Posted by jc

One of the best articles I've found describing the use of XML in book publishing:

Integrating A Publishing Business Using XML
by Alex Brown, Griffin Brown Digital Publishing Ltd.

Excerpt:
The scope within the workflow (business process) of an ONIX record gives it a huge potential. A number of major publishers are taking advantage of the fact that ONIX records model the bibliographic details of products right through the workflow, from product approval (or even before) to the product's mature existence.

This enables the ONIX record for a product to act as a pivotal element in an integrated XML workflow. At first the ONIX record is the only data associated with a nascent product, but as production continues more and more data becomes available that can enrich the ONIX record. The real title of the book, to take a simple example, can be drawn from the content XML (and of course titles change during production). Later, in manufacturing, manufacturing data can inform the ONIX record - the true number of pages for example. Finally, post-production, it is the ONIX record which holds the authoritative bibliographic information, metric and pricing information for the now physical products that are being managed in the supply chain.

 Posted by jc

52 Projects : Random Acts of Everyday Creativity by Jeffrey Yamaguchi

Book Description (from the publisher)
Jeffrey Yamaguchi extends an invitation to indulge one's inner artist by committing yourself to one creative project a week for 52 weeks. 52 Projects chronicles the author's artistic journey over the course of one year and how it changed his life-and also offers 52 jumping-off points for the reader's own creative inspiration:

- Frame a picture you've drawn, painted, or photographed-and hang it up in a public environment
- Write the story of why you moved to the city in which you currently live
- Ask your grandparents to tell you their stories-and document them
- Create something while your laundry is washing and drying
- Make the perfect margarita-and drink it
- Send a friend a Chinese take-out menu and chopsticks
- Stay up all night-and make the most of it

About the Author
Jeffrey Yamaguchi is the author of Working for the Man: Stories from Behind the Cubicle Wall. In addition to 52Projects.com, he is also the publisher for popular websites such as Bookmouth.com, Workingfortheman.com, and Whatsyourproject.com.

 Posted by jc

The New York Times has a great story about the re-release of Rona Jaffe's classic 1958 bestseller "The Best of Everything."

"The Best of Everything" has sweaty, illicit and brain-fogging sex; furtive hotel room trysts; tussles in boardrooms and darkened apartments; and searing emotions. It also deals with themes that Ms. Jaffe, now 73, says are still relevant to women: trying to balance professional success and personal happiness; pursuing an often futile search for Mr. Right; making mistakes without looking back; and finding solace in friendships with other women.

 Posted by jc

From Algonquin Books' Spring Catalog:

For a decade-from 1973 to 1982-John Gardner was one of America's most famous writers and certainly its most flamboyantly opinionated. His 1973 novel, The Sunlight Dialogues, was on the New York Times bestseller list for fourteen weeks. Once in the limelight, he picked public fights with his peers, John Barth, Joseph Heller, and Norman Mailer among them, and wrote five more bestsellers.

Gardner's personal life was as chaotic as his writing life was prolific. At twenty, he married his cousin Joan, and after a long marriage that was both passionate and violent, left her for Liz Rosenberg, a student. Only a few years later, he left Rosenberg for another student, Susan Thornton. Famous for disregarding his own safety, he rode his motorcycle at crazy speeds, incurred countless concussions, and once broke both of his arms. He survived what was diagnosed as terminal colon cancer only to resume his prodigious drinking and to die in a motorcycle accident at age forty-nine, a week before his third wedding.

Biographer Barry Silesky captures John Gardner's fabulously contradictory genius and his capacity to both dazzle and infuriate. He portrays Gardner as a man of unrestrained energy and blatant contempt for convention and also as a man whose charisma drew students and devoted followers wherever he went. Amazingly, Gardner published twenty-nine books in all, including eleven fiction titles, a book-length epic poem, six books of medieval criticism, and a major biography. Twenty-one years after his death, his On Moral Fiction and The Art Of Fiction are still read and debated in MFA programs across the country.

This is a full-scale biography of a writer who was, for ten years, almost bigger than life. It lives up to its subject magnificently.

 Posted by jc • Comments (2)

It occurred to me a few months ago that someone might eventually try creating a "collaborative insta-book." Name a topic, call on the efforts of 10 or 1,000 people, and within a few days, there it is. No long hours at the library for one lonely, dedicated individual. (Of course, the sense of accomplishment would be different). This article from The New York Times describes something that comes close, although in my version, no one person reaped all of the rewards by becoming the published author. In fact, the book wouldn't even be sold for profit. If it ever works, this sort of thing could effectively kill some publishing models.

More Reading:
Help Make Tony Rich, on Brian Dear's blog.

 Posted by jc

From John Gardner's The Art of Fiction:

...Most grown-up behavior, when you come right down to it, is decidedly second-class. People don't drive their cars as well, or wash their ears as well, or eat as well, or even play the harmonica as well as they would if they had sense.