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Media Tools
Free, simple, versatile online file conversions
The web-based file conversion service Zamzar has saved my bacon on a number of occasions. I'm a college English professor who teaches composition, and in the Before Times, I was endlessly frustrated by students submitting their essays in every odd format imaginable (.docx, .wps, .wpf, etc.) -- this despite my pleas that they be saved in the more platform/version friendly Rich Text Format. Consequently, I spent an awful lot of my time running from my office Mac to the PC lab and back to handle time-consuming conversions. Needless to say, it was a major timesink.
Zamzar changes all that by offering a robust, quick, and excellent conversion service: you upload the file you'd like it to convert, select the output format and your email, and you're off. In the span of an hour (sometimes quicker), you'll get an email with a unique link taking you to a page where you can download the converted file, which remains active for a day. You can also upload multiple files in a batch, which comes in handy when you're looking at half a dozen different student file formats and would like them
all similarly converted. I even got a successful .doc conversion made from a colleague's Publisher file (who uses that?).
I've used Zamzar only for about 3 months now, but usually once or twice a week, and it's never failed me except for a .pub to .doc conversion, which had some minor layout issues (things weren't where they were supposed to be). Although I've only used it primarily for word-processing documents, Zamzar also converts to and from a variety of image, audio, and video file formats ranging from the common to the exotic. You don't even need an account to get Zamzar to convert files, although having one ensures that you'll get a converted file faster, have more online storage, an individual file capacity of up to 1GB (as opposed to the free 100MB), and no banner ads. Because I deal primarily with smallish text files, the free service is still plenty fine with me (I get emails linking to my converted file usually within half an hour of submitting it). And I'm happy to weather the relatively unobtrusive ad assault for a free, quick, and idiot-proof way of converting files on the fly.
-- Professor Ben McCorkle
Zamzar
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
The Teaching Company
ClickBook
BaseCamp
Guide for pamphlet printing
ClickBook is a super simple to use, reasonably-priced program that lets you create simple booklets, and more, with a regular, non-duplexing printer. I found it via PaperDirect more than 10 years ago, before ClickBook was bought by Blue Squirrel. I was looking for some fancier templates for personal business cards and other small projects, like tri-fold brochures. When I got it (I use the Windows version), I discovered it could do a whole lot more than just brochures. It was a lifesaver when I was in charge of my Masonic Lodge and had to do a monthly newsletter and all the mailings for Lodge events. I was able to churn out tri-fold mailers quickly and easily, and I even used ClickBook to make the programs for several public events. I don't regularly create booklets these days, but I still use it to make personal reference mini-books and role-playing game handouts.
The program install runs you through a short setup procedure which configures the software for your printer. When finished, the software has installed and configured a virtual printer which can be used to generate pamphlets and booklets from regular word-processing files. All you have to do is open your document, then print it to the ClickBook virtual printer, choosing a final output format. There's no need to worry about measuring margins or fitting documents to a page. The program then sends your job to your printer, complete with instructions for re-inserting the paper to print the back side of the sheets, allowing for automatic aligning of pages in the final booklet. It is one of the most helpful little programs I've ever used, perfect for the budding pamphleteer. I've never found a free version or anything comparable, though I have to admit, since getting the software, I haven't really felt the need to look. This is simple, easy to use, and works every time.
-- Jim Hoffman
ClickBook
$50
(Mac)
Available from Blue Squirrel Software
(Windows)
Also from Blue Squirrel Software
Or 15-day free trial
(Windows only)
Additional info available at ClickBook.com
Related items previously reviewed on Cool Tools:
Vistaprint
PS Print
Dymo Labelwriter Turbo
Heavy-duty saddle stapling
My theater group always uses these for stapling our programs together. It's a serious workhorse, big and heavy, and the longer reach will allow you to make booklets out of much, much bigger material than the Mini Booklet Stapler. The stapler has a 12" reach on it, so you can staple anything up to 24" wide pre-fold (so architectural 'D'-sized paper could be used, if you felt like it). And unlike the mini model, it takes standard staples. The staplers we use were old when I got involved with this theater group (about 7 or 8 years ago), and they're still working like brand new. They are made almost entirely out of steel and are incredibly durable. We mostly use them for programs of no more than 6 sheets of standard paper and a heavy high-gloss cover sheet, but we do several hundred of these programs in a batch every couple of months. We also use them for stapling short scripts, say, 20 pages (long scripts get the three-ring binder). There's a neat little plastic clip on the stapler (which is nicely graduated) that lets you set the width, which makes lining up the fold on your booklets very convenient; you just push your material to the clip and staple. Great for big batches.
-- Andy Martin
Long Reach Stapler
$24*
Available from Amazon
Manufactured by Stanley-Bostitch
[*There are significantly cheaper versions, like this $6 made by Sparco on Amazon; if you've used one for a reasonably significant amount of time and can report positively or negatively about that stapler or any others, please let us know --sl]
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
Blurb * Lulu
Books on Demand
Theater Prop Handbook
How to liveblog a conference
There's an emerging new media I use more and more: an online summary of a conference. Known as liveblogging, it presents a synopsis of each presentation, talk-by-talk, in nearly real time. This saves you time and money traveling to distant cities, and suffering through introductions and equipment failures. At its best, reading the liveblog can be better than attending the talk. All the chaff has been winnowed, and almost every talk captured. (Most conference attendees don't even get to every talk.) Video recordings of conferences are becoming more popular, but a good liveblog is much quicker to scan and digest. But at its worse, a liveblog will offer little more than snarky comments about the speaker.
At the creation end, you need some skills to separate the best from the worst. Ethan Zuckerman, of Geek Corp, is one of the best conference bloggers alive. He teamed up with Bruno Giussani, another star liveblogger, to produce this free short 6-page PDF booklet on how to blog a conference with effectiveness. When you blog a conference it forces you to pay attention. My first book Out of Control began as an online blog of every talk at the first Artificial Life Conference (although no one called it blogging in 1987). The requisite focus of summarizing each talk clarified many ideas for me, and the response to the "blog" of the conference encouraged me to write a book. Other livebloggers find the same. They listen harder, and remember more.
Get good at this and you have a free pass to many high-priced conferences. Organizers are increasingly looking for first-rate livebloggers to generate press and future attendees. Or, like Ethan you can generate your own audience who follow you because your liveblogging skills.
-- KK
Tips for Conference Bloggers
By Bruno Giussani and Ethan Zuckerman
2007, 6 pages
Free
Available as a PDF from here
Sample excerpts:
It’s relatively easy to blog good and great speakers: They follow a narrative path through their talks and speak at a pace the audience can understand. It’s harder to blog inexperienced speakers(because they may be too technical, confusing, fast, etc.) and multispeaker panels (because the discussion can take many different unstructured turns). But you don’t need to transcribe the whole talk, you need to capture the gist of it. A 20-minutes talk can often be summarized in a 20-lines post.
*
Always remember that what you’re writing will be read by people who weren’t in the room, so they haven’t seen the slides, the video, or the gesture. Hence, you have to compensate for the lack of context. Don’t be afraid to create a narrative by saying “He shows a slide with data on ...” or “She walks on stage carrying a big suitcase” or “He shows a YouTube video” etc. And if the speaker shows a YouTube video, or a picture, remember that you’re online: Open another browser window, go to YouTube, find that video, and link to it; or go to the speaker’s website, find that picture or another similar or related item, and link to it (or republish the picture within your post). Yes, this requires effective multitasking. It’s at the root of conference blogging.
*
Conferences usually give out a program ahead of time. Use it to prepare for blogging: Do a quick Google search for each speaker, and save (in the same text file) links to their sites, blogs, and the institutions they’re affiliated with; write a one-or-two-sentences “biography” for each; and for the speakers you’ve never heard of, try to get a general sense of who they are and what they do. To write the mini-biography, use also the speaker information distributed by the conference organizers (booklet, website, etc.). For the key speakers, save a picture on your laptop (from their websites) and pre-format it for Web use, in case you will need it. If you prepare sufficiently, you’ve got the first paragraph of each post almost written ahead of time.
The 200 best documentaries
This is the third version of a guide I have been developing for the past 5 years. It takes the 200 best documentaries I have reviewed on my website True Films and puts them into one handy book. For an explanation of why I bother to order the content of a website into a book see the previous entry.
In True Films, I cover only true films: documentaries, factuals, non-fiction, reality-based series, and some instructional how-to. You can get a sense of what I like from the site. I love documentaries that 1) surprise me, and 2) inform me.
Each review is a rave review; that is, I only review films I love and believe others will enjoy. Merely good films are left unmentioned. I also include what no other film review source does: I provide 4 to 5 screen shots from each documentary to give you an idea of what the texture of the film is. And I only review documentaries that can be seen easily on DVD or tape at consumer prices (either as Netflix rentals, legal downloads, or online purchase). Documentaries available only in theaters, or as high-priced "educational films" are regrettably ignored.
Earlier editions of this book have been available on Amazon, Lulu, and as a cheap download from my site. But with this new version 3.0 I am trying something new. I am offering this 200-page full-color guide (perfect as a companion if you have Netflix) as a FREE download. It's in PDF format, but with a twist. To help offset the significant bandwidth costs of these downloads (I hope my server can take the wave), I have appended advertisements to the PDF book. Here is how the ads work:
If you choose to see the ads, they will appear in a gray sidebar on the right, adjacent to the pages of the book, just outside the frame of the page, as shown below:
These ads are inserted into the PDF by Adobe (using the Yahoo ad network) when you open the file. Like Google Adsense ads, they are contextual. That is, Adobe/Yahoo tries to match the content of the ads with the content of text on the the pages, in my case, text about documentaries. The ads I see at this moment of writing are mostly about apartment rentals, but they change each time one opens the book. The way Adobe/Yahoo "knows" about the content of the PDF is not by crawling the web, but by the author (me in this case) submitting the PDF to their machine the first time, which then stamps it with a registration code, so it can remember what's in it when someone far away opens it on their machine.
Like Google, no money flows unless someone clicks on them. If a reader of the True Films PDF books clicks on an ad, the advertiser pays Yahoo, who in turns gives me some small percent, around 5 cents (I think).
But because the PDF file must reach out from your computer to the Adobe server to get the ads, an action that some readers may not approve, seeing the ads is an opt-in default. You have to agree to see the ads before any will show up. You will also need the latest version of Acrobat Reader (8) to see them. If you use an older version no ads will show up, and you'll see only the free book. Since the ads are adjacent to the book, whether you see ads or not will not affect the design of the book itself.
I hope you get the updated version of the Reader and click to see the ads. (A little box pops up and says "the author has added sponsored content which requires connecting to adobe server. OK?" Say yes.) Why? Because my hunch is that books-supported-by-ads is one way to extend the FREE. I would love to produce books for free, outside of big publishing, just as this recommendation site is given away for free. Cool Tools has continued for free for five years because it is funded by the ads on this site. There is a chance we can develop a similar culture and business model around FREE books. The engine would again be ads.
The Ads for Adobe PDF program is an experiment. It takes all of 10 minutes to sign up and send your PDF through. If it works with you readers to the same degree that ad-supported blogs have, it is not hard to imagine thousands of books being released for free with ads on the side. To some in publishing this prospect is the end of the world. The final stake in the heart of good old books. Ads-in-books specifically have been a bogeyman too horrible for them to even think about.
I am more pragmatic. I actually like the Google contextual ads on Cool Tools. They bring up choices I would have never encountered, yet they are fairly unobtrusive until you are looking. Why not do the same for books?
Well, I have. Several years ago I added Google contextual ads to the digital versions of my books, Out of Control and New Rules for the New Economy. If you look at the books' website the books do the same cool magic as Cool Tools. At the bottom of each page of text in the book, there are somewhat relevant ads (their relevancy wavers depending on the stars).
It seems a logical next step to try ads in free downloadable books. This is an experiment. Opt-in for the ads and let me know if they work for you. Or if you have trouble with the PDF scheme itself.
If all else fails, think of it as a Christmas present. Spread the word that your friends can download a free 200-page guide to the world's best documentaries. In fact, I have a better offer. You are welcomed to host and serve up the file yourself. Indeed, I hope that others will, viral-like, post the PDF elsewhere, wherever they want to. Put it on YouTube, iTunes, etc. You have my permission, as long as the content remains intact. If you do forward and share this PDF -- and you are welcomed to -- please explain to the giftee the opt-in ad function.
In the meantime I'll serve as many of these as I can while my bandwidth lasts. I'll also post the results once the traffic plateaus.
If I have missed any great documentaries, let me know.
-- KK
True Films 3.0
By Kevin Kelly
2007, 198 pages, PDF (Acrobat Reader 8)
Free
Available (for as long as bandwidth lasts) here.
If you have trouble downloading it from my site, a reader has generously mirrored the file here or here.
This week I review five ebooks, or to be more precise, five books available in PDF format. That means you can download them instantly, and in four of the cases, for free.
In the emerging world of digital books, PDF formatted books is not really considered an ebook variant because they don't work so well on a handheld ebook device, such as the new Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader. Most PDFs are designed around a letter or magazine page size, which means they are easy to read on a desktop or laptop monitor, but not quite transferable to a smaller screen. That's okay with me because despite trying a few of the ebook readers, I still read digital books on my computer screen. To date I have not been willing to carry around yet another device to read books with.
If you are reading on a computer screen, then why even mess with PDFs? And for that matter, why even mess with a book? I recommend both books and PDFs because they offer several advantages over a web site.
1) A book (even without its paper pages) is a long argument that coheres as a whole, and whose argument or story is made by integrating well-selected parts. When a book works, it contains a satisfaction and thoroughness that comes from the completeness of a book, a wholeness that is rarely found in the assembled pieces found on a website. A book, unlike a website, tries to embrace a particular subject and say: here it is, at least as of now. Not every query needs or deserves a book, but often I find a book -- not necessarily one bound in covers -- an ideal guide to a subject or story.
2) A PDF is able to retain the highly evolved grammar, design and syntax that one thousand years of bookmaking has attained. Because of the idiosyncratic way web browsers work, designers do not have full control of what you as a reader see on the web. The web page, including its fonts, font sizes, and placement of material and size of the window, partly depends on the viewer's preferences. In my experience as a reader, a web designer, and a book designer, the reading experience on paper -- and PDFs -- is much more refined and elegant. As a publisher and designer I can direct the flow of attention with better tools (font choices, rules, lines, columns) and better control. The benefit to me as a reader is that this sophisticated design translates into increased clarity, smoothness, comprehension, and enjoyment.
3) A PDF book provides both the holistic virtues of a book, and its highly-evolved design, but also offers three of the advantages of the web: instant access, hyperlinking, and the potential to be free (see my discussion of True Films in the next entry).
These five qualities make PDF books pretty attractive to me. In addition the five PDF books I review below (in the next five entries) represent the best in the instructional arts. They tackle subjects that paper books are to slow to attend to, or too niche to bother with. That fact they are free (with one exception) is just a sweet bonus.
Guide to classic, common phrases
I make my living with words, more or less, but from time to time, I mix metaphors, indulge in incorrect idioms, and certainly fall back on tired phrases, believe it or not. This book of short explanations of thousands of clichés is a handy, quick reference any crossword puzzler, Scrabblehead, blogger, editor, or copywriter will enjoy. It's like the Cliff Notes of what's buried deep in the OED. I've always been into etymology -- after all, it's history for word nerds -- so the best aspect of this text, to me, is getting at which clichés are Shakespearean, Biblical, Great Depression-era, etc. We're often taught in English classes to avoid clichés and hackneyed phrases like the plague. Thumbing through this book, you realize they're so ingrained in our everyday discourse that it's easy to forget some are even clichés (i.e. "no problem"). When push comes to shove, no matter how you slice it, I'd wager you'd be hard pressed to write or say anything of length that doesn't have at least one. Surely identifying them would be a good way to temper usage. Live and learn!
-- Steven Leckart
The Facts on File Dictionary of Clichés
Christine Ammer
2006 (2nd Ed.), 544 pages
$14
Available from Amazon
Sample Excerpts:
more or less Approximately. This term has been around since the thirteenth century and still serves as an inexact answer. It also has been subject to numerous word plays, such as "More or less, but rather less than more" (Phoebe's comment on her betrothal to Wilfred, W.S. Gilbert, The Yeomen of the Guard); "A little more than kin and less than kind" (Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2); and "Less is more" (the simpler the better; Robert Browning, "Andrea del Sarto").
believe it or not Appearances to the contrary, it is true. Already a common phrase by then, in December 1918, it became the title of a cartoon series originally drawn by Robert LeRoy Ripley (1893-1949). It appeared in American newspapers for many years and was continued even after Ripley's death. Each drawing represented a seemingly unbelievable but allegedly true event or phenomenon, such as a two-headed chicken or a three-legged cat.
avoid like the plague, to To stay away from, assiduously shun. The scourge of western Europe on numerous occasions, the plague, although poorly understood, was known to be contagious even in the time of St. Jerome (A.D. 345-420), who wrote, "Avoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business."
no problem That's fine; you're welcome; I'd be glad to help. This conversational reply expressing acquiescence and other positive feelings originated in America in the mid-twentieth century. It also has been taken hold in numerous parts of the non-English-speaking world; the author has heard it in France, Austria, Yugoslavia, and Singapore from individuals who otherwise knew almost no English (other than "okay"). Others report having heard it in Russia, where it is often used ironically, Kenya, and China. In Australia, however, it alternates with "no worries" (probably from the 1930s British locution, "not to worry"). The journal American Speech recorded "no problem" in 1963 as an equivalent of NO SWEAT. The OED's citations include Martin Amis's Rachel Papers (1973): "He... gave it back to me, saying 'No problem' again through his nose." It has quickly become as ubiquitous and as divorced from the words' original meaning (i.e. "there is no difficulty") as HAVE A NICE DAY and TAKE CARE. Indeed, Pico Iyer pointed out that today "'No problem' ...in every language means that your problems are just beginning" (Time, July 2, 1990).
push comes to shove, if/when If/when matters become serious; when the situation is crucial; IF WORST COMES TO WORST. This term, with its further implication that action should back up words, appears to have originated in African-American English around the middle of the twentieth century. Murtagh and Harris used it in Cast the First Stone (1958): "Some judges talk nice and polite....Then, when push comes to shove, they say, 'Six months.'"
no matter how you slice it See SLICE THE PIE
slice the pie To share the profits. This metaphor has largely replaced the early-twentieth-century "slice of the melon," but exists side by side with the more literal PIECE OF THE ACTION. It comes from nineteenth-century America. T.N. Page used a version in Red Rock (1898): "Does he want to keep all the pie for himself?" And the Boston Sunday Herald (1967): "An appellate court victory... cut Wymouth's total property valuation... to give the town a bigger slice of the sales tax pie." A related term, "no matter how you slice it," is a twentieth-century Americanism meaning "no matter how you look at it." Carl Sandburg used it in The People, Yes (1936): "No matter how thick or how thin you slice it it's still baloney."
live and learn Experience is a good teacher. This adage was already stated in the sixteenth century by George Gascoigne in his play Glass of Government and has been repeated many times since, in numerous languages. James Howell's English Proverbs (1659) expanded it a bit: "One may live and learn, and be hanged and forget all."
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
The Universal History of Numbers
Dictionary of Symbols
How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle
Distraction-free writing device
The AlphaSmart is a very lightweight word processor with a four-line screen that runs for over 700 hours on a couple of AA batteries. It holds about 100 pages of text in 8 different files. Text can be easily uploaded to any word processing file. It turns on instantly and is extremely durable. I have used a previous incarnation (the AlphaSmart 3000) for years, and truly appreciate its ruggedness, ease of use, and non-distractibility. When I really just need to write and NOT be fooling around on the Internet, it turns on instantly, runs coolly and silently, and does not tempt me to edit when I should be writing (a computer is much easier for editing, since you can see a larger screen). Still, these have enough editing features to allow me to make important changes on the fly. These were originally designed as inexpensive word processors for schools. Since each of the eight files can be assigned to a different student with his own password, a number of different classes can use the same machines (there's a bunch of software available for teachers).
I wrote most of my last novel on mine, uploading to the computer every couple of days. I find it much more portable than my laptop, much less distracting, always ready. I wanted something cheap, lightweight, super-sturdy, entirely intuitive, and non-distracting. I didn't want something hot on my lap, didn't want to wait for it to boot up, didn't want to have to recharge batteries. My AlphaSmart 3000 weighs 2 pounds and I've dropped it more than twice with no problems. It's perfect for me. If I try to rough-draft on the computer, I'm daunted by the big blank "page" of the screen and fatally tempted to edit and format as I go. Or, when the going gets rough, tempted to play games or balance my checkbook or get online. My own character defects, of course, but I dare say not all my own. When I'm ready to upload to the computer, I attach a cable between the AlphaSmart and a USB port on my PC (it's Mac compatible, too) open an MS Word file (or, more usually, a MS Write file, which seems faster for some reason), and hit the "send" key. Then I can sit back and watch what's in the AlphaSmart file scroll onto the screen in a few minutes. Then I can edit my text, and I don't usually get distracted when I'm editing. You do have to upload each file separately, but that's not really a problem. I also bought a piece of software that I can use to download from a text file on the computer to the AlphaSmart, which is useful sometimes.
The version I use is the one that came out just before the Neo, their latest word processor. If I wanted another one, personally, I'd likely buy an older model on eBay rather than get a Neo, only because I can see they're adding more bells and whistles and I just don't want them. I should add that I do have a good laptop, but rarely use it; for one thing, I find it a nuisance and a worry to travel with, but it also has an annoying buzz. Writing is hard enough without having to be aware of the medium. When I start working on it, my AlphaSmart just sort of disappears. Without it, I'd draft in longhand. Lots of writers still do, you know.
-- Polly Robertus
AlphaSmart Word Processor
$220+
Available from and manufactured by Renaissance Learning, Inc.
Or eBay
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
At Work at Home: Design Ideas for Your Home Workplace
Rite in the Rain Notebooks
Life Balance
Cheapest hi-quality photo scans
This service will digitize your old slides, negatives and photographic prints at high quality and at a very cheap price. I've been using them to scan my 30-year backlog of photographs and I have been delighted with the results. I've used other services to scan my old photos; ScanCafe is by far the best deal. Their prices are fantastic. To scan a slide is just 24 cents, a color negative 19 cents.
Here is how it works: You pack up your images and mail them to ScanCafe's headquarters in Northern California. They count them up, and repackage them before shipping the pieces to India. In India they are scanned, touched up, rotated and then privately posted to your account at their website. You then go through the images online and select which ones you'd like to keep. You are allowed to dismiss (and not pay for) up to 50% of the total for that order. You can reject images because you aren't happy with how they look online, or simply because you don't want the image. In the specific case of original photo negatives, there is no reliable way to communicate which image(s) you want on the strip, so ScanCafe will scan the entire strip of negatives. You'll have to reject the particular frames you don't want (but no more than 50% of the total order. Combine them with slides to keep your percentage down.)
After you've made your selection, Scan Cafe will send the originals back to the US and then from CA they will ship you a DVD/CD with your images and your originals. It takes 7-8 weeks door to door. The quality of scan is great for everything except huge billboard enlargements. The photos are scanned at 3000 dpi which gives a file about the quality of a 7 megapixel digital shot. You can scoop the final jpeg images into iPhoto or Flickr or Blurb books. They are rotated into correct up-down/sideways orientation by hand. They are clean and crisp. I have a Nikon scanner and these $0.19 scans are superior in quality. On the left is a ScanCafe scan cropped for detail, on the right is a Nikon scan. Note the increase dynamic range of the left one, as on the rock. (These two images have been uniformly reduced in resolution to fit on the web.)
So for $25 you can get 100 slides scanned. You'll need to pay for shipping your box to and fro via UPS, which might total $12, so larger orders amortize that cost. And then there's the 2 month wait. Clearly this is a tool for dealing with your archive and not a birthday present you need next week. If your photos have sat unused for 10 years a few additional weeks turnaround is not going to hurt. The 50% cut is also meant to encourage you to scan everything and sort later.
These cheap prices have encouraged me to revisit my earlier photo life, and in the spirit of the web, start sharing the treasure now hiding in the basement. Some people are very concerned about sending their precious originals to India -- or anywhere for that matter. They should not be. ScanCafe has a very elaborate tracking and shipping system that would work even if you were shipping jewels. Their scanning facilities in Bangalore (description and photos here) are more organized than you are. I have more trust in this system than I would handing them over to any neighborhood scanner.
-- KK
ScanCafe
$0.19/neg, $0.24/slide
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
Blurb * Lulu
Pro Digital Photographer's Handbook
Pictopia
Personal bookprinting
As commercial book publishing crashes, personal book publishing is booming. Personal book making entails printing high-quality books in very small quantities, including quantities of one. New technologies permit anyone to print one copy of a softcover or hardcover book, including all-color photo books. These printed-on-demand books are indistinguishable from commercially printed books. In fact, some of the books you buy on Amazon are manufactured with this same technology. You just can't tell the difference.
However, being able to print as few as one copy -- instead of a minimum of a thousand -- shifts the economics of bookmaking toward individuals with more passion than money. For the past two years I've been producing high-quality books in very small quantities using several different services. I've shown these finished books around to many people, including those in the New York publishing industry and media, and everyone has agreed the quality is first class. Several of the photo books I've made look like coffee-table artworks, and cost about the same, yet I can produce them one by one on demand. I've also made text only books which appear to be store-bought trade paperbacks or hardcover books from the bookstore.
Having tried most of the services available and created dozens of books, I'm ready to recommend the best services to use. My advice is slightly complicated, because the success of book making and book publishing pivots around your aims.
To turn a text manuscript into a regular book, either softcover or hard, I recommend Lulu. Their website has a very thorough step-by-step process which will enable you to make a book with the least amount of money. A 100-page trade softcover book in black and white will cost about $7 to print. Lulu will walk you through the edit, design, and production sequence. They offer templates you can follow. Once in digital form, you can easily order one book or many. Lulu will also offer help in getting your book out into the world, but it can't really help you market or sell it. That will be your job as a self-publisher. If you are a more sophisticated book maker with your own design skills you can send Lulu a PDF file of your designed book, and simply have them print it, at the same prices. This is the way I use them. Finally, Lulu can also print full color books, including smaller full-color paperbacks. (These could run $20-30 a piece for 150 pages) The overall process of getting a book printed is smooth and fairly hassle free.
My recommendation for the best personal color book printer is Blurb. Blurb produces color books very similar to the iPhoto books you can order from Apple. Using iPhoto Books is slightly easier than using Blurb's software, particularly if all your photos happen to already be in iPhoto, but it works well enough. The idea is that you can drag images (photos or illustrations) into template book pages, add text or captions where you want to, then hit a button and have the finished book mailed to you. (all these systems work with PCs and Macs)
A few of the books I've made in copies of one.
The results from both Apple and Blurb are marvelous. In fact, these books are astounding. That's because they both use the same back-room engine, the HP Indigo 5000 (as do the other color book makers like Snapfish and MyPublisher). The Indigio is essentially a high-speed, high-quality liquid-toner printer that will print your photo book several pages across. (Lulu on the other hand uses a dry toner process called iGen3 from Xerox) The final result of a Indigo-printed page is a very richly colored, very finely detailed image. It looks like a page from a color magazine. The color-match is pretty close to the image you see on your monitor, with this exception: I've notice that printing on paper is far less forgiving of blurred or out of focus images. The human eye notices less-than-perfect sharpness on the page more than on the screen, so you have to be far more ruthless in your editing when making a book.
While Apple and Blurb both produce lovely printed books with well-crafted covers (in quantities of one), Blurb does it for a lot less money. A 100-page book of photographs will cost $100 with Apple iPhoto Books, but only $39 with Blurb. They are currently printed on the same machines. Blurb also offers more options for working directly from PDFs. Recently they announced an easy way to make a printed book version of your blog (or any part of your blog) which I have not tried yet, but will soon. Apple actually subcontracts their bookmaking to MyPublisher, so this is not their focus. Blurb, however, besides having the best prices, is the most dedicated to servicing the widening long-tail of personal book making.
For instance Blurb has noticed that while most people start out by ordering one copy of a personal book, they quickly come back for more. Ordering 50 or more copies is not uncommon. Furthermore, once people discover how easy it is to make a book, they make a lot of them. Maybe several a year. A book has an authority and weight that is not easily dismissed in this digital world. For instance, some people have discovered that by mailing out very nice books out of their reports, business plans, or even Powerpoint presentations they got more attention and calls back because "people won't throw a book out!"
I've also played around with different sized books. MyPublisher offers a truly coffee-table size photobook ($60) that is very impressive. I filled it with snapshots from a trip to Italy we made one year. At the other end of scale, I've made a number of itsy-bitsy books the size of a deck of cards with Apple iPhoto and MyPublisher books. I was first handed one of these diminutive works by a photographer who was using this cute booklet as her portfolio. Cool. I've made little ones this size devoted to curious themes just to hand out.
There are tons of reasons why people make personal books. Artists can use a clean trim hardcover book as their portable gallery. Cookbooks take on a higher class production when you can add photos of your dishes. I even saw one Blurb-produced book that was a reproduction of a relative's old typewritten manuscript of poetry. It had a lot of soul. Several friends who were scrapbook enthusiasts decided to switch to classy photobooks (everything is scanned first) when they saw the tidy fit-and-finish of the Blurb books. Photobooks are hot mementos for reunions. We now make a photobook from all our vacations. I attended one hi-tech conference recently at which everyone got an instant Indigo-produced color book summarizing the conference, pictures and all. At some of the foundations I am involved in, we've used hard cover color books of a fun meeting or trip as perfect gifts for potential funders. And nowadays Blurb books are inexpensive enough that some high school kids are making their own full-color alternative anti-yearbooks.
Most information in the world today is digital and has no need to ever leave the screen. But the more personal your expression is, and the more personal the audience, the greater the impact you get by making the information tangible. For making text in black and white, use Lulu. For making color pages, use Blurb. Lulu has great online tutorials, and Blurb has released a meta-book, a book which tells you how to make a book. It's quite well done, with solid advice useful no matter where you get it printed. While you can purchase a Blurb-made hard copy of this book, they also wisely offer a free downloadable PDF version.
-- KK
Lulu Paperback
$4.50 base price
Available from Lulu
Blurb Photobook
$19 base price
Available from Blurb
Blurb's How to Make a Book
Better than a thesaurus
A working reverse dictionary (hosted by Onelook.com) is one of the most useful sites out there. We've all had those moments when we know there's a word for some concept, but we don't know what it is. We need something more than a thesaurus, because we don't know an equivalent word. Onelook.com's reverse dictionary helps. You can even enter wildcards, if you know what part of the word looks like.
I'm not a professional writer, but I write for fun. This tool is indispensable.
-- Kimball Robinson
OneLook Reverse Dictionary
Digital Paper
Based on comics master Scott McCloud's recommendation (below), I bought a Cintiq. It does something I've always wanted to do since I first saw a computer. This thing is a pen-based tablet that doubles as a monitor. In other words you draw directly on the tablet, just like a paper-based drawing, but digitally. In fact the surface of the Cintq monitor/tablet feels like paper under a pen. Synchrony of image with your movements is almost exact, and the micro difference doesn't seem to matter. The result is weirdly like ink, or paint, but with all the control and magic of Photoshop. Of course, as a monitor, it will display whatever's on your computer, whether it's animation software or a spreadsheet. (You could hook it up to a $500 Mac Mini and have a fabulous digital art studio.) It's slowly being adopted by film animators and other high-end graphic professionals. A Cintq is expensive ($2,500), big, thick and bulky (it is too fat to sit on your lap like other tablets, but it can lay flat on a desk), but if you are producing digital images for a living, it speeds up your productivity and eases your hurt. It's fun to use.
-- KK
Drawing directly on the screen with the Cintiq Tablet made a huge difference in my artwork, and sped up my workflow by at least 30%, maybe more. It also saved me a lot of hand-strain. Apart from the Mac, it's one of my all-time favorite digital tools.
In 2003-2004, I lost about a year of work to hand strain, using a regular tablet, mouse and keyboard. I'd work for a couple of hours each day on my comics and get these shooting pains up my arm and have trouble holding the pen steady. I got a good deal on a Cintiq (a slightly smaller model than today's 21" monster, but equally suited to graphics) at the end of '04 a couple of months before I had to begin finished pages on the new book. After finishing all 225 pages by early 2006 using a Cintq, I'd had no hand strain at all; even working 11 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Most importantly, I actually *liked* the way the art looked. I was never that comfortable with pen and ink tools, and liked all the digital options I started getting in the mid-90's, but my work on the old tablet was always wobbly and lame. Now there's much more control, confidence and warmth to the drawings.
I was an idiot not to buy a Cintiq in '99 when I first saw them on display at a New York show. I figured I couldn't afford it, but I wound up losing a lot more time and money by NOT having one.
-- Scott McCloud
Wacom Cintiq 21UX
$2,500
Available from B&H Photo
Manufactured by Wacom
Condensed reading
Electronic documents are a great tool but there are times when you just need printed copies.
FinePrint installs itself as a printer in your Windows system and will intercept print jobs and put up to 8 pages of output on 1 sheet of paper, though this is often unreadable (at least for me - I didn't pay for the Steve Austin upgrade when I had laser vision surgery).
I find that 2-4 pages per sheet and printing in duplex saves on paper, reduces printing time, saves on toner and makes documents more portable. It's great for web pages without printing views that use those narrow columns. You can also edit the jobs and remove / reorder jobs and pages.
MS Office and some other applications have a version of this capability now but none are as robust as FinePrint's. I have been using it since 2000 and have been very happy with the product.
-- Lon Miller
FinePrint Software
$50
Available from FinePrint
Instant ink brush
Leave it to the Japanese to create a brush pen. This pocketable pen has a super fine brush tip of actual bristles, perfect for tiny Kanji characters, or of course, doodling in your journal, or sketching in your Moleskine. While it's hugely popular with comic book folks and cartoonists, artists of all stripes have picked one up for their paper work. The feel is incredibly tactile and lovely. It works like a fountain pen, with replaceable rich ink cartridges. Once capped it doesn't leak as far as I can tell. (There's a moment of panic when you first assemble it since the instructions are 100% in Japanese, but just insert the ball-bearing end of the ink capsule into the tip.) You can purchase other color inks as well.
-- KK
Pentel Pocket Brush Pen
$12
Available from Jet Pens
Or $18 from Wet Paint Artists' Materials
Text messaging for answers
Using my cell phone to Google is one of my favorite cool tools. When I'm on the road or out of my house, and want to find the phone number to a restaurant, movie times, or the Oakland A's score I use my cell phone to ask Google (# is 46645). I even used it in a class to find the capital of Bhutan (Thimphu) and win a prize. My cell phone company charges me to send and receive text messages, but this is WELL worth the 20 cents to me. It answers back quickly (sometimes almost immediately after you send it, but usually within a minute or two), and accurately. You can convert currency, get directions, translate words, get weather forecasts, get word definitions. Without having to talk to anyone. A lost or confused introvert's best friend.
-- Matt Salazar
The steps (given by Google):
1. Start a new text message and type in your search query
2. Send the message to the number "46645" (GOOGL)
3. You'll receive text message(s) with results
Try it out here:
http://www.google.com/sms/
Television Eliminator
Switch off thousands of TVs using just one small remote! When you want some peace and quiet in that local bar of restaurant or office all you need to do is hit the TV-B-Gone button. I've used it in bars and clubs, and in the headquarters building of a large South African bank which had too many TV's on the walls and some of which needed to switched off. It really does work.
--Paul Parkinson
[When you press the button, TV-B-Gone takes slightly more than a minute to emit more than 200 popular shutdown codes, like trying every possible combination to open a safe. The instructions include a diatribe against television in general, as if using this product is not merely a prank, but a serious political act. CP]
TV-B-Gone
$20
Available from
Amazon
Manufactured by TV B Gone
Recording the great cycle
I've been keeping journals of all kinds for more than a decade now. Travel journals, self-improvement journals, business journals, and daily journals that now form a foot-tall stack under the desk and a box of notebooks on the shelf. Yet none provide that comparative, year-to-year window into the days of life, or answer the question "How am I doing this year versus last year, or the year before that again?"
That's where "The 5 Year Journal" comes in. It's a hardbound, 266-page journal organized so that - as the title says - you can keep 5 years of brief entries in a single book. There are two days on each page, with five years of three-line entries for each day. Now three lines doesn't sound like a lot, but it's enough to capture the essence of the day. And there's no reason you can't keep other journals in parallel for lengthier meditations.
It's a well thought-out book as well. There are logically placed sections for monthly goal planning, and for monthly, quarterly, and yearly reviews. Some of the Quarterly Questions might seem a bit whimsical ("My Favorite... Chuckle... Patience Builder... Tv Show"), but on the whole the author/designer Doreene Clement has exercised admirable self-restraint and thoughtfulness in putting the book together.
I'm looking forward to 2007 to see how things turned out this year.
-- Garry Ray
The 5 Year Journal
$30
Available from
Shared Vision Network
or $25 from Rare Device
The best thesaurus ever
This is the best thesaurus there is. It supplies more synonyms, analogs, parallels, equivalents and comparable words in English than any other source, online or off. No other thesaurus comes near to it for completeness or breadth. Compiled in dictionary form, like the one in your word processors, there's no index or cross-referencing. Just look up a word, any word, and it proceeds to overwhelm you with alternative choices (a total of 1.5 million synonyms are presented in 1,361 pages), including short phrases and only mildly related words. Rather than being a problem of imprecision, the Finder's broad inclusiveness prods your imagination and prompts your recall.
Its single downside, however, is a major frustration: it is not available digitally, in a form compatible to the way most people write these days. It should live on your computer in a pull-down option, or plug-in for Word or the like. I'm totally baffled why it is not. As it is, it's a huge fat book -- a great book! -- sitting within arms' reach when I write, but not near enough for the power that it offers. [Recommended by Judy Renouf]
-- KK
The Synonym Finder
J.I. Rodale
1986, 1361 pages
$12
Available from Amazon
My comparison of four thesauruses using the terms COOL and TOOL:
*
Microsoft Word's Thesaurus
COOL - cold, chill, chilly, fresh, breezy, fashionable, trendy, hip, with it, offhand, unfriendly, icy, distant, detached, frosty, frigid, unenthusiastic, freshen, muted.
TOOL - gear, tackle, utensil, apparatus, paraphernalia.
*
Merriam-Webster Online Thesaurus
COOL -- Synonyms: aloof, antisocial, cold, detached, distant, frosty, remote, standoffish, unsociable, chill, refrigerate. Related Words: introverted, reclusive, reserved, withdrawn; misanthropic; apathetic, indifferent, unconcerned; disinterested, incurious, uninterested; reticent, silent, taciturn; diffident, shy, timid, air-condition; freeze, ice, quick-freeze, supercool; air-cool, ventilate.
TOOL -- Implement, pawn, dupe.
*
Dictionary.com Thesaurus
COOL -- Adjective: cold, air-conditioned, algid, arctic, biting, chill, chilled, chilling, chilly, coldish, frigid, frore, frosty, gelid, nipping, nippy, refreshing, refrigerated, shivery, snappy, wintry. Adjective: calm, assured, collected, composed, coolheaded, deliberate, detached, dispassionate, impassive, imperturbable, level-headed, nonchalant, philosophical, phlegmatic, placid, quiet, relaxed, self-controlled, self-possessed, serene, stolid, together, tranquil, unagitated, unemotional, unexcited, unflappable, unruffled. Adjective: disapproving, aloof, annoyed, apathetic, distant, frigid, impertinent, impudent, incurious, indifferent, insolent, lukewarm, offended, offhand, offish, procacious, reserved, solitary, standoffish, unapproachable, uncommunicative, unenthusiastic, unfriendly, uninterested, unresponsive, unsociable, unwelcoming, withdrawn. adjective: excellent, dandy, divine, glorious, groovy, hunky-dory, keen, marvelous, neat, nifty, sensational, swell.verb: chill, abate, air-condition, air-cool, ally, calm, freeze, frost, infrigidate, lessen, lose heat, mitigate, moderate, reduce, refrigerate, temper.
TOOL -- Noun : instrument, apparatus, appliance, bucksaw, contraption, contrivance, device, dojigger, engine, gadget, gizmo, implement, job, machine, means, mechanism, utensil, weapon, whatchamacallit, accomplice , accessory, accomplice, agent, auxiliary, cat's-paw, chump, creature, dupe, easy mark, figurehead, flunky, go-between, greenhorn, hayseed, hireling, idiot, intermediary, jackal, lackey, mark, medium, messenger, minion, patsy, pawn, peon, puppet, stooge, stool pigeon, sucker, tuna, vehicle.
*
The Synonym Finder
COOL -- adj. 1. chilly, chill, nippy, unheated, unwarmed, heatless, sunless; breezy, draughty, windy. 2. composed, collected, Inf. together, self-possessed, self-controlled; easy-going, relaxed, even-tempered, imperturbable, unexcitable, unflappable; unexcited, unmoved, unperturbed unruffled, staid, sedate; undemonstrative, unemotional, stoical, philosophical; passionless, impassive, dispassionate. 3. passive, undesiring, unexcitable, frigid; phlegmatic, listless, half-hearted, lukewarm; stony, flinty, steely. 4. deliberate, intentional, purposeful, meant, willful, volitional, voluntary; premeditated. calculated, designed, planned, plotted, schemed, devised, contrived. 5. unfriendly, unsociable, unwelcome, uninviting, forbidding; uncordial, ungracious, unamicable, inhospitable; unapproachable, inaccessible, closed tight; distant, remote, stand-offish, Inf. offish. 6. audacious, presumptuous, overconfident, impertinent, assuming, insolent, impudent, brazen,brassy, Inf. nervy, Inf. pushy; unabashed, shameless, forward, Inf. fresh, bumptious. 7. aloof, indifferent, apathetic, unconcerned, disinterested, incurious, uninquisitive; removed, detached, uninvolved, unresponsive, unsympathetic. -- v. 8. chill, refrigerate, freeze, frigorify, Rare. infrigidate; ice, glaciate, congeal, regelate. 9. soothe, allay, assuage, mollify, soften; moderate, temper, Archaic. attemper; mitigate, abate, lessen, diminish, reduce; quiet, still, compose, lull, hush; pacify, tranquilize, smoothe, settle. 10. cool it Slang. a. take it easy, calm down, don't sweat it, go with the tide, roll with the punches, take it in stride, think nothing of it b. cut it out, drop it, lay off, knock it off, come off it. 11. cool off Informal. calm down, relax, loosen up, settle down, unwind, simmer down.
TOOL -- n. 1. implement, instrument, utensil, apparatus, device, contrivance, invention; gadget, dohickey, hickey, Inf. contraption, Sl. gimmick; aid, convenience, Archaic. conveniency, time-saver; appliance, mechanism, machine, automaton, robot. 2. vehicle, channel, agency, instrumentality, means, way, ways and means, wherewithal; agent, medium, intermediary, middleman, go-between, broker, Chiefly Brit. factor, Sl. ten-percenter; cat's-paw, pawn, puppet, creature; jackal, flunky, lackey, attendant, peon, servant, handmaid, menial; minion, follower, toady, sycophant, Inf. yes man; hireling, underling, assistant, henchman, Sl. stooge; dummy, dupe, Sl. pigeon, gull, gudgeon, Inf. sucker.
How to give good slides
A great PowerPoint presentation is a story well-told. A bad
PowerPoint is a mind-deadener. Thousands of businesspeople are
snoozing away at this moment as slide after slide of
fancy-transitioned words, words, and more bulleted words evaporate a
fortune in productivity. Don't get me started on how badly made
PowerPoint presentations are blunting the sharpest minds of today's
college students. Google "Gettysburg Address"+"PowerPoint" to see for
yourself.
It doesn't have to be that way! Beyond Bullet Points shows you how
to achieve excellence in presentations. I just looked at my bookshelf
and noticed that my third copy of Beyond Bullet Points is missing,
having been pressed into the hands of some startled friend,
executive, teacher, activist, who was only trying to get out the door
of my office.
Here's what it teaches in a nutshell: The medium of PowerPoint is one
of visual storytelling. An excellent presentation is an excellent
story. So, the structure of the story is first. Then a storyboard is
needed. A storyboard is a series of sketches, or notes, about what
you will talk about. These are not bullet points that the audience
are meant to read, but visual reminders about what you are planning
to say. Last, and least important, you add the words or text. The
images rule! You can download admirable Word templates from the
book's website, and get started storyboarding right away.
The emerging storyboard
With images in place
Following the approach of this book, I have spent dozens of hours
storyboarding my own recent presentations, and hundreds of dollars on
custom photographs and image research. It has paid off. I've used
this approach on all kinds of audiences all over the world, and it
works. Right now, anyone using these techniques has a strategic
advantage in being heard -- after listening to the second or third
speaker reading words on the screen, audiences who see a
well-orchestrated visual accompaniment to a well-plotted narrative
start waking up and paying attention.
Do not advance one slide further without reading this book.
-- Howard Rheingold
Beyond Bullet Points
Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations that Inform,
Motivate, and Inspire
Cliff Atkinson
2005, 223 pages
$16
Amazon
Beyond Bullets Blog
Sample excerpts:
It might sound counterintuitive, but when you put less information on
a slide, you increase the audience's attention because the audience
is then dependent on the speaker for explanation, and the speaker is
dependent on the audience for feedback.
*
The protagonist of every presentation is your audience, and you are a
supporting character. This is the crucial spin on crafting stories
for live presentations.
*
Stories are about how people respond to something that has changed in
their environment. We like stories of how other people handle changes
in circumstances and what their choices reveal about their characters.
When a protagonist experiences a change, an imbalance is created
because things are no longer like they used to be. In screenwriting,
this change is called the inciting incident that sets a story in
motion. Scene 3 of the story template should help your audience to
understand why they are there for the presentation -- usually,
because a change has happened that has created an imbalance.
Defining the imbalance that has brought everyone to the presentation
can be easy or difficult, depending on your situation. The imbalance
could be caused by a crisis brought on by an external force that has
changed your organization's environment, such as a sudden economic
shift or the action of a competitor. It could be the result of an
internal change, such as a revised opinion or mindset, a new piece of
information, a new research report, or an anecdote from the field.
*
Once you get the hang of writing an Act 1 with your group, try
applying these techniques to other communications scenarios beyond
your PowerPoint presentations. Crafting Act 1 of a presentation is a
problem-solving framework that can also help a group to clarify
strategy, develop marketing messages, create project plans, and
resolve other challenges.
Best podcast microphone
This is the same headset with microphone used by NBA courtside broadcasters. Yes, it's around $250, but instead of the crappy sound from those $19 cheapies at OfficeMax, you'll sound like a real pro; people will think you are on NPR! The mic travels with your head, making this ideal for people making audio info products, doing radio interviews, and of course generating podcasts.
For casual headset/mic use (like on the phone), I do not recommend this unit. The Beyer Dynamic DT290 is really a pro tool. You will have to understand all of the audio hook ins to sound cards, etc. Not exactly a plug-and-play solution. It is not all that difficult, but for novices, it would be problematic. It is really for those who want essentially pro-quality sound in their radio interviews, audio recordings, etc. It does take some effort and expense to get to the next level, but IMO it is well worth it. Especially if one wants to do lots of podcasts. You get the greatest improvement with upgrading the mic. (For the casual user, the best mic at the moment is the Plantronics DSP 500 -- a USB digital headset with mic that gives great, even amazing quality.)
From time to time, you can find the DT290 on EBay. Comes with an XLR connection, but can be modified to use a 1/4 jack.
-- Hakim Chishti
Beyer Dynamic DT290 Headset
$181
Available from
Amazon
Quick quick easy wiki
The easiest-to-set-up wiki I've ever found. (PB = set it up "as easily as a peanut butter sandwich"). And it's true. I'm using it for my to-do list and to collaborate on a document with my friends. Not too fancy and not bloatware. It's just simple, free, and it works!
-- Ramit
PB Wiki
Instant personal logos
Get yer logos here. Only 25 bucks! Quick, dirt-cheap custom logos for your blog, website, garage band, or start-up. You give 'em as much guidance and background as you can jot down, and this outfit will send you one --and only one -- finished design a few days later for 25 dollars. It's a take or leave it job, so inspect their galleries of previous jobs to set your expectations. You can get revisions for $10 more, or purchase more premium packages for fancier "branding" needs. For this price, I figure I can't lose to much if it fails, but it's cheap and cool if they get it right.
I bought my first $25 logo for my True Films website. Its style (identical to Cool Tools) is pretty minimal, an approach which is actually hard to design for. Here is the logo they sent me via email a a few days later.
I paid $10 for a revision, requesting even more simplicity, and a few hours later they provided this:
So that is what I used.
I got my second $25 GotLogo for my Street Use blog about the street use of technology. I gave them a few guideline: keep it black and red; make it like graffiti. I was happy what they came up with so I used it.
It's a great service for the Brand of You.
-- KK
GotLogos
$25
Available from GotLogos
Digital goods storefront
I've been using Payloadz to sell digital PDF files for a while now. It's a great way for me to charge a few dollars for a digital document. Users pay me with Paypal, then they get a url good for 48 hours, and from there they can download the files. It's done automatically. In my case I'm selling hyperlinked PDF versions of my books for $3.50. The alternative to Payloadz is to send a file out by hand for each purchase, which would be insane.
It's not hard for the unscrupulous to cheat a bit (very few do) yet Payloadz removes the temptation of completely unregulated free downloads. I experienced a burp or two setting up the files the first time, but since then the system is pretty invisible. Customers download the books anytime, and the money flows into my Paypal account. I do nothing. Yet when all is accounted for my total profit from a digital file is equal to the total profit from selling the equivalent paper book -- with about 1/100th the trouble.
Payloadz can be used to deliver any digital good -- software, ebooks, movies, ringtones, or CDs worth of material. Biggest downside is their monthly fee ($15 minimum), in addition to the usual modest Paypal charge per transaction. You'll need some brisk traffic to keep it going. Payloadz has a completely free version, but since your files are unprotected in that version (not on the paid) I don't see any advantage to it.
I'd be crazy to call for the end of paper publishing (been there, done that wrong) but I have no hesitation in heralding the dawn of digital publishing. I think digital downloads FOR PAY will be a viable part of the gift economy. So far Payloadz has been an essential tool in exploring this new publishing model. I recommend the service to anyone selling intangibles.
-- KK
My PDF books available via Payloadz
Cool Tools
True Films
Your own super hi-res printer
I needed a printer that could, without raising an eyebrow, accept my digitally produced artwork, print it, and mail it to my house.
A recent find, PS Print, has brought my original dream true. Much of their success is due to the widespread adoption of the PDF standard, which removes lot of variables. I sailed through this experience with joy. PS Print has an idiot-proof website, with crystal clear and simple steps to upload files. It takes half a minute. They print your files and mail the material back to you. At great prices. For instance, I designed my own personal business card in Photoshop (it could have been any program), uploaded the file, ordered the minimum 250 cards for $26, and got the box of four-color cards by mail later that week. No muss, no fuss. For common color printing tasks like flyers, postcards, brochures and biz cards, this is like having a multi-million dollar printer at the other end of your USB cable. (They even do the less common, like full-color event tickets with numbering, which is pretty cool.)
-- KK
PS Print
Best source for self-publishing
Dan Poynter�s utterly reliable self-publishing advice, The Self-Publishing Manual, has been a perennial oasis of sanity in a sea of hype for over two decades. Now in its 13th edition, it�s more useful than ever. To Poynter the technologies of cheap � if not free � duplication are an outright opportunity, rather than a dreaded disaster. The Self-Publishing Manual is way ahead of any other source in offering smart counsel on how to exploit on-demand printing, online-download publishing, and e-distribution � in the context of 2 billion free web pages. All publishing is self-publishing now. If you want to know how to publish (especially on paper), this is the man. Hello, New York?
�KK
The Self-Publishing
Manual
Dan Poynter
2002, 430 pages
$7+
Para Publishing
Santa Barbara, CA
Amazon
The new book-publishing model is not strictly self-publishing. It is a trial run of 500 books that allows you, not only to sell them, but also to approach some agents and publishers with a book rather than a manuscript. You can also send out review copies, approach distributors, wholesalers, book clubs and make other sales.
�
Don�t just write � build: Today, authors �build� their books; writing is just part of the building process. As an author, you know your subject. You can describe it, explain it and teach it. The eBook simply provides you with more visual aids to help you get your point to your reader. Now, in addition to the printed word, you have photos, graphics, animation, color, dimension, motion, sound and hyperlinks to more information. Your pBook (paper) will have static words and b/w photographs but the eBook version will be far more versatile.
�
Customizing and special versions: Because your books can be printed in short runs and since the new print engines print two pages at a time, you may customize your book for your customer. If you make a premium sale to a company, it will cost just pennies to bind in a letter from the CEO or to add the company logo to the cover. This is called �Mass Customization.�
�
Since the laser printers are driven by computer, books can have several versions of some chapters, each aimed at a particular type of reader. These are called �Module Books,� as the book can be assembled for a particular reader.
 Your sales chart
 Typical big publisher�s sales chart
Mastering the inner life of stories
The elemental unit of human experience is the story. Yet few people know how a story works, or why, or how to make a good story. When I began this book I thought it was a manual for Hollywood screenwriters, which it is. There are scores of other books in the genre, but ignore them. Professional screenwriters all swear by McKee's Story as the key guide to creating a story that works. Halfway through this book, it altered me as an audience; I was watching and reading differently. By the end, I realized that this was actually a book about living. Constructing a story that works is similar to constructing a life that works. For people trying to write a story, for people listening to a story, for people trying to compose an interesting life, this is a profoundly important guide. I find it worth rereading every couple of years.
I recommend using the four-cassette audio version of this book for several reasons. One, it is abridged, and improved by that, and two, you get more a sense of storytelling by listening, rather than reading, and three, the author delivers his message in his own strong voice, which in this case conveys his passion and intelligence more than his words alone do.
Story
Robert McKee
1997, 466 pages
$35
Regan Books
Amazon
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A tool kit for documentary radio by Jay Allison
A decade and half ago, I published in Whole Earth Review a wonderfully succinct guide to conducting a radio interview/story, written by radio producer Jay Allison. It's still great advice (available on Transom.org), so I asked Jay what tools he is recommending for radioheads these days and he quickly sent back the following pithy and incredibly useful reviews.
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So you want to make a story for radio?
The first tool I'd recommend is the public radio website Transom.org, which covers a spectrum of Tools, Ideas and Practices. You'll find recommendations for new gear there, but more than that, you find new voices and new ways of telling. It's a performance space and master class with the likes of Studs Terkel, Sarah Vowell, Norman Corwin, Scott Carrier and lots of others. I'm quite proud of it (it comes from a non-profit group I founded, Atlantic Public Media) and it's having a real impact in public broadcasting. Check it out: Transom.org
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Sharp mini-disc,$150-250, previously available from Amazon
As for gear, many people are using the small mini-disc recorders in the field these days. The portable mini-discs are teeny and cheap, but honestly I feel that's their weakness. They break. Their tiny mic inputs get stressed. Humidity hurts them. If you want to hear something heretical in the digital age, I often still use an old analog cassette recorder, the venerable Sony TC-D5M. It runs on D-Cells and is not subject to digital gremlins. It sounds quite sweet, if somewhat noisy compared to the silent sheen of digital, and I can almost always rely on it. I use portable DAT recorders too, but the best, the HHB, uses rechargeable batteries which, like all rechargeables, are inherently evil and programmed by the devil to fade at the moment they are needed most. I personally do not use Minidisc recorders, but they sound good for the money, which is why lots of people love them and I recommend them for beginners. The model numbers change, but the Sony and Sharp units are the most popular, particularly the Sharp for its more flexible recording volume controls and AA battery powering. For specific models, check the latest recommendations at Minidisc.org.
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Beyer M58 microphone
$240
Broadcast Supply Worldwide
800-426-8434
Also from Amazon
For an all-purpose interview mic, I'd pick the Beyer M-58. It's a dynamic omni with a long handle for getting in close to the speaker's mouth, which is required for radio. It represents a good balance between sweet sound and indestructibility. You need the M-58's windscreen, a set of headphones (Walkman-style will do), and the proper XLR-miniplug cable to connect the mic with the mini-disc recorder. The best cable has a right-angle plug which doesn't stress the delicate input. Sonic Studios makes nice custom cables. In fact, their website sells a variety of portable rigs, configured and ready to go, plus lots of good advice for recordists.
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ProTools
Free download at
Digidesign
Finally, I'd say the most remarkable new tool is Digidesign's ProTools. ProTools is editing and mixing software. It replaces many bulky and expensive items of yesteryear, like the reel-to-reel tape recorders we used to edit on with razor blades (a lost and lovely skill), the multi-track machines and mixers which blended our sounds, the various outboard signal processing devices which improved the audio. Now it all comes in a little box for a few hundred bucks. Anyone raised around computers will get the hang of it quickly. It's powerful stuff. Of course, you still have to have talent, smarts, and a great ear. Digital technology hasn't changed that.
Digidesign has a free version, ProTools Free, which is just enough to get you hooked and make you want to move on to the hard stuff... which is NOT free, but still just a fraction of what it would have been only a few years ago for this kind of power in a digital audio workstation. It works best on the Mac.
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Mbox
$250
Available from Amazon
UPDATE: $450 for Mbox2 available from Sweetwater
800-222-4700,
260-432-8176
Getting the sound in and out of a computer with ProTools Free, however, is tricky. There are lots of kludges and work-arounds that will get you started for little money (check the Transom.org discussion boards), but if you're at all serious, you'll be happier spending the few hundred bucks for the commercial version than wasting your time on trickery. The commercial ProTools package includes a hardware interface (it's like an external audio card) which allows you make the connections easily. Their MBox is the cheapest of these - at $500 list, with the fully enabled software included. One thing: the interface must be connected to your computer in order for the commercial version of ProTools to work.
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So, the basic setup is an inexpensive portable mini-disk recorder, a Beyer M58 mic, the Digidesign MBox as the interface between the gear, with ProTools software installed on any recent Mac, even an iBook. An external firewire many-gigabyte drive is recommended but not necessary. This package gives you all the digital/analog ins and outs, plus astonishing editing/mixing/processing tools for creating fully professional stories or music. Burn a CD or rip an MP3 when you're done, and share with the multitudes. At Transom.org, you'll find youngsters and oldsters who are doing exactly this and are getting their stories on public radio. It's a step in the direction of citizen access to mainstream media, when most steps are headed in the opposite direction.
Current reviews of mini-discs
Minidisc
Printing small quantities of books cheaply
The authority of a book is astounding. Take text as it appears on your screen, print it on paper, bind between covers, and those words will get more attention and respect than they would on a website or stapled as a report. We don't know how long this cultural bias will prevail, but as long as it does, you can take advantage of outfits that print short runs of soft-bound books.
I recently produced a 120-page book that reproduced a sketch journal I kept while bicycling across America. I scanned the images and sent the printer the files of the completely designed book. They sent me back 200 copies at $3.23 per copy. And I could have ordered as few as 10 books.
Sample pages can be viewed here.
I did another small run of a book of weird drawings, this time only 100 copies. The curious can find it here on amazon.
This was not only cheaper than having them copied at Kinkos, it was more handsome and handy since the pages were perfect bound. I use them as gifts; they appear as authortative as any other book on your bookshelf.
Two recent advances are behind this service. The first is a high-speed Xerox document machine called DocuTech 6100 series, which prints rapidly (180 pages per minute) using inexpensive toner driven by computers. There is no ink, film or plate.
This high tech machine is finding a home in clean rooms of printing plants; you feed it digital files; it looks like a long copy machine. For print runs of less than 1,500 copies, this process will be cheaper per book; beyond that it's cheaper to print with ink. The advantage of this short-run zone is that there is little penalty for printing only a few books; the cost per copy remains the same, unlike in most print jobs. Technically, since you aren't producing each book as you need it (that's true books on demand) but in very small lots, this type of printing is called Print Quantity Needed (PQN).
The second piece of equipment that makes this small-time publishing work is the binder, such as the Amigo Perfect Binder. Small lots of books can be squarely and instantly glued into paper-back books at very little cost, and with minimal skill.
The combination of both tools produces a book that is indistinguishable from one you would buy in a book store, yet can be produced in more personal quantities. (All I've said applies to black and white printing. On-demand color printing is used primarily for the cover only.) Since Amazon now accepts any book with an ISBN number and bar code, anyone can truly be in the publishing channel. On-demand books are sold on Amazon.
To capture the full economy of on-demand printing, you need to ready your material digitally. You should do any scanning that might be needed. The book should end up in a layout program such as Quark or InDesign, with font and picture files inserted. Aim to deliver the entire book on a CD. Any book with pages larger than a normal 8 x11 will be problematic. There's a sweet spot in this technology at a page size of about 6 x 9, which is your standard trade paperback, so think that size. New York publishers use this technology all the time now to print the 300-500 "advance" copies (called gallies) that they send to reviewers. As the technology progresses they will eventually use something similar to print all the books.
Because a load of books can be heavy, delivery at the finish can be a problem. Local is good. If you find a great bargain out of state, it could be worth having them shipped to you by postal media rate.
The dream of going from a Word or Quark file to a printed book, in small quantities, for reasonable rates is here. But printers are not publishers. If you want to peddle your book yourself on Amazon (and why not?), you'll need the additional advice of the Self Publishing Manual to steer you through the procedure.
After some scouting in Calfornia for a reliable on-demand book printer I get the best quotes from DeHART'S; they printed my first two books.
DeHART'S Printing Services
3265 Scott Blvd
Santa Clara, CA 95054
1-888-982-4763
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