Open Meets New Meets Old Publishing

YOUNG JUNIUSOC con­trib­u­tor Seth Har­wood has some­thing excit­ing going on over at his site today: he’s launch­ing the pre-order sales of his new nov­el YOUNG JUNIUS, which is due out this fall. This is part­ly worth not­ing because Seth’s path to pub­li­ca­tion involves giv­ing away his work for free as MP3 audio­books. You can even lis­ten to all of YOUNG JUNIUS before you make a buy. If you’re a fan of crime or mys­tery fic­tion, or you dig The Wire, you’ll love this book!

Now, Seth is part­ner­ing with inde­pen­dent pub­lish­er Tyrus Books to break new ground in pub­lish­ing strate­gies. To read the full descrip­tion of what he’s up to, go here. The brief ver­sion involves the pre-order of spe­cial, lim­it­ed edi­tion copies of the book that fea­ture cloth bind­ing, fan-cre­at­ed cov­er art, pho­tos of the sto­ry’s loca­tions, signed per­son­al­iza­tion and more. By offer­ing these for a lim­it­ed time via his site, he and Tyrus are able to print just the quan­ti­ty sold and bal­ance some of the cost (reduce the risk) of the book’s full print run–hardcover, paper­back AND spe­cial edi­tion.

If you’d like to read more about this or order a copy, head over to sethharwood.com. When you do, use the code OC to save $3 off the cov­er price of the book! Enjoy!!

Seth Har­wood is a vora­cious read­er, sub­ver­sive pub­lish­ing maven and crime nov­el­ist.

Alice In Openland

This year, Tim Bur­ton’s pro­duc­tion of Alice In Won­der­land was wel­comed by a flur­ry of media buzz and a rather polar­ized pub­lic response debat­ing whether the icon­ic direc­tor had butchered or rein­vent­ed the even more icon­ic chil­dren’s clas­sic. But dis­cus­sion of the film’s cre­ative mer­its aside, one thing it did do bril­liant­ly was rekin­dle the pub­lic’s inter­est in what’s eas­i­ly the most beloved work of chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture of the past two cen­turies.

So beloved, in fact, that Lewis Car­rol­l’s 1865 nov­el has gen­er­at­ed hun­dreds of reprints, film adap­ta­tions and var­i­ous deriv­a­tive works over the years. Many of these works are now avail­able in the pub­lic domain — even a sim­ple search in the Inter­net Archive sends you down a rab­bit hole of adap­ta­tions and remakes, span­ning from land­mark ear­ly cin­e­ma trea­sures to off­beat prod­ucts of con­tem­po­rary dig­i­tal cul­ture.

Today, we’ve curat­ed a selec­tion of the most inter­est­ing and cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant — the “curi­ouser and curi­ouser,” if you will — free ver­sions of, trib­utes to, and deriv­a­tives of Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land.

  • The fun­da­men­tals: A Project Guten­berg free dig­i­tal copy of Car­rol­l’s orig­i­nal Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land text
  • A 1916 abridged ver­sion intend­ed for younger chil­dren, dig­i­tized by the Library of Con­gress, is avail­able from the Inter­na­tion­al Chil­dren’s Dig­i­tal Library and fea­tures some won­der­ful illus­tra­tion — though, regret­tably, it lacks the Cheshire Cat
  • For a clas­sic with a spin, try this audio ver­sion read by blog­ger extra­or­di­naire, Boing­Bo­ing co-edi­tor, Pop­u­lar Sci­ence colum­nist and vocal free con­tent advo­cate Cory Doc­torow
  • The ear­li­est cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of the book, direct­ed by Cecil Hep­worth in 1903, is a silent film gem, clock­ing in at just 8 min­utes and 19 sec­onds. Watch above.
  • In 1915, W. W. Young direct­ed the sec­ond Amer­i­can adap­ta­tion of Alice — a mas­sive six-reel pro­duc­tion that show­cased the rapid evo­lu­tion of film­mak­ing in just a decade since the first pro­duc­tion. Though much of the film is now lost, 42 min­utes of it can be seen at the Inter­net Archive for free
  • A 1966 British adap­ta­tion by direc­tor Jonathan Miller for the BBC fea­tures an ambi­tious cast — includ­ing Peter Sell­ers as the King of Hearts, Sir John Giel­guld as Mock Tur­tle, Michael Red­grave as The Cater­pil­lar and Peter Cook as the Mad Hat­ter — and its sound­track, scored by the leg­endary Ravi Shankar, exudes the bor­der­line folk-psy­che­delia sound of the Wood­stock era. The film, divid­ed into sev­en parts, is avail­able for free on YouTube.
  • This 2‑minute ver­sion of Alice In Won­der­land shot in the vir­tu­al world Sec­ond Life is an eerie tes­ta­ment to just how wide­ly Car­rol­l’s clas­sic res­onates.
  • Per­haps the biggest trea­sure of all, Lewis Car­rol­l’s orig­i­nal man­u­script, avail­able from the British Library — 91 pages of pre­cious lit­er­ary his­to­ry, with orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions from artist John Ten­niel. The online gallery also fea­tures a pref­ace telling the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry of the Oxford math­e­mati­cian’s real-life inspi­ra­tion for the book and the fate of the real Alice

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

Google Creating Grants to Study Digital Books

The details are still hazy. But we know this: Google will be launch­ing a “col­lab­o­ra­tive research pro­gram to explore the dig­i­tal human­i­ties” using Google Books. Schol­ars will get up to $50,000 per year, and they’ll come from eight poten­tial dis­ci­plines (archae­ol­o­gy, his­to­ry, anthro­pol­o­gy, lin­guis­tics, lit­er­a­ture, clas­sics, phi­los­o­phy & soci­ol­o­gy). And what’s the point of their research? Essen­tial­ly to make Google’s online dig­i­tal library more effec­tive  and friend­ly for researchers. Just last year, a promi­nent aca­d­e­m­ic called Google Books a “Dis­as­ter for Schol­ars” in a high pro­file forum. The new grants should begin to address these con­cerns in some mean­ing­ful ways. For more infor­ma­tion, head over to The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion, which has the full sto­ry.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Mark Twain Captured on Film by Thomas Edison in 1909. It’s the Only Known Footage of the Author.

Here’s a lit­tle nugget for you. The great inven­tor Thomas Edi­son vis­it­ed the home of Mark Twain in 1909, and cap­tured footage of “the father of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture” (says Faulkn­er) walk­ing around his estate and play­ing cards with his daugh­ters, Clara and Jean. The film is silent and dete­ri­o­rat­ed. But it’s appar­ent­ly the only known footage of the author who gave us Huck­le­ber­ry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Twain would die the next year.

Find works by Twain in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

And if you like what we serve up, don’t miss us on Twit­ter on Face­book. It’s any easy way to share cul­tur­al gems with fam­i­ly and friends.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Shirt­less in 1883 Pho­to

Thomas Edi­son Recites “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in Ear­ly Voice Record­ing

Thomas Edison’s Box­ing Cats (1894), or Where the LOL­Cats All Began

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 14 ) |

The End of Attribution?

A cou­ple of days ago, we fea­tured a video post­ed on Pen­guin’s YouTube Chan­nel that used a smart video tech­nique to restore faith in the future of book pub­lish­ing. A cou­ple of our read­ers were quick to point out that the video’s cre­ative ele­ment was high­ly sim­i­lar to an award-win­ning video called “Lost Gen­er­a­tion”. (See above.) And yet there was no attri­bu­tion. A prob­lem? Par­tic­u­lar­ly for an enti­ty in the intel­lec­tu­al property/copyright busi­ness?

UPDATE: Tonight, anoth­er read­er tells us that “Lost Gen­er­a­tion” has its own ori­gins in a 2006 adver­tise­ment for Argen­tin­ian pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ricar­do Lopez Mur­phy called “The Truth.” Does this make this style of video a meme of sorts? A style that’s so out there that attri­bu­tion is not worth a both­er? Per­haps I’m hold­ing Pen­guin’s feet too close to the fire on this one. Per­haps (as, Maria, a blog­ger col­league men­tions via email) this high­lights a big­ger prob­lem. Too much deriva­tion. Not enough orig­i­nal think­ing all around.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 7 ) |

The End of Publishing. Or Is It?

Smart and hope­ful. But you need to stick with it for a cou­ple of min­utes. A job well done…

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

GoodReads

A quick heads up for book lovers: Goodreads is a large social net­work for read­ers, with over 3,000,000 mem­bers who review, rec­om­mend and swap books. The site also fea­tures “book-give-aways” for its mem­bers. This month you can enter to win a free copy of If You Fol­low Me, a nov­el by Male­na Watrous, a tal­ent­ed col­league of mine at Stan­ford. About the book one review­er said: It’s “the kind of book you fin­ish and then clutch to your heart as you run around telling every­one you know that they have to read it.” The book is hit­ting the book­store shelves today, and you can sign up to win a free copy until March 16.

PS Male­na will be teach­ing an online writ­ing course through Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies this spring. The course, called The Cre­ative Writ­ing Coach, is open to all. Mean­while, we’re also pilot­ing our first online human­i­ties course, a phi­los­o­phy course called Envi­sion­ing the Good Life. Watch the video intro­duc­tion for the course here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Henry Miller on New York

(NOTE: some strong lan­guage here...)

Back in 1975, film­mak­er Tom Schiller (only 20 years old at the time) made a short doc­u­men­tary on the nov­el­ist Hen­ry Miller (Trop­ic of Can­cer, Trop­ic of Capri­corn). In the scene above, Miller, then 81 years old, rem­i­nisces about his dif­fi­cult ear­ly life in New York, and it all takes place on the set used to shoot the movie Hel­lo, Dol­ly!. Schiller’s com­plete film, Hen­ry Miller Asleep and Awake, can be watched for free on Snag­films. (It’s also avail­able at Ama­zon on DVD here.) The run time is 34 min­utes. Excel­lent find by Mike.

Note: We’ve added Hen­ry Miller Asleep and Awake to our grow­ing film col­lec­tion: Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Film Noir, Doc­u­men­taries & More

« Go BackMore in this category... »
Quantcast