The magazine business is a tough one to break into. Even tougher are literary magazines. A majority never see a profit (even the successful ones) and many simply shut down because of rising costs, dwindling sales and a strained business model (you can only sell so many MFA program ads).

MagCloud just might make publishing that literary magazine you’ve been dreaming about a little closer to reality. I initially caught wind of this cool new service via this post from the if:Book blog.

According to MagCloud’s homepage, the process appears to be simple:

MagCloud enables you to publish your own magazines. All you have to do is upload a PDF and we’ll take care of the rest: printing, mailing, subscription management, and more.

And the price seems to be fair as well – $0.20/page plus the cost of shipping.

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Even in 2008, when ebooks are steadily gaining in popularity and self-publishing is becoming more and more accepted, there are still a lot of myths out there, especially about the latter. You have probably heard them: People who self-publish can’t cut it with traditional publishers (ie. they are not good enough), self-publishing is only for family memoirs/histories, and the list goes on.

During my weekend blog reading I came across this post over at the TeleRead blog. The post basically gives the top ten myths about self-publishing and seeks to dispel such nastiness. I’m not going to run through all ten myths, you can read them yourself and make your own judgment. However, I would like to add my own two cents about a few things that were mentioned.

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It turns out that younger kids read a lot more for fun than their teenage counterparts. I came across an interesting article on Publishers Weekly that gives the results of a study done by Scholastic. In part, the article says:

The study found that a majority of children (68%) think it is "extremly" or "very" important to read for pleasure, and "like" or "love" doing so. However, that number decreases with age: 82% percent of children ages five to eight "like" or "love" reading, compared to 55% for children ages 15 to 17. It also found that although children can readily envision a future in which reading and technology are increasingly intertwined, nearly two thirds prefer to read physical books, rather than on a computer screen or digital device.

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…No, not the store Borders!

Before you plan a globe-trotting journey with your iPhone, Amazon Kindle/Sony Reader and that MacBook Air, you might want to keep reading.

A new international agreement planned to be adopted at the upcoming G8 Summit, would basically give border authorities of any participating nation the right to search your electronic gadgets in search of material that infringes on copyrights.

This means that if you are going through a border crossing (even through customs at an airport), the authorities can open your laptop (for example) and look through your files without probable cause. According to the Teleread Blog, which is where I first came across this story, says that there is little oversight for this agreement because it would…

…reportedly allow border guards in any covered country to seize your iPod, laptop, Sony Reader or Kindle—if the guards believed you’d used your evil gizmo to infringe copyright.

Lawyers to protect you? Fergit. And no appeals.

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Borders has opened up its very own slick new website to the public (which has been in beta testing for many months). I came across a brief article on Publishers Weekly while sifting through my morning email. You can check out the new site at Borders.com.

My first impressions are generally good, although I haven’t spent a whole lot of time exploring the site yet. You might remember that Borders used to partner up with Amazon.com (aff link) for selling books online, and has now cut the cord with the online retail giant. Now that Borders is on its own, I’m not sure how the prices will compare (next time I have some book shopping to do, I guess I’ll find out).

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One of the great benefits of the internet is that it levels the playing field for the small guys like myself. Bloggers are getting book deals. Authors are able to write, publish and sell their own work and completely bypass the traditional large publishing houses (unless you plan to sell your print-on-demand book through Amazon, then there might be problems, which I have written about here). The list goes on, telling the stories of Average Joe finding literary fame where there once was nothing.

I guess those large publishing houses began to feel left out, or at least, one of them did. I came across an interesting blog post on the UK’s Guardian Unlimited that talks about HarperCollins joining the Web 2.0 revolution. Now in beta testing, the publisher is letting authors with an unpublished novel, post the manuscript online and let others comment on it. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

You can currently only join by invitation, but membership will soon be available to anyone. While there is scope for avid readers to add to their own virtual "bookshelf", the site seems to be aimed particularly at budding authors – members are encouraged to "create a profile for your own book" and "start uploading your work". (And, if there’s any doubt about their intentions, the right-hand column contains the links: "Get Read. Get Spotted. Get Online.")

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I received an email from WritersWeekly.com today that announced what could be the first of many  lawsuits against Amazon.com. In recent months, Amazon has been forcing POD (print-on-demand) publishers to use their own printing service, BookSurge, or risk not getting their books listed on the popular ecommerce site. But instead of me re-hashing everything, you can read my previous post here, and an updated post here.

According to the email, the lawsuit has been filed by BookLocker.com, the publishing arm of Writers Weekly, which specializes in publishing ebooks and traditional books via POD. Here’s an excerpt from their press release:

BookLocker.com has filed a class action lawsuit against Amazon.com in response to Amazon’s recent attempts to force all publishers using Print on Demand (POD) technology to pay Amazon to print their books.

You can read the complaint here.

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This post is a follow-up to my post last month about publishers going green.

Every little bit helps. That is my philosophy when trying to tackle something like waste and the environment. So I was pleased when I came across an article on Publishers Weekly about HarperCollins moving its massive catalog of titles online!

HarperCollins is developing an interactive, electronic sales catalog. The catalog will offer booksellers an online tool to order books and reduce Harper’ paper output.

This will allow booksellers (and hopefully the general public) to browse the catalog, read reviews, place orders and a host of other cool features. While this is something they could have done a lot earlier, it’s always better late than never. I think Jane Freidman, the President and CEO of HarperCollins, makes a good point:

"It has been clear to me for some time that catalogs are out of date as soon as they are printed. So much of what we do today is in real time. Why not our catalogs? In addition, an electronic version reduces a tremendous amount of waste in all areas, paper, production and shipping. "

While simply moving their catalog to the internet doesn’t solve all of our problems with waste, the environment, global warming, etc., at least it’s a small step in the right direction. If everyone (even large corporations) took small steps like this, it would add up to make a big difference.

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I’m always on the lookout for new ways to consume literature. I have a Sony Reader that I love, but don’t use that much (mostly due to Sony’s poor book selection). And I have an iPhone that I use daily – for everything from making calls, surfing the net, checking/writing email, listening to music and watching movies. Yep, it would be hard to find me going about my day without my iPhone by my side.

And thanks to a great service called Readdle, I can now read ebooks on my iPhone without having to hack it or make any other changes that void the warranty. Here’s how it works: You sign up for a basic account (which is free) and they give you 50MB of storage. Okay, it’s not exactly enough to read  War and Peace, but it does give you a basic idea of how the service works.

Of course there is an option to upgrade your account. For $5/month you get 1GB of storage, the ability to read your docs offline (great for flying), and a bookmarking feature so you don’t have to scroll through 100 pages to find your spot. For $10/month, a whopping 5GB of storage and can store an unlimited number of documents.

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I’m back! I apologize for not posting in several days – I’ve been busy with a few other projects and found myself short on time. Instead of writing several posts to cover several topics, I’m gonna combine them into one post to save me (and you) time. Here’s what’s going on at Brad’s Reader:

Comment Contest Winner to be Announced

The good news is that a winner has been picked and notified for my April 2008 Comment Contest! I’ll be announcing the winner soon (probably before the weekend), and the $30 Amazon gift card is on its way! If you didn’t win, don’t worry, I’ll be holding many more contests like this in the near future.

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