Some Interesting Insights on the new Digital Publishing Paradigm

A friend just sent me this intriguing article on "Best Selling Author Turns Down Half A Million Dollar Publishing Contract To Self-Publish"

It provides a good insight into the minds of authors (especially good ones) in the new digital paradigm. I also got a good view of the traditional financial publishing model (which i assume is similar for other intellectual property like music) from quotes like:

"In paper, with rare exceptions, there's a big upfront sales push, followed by either total evaporation or by years of low backlist sales. Digital isn't like that."

".. getting half a million bucks and 14.9% royalties, forever, isn't as lucrative as no money up front and 70% royalties, forever."

"a publisher's advance represents: a loan, an insurance policy, a bet"

"If the loan is so big that you don't think you'd ever be able to make that much on your own, plus you won't have to pay it back, then sure, take it"

"...getting half a million bucks and 14.9% royalties, forever, isn't as lucrative as no money up front and 70% royalties, forever."


I guess part of the thinking behind this is that both delivery/distribution AND marketing can be achieved effectively online now. With Social Media, the author, especially a good one, can do his own marketing to reach his audience and get feedback. Before these channels became available very few authors will make such a decision.

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

I just came across this great video of JK Rowling giving the commencement address to the Harvard graduating class in 2008. The impact is of course that it is JK Rowling, but the delivery is quite excellent and the message really gets through.

http://harvardmagazine.com/commencement/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination

This was a link I found from NTU SIFE

Plus check out this analysis of her talk "Speech Analysis: JK Rowling 2008 Harvard Commencement Speech".

Summary of Sharepoint 2010 Social Features

Sharepoint 2010 has upped the ante on business applications that provide social features. A study of what Sharepoint is doing in this area can give us more insights into the kind of features that might be useful in business software expecially in corporate settings. This is also relevant to developers who aspire to build social features into their offerings or solutions

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Social Media Tools on Sharepoint 2010

1. Managing your content – profile page with personal and work related information, profile management, and managing tags and notes (filtering, sorting, etc.).
   
   
   
   1. Personal Tag Cloud, which surfaces all the tags that user has employed and displays them in a tag cloud.
   
   
   2. Tag Profile feature which aggregates all of the people who have used a given tag within the organization. It's possible to subscribe to a feed of any tag, see who's following a tab, and add a tag to your responsibilities, all of which are options surfaced simply by clicking on a tag.
   
   
   3. "Ask Me About" feature falls under the interests area and allows users to broadcast areas of expertise about which they're open to receiving questions from colleagues.
   
   
   4. Content tab surfaces a user's sites, documents and pictures (shared and personal). Sites include a personal blog by default. Included in the blog is a Ribbon-based contextual editor which "makes it much more natural to do internal blogging." In addition to showing blogs in the browser, authoring on a mobile device is easy.


2. Staying connected (Social Networking)
   
   
   
   1. My Network feature, to track your colleagues and interests, shows a running feed of colleagues' activity (an "analogue to Facebook friends, if you will") and interests
   
   
   2. Overview includes a user's Note Board, "Facebook Wall-style interface”, where you can post a note on a colleague's profile or leave a comment on a team site.


3. Finding expertise (Social Networking) – Finding Expertise – In terms of finding expertise, SharePoint 2010's people search where you can sort by "social distance" and filter results by projects, skills, and responsibilities and an Organization Browser where one can
   
   
   
   1. Organization tab surfaces an org browser in Silverlight, to browse through peers and management chains, which shows an org chart that's far more slick (and interactive) than any org chart you've seen before. An HTML version of the org browser is also available.


4. Finding information (Aggregation, RSS) – For finding information, she showed us an example of a search for content where one can search across sites, filter results by type, author, date, or tag, as well as create an alert or RSS feed on a particular search query.


5. Capturing unstructured content (Social News and Bookmarking) – bookmarking (of both internal and external sites), tagging (sites, profile pages, lists, libraries, or items) and the suggested tag feature. She also briefly touched on blogs, video, an enterprise wiki, and an "office backstage" feature.


6. Working together anywhere (Collaboration) –
   
   
   
   1. co-authoring experience in Microsoft Office through SharePoint 2010 (with featured participants) and mobile collaboration where you can access team sites, office applications, create blog posts and comments and have 1-click access to documents, sites and colleagues
   
   
   2. two varieties of wikis in 2010, team sites and enterprise wikis, with the latter being more of a traditional wiki usage. Both feature Web Edit functionality and built-in workflows (which are also built into blogs in 2010). In 2010 you can insert Web Parts directly into a wiki.
   
   

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