book

Paperback Collator

POSTED IN my projects, writing | TAGS : book, ebook, paperback, self publishing 21 May 2012

Poorly Collected Works 2010-11 is the title of an eBook I pulled together at the end of last year. It sold a few, and jumped into the Amazon charts when it was part of a promotion, but was more of an experiment. In continuing experimentation, now Createspace is working with Amazon UK I made it into a real paperback too. It’s available to buy now at a cheapish price.

It does contain a few treats not in the similar e-book—amongst them a previously unpublished interview with Barney from the grindcore band Napalm Death, a few pieces focussed on the referendum for an elected mayor that was held in Birmingham in the early part of the year, and excitingly I think a small piece of my half of Pier Review—that real book that I’m writing that will come out sooner rather than later.

Createspace also does DVDs/film downloads as well as books—it’s a fairly simple way of creating work and self publishing. You need to fiddle a little with their formatting and do a lot of checking, but it’s easy enough.

Here Comes Everybody Else

POSTED IN Conferences & Talks, social media | TAGS : book, book club, clay shirky, dave harte, here comes everybody, jon hickman, twitter 12 February 2009

I spent a great high-minded couple of hours yesterday at BCU and the Creative Industries Book Club discussing Clay Shirky’s  Here Comes Everybody — a book about how the internet (and the social internet especially) is transforming the business of “organising”.

I’d read the book just after the hardback edition came out, which not only meant that I’d missed the Epilogue (where Shirky finally mentions Twitter) but that I’d had to quickly re-read it when Jon Hickman invited me to the club. In fact I’d really whipped through it as I live tweeted a review.

The reason I’d been invited, apart from because they’re all nice people, was that the Big City Talk site I’ve recently developed and “organised” is a very neat case study of the type that Shirky is talking about throughout his book — and rather more close to home (certainly something that Dave Harte was kind enough to say on his blog). I’m waiting for the dust to settle a little before fully documenting the Big City Plan / Talk project, but I’m pleased to say that it’s gone well and has (rather thrillingly) been mentioned in the Cabinet Office’s Power of Information report.

After my brief introduction the assembled minds thoroughly dissected the book, and I think, found it to be a superb (and utopian) introduction to the power of the social web — but lacking in grit or any real depth. Andrew Dubber made a superb point about the idea of how “cheap” this organisation online is — that the marginal cost is cheap, but that you have already to have the tools (the computers/or access) and the skills. This is something I’m thinking about more and more with my work with We Share Stuff around “digital inclusion” — John Kirby’s blog post on the book club has a good account of this.

What Shirky is doing from my perspective is detailing ways in which existing organisational structures fail, and where the looser, more ad-hoc ones now enabled by technology do things more easily (or make possible things that weren’t possible before). He doesn’t, however, offer any solutions — he’s not trying to, for at this stage it’s not possible to offer even a buffet-style array of potential solutions. Each organisation’s situation is — if not unique — something that can only be tackled by culture change within the organisation. Outside people like myself can advise, help and train, but in the end the social tools need to be used by the people closest to the business.

If you haven’t really got a handle on “where all this stuff is going” then Here Comes Everybody is certainly a good place to start, hopefully it’s scary and enthusing in equal measures. And I can always point to examples that are much more “real”.

ManyBooks.net – Free eBooks for your PDA, iPhone, or eBook Reader

POSTED IN found stuff | TAGS : book, ereader, link, ramblings, sony 26 November 2008

I've got a Sony eReader — and I've quickly eaten through the free "classics" that come with it and a number of CC licensed works. Rather than buy books I've start on this site — there are 22,303 eBooks available and all free. [link]

Fifth Beatles

POSTED IN Uncategorized | TAGS : book, idea, music 29 March 2008

I’ve thought for a long time that there was a great eposodic book (or possbily radio doc series)  in having a chapter on each of the peopl that have a some point or another been called the “fifth beatle” – anyone is welcome to have a go, I’ll never get round to it. Neil Aspinall’s death has reminded me – let’s see how many we can think up:

Pete Best

Stuart Sutcliffe

Brian Epstein

George Martin

George Best

Billy Preston

Murry The K

(actually there are tons on this Wikipedia page)