Recent Posts
Diary of a Mad Editor
Return To Blog Listing
A small press publishers thoughts and rants on publishing and the writing life
Recent Posts Tagged With 'new media'
Direct TV Primed for Takeover?
Liberty Media Corp’s recent decision to split off Direct TV, has fueled rumors that Verizon might buy the satellite TV provider. However, according to a report from Reuters, Verizon’s CEO has put the kibosh on this rumour. According to h...
No More Free Lunch
News arrived earlier this week that yet another print literary journal is packing it in. Free Lunch is calling it quits after two decades and 42 issues. The message which states simply: The Board of Directors of Free Lunch Arts Alliance regrets to i...
The Empire Strikes Back
No, I’m not referring to what is arguably the best film in the long-running Star Wars franchise — I’m referring to yesterday’s announcement that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and several other media heavyweights including Time...
Gettin’ Wavey Wit’ It
After months of anticipation and waiting, I finally got my Google Wave invite the other day. In case you’ve been living in a cave this past year and haven’t heard all the hoopla about Google’s new techno-toy here’s the scoop a...
Apple Takes a Second Bite
In addition to all the spam for a fat burner, penis extender and Nigerian Bank scammer sitting in my inbox this morning, I received a link for this slide show: Publishing 2.0. What Would Apple Do? View more documents from Freek Bijl. Interesting, ...
Now That Halloween’s Over, Time to Think About Christmas
Halloween is over (thankfully, he sighed) and although it’s still a little too soon to think about Christmas, I did find myself, earlier this morning, fantasizing a bit about my wish list. I even went so far as to mosey on over to Amazon to cre...
How to Use Google’s My Library Feature to Import and Create a Library List
Let’s say you wanted to create a list of your personal library. Here’s how you can use Google Book’s "My Library" feature to import books: Step 1 Go to Google Books, log-in to your Google account, a click on "My Library&...
Yet Another Vamp Novel Released for the Holiday Book-Buying Season
I’ve received another thing for another vampire series novel (speaking of which, is St. Martin the publisher for vampire novels, these days?). Similar to the last vamp novel mentioned on this blog, this one is also being promoted heavily online...
Barnes & Noble’s New E-Reader to Go Head-to-Head with Amazon’s Kindle
With all the buzz about the new generation of e-readers and with so many companies looking to jump on the bandwagon, you might think that we need another one like a cat needs dog supplies, but The Nook, Barnes & Noble’s answer to the much-h...
It’s Hard to Stay Neutral About Net Neutrality
Much ado has been made about net neutrality — by those who support it and those who don’t. Those who don’t support neutrality are mostly the Telecom industry and those who support the Telkom industry such as certain member of congress w...
. . . And By the Way, Will You Follow Me On Twitter
Ellis Weiner posted something in the Shout & Murmurs section of the The New Yorker this morning that made me snicker like a child. I nifty satirical piece on the decline of book marketing at major publishing houses — a theme I discuss the other...
The 13th Warrior Review Volume 7, Issue 13 is Online Now!
Finally, after a whole summer of slacking-off, I was able to complete and publish the latest issue of The 13th Warrior Review. In this issue (if your inclined to take a look) is: Poetry by Genine Hanns, P.Q. Perron, Langston Kerman, Peter Layton, M...
Death of the Book Editor?
Writer and former Random House executive, Daniel Menaker has posted an interesting article over at Barnes and Noble Review that some of you must read. Unlike many articles written by book publishing insiders, this article isn’t an exercise in h...
Here We Go Again
According to a recent article on BetaNews, Google wants to follow Journalism Online in offering a micropayment solution to news providers. While I’ll stand on my previous comments on this subject, I’m thinking Google will have more succe...
You’d Think They’d Learn
Word on the street — make that, the Wall Street Journal, is that a new Internet startup, Journalism Online, is attempting to succeed where so many others have failed. This company, co-founded by former WSJ publisher Gordon Crovitz and Media gu...
Head in the Clouds?
There’s a new buzzword floating around the Internets of late: “Cloud Publishing” or “Cloud-based Publishing”. In a nutshell, this is a method of self-publishing that combines social media, database management and print-...
Michael Vick and the Dogs of War
This past Friday, I was sucked into an argument about Michael Vick and whether or not he should be allowed to return to professional football. I didn’t want to argue about it. I find this whole Michael Vick controversy to be a trivial waste of...
The Future of Television
The other day I was reading that Direct TV is about to launch an online service to compete with Comcast’s On Demand Online service and it got me thinking that maybe this battle between cable and Satellite Directv has already been conceded by bo...
Prognosticators Be Damned
I’ve come to the conclusion recently that those who attempt to forecast the future of publishing (myself included) are full of shit. Yes, they (We) are. I was reading a blog the other day about the “future” of literary magazine p...
TV Sucks Pt. 2
Just found out that one of my favorite shows, Primieval, has been cancelled. I was already unhappy that, Kings, a new show I’d just started getting into wasn’t coming back for a new season. It’s bad enough that there’s pract...
In Remembrance of Video Games Past
Yesterday, after finishing a writing project (and thus beating a deadline), I decided to reward myself with a little casual web-surfing. Since the much-anticipated game, The Sims 3 is coming out next week and I am unembarrassed to admit that I’...
What Happened to Blogging?
Somewhere along the line, blogging stopped being a pure act of love and became a part of the underground economy. It used to be blogging was this neat little outlet for aspiring and established writers (and anyone else who had something to say about...
Ain’t That Stupid
Yesterday, I was watching a tv show on Fancast.com and if you’ve ever watched a television program online you know that every few minutes or so, the program is interrupted for a ad break. Well, as I was watching my program, the ad comes on &#...
This Corpse is Starting to Stink Pt. 2
“So, Mad Editor, what is the solution?” — Patricia With regards to the future of publishing, Patricia’s question is the one on everyone’s mind. Everyone from the NY literary agent to the pimply-faced kid grinding out tha...
This Corpse is Starting to Stink
In the last month several more newspapers have decided to stop their presses, the latest being, the Tuscon Citizen, one of the oldest remaining newspapers in the country, the Rocky Mountain News, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Why bother m...
Video Games Saved My Brain
Okay, this is not a gaming blog but given the discussion the last few days about reading and audio books, and cognitive development I thought I’d share with you something that I do believe is nearly equal to reading as an activity: playing vid...
4 Indespensible Ebooks for Bloggers
Here are 4 essential ebooks from Zinio.com: Email Marketing: An Hour A Day Learn about email marketing with case studies, step-by-step guides, checklists, quizzes and hands-on tutorials. Web Analytics: An Hour a Day Learn web analytics strateg...
Kindle the Fire and Let’s Burn Some Books
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the sp...
Kafka Coulda Been a Blogger
Imagine if Joseph K. was a blogger. Joseph works hard on his blog and posts nearly every day. One day he realizes that he can no longer afford to maintain his blog without attracting advertisers to help defray some of his costs. Because his blog ...
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
As I more or less said in Blogger’s Lament, I sometimes feel as if I’m straddling two worlds. One is the old hard copy world of hardbound books — a world of brick and mortar libraries, a world of literature. The other is the worl...
