“The lack of video, the lack of audio,” writes Richard Nash in What is the Business of Literature?, “is a feature of literature, not a bug.” This is exactly how we look at the book business at Thought Catalog. Books aren’t an antiquated technology. Books are cutting-edge technology. In fact, books are the greatest virtual reality machines on the market. While virtual reality gear like Oculus engulfs the brain to present a different reality, books engage the brain and present a different reality through a more creative exchange between medium and self.
SILE – What is SILE?
When most people produce printed documents using a computer, they usually use software such as Word (part of Microsoft Office) or Writer (part of Open/LibreOffice) or similar–word processing software. SILE is not a word processor; it is a typesetting system. There are several important differences.
The job of a word processor is to produce a document that looks exactly like what you type on the screen. SILE takes what you type and considers it instructions for producing a document that looks as good as possible.
For instance, in a word processor, you keep typing and when you hit the right margin, your cursor will move to the next line. It is showing you where the lines will break. SILE doesn’t show you where the lines will break, because it doesn’t know yet. You can type and type and type as long a line as you like, and when SILE comes to process your instructions, it will consider your input (up to) three times over in order to work out how to best to break the lines to form a paragraph. Did we end two successive lines with a hyphenated word? Go back and try again.
SILE – What is SILE? http://sile-typesetter.org/what-is
Amid declining book sales, university presses search for new ways to measure success
Amid declining book sales, university presses search for new ways to measure success https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/08/01/amid-declining-book-sales-university-presses-search-new-ways-measure-success
Confessions of a newspaper publishing exec: ‘We’ve screwed up by pursuing scale’
Confessions of a newspaper publishing exec: ‘We’ve screwed up by pursuing scale’ http://digiday.com/publishers/confessions-newspaper-publishing-exec-weve-screwed-pursuing-scale-sake-scale/
University of Florida, Elsevier explore interoperability in the publishing space | Inside Higher Ed
University of Florida, Elsevier explore interoperability in the publishing space | Inside Higher Ed https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/25/university-florida-elsevier-explore-interoperability-publishing-space
Calibre breakthrough: Convert sideloaded e-books to the new Kindle KFX format offering enhanced typesetting – TeleRead News: E-books, publishing, tech and beyond
A new Calibre plugin lets you read many sideloaded books in Amazon’s KFX format—on your recent Kindle. Enjoy dropped caps, hyphenation, better kerning.
New AI could help write your next textbook, using Penn State technology – TechRepublic
Penn State has announced the launch of BBookX—new technology they developed that works with faculty to use artificial intelligence to build textbooks from open resources. The software, which was created in August, works to create personalized textbooks by extracting open source information from the Web, based on user input.
This is an interesting development. Trying it out requires an account.
Let’s create an open source Medium clone – Scripting News
Let’s create an open source Medium clone – Scripting News http://scripting.com/2015/07/04/letsCreateAnOpenSourceMediumClone.html#aSUATH
Mellon foundation looking to fund next gen academic publishing projects
Th
e Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is aggressively funding efforts to support new forms of academic publishing, which researchers say could further legitimize digital scholarship.
The foundation in May sent university press directors a request for proposals to a new grant-making initiative for long-form digital publishing for the humanities. In the e-mail, the foundation noted the growing popularity of digital scholarship, which presented an “urgent and compelling” need for university presses to publish and make digital work available to readers.
But the foundation quickly contrasted those opportunities with the economic realities facing many university presses. “These declines have made it challenging to find the resources that are needed to experiment with new digital work flows and publication models, and to create the business models and the marketing and discoverability strategies that are essential if electronic publication is to become sustainable and support scholarship in the 21st century,” the e-mail reads
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Piecing together publishing – Inside Higher Ed https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/25/researchers-university-press-directors-emboldened-mellon-foundation-interest
Go To Hellman: Why GitHub is Important for Book Publishing
Go To Hellman: Why GitHub is Important for Book Publishing. http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2015/01/why-github-is-important-for-book.html