Archive
Whichbook.net is such a good idea it’s surprising it hasn’t been shamelessly copied elsewhere. You move a set of sliders and get recommendations from UK library catalogues.
I love it when a plan comes together. A Sunday evening chat on Brick Lane about ways of opening up/gatecrashing/subverting the upcoming London Literature Festival has led very quickly to the creation of London Lit Plus, an open-access festival to showcase the best of London’s literary scenes: London Lit Plus (LL+) is an open festival, […]
Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries is the website and nom de guerre of artists Young-Hae Chang and Marc Voge, based in Seoul, South Korea. Their art takes the form of text, usually parodying the manifesto or thesis form and accompanied by jazz soundtracks, delivered either as film, or, on the web, flash movies. You can watch […]
A recent literary event provided a chance for an extended chat with various people about the possibilities for new types of readings. I’ve always thought they’re a bad way to appreciate lit, but they’re valuable in promoting new work, and bringing together like-minded people. What can we do about this?
3:AM Magazine, of which I am a co-editor as well as designer and site developer, today launched a new, Portuguese-language edition dedicated to writing, music and culture from Brazil: 3:AM Brasil. I meant to write about 3:AM when we launched the redesigned site back in January, but didn’t get round to it. It’s a great […]
If things have been less busy around here for the last couple of weeks, there’s a reason: I’m moving on from my day job with the lovely Snowbooks, and pursuing other opportunities, with the consequent upheavals. Booktwo isn’t going anywhere though, and neither is Slow Fire – thanks to all who have signed up, and […]
With new technology comes the need to rethink certain conventions. The above is clipped from a Macmillan ebook (link), and while I don’t wish to do anyone in particular down, and the technology is young, I think it speaks to a disparity in the understanding of ebooks: they are not simply paper books, scanned page […]
Book piracy is no laughing matter, particularly in India, where it is estimated that US$36.5 million a year are lost by publishers (Source). With the advent of YouTube-like services such as Scribd, the problem is only going to grow. However, I fear that these ads from an Indian bookseller are unlikely to have much effect, […]
The subject of reading from electronic screens is a matter of ongoing debate. Many claim people will simply never read off screens in the way that they read off paper now. Excepting e-ink-based paper, which promises to revolutionise our understanding of “the screen”, are there simple ways to improve our reading experience on the web?
Cycling to work today, I saw this advertised on the side of a bus: Bob Books. Bob Books allows you to create and order books using your own text and digital photos – the examples on the website heavily emphasise personal photo albums of the baby/wedding/holiday variety. It’s a beautiful site and the downloadable software […]
I just received some rather wonderful news. As a direct result of my recent talk at the British Council, one of the international publishers who was present, Anuradha Roy of Permanent Black in India, has set up a blog to talk to the world about their books. http://permanent-black.blogspot.com/ Publishers of the finest work on South […]
Something Twitterered, something new… Lots of interesting things come my way via other peoples’ Twitter streams, and this afternoon, via Tom Coates, I heard about Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger’s new book about “Digital Disorder” and “how we’re pulling ourselves together now that we’ve blown ourselves to bits.” Looks fascinating, and I’ll try and get […]
I’ve written about Google Book Search before, but it’s time to do so again – particularly after their PR barrage at the London Book Fair, some aspects of which I wrote up at the time. For a while now, I’ve been broadly in favour of GBS, at least in as much as it’s forcing publishers […]
As regular readers have probably noticed, I’ve been bothered for some time about the general lack of zing in publishing get-togethers, and the massive disparity between the hunger, excitement and inspiration generated at events like FOWA and SXSW and the drab reality of book fairs and similar events. Moreover, I believe this situation is bad […]
Here’s something that passed me by, but that makes fascinating reading: yesterday was International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day (via Boingboing). On this day, everyone who wants to should give away professional quality work online. It doesn’t matter if it’s a novel, a story or a poem, it doesn’t matter if it’s already been published or if […]
So, as a little experiment, I’m going to be logging the London Book Fair as it happens at www.booktwo.org/lbf2007/. For realtime updates, see the Twitter stream, and you can also grab an RSS feed. If people – particularly people attending – want to get involved, and make this more of a community backchannel – then […]
Thanks for all the thoughts that people offered in advance of my talk today at the British Council. I’ve posted the slides and a bunch of links, which you can read here, and I’ll post some more about it later. In short, I think it went well – in that I explained a few things […]
I’ve just agreed to give a fifteen-minute presentation on ‘publishing in the digital age’ at the British Council on Friday, as part of their International Young Publisher programme (which, incidentally, I wrote about last year). Frankly, help me. The other speakers are from the Oxford Brookes Institute of Publishing and the London College of Communications […]
A quick note. As I mentioned vaguely before, I’ll be attending all three days of the London Book Fair next week. I’ll be working, but if there’s anyone who’d like to meet up for a drink at the end of the day, please get in touch. I’ll obviously be reporting on any booktwo-related events, on […]
With little fanfare, if:book released a very early version of Sophie, their rich content creation tool, last Wednesday. You can download it here. Sophie has been described variously as the next step in ebooks, a publishing tool for the rest of us, the first base of the networked book, so I was eager to see […]
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Booktwo.org is the blog of James Bridle, a book and technology specialist with specific expertise in planning and producing web and new media projects for clients in publishing and the arts. If you'd like to hire me, have a look at my CV and portfolio, and feel free to get in touch.
I am also a member of the Really Interesting Group.
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Speaking Engagements:
I am available for conferences and other events. For examples, see my talks at Interesting, Playful, South by Southwest, dConstruct and Tools of Change Frankfurt.
A complete list of talks, with links, is available.