches Rising
“How To Find Your Worldwide iTunes Podcast Reviews For Free” on James Kennison
“The newsonomics of podcasting” on Nieman Lab
“The Week’s Big Story: Amazon Publishing on Wooing Dean Koontz” on Publishing Perspectives
“Authors: Taking Charge of Our Future in a Time of Uncertainty” on Kristen Lamb
“Self-publishing News: Subscription for Authors” on ALLi
“Would You Write a Cookbook for Next to Nothing?” on New York Times
“How You Too Can Build a Literary Festival” on Writer Unboxed
“BookLife Launches Paid Review Service for Self-Pubbed Books” on Publisher’s Weekly
“Is Publishing Too Top-Heavy?” on Publisher’s Weekly
“Help! My Royalties are Incorrect!” on ALLi
“Bookbar Launches ReadTribe to Match Readers, Book Clubs” on Publisher’s Weekly
“Amazon Past Prime: Why Major Retailers & Publishers are Going it Alone” on Kristen Lamb
“A Book Marketing Pandemic Playbook For Authors” on Book Marketing Buzz Blog
“Google Stadia launches Stadia Makers, a self-publishing program for indies” on Game Daily Biz
“How Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs” on DigiDay
“Is Substack the Media Future We Want?” on The New Yorker
“Open, Click, Buy – How to Sell Anything via Your Newsletter” on The Book Designer
“Advice for newsletter-ers” on Robin Sloan
“Good News About Reading: Here’s the Data” on Lisa Tener
“Top cities and states in the U.S. for self-publishing authors” on About Amazon
“Next-Gen Visuals Demand a Strong Foundation Today” on Content Marketing Institute
“Pros and Cons of Virtual Events Weighed by Publishers, Booksellers” on Publisher’s Weekly
“Can You Zoom Your Way up the Bestseller Charts?” on Indie Reader
“Authors & Zoom” on Anne R. Allen
“How to Get the Most Out of an Online Writing Workshop” on The Writers Cookbook
