I have donated a 2 hour consult, plus assorted extras, to a charitable auction. I would normally charge $200 per hour for the consults, and $55 for the book and software package, so this is a $455 value. The crowd is not focused on publishing or writing, so the chances are that the item will go for a very low price. It’s here.
The auction supports The Lang School, which is a very special place indeed. They work with children who are simultaneously brilliant and learning disabled. You can probably imagine how frustrating and difficult it would be to walk in their shoes, especially in either normal or special education environments.
One of these kids could be the next Einstein, but without the support of an environment tailored to them, most will spiral into a cycle of failure, let alone realizing their potential and becoming the forces for good that they could be.
If you want to support the school, you can bid on the item above, or one of the others in the auction, at Bidding for Good. If you visit the school’s site, you can find out more, including this link for donations.
And finally, if you live in NYC, you can always come to the party, this Thursday, February 10. It’s called Cocktails at the Cabanas, and you can get a ticket here. I’ll be there, and it looks like it will be a lot of fun, as well as supporting a wonderful cause.
BEA 2011
Friday, June 3rd, 2011Overall Impressions:
–Reed and the Javits staff have found a way to obscure the fact that it no longer fills an entire floor with exhibitors, but there was plenty of space around the edges for curtained enclosures and meeting rooms of various types.
–Despite the small number of exhibitors (or perhaps because of it), the aisles were full, and the mood seemed upbeat, enthusiastic and intent. I heard far less of the “this will be the last show” chatter.
–The “concurrent events” brought new blood into the mix. This bodes well for the future. Unfortunately, the total attendance didn’t go up with the inclusion of this new blood. That doesn’t bode as well.
–Oddly enough, I saw far fewer of the independent publishers’ booths and the denizens of Writers’ Row. It could be that the word has finally gotten out that those locations aren’t really offering the full benefit of being at the show, and that this isn’t a place where you go to sell a bunch of books on the spot.
–This was the “All Ebook, All the Time” BEA. I know that e- is the coming trend, and I certainly advocate being aware of how it can be used in your own publishing, and what the pros and cons are for your operation, but surely we could have found more topics to discuss? Maybe next year?
I attended one very interesting lecture, and yes, it was ebook-related. The presenter was from Attributor. If you publish in niches that suffer from large amounts of organized piracy, I would invest in their services. They search all of the darknet and legitimate file sharing sites (after all, there are legitimate reasons why you might need to upload things, for example team projects where people are telecommuting). When they locate files that might be caches of pirated material, use AI and expert systems to rank the most probably-pirated of the millions of files found, and then have humans examine them to prevent false positives.
Then they do a tiered enforcement action, resulting in a 99% success rate in getting the illegitimate material yanked, or converted to a revenue producing legitimate sales site.
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