Category: books

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books

Social Reading

Joe Wikert has a great post on the future of social reading. He states how many cynics believe reading will always be a solitary event, while he asserts great startups like ReadSocial and BookShout are making social reading attractive.

In many ways, this is a nod to the past when storytelling was a social event that would be held around a campfire. The storyteller would weave history and tall tales while the audience would give their approval. It was part history and part drama.

Until recently, literacy was only for the well-educated. If you wanted to hear God’s word, you went to church and heard the pastor or priest read from scripture. Even if you could read, Bibles were too large to be toted around. It was only when books became portable that reading could be a solitary event.

Technology is allowing us to become social readers again. We can be part of a larger community that shares our reading interests. It’s an interesting world we live in!

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books

Is it a Book?

I read an interesting blog entitled, “I Declare the War is Over: We need a new word for the things we used to call books.” The premise is we are in an era where the traditional book doesn’t adequately describe the many ways we package book content.

The article complemented the Pew research study that says e-reader and tablet ownership nearly doubled over the holiday season.

This threatens many people within publishing. But should it? All these readers still need content. Without something to read or view, e-readers are useless. Authors and publishers need to come to grips with the fact we are in the content business, not the product business.

I’ve come to realize we’ve fooled ourselves over the millennia. Publishers claimed it was all about the content, but the profit came in the physical book. We claimed the ideas within the books were important, but we were really selling the pages and cover.

Now that we’ve entered a new age, the ideas within the “book” really will matter. Let’s start selling worthy content, and not worry about what form it could take. Leave that to the consumers.

The businesses that the most to lose are the printers, not the publishers. Heaven help them!

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Locusts for Lunch

This is an activity book cover I did for Warner Press entitled, Locusts for Lunch. This book holds a little place in my heart because it was one of the first I wrote, illustrated and designed. It was fun planning the word and graphic activities as well as telling the story.

I thought this title would be perfect for this week’s Illustration Friday word. The word is “swarm.”

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No Atmosphere

Cartoon of a couple looking in a restaurantCartoon of a couple looking inside a restaurant. Two diners are gasping for air while another wears an oxygen mask. The guy looking in the restaurant says, “I hear the food is great, but there isn’t much atmosphere.”

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PC Album

Cartoon of a Mom looking at photosCartoon of children, a dad and mom looking at photos. The mom is angry and says, “There isn’t one picture of me of the kids in here! It’s nothing but shots of your computer!”

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