Thad McIlroy - The Future of Publishing

Courtesy of Bob McArthur I learned that in today’s online the Onion you’ll find the headline “Nation Shudders At Large Block Of Uninterrupted Text.”
Can you blame them?

                                                                                                                               From the Onion
Boston resident Charlyne Thomson said, “Why won’t it just tell me what it’s about?” There are no bullet points, no highlighted parts. I’ve looked everywhere—there’s [...]

Courtesy of a tip from Bob Sacks, and published in The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), Magazines and their Web Sites” found publishers are still trying to work out how best to utilise the online medium. There is no general standard or guidelines for magazine websites and little discussion between industry leaders as to how they [...]

A colleague of mine who is a noted Canadian historian, and a prolific writer, asked today what makes a great web site for an author. So I began an exploration:
Most publisher websites for authors are pathetic, placeholders with short bios and links to books. A case in point is Canada’s “most venerable” old publisher, McClelland [...]

A good follow-up to yesterday’s post about Daniel Menaker’s post on trade book publishing comes from Nathanial Bransford’s popular blog (81 comments so far on the entry). Titled, of course, Will Authors of the Future Need Publishers? Bransford makes several important points.
1. Book sales are off 2.5% for the year as of July, compared to a [...]

I have two clients currently (three if I count myself) who are asking the question: “How do I evaluate the essential quality of my website?”
There are no shortage of metrics. Many look to the pretty good free service of Google Analytics. There are a ton of supplementary alternatives. I’m currently a subscriber to Visistat, recommended by my [...]

A cute article in today’s Wall Street Journal brought me to the site www.netlingo.com. The About section includes:
People tell me everyday “it’s tough to keep up with all of this new technology!” I tell them “you’re not alone!” It used to be that understanding the Internet was only for computer professionals and web design folks. [...]

One of the continuing controversies we all face as the Web becomes our primary tool for news, knowledge, reference…indeed for all forms of information, is determining the quality of the information published on the Web. The topic arises frequently in articles and blog entries. Much of the controversy has been associated with Wikipedia. Wikipedia has [...]

One of the great features of blogging is where what appears to be a single entry is in fact a combination of two, or, in this case, of three different “articles.”
My Google newsfeed directed me tonight to an interesting blog entry by literary agent Kristin Nelson titled “Is Publishing Just About To Be Disrupted?” The [...]

The title of this blog is the same as one appearing today on Chris Brogan’s thoughtful blog.
After a brief intro he offers the following:
The Next Media Company Manifesto
Here’s what I believe might (emphasis mine) need to be true about the next media company:

Stories are points in time, but won’t end at publication. (Edits, updates, extensions [...]

Last night I wrote to the calligrapher featured in my previous entry:

Dear Mr. Karimaei,
PLEASE do let me know if I’ve posted it incorrectly!
Today I received the response from Mr. Karimaei:
“I write another two your name’s script in two style of Persian Calligraphy that you can replace in the previous script because these have better quality.”
Joy!
Here [...]