If you’re one of the people who hasn’t stood in line for the premiere of “Eclipse,” or for the latest Apple iPhone, don’t feel bad. I think you might be onto something by waiting a little.

The Apple store here at the Phoenix Biltmore Fashion Square apparently had people getting in line more than 24 hours ahead of the opening. They were all waiting for the latest version of iPhone, which promised new features and new applications.   In L.A., there were also hords of people camping overnight in order to see the first showing of the movie Eclipse.

I don’t know why so many people have this need to be a lemming and follow the crowds for the first of anything. I always like to wait a little, and it usually behooves me to do so. If you have ever worked in a company with the development team, you know that marketing usually wants to trumpet the latest feature to the public way before development is ready to release it. Consequently, what happens is that a lot of what is described in the marketing literature really doesn’t ring true with reality. There is always this delta between what the literature promises and what the features can actually do.

For that reason, I won’t be the person to stand in line for Eclipse or for the iPhone 4.   I’ll wait until the product stabilizes, and I’ll wait until the movie lines disperse. Most likely, I’ll watch Eclipse on Netflix or cable.

It’s always possible to wait too long and miss the boat, but it hasn’t happened to me yet. I love technology and innovation, but I also hate wasting money. I’ve delayed my purchase of an e-book reader for that reason.

Is there anything you’ve bought right out of the gate that you wish you hadn’t? Have you ever stood in line to be the first for something?  Is it the thrill of having the latest gadget or the comraderie of others?

In 2008, over a billion dollars of audiobooks were sold in the U.S.   They are typically purchased by “educated buyers over the age of 30 who have busy lifestyles,” according to demographic stats.

Here in Arizona, John Mahoney of Ravenpheat Productions specializes in audio books.   After listening to him rattle off the ins and outs of turning a print book into audio format, I realized it really behooves authors to work with someone who knows what they are doing.   Do NOT try this alone!

If you’re in the market to produce an audio version of your work, visit the studio you’re considering and take a look around.  Is it organized?   Are all of your questions answered?   Are the hours flexible, or fixed?  

John says that of the books he has helped produce, about 50% of the authors read their own books.   The other 50% use professional audio talent from his database of voice samples.   The danger in reading your own book is that you just might not be that adept a reader.   “If they can’t read smoothly, I have to do twice as much editing, which will cost more in the long run,” John says.  Better to listen to a few of the MP3 clips he has, mostly of ex-radio talent who know how to read professionally without slurring words.   “You have to be relaxed,” advises John.   “Once you let go, everything flows.   The energy is everything, however.   For most books, there is some acting involved – playacting to keep the energy level up.” 

He will only record the voice talent 2-3 hours at a time, to keep the energy consistent.   If he detects the energy flagging, he will stop the session. 

It takes about 10-12 hours to read a 50,000 word book, and 40-60 hours to edit that audio.   The cost is roughly 2.6 cents a word if he’s not in crunch time, and he provides 2 sets of masters on CDs.  About 10,000 words will fit on a CD, so a 40,000 word book will be 4-6 CDs.  One of the largest projects he has worked on was a 170,000 word book, which came out to 12 or 13 CDs.  

The voice talent cost is separate, and starts at $60-$70/hour.   The music, which is used for introduction, outros, and fillers in between chapters, is royalty-free, which saves the author both costs and hassles.

Carra Riley lives in Arizona and wrote, “Cosmic Cow Pie:  Connecting the Dots,” which contains 14 principles to reduce stress.  She recorded the audio book at John’s studio, and sells the CD version of her book and the MP3 version on her website, www.CosmicCowPie.com.  “Most people tell me they love having the author read the book to them,” says Carra.   “It makes them feel part of the message, and like I am a friend.   I wrote the book from my life experiences so with me reading it, the message is very authentic and sincere for those who have listened.”

So many formats to deliver these days – print, PDF,MP3, ebooks, audio CD, video…and they all represent additional revenue streams to suit individual tastes.

I check Scobleizer every now and then to find out the latest tech developments, and although many of the tools he features are a bit too geeky for me, I did like the one he features today:   www.tungle.me.  Founded by Canadians, Tungle is free and aggregates all of your scheduling info to show when you’re available, without compromising your privacy.  

They’ve spent 4 years developing the infrastructure, which integrates with Google calendar, Apple, MS Outlook.   If someone wants to meet with you, they check your online Tungle profile (mine is http://tungle.me/LindaVandeVrede )  and view your availability.   They can then request a meeting with you, which comes over email.  You can click yes or no in response to their request. 

Pretty cool.   I would imagine that “big name” professional speakers would adore this feature, since it removes the necessity of a personal assistant to check with you on every request, and because you can set your own times that you want to be available.

If you’re thinking about buying an iPad, here are two frank posts I’ve found from my friends Jason Baer and Francine Hardaway that spell out the pros and cons.   Take a read before you buy – the feedback will either hasten or delay your purchase timing. 

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-tools/the-truth-about-the-ipad/

http://blog.stealthmode.com/2010/04/ipad-answers-for-jason-calcanis/

Since I travel to Rhode Island every month for 1-2 weeks at a time, I asked Jay whether I should take an iPad or a laptop on the trips– his reply:  “Linda, if you had to do real work during the trip, Macbook. If it was truly a vacation, iPad all the way.”

Whenever there is a revolution, something is often left in its wake, and that apparently is the U.S. postal service. 

In the words of the US Postmaster General, Jack Potter, there has been a macro change in society and all posts around the world are challenged by the diversion of hard copy to electronic medium. Unlike other postal services in other parts of the world, the USPS is constrained by regulations and cannot expand into other areas. Facing a huge mountain of debt, they are proposing that delivery on Saturdays be eliminated. Another likely possibility is a significant hike in postal prices after 2010.

While the speed and convenience of electronic delivery are well understood, nothing quite captures the thrill and quaintness of receiving a handwritten letter. Perhaps the USPS will eventually privatize somehow.   I would hate to see this element of American society disappear, but as I watch teens and twentysomethings with their individual smart phones, I don’t doubt that 30 years from now when my generation has gone, our modes of communication will be housed in museums as curious oddities.

Master's thesis, Boston University, 1984

Steve Jobs demoed the Apple iPad today, which although not available for several months, promises to take us closer to e-book reality.

Master’s Thesis

I first researched e-books in 1983-84 as part of my master’s thesis at Boston University’s College of Communication. The project analyzed what was then an emerging communications technology, driven through the videotext channels at the time.  Videotext is a two-way interactive system which transmits information on telephone or cable lines to a specially adapted television set or home computer. Book publishing stood to be affected by videotext because it offered an important alternative to the familiar physical book that we all know.

Back then, future based institutes were predicting that by the year 2000, 35% of all households would have videotext. It was seen even back in the 80s as a trend toward media that are more specialized and less indistinguishable, a divergence from the truly mass media of before and occurring at a rate rapid enough to cause great confusion among media professionals.

Videotext for timely information

Videotext focused on distributing timely, as opposed to timeless, information. It was a sister companion to teletext which was broadcast over the airwaves as opposed to telephone or cable lines. Videotext offered the capability of two-way communication, allowing the user to interact and actually manipulate the information.

It was difficult back in 1983 to project how well e-books would be adapted because the screen technology was so primitive at the time. Since videotext was carried on (non hard-definition) television sets which have poorer qualiy than video display units, there was more of a jittering effect because of the different refresh rates. It was a challenge to read text off the screen. We know now that with the development of technology, screen readability is no longer an issue.

Costly distribution
In the early 80s, the distribution cost of data was also formidable. Source Telecomputing Corporation was founded in June 1979 in McLean, Virginia as a way to give the public affordable access to updated information. Daytime rates were over $20 an hour, and nighttime rates were $7-$10 an hour. The Source offered featured news, research, shopping and transaction, and education although limited.

Blind Pharoah – first electronic novel or ebook

The Source also had the distinction of offering the very first electronic novel, which later changed in nomenclature to “e-books.” At a Toronto computer show in early 1983, Burke Campbell wrote a suspense novelette at on an Apple III and sent it to The Source, which then edited it and had it online for Source subscribers only three hours later. Subscribers had the choice of reading “Blind Pharaoh” on their video display terminal, printing it, or storing it on a floppy disk. To download the story into computer memory was over two dollars at nighttime fees, which was still considerably cheaper than a paperback novel. The book had 20,000 words and 19 chapters.

Other services such as CompuServe, which was formed in 1969 as a time-sharing service and then as an information service in 1979, offered distribution rates for information at much lower fees, such as six dollars per hour during the daytime. Over the last 27 years, since I first researched electronic novels, there has been a lot of debate in the publishing world about where and how they can best be distributed.

Universal formats will bode well for e-books, so that users can ultimately choose the electronic version of their favorite book no matter what device they are carrying.  The publishing world is still settling the issue of digital piracy, and that will remain a thorny issue.

What hasn’t changed is that people still like the ease and portability of traditional book formats. In 1983, I predicted that this wouldn’t change. I still support that notion, but have backed off it a little bit because of the dramatic improvements in technology in terms of the look and feel. Society has also changed in terms of its consumption of information and its demand for immediacy of content. It may be that as generation outgrows generation, those of us who grew up with physical books are replaced by younger generations who have only known electronic media, and eventually the traditional book will only become a curiosity in a museum.

Technology has made ebooks more palatable

In the thesis, I described how unstable the refresh rate of characters on the screen were and how annoying they were to the eyes for any extended length of time. I concluded it is difficult to conceive of a scene where a user decides to call up the latest novel on his videotext terminal and read it on the spot. The issue then also was that the computer-like typeface of the medium when printed did not approach the sophisticated, readable typeface found in traditional books. I theorized that videotext equipment would have to be improved substantially to achieve this goal which seemed unlikely because it would undoubtedly mean higher prices.

Since directories are updated continually, I wrote, it is reasonable to expect that perhaps videotext will eliminate the traditional print formats of highly timely material if only to save printing costs such as scenario is in no way detrimental to book publishers as electronic transmittal in this particular case is much cheaper than print production. The experts I interviewed in the early 80s at different publishing houses, videotext service companies and cable companies felt that partnerships were the way to go. In the early stages of an industry, commented Shelley Isaccson, partnerships make sense.

The future as predicted in 1983

Obsolescence is defined as the situation occurring when a new product performs functions more effectively than the old.  Videotext, now in the form of ebooks are not a threat to printed books, nor vice versa. Each medium has particular instances where its convenience outperforms the other. For e-books, the selectivity of timely information is its major advantage. Books are more appropriate for portable and lengthy “escapist” material. The two forms are merging and moving toward coexistence. It remains to be seen what the final arrangement will look like.

Note:  It is interesting that I typed the thesis, rather than used a computer, as I did not have access to or own a computer in 1983.    I owe a debt of gratitude to my three expert readers for the project, including Professor David Sykes at Boston University, Analyst Berge Ayvazian, and Computerserve Branch Support Manager Antonio Dutra.  

If you’re trying to find a quick list of media twitter handles, or you want to add some of your own lists to a free, online repository, check out www.mediaontwitter.com. 

The site is a community-built platform that runs on online database software by TrackVia.   It launched march 2009 and has almost 2,000 names so far.   It’s a work-in-progress and more features will be added in 2010, according to Melissa Hourigan, one of the collaborators.   You can currently sort by outlet, name, twitter ID and country.   In the future, there will be more sorting functions to include beat and media type.   You can share any suggestions for the db with her on twitter @melissahourigan or email at mhourigan@digitalideamedia.com.  The database is edited and maintained by a group of volunteer editors.

“If you look at the biggest influencers in PR,” says Melissa, “many of whom are part of this collaboration, (@briansolis, @skydiver, @prsarahevans, @edunigan), you will notice that they share what they learn, tools they discover and new methods to consider.   Gone are the days where you keep your approach and knowledge a secret.”

It’s not often I can sit (or stand) for a whole hour listening to a presenter without having my mind wander, but tonite I was really fascinated by Dan Poynter’s talk at the Arizona Book Publishing Association.

Now if you don’t know him, he’s best known for writing his “Self-Publishing Manual,” which has 16 revised editions and 20 printings in 28 years.    He calls it “the book that launched a million+books.” 

He was telling us that everything we’ve learned about publishing is obsolete, and as he rattled down the list of things that will disappear from the book publishing world as we know it, it made sense – frightening sense:

• literary agents will disappear
• book proposals will disappear
• the 3 selling seasons will disappear
• print ads will disappear
• book reviews will disappear – Amazon reader reviews are taking over
• quality at the big publishers is going down
• newspapers will disappear
• printing presses are expensive – more and more we’ll move to online
• crowdsourcing for information (wikipedia, for example) is cheaper and better
• independent bookstores will disappear
• returns will disappear
• chain stores will disappear

The best thing you can do is to trim your sails and go where the market is going.  He talked quite a bit about ebooks. In 2008, the ebook market grew 125%.  People who read ebooks read more books.   There are 1.2 million e-reading devices now, and there will be 6 million sold in 2010. The immediacy, price and customer service of ebooks surpass that of “pbooks,” he called them (printed books).   There are more than 40 million iphones and ipods, and he says he reads books on his iphone – that way he doesn’t have to carry a separate device 

He advised the audience to “do all [their] promotion online – forget the print publications.”   The old social networking around the campfire has moved to the internet.   “Spend valuable time online.”  

I’ve presented several times in the last few weeks on the topic of social media and promotion.   I can see in the eyes of the audience members — some get it, and will trim their sails.   Others will be resistant to change and will wonder how they ended up off course.

I’ve been thinking about creating an e-book, ever since I read David Meerman Scott’s inspiring book, World Wide Rave.  Got into a discussion with book production experts recently to learn more, and found out that Microsoft Word is not the best format for these things.

The reason?  According to Kelly Scott-Olson, president and creative director of ATG Productions, if you use Microsoft Word as a primary source for your book file, you’ll need HTML experience as well in order to clean up the code that Word embeds into the file. She and Lisa Liddy of The Printed Page then commiserated about the frustrations of working with files that have so much information automatically embedded into them that apparently it is a nightmare in most cases to extricate it.

Has anyone used Amazon’s services to create a Kindle-ready version of their book?

If you want an example of what not to do on twitter, read this post by self-proclaimed tech geek Robert Scoble.  Few of us need to follow or have followers that amount to 106,000 people.  He’s an extreme example.  Forget about him.

Here are 4 things you can learn from twitter:

1.  Breaking news as it happens – surpassing CNN and any other news networks.  Maybe you’re not a news junkie like me, however, so read on to number 2.

2. Links to articles and trends in your profession.   I follow mostly PR pros, and they provide me with valuable links to information about the latest info in public relations.   Necessary in order to keep on top of my specialty.

3. Events of interest in your city.  Through twitter, I found out that one of my favorite musicians, Shawn Colvin, is coming to Scottsdale in October.  

4. New friends in unexpected places.   I’ve made new friends through my tweets (they see them and comment on them) and through tweets of others (I follow the phrase “PR Strategy” on twitter, and tweetdeck pulls up every reference for me automatically). 

If you think twitter is just about people posting what they ate for dinner, think again.  You’re missing out on a treasure trove of information and fun.  For a quick and painless way to get up to speed, I highly recommend a twitter webinar that Dave Barnhart of Blogging Business Pros holds every few weeks.   For $59.00, you’ll come away with a solid understanding of what all the “fuss” is about.