August 27th, 2008
Bear with me while I pop back in time a handful of years to when I messed around with stand-up comedy.
For the first few years as an aspiring stand-up comic, one must tread the rocky paths of the open spots. These are the 5 minute - or if you are lucky 10 - slots that [...]
August 25th, 2008
How many complaints regarding a book would a publisher require to justify editing and reprinting what some may regard as an offensive word? 5,000? 500? How about just one…
Dame Jaqueline Wilson’s My Sister Jodie, a book aimed at the 9 to 11 age group, has sold around 28,000 copies since its release in March this [...]
August 22nd, 2008
I wrote on my personal blog about how work - that’s the bit that actually pays the rent right now - overshadows pretty much everything else, including the creative writing. When writing has to be squeezed-in to available hours, it can be tough to summon up the inspiration.
The day-to-day demands of working in the UK [...]
August 4th, 2008
eMusic this week announced their online music catalogue has just reached 4 million tracks!
Now affiliated with 40,000 record labels, and recently having shifted its service into a more web 2.0 social network environment, it seems eMusic is going from strength to strength. David Pakman, eMusic President and CEO said:
eMusic is redefining digital music retail for [...]
July 26th, 2008
A MINOR TECHNICALITY episode 42 - Life, the universe, and social notworking - What on earth happened? What started off as some wittering about offers related to the show (such as Budget Rent-a-Car, eMusic and GoDaddy) ended up in a flood of frustration about social notworking (netwasting). So I decided, what the hell, the days of waffly, slightly ranty audio shows is most definitely not yet over!
July 16th, 2008
Borders, the international book retailer, has begun selling audiobooks as downloads from their online store.
15,000 titles are planned to be available for download in mp3 - which means DRM-free, of course - and can be played on pretty much any digital music device. In addition, the audiobooks are available in WMA format - which looks [...]
July 14th, 2008
Back in April when PodShow re-branded to MEVIO, there was a a fair bit of spitting over the CEO’s comments that the company had “…never believed in user-generated content as a business, or even as a sustainable entertainment offering“. This created all manner of waves amongst podcast producers. Here is my personal take on why [...]
July 11th, 2008
As much as publishers panic at the thought of losing control of their products once out there on the mighty interweb, so we are seeing more companies offering professional audiobook products as DRM-free downloads.
PublishersWeekly is reporting that Simply Audiobooks is about to offer more than 5000 DRM-free products from Random House. This means Simply Audiobooks [...]