Recently, I took a great free online course to learn more about blockchain, decentralization, and how it affects libraries and museums. The course is available on Canvas Network, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about this technology. Below are some of the things and resources I learned from the course. About Blockchain "Blockchain: how mining … [Read more...] about Blockchain and Libraries and Museums
libraries
Books and Stories From the Past
Just for fun, for today's blog post I thought I'd share some interesting links about stories from the past. Coloring Books First up are a couple links about coloring books. Apparently, coloring books started out as meant for adults. According to Time, there are early coloring books from the 1600s that depict engraved maps, and it was a trend to color the maps in yourself. … [Read more...] about Books and Stories From the Past
Pokémon Go and Book Publishing
Last week for work, I was at SIGGRAPH 2016, a conference and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques. In addition to companies sharing their products via booths, there were a lot of panels and presentations of peer-reviewed research in graphics and techniques. Not surprisingly, a big chunk of the conference was dedicated to virtual reality (VR). One whole … [Read more...] about Pokémon Go and Book Publishing
Indie Authors and Libraries
Libraries are wonderful for indie authors. They open up a whole new audience of readers, but unfortunately the route to getting an indie book into a library is not always very clear. The American Library Association (ALA) has a great fact sheet that goes over what libraries buy, when they look to buy books, what the library market looks like, and marketing opportunities. The … [Read more...] about Indie Authors and Libraries
Readers and Writers: Library News
Libraries are an important part of the book publishing world, and it's been a while since I mentioned them in a post, so here's a collection of links to library news, services, and more. Library Databases "American Museum of Natural History Unveils New Database With 7,000 Digitized Items (Images, Illustrations, Drawings & More)" by Gary Price (see database here) … [Read more...] about Readers and Writers: Library News
Getting Past the Gatekeepers: Promoting Children’s Books
By Louisa Clarkson – Indicated Now that more and more people self-publishing, it can be hard for new books to get noticed. With that in mind, Louisa Clarkson, founder of Indicated, a promotional resource for indie authors and small presses, has shared three helpful tips on how to promote children's books, the genre with arguably the most gatekeepers. Boy, I thought writing … [Read more...] about Getting Past the Gatekeepers: Promoting Children’s Books
This Week in Publishing
Random House finally decided to adopt the agency model. It’s the last of the big six houses to switch from the wholesale model, but now that it uses the agency model all 17,000 Random House ebooks will be directly available through the iBookstore—which is good since the iPad2 made its debut on March 2. The agency model is “when the publisher sets the price and designates an … [Read more...] about This Week in Publishing
This Week in Publishing
According to this blog post, the death of print media is coming sooner than we think. Amazon recently said it’s now selling more e-books than paperbacks, and “for every 100 paperback books they’ve sold this January, they’re selling 115 ebooks…” This means ebook sales are 45 percent of all Amazon book sales. But what about ereaders? Cavanaugh says, “I’m sticking by my … [Read more...] about This Week in Publishing
Digital Book World 2011
Today I was a volunteer for Digital Book World 2011, an annual conference that discusses the changing technologies of the publishing world. It was cool--I got to meet people in the industry, and for about five hours I handled their coats. Yeah, that's right: coats. It was actually a great way to meet new people, since nobody wanted to carry around their drippy, snowy, heavy … [Read more...] about Digital Book World 2011