Viral Video: The New Way to Market Books

in Books, YouTube | June 10th, 2008

Over the week­end, The Wall Street Jour­nal took a look at an emerg­ing trend in the pub­lish­ing world — using viral videos to pro­mote new books. The strat­e­gy, which has­n’t yet gen­er­at­ed much in the way of sales, is being used to mar­ket books by estab­lished authors (take Jodi Picoult’s 19 Min­utes for exam­ple) and new authors as well. One video not men­tioned in WSJ’s piece is the fair­ly slick clip that pro­motes Toby Barlow’s début nov­el Sharp Teeth. Bar­low, when not writ­ing, is the cre­ative direc­tor of a large adver­tis­ing agency. Hence per­haps the will­ing­ness to take this approach:

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Free Download of Cory Doctorow’s Graphic Novels

in Art, Books, Sci Fi | June 9th, 2008

Quick fyi for Boing­Bo­ing read­ers .… Cory Doc­torow has just released com­ic adap­ta­tions of his award-win­ning sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries — Futur­is­tic Tales of the Here and Now. You can down­load them here for free, or buy the col­lec­tion on Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load free copy of Shake Girl

17 Free and Down­load­able Graph­ic Nov­els

Best Online Language Tools for Word Nerds

in English Language | June 9th, 2008

Life­hack­er is run­ning a good piece today that high­lights a series of web-based lan­guage tools for any­one look­ing to fig­ure out a word’s def­i­n­i­tion, trans­la­tion, pro­nun­ci­a­tion, syn­onym, or antonym. Word nerds, this could be your lucky day…

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Learn a Language Online

in Language Lessons | June 5th, 2008

MSN-Sym­pa­ti­co has been run­ning a piece that cov­ers the ins-and-outs of learn­ing a for­eign lan­guage online. The piece high­lights free resources that you can access on the web, includ­ing our col­lec­tion of Free For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­casts, but also many oth­er worth­while mate­ri­als. Free lan­guage dic­tio­nar­ies, flash cards, inter­ac­tive games, lan­guage learn­ing com­mu­ni­ties, inter­na­tion­al news and radio shows, for­mal uni­ver­si­ty cours­es — they’re all list­ed here.

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How Not to Get Caught Reading at Work

in Books | June 4th, 2008

This is a clever web site cre­at­ed by the folks at the New Zealand Book Coun­cil. The site cre­ates a repli­ca of a PC desk­top envi­ron­ment, and, with­in the fold­ers, you’ll find texts that can be read on the sly.

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Learn the Art of Photography: The Nikon Way

in Uncategorized | June 3rd, 2008

The advent of dig­i­tal cam­eras has changed pho­tog­ra­phy as we know it. It has dra­mat­i­cal­ly low­ered the cost of pho­tog­ra­phy, and we’re now snap­ping more pho­tos than ever before. But we’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly tak­ing bet­ter pic­tures.

This is where Nikon steps in. Their cam­eras make casu­al pho­tog­ra­phers immense­ly bet­ter than they actu­al­ly are. (Trust me, I know.) And Nikon has now set up a free Dig­i­tal Learn­ing Cen­ter that offers tuto­ri­als and tips for tak­ing a range of dif­fer­ent pic­tures — por­traits, trav­el pho­tos, nature pho­tog­ra­phy, etc. Ques­tions that get tack­led here include, but are not lim­it­ed, to: “How can I take bet­ter por­traits?” “How can I take pho­tos at dusk with­out hav­ing them look com­plete­ly dark?” “How do I get true-to-life skin tones?” “How can I get the mov­ing fig­ures in my pho­tos to look like they’re in motion and not frozen?” “My por­traits have red eyes. How can I pre­vent this?” Give a tour of the Learn­ing Cen­ter here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

• If you’d like to learn about dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy using pod­casts, check out Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips from the Top Floor (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). And, for that mat­ter, if you need to learn how to use a pod­cast, spend some time with our Pod­cast Primer here.

• Also Slate recent­ly put togeth­er a nice gallery of images fea­tur­ing the work of Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son, a mas­ter pho­tog­ra­ph­er who is con­sid­ered the father of mod­ern pho­to­jour­nal­ism.

Remembering Bo Diddley on YouTube

in Music | June 3rd, 2008

Pio­neer­ing gui­tarist Bo Did­dley passed away yes­ter­day at 79. You can find a nice video trib­ute here. Among them, you’ll find this good old chest­nut:

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Great Stories from Everyday People

in Uncategorized | June 1st, 2008

The name of the pro­gram is Morn­ing Sto­ries (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). The host is Tony Kahn. And the show is all about pre­sent­ing great sto­ries from every­day peo­ple — sto­ries that get at some­thing deeply human, things that oth­er peo­ple can iden­ti­fy with, no mat­ter what their age, back­ground, or nation­al­i­ty. (Hence the rea­son why the show’s pod­cast has unex­pect­ed­ly devel­oped a con­sid­er­able fol­low­ing in Chi­na.)

I fig­ured that there’s no bet­ter way to intro­duce the show than to ask Tony Kahn to high­light some of his own favorite episodes. So that’s what I did, and here’s what he had to say. Once you get beyond lis­ten­ing to his favorites, you can peruse the com­plete archive here. Enjoy.

1. Over Here and Over There (mp3): Morn­ing Sto­ries Pro­duc­er and Direc­tor catch­es up with his friend Fati­ma, by phone from Brazil, and recalls her sto­ry of the hopes that once made her flee her home­land for Amer­i­ca, and the fears that sent her back.

2. How Can You Say No? (mp3): Jack­ie Lantry fights time and City Hall in Chi­na to give her son a fam­i­ly, and Tony Kahn and Gary Mott dis­cuss their per­son­al expe­ri­ences with adop­tion.

3. Fam­i­ly Tree (mp3): Karen Dil­lon begins the pod­cast with a report on work­ing with griev­ing chil­dren. Kat­ri­na Mur­ray ends it with a moth­er’s tale.

4. A Les­son in Chi­nese (mp3): A caller from Xian, Chi­na teach­es Tony the true mean­ing of “hap­pi­ness,” “love,” and “vol­un­teer job.”  Also, Tony and Gary dis­cuss the true mean­ing of “wan­ton.”

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Ira Glass on Why Creative Excellence Takes Time

in Creativity, Life | May 29th, 2008

Ira Glass, host of the beloved radio show This Amer­i­can Life, offers a help­ful reminder that excel­lence does­n’t come auto­mat­i­cal­ly. (See video below.) It takes work, years of it. And he revis­its some of his ear­ly radio work in order to prove it.

The Glass video has been added to our YouTube playlist.

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Art by Committee: The Story Behind the Writing of “Shake Girl”

in Books, Stanford | May 29th, 2008

Here at Stan­ford, a cou­ple of our teach­ers (Tom Kealey and Adam John­son) took a nov­el approach to run­ning a writ­ing class. They want­ed to see what hap­pens when 14 stu­dents col­lec­tive­ly write, edit and illus­trate a graph­ic nov­el. (A graph­ic nov­el is a type of com­ic book that fea­tures a lengthy and com­plex sto­ry­line.) Fast for­ward a few weeks, and you can see what the class pro­duced. Their nov­el, “a wild­ly ambi­tious, emo­tion­al­ly sear­ing sto­ry,” based on a series of true events, is called Shake Girl, and you can start read­ing it here. Should you want to learn more about the writ­ing of this col­lab­o­ra­tive nov­el, you can lis­ten to this pod­cast that gives you the back­sto­ry and also read this sec­tion of the Shake Girl web­site.

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