Random Culture

R.I.P. Norman Mailer

"Tough guys don't dance. You had better believe it." - Norman Mailer

Time to take a trip to the bookstore and polish up on your Norman Mailer. He even wrote a few blog posts. Anyone who cares a lick about one of the most important American writers should read his obituary in the New York Times.

Creating Flash Advertising

A co-worker of mine, Jason Fincanon, has just published a book that I feel is worth recommending. It's entitled "Creating Flash Advertising", and definitely stands out among existing Flash books. Why? Because it's targeted at advertising folks, and specifically addresses the types of things we're interested in, like Flash ad units, microsites, using video and more. Sure, I'm biased because I work with Jason, but he's filled a niche that wasn't being addressed, which is why you should totally buy it.

Lexus Magazine Interactive

Lexus has launched a serial novel, Black Sapphire Pearl, written by Los Angeles author Mark Haskell Smith. The article appears in the Lexus quarterly magazine, but is available online here as well. The second part is ready, and the third part is coming soon.

For more on the effort, check out this Washington Post article.

Link via AdPulp.

Trailers for Books

I love this... the recent online video boom has opened up new avenues for many publishers that want to cross into another type of media distribution. Newspapers are podcasting, some even video podcasting. Does this mean they now compete in the same arena as television? How long before we have a New York Times online TV channel?

An interesting example of this embracing of online video is HarperCollins' introduction of "trailers" for the promotion of their books. According to an article in the Guardian Unlimited:

"There are now trailers for books and soon, according to Steve Osgoode, director of online marketing at HarperCollins Canada, they will be everywhere."

Check out one of HarperCollins' trailers for Londonstani, a book by Gautam Malkani.

If You Only Buy One Book...

If you only buy one book this year, it should be this one... Chris Anderson's upcoming book, "The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business is Selling Less of More." Yes, Chris is the same guy who introduced the idea of the "Long Tail" in Wired. You can check out his blog at: www.thelongtail.com.

The book is available now for pre-order at Amazon, and ships in July.

This is right up there with must-reads like The Tipping Point and The Cluetrain Manifesto. Every CEO of every retail company in the world needs to read this, lest they get left in the dust.

Amazon Launches Podcast!

Amazon has just launched Amazon Wire, a podcast featuring exclusive interviews with authors, musicians, movie directors and other people behind the products they sell. Visit Amazon Wire at: Amazon.com/podcast.

The first episode includes interviews with Steven Soderbergh, Blondie, the Flaming Lips and Freakonomics author Stephen J. Dubner. I have to say... it's a well produced podcast, with good audio and pretty interesting content. In fact, I'll subscribe as long as they can update it at least once a week. If you'd like to subscribe to Amazon Wire, click here to open the podcast directly though your iTunes.

BMW Audiobooks

BMW, in conjunction with Random House, has launched a series of unique short story audio books. You can download the first in the series at BMWAudiobooks.com. Adverblog points out that not so long ago, BMW said branded entertainment was becoming too expensive, and they were terminating those efforts.

Well, I guess they aren't.

Most Blogged About Books

The New York Times has a great list of the most blogged about books of 2005. According to the New York Times, this list was created from looking at "5,000 of the most-trafficked blogs." No word on what they used to figure that out. The article also contains links to some of the posts from these blogs.

Link via Micropersuasion.

Borders Holiday Marketing

You may remember last year, Borders had one of the better holiday marketing sites, the "Giftmixer 3000." This year, they're following suit, launching SeasonofSurprises.com. It's a gift selector as well, but with an eye towards the people you're finding gifts for... their personalities and tastes. The site is well designed with some great illustrations, and is definitely worth checking out. Borders has set the bar once again.

Amazon: Pay per Page?

Amazon.com is attempting to capitalize on the "iTunes model." Two new services will accommodate this attempt. The first is Amazon Pages, which will allow customers to buy books "inexpensively" by the chapter or other segment, instead of purchasing the whole book. Amazon Upgrade is the second service, which basically allows people to access online the content they've purchased.

In an article by Jonathan Berr on TheStreet.com, CEO Jeff Bezos says: "Amazon Pages and Amazon Upgrade leverage Amazon's existing Search Inside the Book technology to give customers unusual flexibility in how they buy and read books."

Um... ok, but guess what? Flexibility doesn't mean buying the last chapter of the Harry Potter book. The reason iTunes worked for Apple is because purchasing by the song catered to how music was being consumed... people often only liked one song on an album, and didn't want to buy the whole thing. But people don't consume books in the same way...

Granted, for some genres this might work, but overall, I think Amazon Upgrade is the service to pay attention to, not Amazon Pages. People will buy complete books online, and allowing them universal access to it is a great idea.

Here's another article on the same subject at Forbes.

Link via AdPulp.

Mobile Book Previews

Harper Collins in Australia has launched MobileReader, a service that lets book lovers sample chapters from upcoming books on their mobile phones. Every month, a new "pack" of samples is delivered, and what you receive can even be targeted by the genre of books you're interested in.

Link via Adverblog.

Blooks? Hackoff.com

A Blook is, according to Hackoff.com, "a book serialized on a blog. You can read it with a browser or feed reader, subscribe to it, tag it, comment on it, and link to it."

Hackoff.com is a blook... The story is essentially a murder mystery set in the midst of the dot-com bubble. Check out the personal blog of the author, Tom Evslin, for more insight into it's creation. In addition, he's also kind of taken an alternate reality gaming approach, as there are fake websites, press releases and other materials that factor into the story.

There may be a high learning curve to really understand and get involved in what's happening, but it's an interesting idea, and feels like something different. Thanks to Jason for the link.

Bookcasting????

LibriVox is volunteer project where people record readings of books that are in the public domain, and those recordings are distributed via podcast. According to the site, it works like this: "a book is chosen, then *you*, the volunteers, read and record one or more chapters. We liberate the audio files through this webblog/podcast every week (day ?)."

It's an interesting idea... yet another way to distribute public domain works.

Link via BoingBoing.

Seth Godin's Free eBook

For a limited time, Seth Godin is offering a free download of his latest book entitled "Who's There: Seth Godin's Incomplete Guide to Blogs and New Media." It's worth downloading.

FYI: It's a follow up to the recent "Knock Knock" eBook, which is still available for download.

Naked Conversations

The new book by notable blogger Robert Scoble and communication strategist Shel Israel, is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, looks to be a great read for anyone involved in looking at business blogs.

You can also check out the Naked Conversations blog they set up to keep people updated as they wrote the book. It's got some great inside information on the process of writing the book.

The Personal MBA

What's the value of an MBA today? You don't have to shell out big bucks and sit through classes. Josh Kaufman has assembled "The Personal MBA", a collection of 40 book titles that cover topics such as accounting, competition, marketing, business ethics and more. View the complete list of books here.

In addition, Josh has set up a forum (using Vanilla), where users can discuss each title in detail. You can find that forum at personalmba.com.

The Podcast-only Book

Author Scott Sigler has a new novel called "Earth Core" that he's decided to release as the world's first podcast-only novel. What's interesting is that the format will be serial, instead of releasing the whole thing at once.Scott's goal is pretty modest, wanting to see only 5,000 subscribers.

Scott says "This novel is a cross between episodic modern-action fare like "24" and classic sci-fi movies like Predator and Starship Troopers."

Interestingly enough, the novel was actually released as an ebook in 2001, but September 11th came along, and lo and behold, the novel never actually got published.

Link via Dead Parrot Society.

Seth Godin's New Book

Seth Godin posts that he's launched a blog for his new book "All Marketers Are Liars." At the blog, you can download a pdf with a short synopsis of what the book is about. And according to that document:

"This is a powerful book for anyone who wants to sell things people truly want, as opposed to commodities that people merely need."

Hunter S. Thompson Dead

Hunter S. Thompson has committed suicide.

This is the only post that needs to happen today...

Read his stuff.

This Is Not A Game

Since we're on the subject of Alternate Reality Gaming, there's a book coming out soon by Dave Szulborski called "This Is Not A Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming." While the book is supposed to be available for purchase sometime this month, you can download the first two chapters for free. Just based on looking at the table of contents, it should be a really great resource for anyone looking to create their own alternate reality game.

New Book: On Bullshit

I've seen several posts today about this new book, titled "On Bullshit." It looks to be an extremely good read. The author, Harry G. Frankfurt, is apparently a Princeton philosophy professor... The book is based on the assumption that "bullshit" is different than "lying", for example. Here's a hint from thej Amazon review about that distinction:

"He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all."

Gee, that sounds familiar... If only this had been published before November of 2004...

Link via Ernie Schneck.

Top 10 Business Books

Forbes has released their list of the top 10 business books of the year. And guess what? Seth Godin's book made it into the top 10.

100 Notable Books of 2004

The NY Times Book Review has published a list of 100 notable books from 2004.

Thanks to Kottke for the link.