Eoin Purcell's Blog

Eoin Purcell

Via Bluberati blog:

There is a very interesting and valuable analysis of the costs and practicalities of having a photo album printed in full colour by some of the major internet printers here on Mike DelGaudio’s blog.

Approaching New Year calmly
Eoin

PS: Looks like I have been included in this test so enjoy the snap previews. I think they are great.

Eoin Purcell

If Google are to be believed
GBS linked to this page of books including Dickens’ classic tale. You will see that the books are all limited preview and available to buy, yet Dickens is long dead and his books firmly in the public domain, surely they could have dreged up a version that was free to view and possibly free to download in their PDF versions?

Look what I found
Well you can. Here is the book for download from Google and here it is from Gutenberg.

Wondering why they didn’t link directly
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

Christmas & the living is easy!
The office wind down is done and we had a meal last night in an absolutely wonderful restaurant called Tante Zoe’s, where we had their Christmas Dinner Menu. Definitely worth going if you have time and the inclination.

Making mince pies
I generally don’t post about things like this but I thought that seen as others have done a good deal of cooking recently, a little image of the mince pies I have been helping to cook most of the day (Blathnaid does most of the hard work) wouldn’t hurt.

I am sure I will post before Monday but just in case:

Seasons Greetings to everyone.

Still cooking,
Nollaig Shona
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

From Where I sit:
The blog of Thomas Nelson boss Michael Hyatt (one of my favourite blogging CEOs by the way. He has a knack for blogging interesting and important points both for his internal audience and for those outside) has a very interesting analysis of the top ten trade publishers in the USA. It is built, in his words, from:

a proprietary database made up of various point-of-sale databases. It includes all the major retail sales channels. It does not include international, ministry, book fairs, direct-to-consumer sales, etc. If it did, we would be higher on the list because of our robust ministry, school fundraising, and live event sales. Scholastic would also be higher on the list because of their huge book fair business. However, this database only tracks sales through retail channels.

We are now updating this on a monthly basis. As far as I know, we are the only publisher in world who has this information.

Read the rest of this entry »

Eoin Purcell

Good Tidings
Joe Wikert points in the direction of some good news ont he Print On Demand front. Its an interesting CNN/Forbes article that runs with news about On Demand Books [I have linked to these guys before; you might recall they have a video of their product in action] Espresso book manufacturing unit. from the article:

The machine can print, align, mill, glue and bind two books simultaneously in less than seven minutes, including full-color laminated covers. It prints in any language and will even accommodate right-to-left texts by putting the spine on the right. The upper page limit is 550 pages, though by tweaking the page thickness and type size, you could get a copy of War and Peace (albeit tough to read) if you wanted.

Well I hope this does take off and makes books cheaper too but I remain to be convinced that this is the way to go. It may well be an internediate stage but it’s not the final destination.

Enjoying the season
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

Google Patent Search
Google Patent Search was confusingly launched from the Inside Google Book Search blog. The service is nice and clean and works very well from what I can see. The search function is useful if you know what it is you are searching for, but as with any such insanely large catalogue, browsing can be tricky (if interesting).

Remember the power of the web
The startling capacity to place all 7 million patents online like this is an indication of the revolutionary and transforming nature of the web. It should serve as a reminder (aswikipedia does) that constant innovation and change are the only real route to success.

What do I think?
If I have a comment on the new service it is that it seems the most rounded launch by Google in recent time, as if they launched it when it was ready and not before. The features not products mantra is obviously influencing much of the companies actvities now and it shows.

Overall a nice feature for those who really need it and an interesting one for the mere curious!

In other news
And only a matter of time too before I changed back to cutline. I just like the clean interface too much that is the problem. The brown and floral patterns were sping like but just a little garish for my tastse! Though I did like the smoothness of it.

How did it get so wet today?
Eoin

This article from the New York Times is worth reading and definitely worth thinking about too.

Eoin

Eoin Purcell

This was news to me but I find it very interesting. A nice development for Self Publishers through lulu.com. Basically Lulu.com will allow you to get your book on GBS via their service so that the first link leads directly to your Lulu storefront. Nice feature.

It’s cold this December
Eoin

UPDATE: NICE COMMENT FROM BOOKSQUARE HERE

So in case you missed it Microsoft launched their rival book search product. There has been a great deal of comment on it. The product however does not have nearly the same buzz as Google’s product has.

Lifehacker has a pointer here.

See the wonder here.

Tired but happy
Eoin