An Age of Magic

Be your own publisher

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Many people nowadays are taking time out to do what they have always wished to do…write their own book.  But times have changed and rather than send your lovingly written piece of work out to a whole rash of publishers only to have it rejected you might want to consider joining the ranks of the many people who are now using the latest technology and software from blurb to design and publish your own book. It is so much easier than you think and more satisfying than you ever expected. Now, read on…

EXPLOSIVE PRINT ON DEMAND ADOPTION
IS RE-DEFINING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE PUBLISHED

Blurb leverages online communities, print-on-demand technology, and shifts in consumer behaviour to drive changes in the traditional publishing industry

January 18th 2008 – Blurb, the creative book publishing service, is reporting explosive growth in 2007. People have more digital images and online content to feature in books, and are more engaged in communities in which they can share this content. These trends in consumer behavior, coupled with the economics of print-on-demand technology, are driving industry-wide growth in self-publishing. Companies like Blurb are changing traditional publishing by providing the tools to help people create and publish books on their own terms.

Blurb makes it possible for anyone to become a published author and share, market, or sell those books to a wider audience. Blurb produced nearly 80,000 unique titles in 2007. To put this in perspective, Simon & Schuster publishes approximately 1,800 titles annually, and Random House, with more than 100 editorially independent imprints worldwide, published 9,000 new titles in 2006. Blurb’s title output is nearly 8x the combined number of titles released by these traditional publishing houses, and as a result, the company doubled in size every three months in 2007. Compared to traditional publishing, custom print-on-demand books are more personal, economical, green, and profitable for the “everyday” authors who make them.

The self-publishing explosion is being driven by a dramatic increase in digital camera sales, which in 2007 grew twice as fast as the industry expected. 2.1 million DSLR units shipped in the U.S. last year – up 37% over 2006. (Source: InfoTrends). As a result, creative professionals and consumers have enormous libraries of digital images ready for bookmaking.

Flickr, the popular photo sharing website, just celebrated its two-billionth uploaded photo in November of 2007, and according to Technorati, 120,000 new blogs are being created worldwide each day. People are writing and photographing like never before and this fosters an increased desire to create real, tangible things like books.

“Although consumers are still new to the opportunities of self publishing, the tools are now in place to help them create high quality books using their own content,” said InfoTrends’ analyst Mette Eriksen. “InfoTrends estimates that the photo book market grew by 166% in 2007. This market will continue to grow as more consumers become aware of the opportunities that companies like Blurb offer. Blurb’s end-to-end platform that offers consumers ease of use combined with a high quality finished product is one of the drivers for market adoption.”

“Blurb is redefining how success is measured in publishing,” said Eileen Gittins, Blurb’s founder and CEO. “For some, success is creating a book that helps raise money for a foundation, for others it might be selling 25 copies of one’s own book, and for still others it might be a marketing piece like an event book or portfolio. Unlike traditional publishers whose economics drive a focus on the best-seller, Blurb is expanding the book market to include books for millions of very small, niche markets.”

To create and publish a Blurb book, users start by downloading Blurb BookSmart™ software from the Blurb Web site. Blurb’s BookSmart software is free, runs on a Mac or PC, and offers a wide variety of book layouts created by professional book designers. The software enables anyone to affordably make, share, and market beautiful, bookstore-quality books. Prices start at £6.95 and authors can order only one book or many.

About Blurb
Blurb is a company and a community that believes passionately in the power of books: making, reading, sharing, and selling them. Blurb’s creative publishing service is simple and smart enough to make anyone an author – every blogger, artist, marketer, photographer, traveller, entrepreneur, poet, everyone. Additionally, Blurb’s bookstore and online marketing tools let Blurb authors sell and promote their books, and keep 100% of the author’s markup. Blurb’s community features – designed to encourage collaboration and communication – are defining social print media. Founded by Eileen Gittins in 2004 and funded by Canaan Partners and Anthem Venture Partners, Blurb is bringing book publishing to the masses. Blurb BookSmart™ software is free for Mac or PC; users pay only when they publish their books. The software is available for download at www.blurb.com <http://www.blurb.com> .

Popularity: 33% [?]

Any bloggers remember John Titor?

It seems that quite a few do! If you browse around and enter his name in any of the search engines you will read plenty of posts about this intriguing individual.  It seems that John Titor still fascinates many people and so he should. But it helps to have an open mind about this person…whoever he was.

Well, we know some things about him. John Titor was the name used on several message boards during 2000 and 2001 of a poster claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2036. In these posts he made numerous predictions a number of them were wafty but others were quite specific about events in the near future, starting with events in 2004. He described a drastically changed future in which the United States had broken into five smaller regions, the environment and infrastructure had been devastated by a nuclear attack, and most other world powers had been destroyed. John  and his family supposedly lived in Florida where everyone basically lived off the land in the year 2036.

Titor’s posts sparked an intense debate on the internet, with some people dismissing the claims, and others defending them. I am in two minds actually. In the time since Titor left these forums, the predictions for events that were supposed to occur by now have all failed to occur so far. Nevertheless, the Titor postings still have their supporters, who are quick to explain away these predictive failings. 

I don’t know…he certainly was spot on with regards to the IBM 5100 and the UNIX problem that will most certainly occur in 2038.  Titor claimed to be an American soldier from the year 2036, based in Tampa who was assigned to a governmental time travel project. He had been sent back to 1975 to retrieve an IBM 5100 computer which he said was needed to “debug” various legacy computer programs in 2036; a reference to the UNIX 2038 timeout error. The 5100 runs the APL, and BASIC programming languages. Titor had been selected for this mission specifically due to the fact his paternal grandfather was directly involved with the building and programming of the 5100.

Actually Titor was spot on about the Unix thing…there will actually be a series of events throughout this century regarding this particular problem. This problem is due to the way most computer system’s units hold dates as a single binary number. From the 1st January 1970 until some stage in 2038 (03hrs.14mins.07secs on Tuesday January 19th to my calculations) computer systems will have run out of space to hold dates…at that point the computer systems will display the time of 20.45.52sec Friday December 13th 1901. Alternatively it may display December 32nd 1969. Now, we all know there is no ‘32nd’ of any month of the year but this will be due to the fact that the system will have run out of space to correctly display time, day, date and year.

This is a reality. I hope, in some ways, that John Titor was too.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Getting your restaurant off the ground

One of the tricks to running a successful restaurant is not just having a great chef or an innovative menu. Many well known celebrity chefs have opened their own restaurant and gone to the wall simply because their business skills do not match their cooking skills. Running a restaurant is a highly competitive game today and to make sure your business starts off on the right foot you need to have your finances well organised.

Restaurants can literally eat away at your cash reserves so make sure you go to great lengths to organise your restaurant finance. ARF have years of experience in restaurant financing and know exactly where your interests will be. Their finance professionals are well tuned to the needs of all small to medium businesses in the retail industry so it will make perfect sense to consult ARF and ensure your needs are met.

Popularity: 23% [?]