The Future of Content Delivery

in Amazon Kindle, Audio Books, Books, Podcasts | August 18th, 2009

sigler2This pod­cast (get it here) presents the thoughts of Scott Sigler–media maven, NY Times Best­selling Author of INFECTED and CONTAGIOUS (both avail­able free as pod­casts), podi­o­book dynamo, and social net­work­ing mastermind–on none oth­er than “how will peo­ple read books in the near future?”

In this repod­cast of his keynote speech at this year’s Balti­con con­fer­ence, Scott talks about how he built a HUGE online fan base for his fic­tion, land­ed a major pub­lish­ing deal with Crown Books, reached NY Times best­seller sta­tus, and why he insists that giv­ing his fic­tion away for free is the best mar­ket­ing around.

He presents his thoughts on Big Pub­lish­ing, small pub­lish­ing, smart-phones vs. the Kin­dle, and per­haps most impor­tant­ly, lays out the meth­ods by which he pre-sold 1,500 copies of his new, self-pub­lished nov­el THE ROOKIE this April via his own web­site, scottsigler.com. That’s right: For­get print-on-demand and its high­er cost-per-book. Scott breaks down how he pre-sold enough books to pay for an entire print run before THE ROOKIE ever went to press! It’s a mod­el so far ahead of every­one else that we’ve got to take notes!

If you’re a writer or aspir­ing author, you need to lis­ten to this. And don’t let the intro scare you off.

To down­load this file and lis­ten to it on your own time, on your iPod or sim­i­lar device, sim­ple right click this link: DOWNLOAD and choose “Save Link as…” on a Mac, or “Save File” on a PC.

Or lis­ten to it right here:

Seth Har­wood, the author of JACK WAKES UP, will be teach­ing an online course (The Grip­ping Read) with Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. And he’ll also be teach­ing an Author Boot­camp with Scott Sigler on Stan­ford’s cam­pus on Novem­ber 7 and 14. Each course only has a few slots still open.

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Reading Free Books on the Kindle

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, Literature | August 17th, 2009

Even though we some­times give Ama­zon’s Kin­dle a hard time, the device is undoubt­ed­ly handy for read­ing e‑books. The Kin­dle lets you seam­less­ly down­load books straight from Ama­zon in a mat­ter of sec­onds. And, even bet­ter, you can load the Kin­dle with thou­sands of free e‑books from sources such as Project Guten­berg. (Few peo­ple know this.) This guide will show you how to down­load a free book from Project Guten­berg, and then read it on your Kin­dle. You can also find many free ebooks for the Kin­dle in our Free eBook col­lec­tion.

Step 1:

Go to http://www.gutenberg.org and search for a book you would like to read.

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Step 2:

Once you’ve found a book that you want to down­load, down­load it in MOBI for­mat if pos­si­ble. If no MOBI for­mat exists, then using plain text works as well.
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Step 3:
After your down­load is com­plete, plug in your Kin­dle to your com­put­er’s USB port. The Kin­dle will show up as a USB Dri­ve.
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Step 4:
Go to the Doc­u­ments direc­to­ry on your Kin­dle.
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Step 5:

Copy the e‑book file to the Doc­u­ments fold­er. You can option­al­ly rename the file to some­thing more mean­ing­ful if you’d like.
Step 6:

The sil­ver cur­sor on your Kin­dle will begin to spin. When it stops, the Kin­dle is fin­ished sync­ing. Now you can eject and unplug your Kin­dle and enjoy your free ebook!
Fred Hsu designed the handy Open Cul­ture app. Give it a spin. It’s free and it’s good for you.

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Woodstock Revisited in Three Minutes

in Music | August 17th, 2009

It was 40 years ago today — August 15 to August 18, 1969.

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Making the Web Work for Science

in Science | August 16th, 2009

httpv://vimeo.com/6087817

How can the web advance the progress of sci­ence? It’s a big ques­tion, obvi­ous­ly. And some smart folks have some­thing to say about it. Here we have Tim O’Reil­ly (founder of O’Reil­ly Media, one of the lead­ing tech pub­lish­ers), Jim­my Wales (Wikipedia Founder), Stephen Friend (founder of Roset­ta Inphar­mat­ics and for­mer EVP at Mer­ck Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries) and John Will­banks (VP and head of the Sci­ence Com­mons project at Cre­ative Com­mons) offer­ing their thoughts. The con­ver­sa­tion was held on July 28th at the The Com­mon­wealth Club of Cal­i­for­nia.

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Rod Blagojevich Sings Elvis with Fabio

in Music | August 14th, 2009

One month you’re the gov­er­nor of Illi­nois; the next you’re indict­ed and kicked out of office for try­ing to sell Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s Sen­ate seat; and sev­er­al months lat­er, you wind up imi­tat­ing Elvis at block par­ties. Oh how the mighty have fall­en. The mon­ey moment comes 50 sec­onds in. Have a good week­end. Back to seri­ous stuff next week.

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Nobel Prize Winner Reads From His New Novel

in Books | August 13th, 2009

J.M. Coet­zee won the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in 2003. This com­ing Decem­ber, Viking will release his lat­est nov­el, Sum­mer­time. The New York Review of Books recent­ly pub­lished two excerpts from the book (here and here). And you can now lis­ten to Coet­zee read the first of the two excerpts. It’s called “Undat­ed Frag­ments.” It’s avail­able in the fol­low­ing for­mats: MP3 — iTunes — RSS Feed. In the mean­time, we’ve added the New York Review of Books pod­cast to our col­lec­tion of Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­casts, which can also be accessed through our Free iPhone App.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter!

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In Memory of Les Paul

in Music | August 13th, 2009

Les Paul, the gui­tar mas­ter and inven­tor, passed away today at the age of 94. The clip above shows Paul at 90, just a few years ago, liv­ing a still vig­or­ous life. He’ll be missed.

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Introducing “Book Oven”

in Books | August 12th, 2009

The folks who brought you Lib­rivox (one of our favs) are now rolling out a new site: Book Oven. The beau­ty of Lib­rivox is that it has used crowd­sourc­ing to pro­duce the largest col­lec­tion of free audio books on the web (and we’ve fea­tured many of them in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books). Book Oven takes crowd­sourc­ing and does some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent with it. It gives book lovers the pow­er to par­tic­i­pate in the writ­ing, sales and dis­tri­b­u­tion of new books. Above, Hugh McGuire, founder of Lib­rivox, explains the con­cept of Book Oven more ful­ly. (You’ll need to turn up the vol­ume a bit.) The site is cur­rent­ly in alpha, and I sus­pect that you can watch it evolve dur­ing the months ahead. Watch Book Oven Blog to track its devel­op­ment.

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