Tag Archives: publishing

Spamming and Swindling with E-Books

Spammers and plagiarists target e-books (Kindle, etc.)

Mike Essex, a Search Specialist at UK digital marketing agency Impact Media, believes that ebooks are the next frontier for content farmers and is already noticing an increasing number of spam e-books hitting ebookstores like the Kindle Store. He originally wrote about his discovery on the Impact Media blog.

Amazon does not care.

Many ebook vendors don’t check copyright on works that are submitted, and Essex noticed that people are stealing content from the web, quickly creating ebooks about the same topics from multiple angles in order to target different keyword variants, and publishing them—some Kindle authors have “written” thousands of books in a single year. The Amazon.com domain name gives these books an added boost in search results; royalty payouts are high even when a book is priced at $0.99, and reviews aren’t a surefire solution to combating the problem.

More information at Making Light.

Bad writers, yes. One man’s trash is another man’s pit of voles. But one of the advantages of e-book/Kindle store/et al that we keep hearing from the e-book enthusiasts is that it bypasses the gatekeepers.

“Stolen content and scammers” is another area, and there isn’t any pressure on Amazon to stop ‘em, since they get their cut regardless. Adding acquiring editors would add time and expense, and keep the struggling geniuses whose works no one understand from ever getting published at all.

Ain’t it wonderful? This is what happens when you “bypass the gatekeepers” (all those grumpy editors).

 

Gallimaufry with Graphs

• The writing process, graphed, from Boing Boing.

• The “great conversation” lives on: University students discovering ideas that their so-called teachers kept from them because they were not “relevant” or something.

•  Why did Borders crash? Here is one view. Too much space given to music. for one thing, says the writer.

• Support for a “gap year” before university grows in the U.S. I could have used one.

Among the Writer’s Style Books

The AP Stylebook, the holy book of the American journalist, is making some changes, such as now specifying “email” instead of “e-mail.”

In my journalist days, I used to tell people that I had it memorized, but now I have moved on.

Since entering academic journal and book editing, I have embraced the true path of the Chicago Manual of Style—the Torah, nay, the Urantia Book of style books.

And if there is any question that it does not answer, its editors will issue a fatwa to the seeker after truth.

I have received one, and I felt blessed.

Still, in deference to the AP and just to keep my hand in, expect to see “website” instead of “Web site” here in the future.

Beatnik Witches

Aidan Kelly’s Hippie Commie Beatnik Witches, which has circulated in digital form for some years, can now be purchased as a book from Amazon, with new material added.

As the San Francisco counter-culture teeters on the edge of the Psychedelic Era, a group of twenty-somethings, open to spiritual experiment (and other sorts of experiments), find themselves morphing into something that they do not quite a have a word for  . . . Druids? Witches??

Built from recollections and interviews, it is a picture of people creating a new religion based on a heady mix of reading, ritual, and inspiration.

 

Why the Used Bookstore Clerk Hates You

Because you camp out in the Spirituality section? Or worse.

Also, you are trying to sell us textbooks and other crap, and we’re not buying.

Gallimaufry with Books

• Stonehenge as sold by by Ikea. (via Mirabilis)

• If gays come out of “the closet” and witches come out of “the broom closet,” what closet do atheists come out of?

• Ten suggested alternatives to Photoshop. On the Mac, I use Graphic Converter quite a bit. But I might check some of these out too.

• If books had these titles, you would know instantly what they were about. There is this approach too.

This Man is an Author . . .

. . . and here is how his book gets into print, circa 1947. Note that the Linotype does not have a QWERTY keyboard. And has the bindery process changed that much, really? (The printing company where I once worked did only softcover, or “perfect” [sic] binding.)

Bibliotheca Alexandrina Seeks Pagan Writers

Bibliotheca Alexandrina publishers seek writers for a new series of anthologies dedicated to various gods. You may also read  longer versions of the calls for submission at Amanda Blake’s blog, Temple of Athena the Savior.

There is, of course, no connection other than name and some history between this publishing project and the newish building in Alexandria, Egypt. Somehow I doubt that if you went to the latter, you would find the works of Iamblichus or Plotinus on the shelves.

Gallimaufry in Eden

• At the Religion in American History blog: What Puritans, Shakers, beer, and running shoes have in common.

• Is The Decembrists’ The King is Dead their most Pagan-friendly album? Laura at The Juggler thinks so.

• It is true that religion scholars go on and on about “the sacred.” So why is “the paranormal” not given equivalent attention?

• If I did not have the Interwebz available for checking, I would never have thought that these were actual book titles.

When You Meet the Buddha in the Road, Bite Him

We have a best-selling series of romance novels about vampires written by a Mormon.

But we also have a popular, if not so huge, series of romance novels about people in Amish communities, by a writer who grew up around Amish people but is not herself Amish.

Is this a great country or not? That’s one way to learn about religion. Or you can wait for the English translation of Saint Young Men. Jesus and the Buddha, roommates! The “odd couple” formula works in manga too, evidently.

But wait, you say. Vampires? Religion? Consider that NYU Press has published Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture.

Jeffrey Kripal, whose book Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred I am just starting to read, not surprisingly tells the New York Times that scholars of religion should take “the paranormal” seriously.

Is that the “paranormal” as opposed to the “supernatural”?

According to Dr. Kripal, [four famous paranormal researchers’] omission [from scholarly investigation]  is evidence of a persistent bias among religion scholars, happy to consider the inexplicable, like miracles, as long as they fit a familiar narrative, like Judaism or Christianity.

Meanwhile, someone needs to write a novel: Ghost-hunting single Amish girl falls in love with a vampire and discovered Buddhism. Quick!