Seth Godin: The Wealth of Free (Semi-Animated)

in Books, e-books | May 4th, 2011

Every idea has to begin some­where. And, back in 2000, Seth Godin start­ed exper­i­ment­ing with a fair­ly rad­i­cal pub­lish­ing mod­el. Inspired by Mal­colm Glad­well, Godin wrote Unleash­ing the Ideav­irus, which essen­tial­ly argued that free ideas spread quick­er than ideas that cost mon­ey. And it’s the ideas that spread the quick­est that win. So what was the log­i­cal next step? Mak­ing the book avail­able for free (get the ebook here) and see­ing what hap­pened.

The video above tells you the rest of the sto­ry. What it does­n’t tell you is that Godin has since writ­ten a steady stream of best­sellers (find free ecopies here), while author­ing the most wide­ly-read mar­ket­ing blog and found­ing Squidoo. The art­work accom­pa­ny­ing God­in’s talk was cre­at­ed by Stu­art Lang­field.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

How to Start a Start­up

Start Your Start­up with Free Stan­ford Cours­es and Lec­tures

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Vladimir Nabokov Marvels Over Different “Lolita” Book Covers

in Books, Literature | May 2nd, 2011

In this short excerpt from a TV pro­gram called “USA: The Nov­el,” Vladimir Nabokov com­ments on dif­fer­ent for­eign edi­tions of his nov­el Loli­ta. The indi­vid­ual cov­ers he dis­cuss­es are list­ed here; the full pro­gram is avail­able here, and it con­tains some mem­o­rable quotes by the author (from chap­ter 1: “Mr Nabokov, would you tell us why it is that you detest Dr. Freud?” — “I think he’s crude, I think he’s medieval, and I don’t want an elder­ly gen­tle­man from Vien­na with an umbrel­la inflict­ing his dreams upon me. I don’t have the dreams that he dis­cuss­es in his books, I don’t see umbrel­las in my dreams or bal­loons.”).

Find­ing a pub­lish­er for Loli­ta proved to be rather dif­fi­cult for Nabokov. A Decem­ber 1953 review of the man­u­script said: “It is over­whelm­ing­ly nau­se­at­ing, even to an enlight­ened Freudi­an. To the pub­lic, it will be revolt­ing. It will not sell, and will do immea­sur­able harm to a grow­ing rep­u­ta­tion. […] I rec­om­mend that it be buried under a stone for a thou­sand years.” (Get more infor­ma­tion at Stan­ford’s “The Book Haven”) Loli­ta was first pub­lished in 1955 (orig­i­nal cov­er here) and has since been trans­lat­ed into many lan­guages with a wide vari­ety of cov­er designs (find a good col­lec­tion at this site).

Short­ly after Loli­ta’s pub­li­ca­tion, Nabokov dis­cussed his nov­el on the CBC pro­gram “Close Up”: see part one and part two.

Bonus: Lit­tle known detail — Nabokov held the post of cura­tor of lep­i­doptera at Har­vard’s Muse­um of Com­par­a­tive Zool­o­gy. He col­lect­ed many but­ter­flies and devel­oped a the­o­ry of but­ter­fly migra­tion which dis­put­ed all pre­vi­ous the­o­ries and was­n’t tak­en seri­ous­ly by biol­o­gists then. Only recent­ly did genet­ic stud­ies vin­di­cate his once bold the­o­ry. Some of Nabokov’s beau­ti­ful draw­ings of the but­ter­flies he stud­ied can be enjoyed cour­tesy of Fla­vor­wire.

You can find this video housed in our col­lec­tion of 235 Cul­tur­al Icons.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Tina Fey Brings Bossypants Tour to Google

in Books, Comedy | April 26th, 2011

A day after Pres­i­dent Oba­ma con­duct­ed his much pub­li­cized town hall meet­ing at Face­book, Tina Fey, the star of 30 Rock and the author of the new book Bossy­pants, head­ed to Google, just a few miles down the road.

Last May, Googlers had their riotous romp with Conan O’Brien. Now they get their 60 min­utes with anoth­er come­di­an who came of age on NBC. The con­ver­sa­tion led by Eric Schmidt teach­es you the secrets of improv, how to take pic­tures like a mod­el, the pros & cons of goof­ing on Sarah Palin, and why male and female com­e­dy writ­ers dif­fer in fun­da­men­tal­ly odd ways. Tina Fey is fun­ny. But some­times fun­nier is watch­ing Schmidt try­ing to keep the con­ver­sa­tion from going off the rails. Scroll to the 8:20 mark, and you’ll see what I mean.

Just an fyi: Tina Fey actu­al­ly nar­rates the audio­book ver­sion of Bossy­pants, and you can snag it for free through this Audible.com deal. Details here.

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The Pale King: How the Book Came Together (and How to Download the Novel in Audio)

in Books, Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | April 18th, 2011

When David Fos­ter Wal­lace com­mit­ted sui­cide in Sep­tem­ber 2008, he left behind the man­u­script for The Pale King, an unfin­ished nov­el he start­ed research­ing back in 1997, not long after the pub­li­ca­tion of Infi­nite Jest. The Pale King was final­ly pub­lished this past Fri­day (April 15), a date that was hard­ly arbi­trary. Offer­ing a lengthy med­i­ta­tion on bore­dom, The Pale King is set in a Mid­west­ern I.R.S. office. And what was April 15th? The day when Amer­i­cans tra­di­tion­al­ly file their tax­es (although they have until the 18th this year).

The posthu­mous nov­el came togeth­er with the help of Wal­lace’s long­time edi­tor, Michael Pietsch, who spent two years work­ing through heaps of pages left in bins, draw­ers and wire bas­kets, hop­ing to turn this mass of mate­r­i­al into the most com­plete nov­el pos­si­ble. The inter­view with Pietsch above, along with this short piece in The New York Times, brings you inside the editing/making of The Pale King, which has already received some favor­able reviews.

If you’re look­ing to get your hands on the book, give this some thought: If you reg­is­ter for a 14-day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load pret­ty much any audio book in Audi­ble’s cat­a­logue for free. And that cat­a­logue now includes The Pale King. Once the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion (as I did), or can­cel it, and still keep the free book. The choice is yours…

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The Shape of A Story: Writing Tips from Kurt Vonnegut

in Books, Literature, Writing | April 4th, 2011

A few years ago, Open Cul­ture read­ers list­ed Slaugh­ter­house Five as one of your top life-chang­ing books. But Kurt Von­negut was not only a great author. He was also an inspi­ra­tion for any­one who aspires to write fic­tion – see for exam­ple his 8 rules for writ­ing fic­tion, which starts with the so-obvi­ous-it’s-often-for­got­ten reminder nev­er to waste your read­er’s time.

In this video, Von­negut fol­lows his own advice and sketch­es some bril­liant blue­prints for envi­sion­ing the “shape” of a sto­ry, all in less than 4 min­utes and 37 sec­onds.

FYI. Orig­i­nal works by Von­negut appear in Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

John Steinbeck’s Six Tips for the Aspir­ing Writer and His Nobel Prize Speech

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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The Wire as Great Victorian Novel

in Books, Literature, Television | March 25th, 2011

A while back, W. Daniel Hillis made the case that The Wire may rise to the lev­el of – if not sur­pass – Tol­stoy’s War & Peace. Writ­ing for the Edge.org, Hillis went so far as to say:

As much as I liked War and Peace, I prob­a­bly got more out of The Wire. And why should that be sur­pris­ing? More human effort can be put into a tele­vi­sion series than a nov­el and more time is spent con­sum­ing it. If both are exe­cut­ed to their high­est stan­dards, with equal care, skill and insight, we might well expect less from the book.

If we can men­tion The Wire in the same breath as Tol­stoy, then why not anoth­er giant of nine­teenth cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture, Charles Dick­ens? Yes, The Wire has been called “Dick­en­sian” too, and this week the Hood­ed Util­i­tar­i­an has re-imag­ined The Wire as a seri­al­ized Vic­to­ri­an nov­el. The premise? Imag­ine The Wire writ­ten in 60 install­ments over the course of six years, start­ing in 1846, by Hor­a­tio Buck­les­by Ogden, a Dick­ens con­tem­po­rary who wrote with a “nuance and atten­tion to detail that Dick­ens nev­er achieved.” Each install­ment ran 30 pages and sold for one shilling apiece.

The Hood­ed Util­i­tar­i­an has­n’t actu­al­ly print­ed these 60 install­ments (because they don’t actu­al­ly exist). But they have pro­duced a few won­der­ful mock pages, and writ­ten a faux piece of lit­er­ary crit­i­cism to accom­pa­ny them. A great job by Joy Delyr­ia and Sean Michael Robin­son.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Endangered Species in Unforgettable Images

in Books, Life, Science | March 17th, 2011

Some books lend them­selves espe­cial­ly well to trail­ers. Rare: Por­traits of Amer­i­ca’s Endan­gered Species, pre­sent­ed by Nation­al Geo­graph­ic wildlife pho­tog­ra­ph­er Joel Sar­tore, offers one good exam­ple. Sar­tore’s footage of these rare crea­tures, all shot against a sim­ple white back­ground, leaves you want­i­ng more. For­tu­nate­ly there’s plen­ty more on the book’s site, includ­ing a nice behind-the-scenes video, and an exten­sive gallery (you may need to scroll down). Be sure that you don’t miss the ocelot.

If you’ve gone through the site and you’re still not sat­is­fied, there’s always the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion’s new wildlife pho­to archive, which we’ve been lost in all week.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Vari­ety, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Terrific Hand-Crafted Animation Puts the Novel, Going West, Into (Stop) Motion

in Art, Books | March 10th, 2011

Could­n’t let this one pass by…

Ander­sen M, a Lon­don design stu­dio, craft­ed a rather amaz­ing stop motion video to accom­pa­ny an excerpt from Mau­rice Gee’s nov­el, Going West. The short film was pro­duced on behalf of the New Zealand Book Coun­cil, and you can only imag­ine, as one of our read­ers points out, the crafts­man­ship, patience, and effort that went into the mak­ing this.

Thanks Dalel for send­ing this our way, and please don’t miss anoth­er one of our favorites: Books Savored in Stop Motion Film…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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