Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- Amazon Rewrites the Rules of Book Publishing – NYTimes.com – Not a lot of surprise here, but interesting to watch it happen.
- Google Reader+ And Identity vs. Personas by @ScepticGeek – I don’t agree with all the points here, but there is a key one: my persona, as shared in Google Plus (and Twitter, for that matter), is different from the persona I share in Google Reader (which tends to be a lot more political). By force-blending the two together, I risk turning off people who enjoy my lighter, more whimsical G+ posts. People who like me posting a movie trailer might not care for my thoughts on OWS. Even if they are, they may not be interested in the volume of shares I produce out of GReader (which are easy to skim past or ignore in GReader, not so much in G+).
- In Sign Of Global Influence, Chinese Officials Cracking Down On Occupy Wall Street Coverage | ThinkProgress – But … but … weren’t we assured by Fox News that the Commies were big supporters of OWS which is how we know it’s evil and anti-American?
- What If We Paid Off The Debt? The Secret Government Report : Planet Money : NPR – It’s an interesting lesson in how economic trends are rarely simplistically “good” or “bad.” A more common one is the whole question of a strong dollar vs a weak dollar — both states create problems for some, advantages for others. You can make an aggregate judgment over what’s better (or least bad), but it’s rarely a simple sound-bite-suitable answer.
- Reading!
- Purple? – If all you do is “raise awareness,” I agree that’s weak beer compared to speaking out and actually acting on your convictions. On the other hand, as George notes, if “raising awareness” keeps breaks the illusion that everyone feels some default away about an issue, then it’s a good thing.
- Homeless anti-Semite was around long before Occupy – Salon.com – I would not be shocked to discover that, aside from the crazy guy in question, there are some folks in the OWS movement who are anti-Semetic (even if we filter out from that description “aren’t thrilled with the actions of Israel”). But that’s not what the movement is about, by any means. I suspect there are Tea Partiers who are anti-Semitic, too. And NASCAR fans, and opera buffs and gamers and philatelists and snow boarders. It’s a sad, twisted strain that can be found in various areas of American society — but it’s not what those particular pastimes, interests, or causes are about.
- Family overcome with emulsion: Car crash covers them in white paint | Mail Online – A good reason to pack loose items in the trunk of the car …
- Parker: Pizza restaurateur Pasquini takes back control of franchise spots – The Denver Post – I like Pasquini’s a lot (and have fond memories of the one on 17th, as I ate there several times while Margie was in the hospital having Katherine).
- Calif Christian group now sees end of world Friday – The Denver Post – Excellent. That means I can skip doing my status report today, I guess.
- Google honors Mary Blair | The Disney Blog – Fun.
- ‘I dreamed I was ‘X’ in my Maidenform bra’, 1944-1966 – Careful, you could poke an eye out with one of those!
- Abandoned Power Station, Luxembourg – Very cool.
- Prairie – Heh. (The hover text is pretty good, too.)
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Is Amazon going to be a proper publishing house, or just a vanity publisher? If the former it is going to need all the editors etc. Someone is going to have to make the decision what to publish, or it will become awash with the crap fan-fic that is on the internet, but easy to avoid.
That is where the cost is, someone to read it and go through it with the writer to improve the 1st draft.
“Daddy, why do those old fashioned paper books nanny has not have any mistakes in…”
Well, beyond that, there are two real levels of editing — the proofreading kind (possibly including “hey, you left this bit off, or contradicted yourself here from what you said in chapter 1”) and then the creative assistant kind (“hey, none of these characters are interesting, maybe you need to do something with that”). Amazon could provide the former; the letter is a bit more difficult.