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To get a free sneak peek at the story, fans can eyeball an eight-page digital preview on an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. The Dust to Dust app, devised by comiXology and Boom Studios, includes a retail locator bundled with a preorder feature for those who want to purchase physical copies. Learn more about Dust to Dust, and see more cover variants, by clicking the link above.
Last year Edinburgh residents tackled Arthur Conan Doyle’s dinosaur adventure The Lost World, last month Dubliners were taking a collective look at The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Brighton’s readers are currently engrossed in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel From Russia with Love. Now a new project is hoping to take the “one book, one city” initiative a step further, and get the whole world reading the same novel.
The brainchild of Jeff Howe, author of Crowdsourcing and a contributing editor at Wired magazine, the One Book, One Twitter scheme launches tomorrow. Readers have been voting for the book which they’ll be tackling for the past month, with Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel American Gods eventually triumphing over titles including Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.
“The aim with One Book, One Twitter is – like the one city, one book programme which inspired it – to get a zillion people all reading and talking about a single book. It is not, for instance, an attempt to gather a more selective crew of book lovers to read a series of books and meet at established times to discuss,” explained Howe at Wired.com. “Usually such ‘Big Read’ programs are organised around geography. Seattle started the trend for collective reading in 1998 when zillions of Seattlites all read Russell Banks’s book, Sweet Hereafter. Chicago followed suit with To Kill a Mockingbird a few years later. This Big Read is organised around Twitter, and says to hell with physical limitations.”
Gaiman, whose novel follows the story of ex-convict Shadow, released from prison and embarking on a bizarre journey across America with the mysterious Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a former god, said he thought One Book, One Twitter was “a great idea – a sort of worldwide book club”.
He was, however, slightly concerned about the choice of American Gods, describing himself as “half-pleased and half-not”, because it’s “such a divisive book”. “Some people love it, some sort of like it, and some people hate it … It’s not a book I’d hand out to everyone, because the people who don’t know anything about what I’ve written and who hate it – who might have loved Stardust, or Neverwhere, or The Graveyard Book or Sandman – probably won’t go and look any further,” the author explained on his blog.
“But it’s happened, I’m kind of thrilled that I get to help kick off something this new, and I’m going to do all I can to help. Which, today, will consist of making sure I let all the publishers around the world who have American Gods in print know about this, and, over the next few months, sending helpful or apologetic tweets to people who are stuck, offended, or very, very confused.”
On Twitter at @1B1T2010 – with more than 1,500 followers days after launching – and hashtag #1b1t, the One Book, One Twitter project begins officially tomorrow.
Curious to see how many people follow this. I loved the book. http://amzn.to/chfk08
According to Grandinetti, publishers are asking the wrong questions. “The real competition here is not, in our view, between the hardcover book and the e-book,” he says. “TV, movies, Web browsing, video games are all competing for people’s valuable time. And if the book doesn’t compete we think that over time the industry will suffer. Look at the price points of digital goods in other media. I read a newspaper this morning online, and it didn’t cost me anything. Look at the price of rental movies. Look at the price of music. In a lot of respects, teaching a customer to pay ten dollars for a digital book is a great accomplishment.”
In Grandinetti’s view, book publishers—like executives in other media—are making the same mistake the railroad companies made more than a century ago: thinking they were in the train business rather than the transportation business. To thrive, he believes, publishers have to reimagine the book as multimedia entertainment. David Rosenthal, the publisher of Simon & Schuster, says that his company is racing “to embed audio and video and other value-added features in e-books. It could be an author discussing his book, or a clip from a movie that touches on the book’s topic.” The other major publishers are working on similar projects, experimenting with music, video from news clips, and animation. Publishers hope that consumers will be willing to pay more for the added features. The iPad, Rosenthal says, “has opened up the possibility that we are no longer dealing with a static book. You have tremendous possibilities.”
Must read article available in full at the link above.
What was the last magazine article you read? Where did you see it? Why did you read it?
In a few days Apple is expected to introduce a new device, affectionally known as The Tablet until then. Very few know what it will be, what it will do, whether it will be some kind of e-reader. Many publications are hoping, and preparing for, Apple doing with them what it managed to accomplish with music via the iTunes store. This is not about The Tablet, though inspired by it, but instead it is about magazines.
I love magazines. I blame my parents.
On alternating weekends, while growing up in Puerto Rico, my parents would get me and my sister in the car and travel to a different town, half hour away, to visit a small, hole-in-the-wall newsstand. I remember the place being crowded with books and shelves upon shelves of magazines from Spanish speaking countries. It felt foreign, European. I think it was owned by a Spanish family. I am probably romanticizing the memory.
My mother would collect stacks of oversized fashion magazines held for her. My father would pick up obscure books to complement his massive law book library. My sister and I would pick up comic books from South America. We would then visit a cafe and get small bags of deep fried treats, savory and sweet. And while nibbling on churros and drinking coffee we would read.
In that newsstand I discovered magazines. Back then my favorite was Muy Interesante - Very Interesting. Not Interesting but Very Interesting. A Spanish magazine full of fun science. I remember reading articles about how soap is made, about oxygen, about the vastness of the oceans. Every issue a perfectly random collection of information that I devoured with intense curiosity. I remember also looking at all those magazines, from all those different countries and noticing the ads, the designs, the diversity of the Spanish language.
Around the same time my parents introduced me to computers. A Tandy TRS-80, a Commodore 64, a Colecovision, with their big rubbery keyboards, my welcoming hosts luring me into the digital realm. I have vivid memories of my father sneaking me into a BASIC programming class he was taking at night, and me discreetly sitting at a terminal writing and compiling code for the first time, a simple program that printed “Hola” on screen.
In the early 90s, after college, and with me now living in New Jersey, the passion for technology and magazines grew. I dove into the deep end of the web before most people knew what it was. I created a website to promote the Rutgers Arts Center, completely text-based, an experiment really. I had an email account as early as 1987, one of the perks of studying computer science. In 91 or 92, I am not sure which year, I received a holiday gift (a mousepad, a coffee mug) from Amazon.com with a letter telling me that I was one of their Top 50 customers in New Jersey.
And I subscribed to everything.
I had subscriptions for Premiere, The New Yorker, American Theater, Theater Crafts International, GQ, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Interview and on and on. I can’t even remember everything I was subscribed to. I slept little and read a lot. I had books and magazines with me at all times using train delays and other inconveniences of travel as opportunities to catch up on reading. To me magazines were the perfect tool for exploration. By getting magazines I was allowing myself to be within reach of a multitude of ideas, opinions, visuals. I would clip and save articles and layouts I liked. I would get excited when I checked my mail and there would be stacks of magazines waiting for me.
Then the rest of the world embraced the web. Slowly I migrated from reading magazines to reading online with the added advantage that most everything was easily available and free. I still subscribe to a few magazines, Wired, Esquire, Communication Arts, because I like them as physical things - the thickness and richness of the paper, their fantastic layouts and spreads — as much as I like them as distribution mechanisms for information. On the other hand, the list of RSS feeds, twitter lists, and other online content I read surpasses what I read on any printed page.
Now we are exposed to as much random information as we want at all times. Feeds and streams of information like a fast moving river we can look at, dip a toe in or swim in as we wish. Then we write about our experiences in the river, our words contributing to the streams that make the river bigger. The problem with this transition is of course that we become the editors of the information we consume and therefore limit the amount of new information that enters our lives. For the most part we only read things we are interested in. Additionally, with that much information constantly available to us, a keen ability to discern, very quickly, what content we will engage with and what will be dismissed is needed.
There is great value to having an editorial voice, aesthetic and vision. A group of eclectic individuals curating ideas, putting together issues that include things familiar and completely new. That is the power of the magazine. The advantage that people that still seek magazines acquire.
But today, in 2010, what is a magazine?
There are sites online that have editorial voices as strong as any printed magazine. Even magazines that exist exclusively online, though they don’t call themselves magazines. There are individuals that single-handlely curate information in a way that rivals any established magazine. Printed magazines have begun to embrace the norms of the web in their formats with Esquire going as far as sometimes underlining in blue, like hyperlinks, phrases and words that have footnotes. What we are witnessing is the mashup of both worlds: rich content with a specific voice, supported by advertising, presented in a format that readers would embrace and pay for whether online or printed.
Online magazines are looking to grow and printed magazines have to change their business model or perish. Last year we saw the atrophy and death of many magazines, from the obscure to the Gourmet and I.D. Perhaps magazines should evolve to be printed only a few times each year as a supplement to the web, the reverse of the current model, with exclusive print-only content.
As a consumer of magazines and books, as a reader, something interesting has happened to me as a side effect of this evolution. When I am reading something that is actually printed I find myself completely aware of how much longer I have to read before I finish. It is not a short attention span or lack of concentration, I can still comfortably read for hours. It is a constant, almost unconscious calibration of the time spent with any given written piece. On the other hand, anything that I read on a screen lacks this distraction. I can read on screen, scrolling and scrolling, completely loosing track of time.
Which brings us back to technology. Next week Apple will, once again, put on The Greatest Show On Tech. Some kind of tablet will most likely be introduced. It will probably handle magazine content like this:
With Apple’s acquisition of Lala and the rumored expansion of iTunes to the web, soon your library of movies, music and most likely books and magazines will be in the cloud. The newsstand, now an ethereal concept, available to you everywhere. Apple will probably surprise us again and the device will not only be a tool for content consumption, but also innovate ways to create content of our own. I will probably get one and read more because of it.
This is all informed guessing, about Apple and the future of magazines, and for those of us that enjoy technology and reading, very exciting. One thing is certain, magazines in digital form guarantee no more loose subscription cards and no more perfume strips.
And not just end-of-year but also end-of-decade. Here are some of the most interesting lists I’ve seen, interspersed with some of the best work I’ve discovered this year and some suggestions for creative gifts.
• Pixar’s Up
• Foreign Policy’s Top Ten Stories You Missed: Do you know about the hotline for China and India?
• The New York Times Year In Ideas
• Pop Culture’s Finest Moments Of 2009
• Newsweek’s The Decade In 7 Minutes:
• Amazon.com: Best Books Of 2009
• The Best And Worse Tech Of The Decade
• Milton Glaser Draws And Lectures:
• Creative Review Gunne Report 2009 And 2009 Epica Winners Featuring:
• PaperSpecs Top Ten Tips Of 2009: For my fellow printing producers.
• Open Culture Compilation Of Free Audiobooks
• 50 Of The World’s Best Design Blogs
• Slings & Arrows
• The Buzzwords Of 2009: My favorite “crash blossom.”
• The Best Films Of 2009 By Roger Ebert: You have not seen it yet, but you must watch The Hurt Locker
• The Decade In Culture
• Google Wave continues to confound most everyone. And then you see this:
• GE Plug Into The Smart Grid: This is the first example I encountered of Augmented Reality actually implemented. A whole creative department stood huddled around a computer, mouths open, uttering small cries of disbelief.
• YouTube, The Most Searched, The Most Viewed
• Life’s Pictures Of The Year
• MoMA’s Tim Burton Exhibition Website, and The Making Of
• The Hollywood Reporter: Top Ten Techs Tormenting Hollywood
• Johnnie Walker’s Walk: Perfectly produced, it is an astonishing blend of branding, filmmaking, performance, advertising and above all storytelling.
• Amelia: If you love dance this piece will make you reconsider what dance can be. It is ballet mashed up with urban in the matrix. Gorgeous.
• Brand New’s The Best And Worst Of Identities 2009: Have you seen the new AOL logo? What do you think?
• Tarsem’s The Fall
• Top 60 Japanese Phrases/Words Of 2009
• Chanel No. 5’s Night Train: Staring Audrey Tautou. Watch the full length video. Even the behind the scenes is beautiful.
• Ataque de Pánico! recently got Fede Alvarez, the director and animator, a big budget Hollywood deal, which reminds me of…
• …Alive in Joburg, which led Neill Blomkamp to direct District 9
• And speaking of Henry Jenkins, his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
• Google Zeitgeist 2009
• The Year In Media Errors And Corrections: The internet never forgets.
• I love dance. I watch this on tv and realize that I may be witnessing the evolution of the dance form:
And then I learn there is more.
• The LXD is launching an online, episodic series, with hints of graphic novel myth-making all told through dance. This is a creative endeavor that is practically custom made for me.
• The 50 Most Interesting Articles In Wikipedia
• The Best Films Of The Decade By AV Club
• UNESCO and Google partner to deliver virtual access to World Heritage sites.
• The Noughtie List, the 00’s in Review. A comprehensive list of lists by kottke.org.
• Rolling Stone’s Best Of The Decade
• Top Ten China Myths Of 2009
• In The Emperor of Scent: A True Story of Perfume and Obsession
• The Top 10 Flash Mobs Of 2009: If we are ever together in a crowded public space and music starts playing, people start dancing, there is a very big possibility I’ll be joining in.
• Time Magazine’s The Top 10 Of Everything 2009
• Vaporware 2009: Inhale the Fail: Technologies unfulfilled promises.
• The Big Picture, The Decade In News Photographs: These reiterate how challenging this decade has been.
• The Big Picture, The Year In Pictures: What a crazy year it has been.
• The Major Works Of Counterintuitive Thought Of The Past Decade
• Paloma Faith is the latest eclectic British singer to do the soul thing. A former magician’s assistant, she delivers a great record that feels a bit like the anti Amy Winehouse’s Rehab. Do You Want the Truth Or Something Beautiful
• National Geographic Visions of Earth 2009: Marvel at the variety of images and experiences that our planet creates.
• See Puerto Rico: Yes, I am biased, but the new tourism campaign for Puerto Rico is rich in history and beauty.
• The Ten Best Films You Won’t See This Year
• The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
• The 10 Most Innovative Viral Video Ads
• Top 40 iPhone Apps Of 2009
• 50 Most Influential Bloggers Of 2009: Have you met Gary Vaynerchuk?
• Adweek Media Best Of The 2000s: Gawker is the blog of the decade?
• Jill Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight
• Best New Blogs Of 2009
• 50 Ultimate Travel Experiences
• The Best TV Series Of The 00’s
• 40 Things That Were Popular At The Beginning Of The Decade That Are Not Popular Now: Remember Pepsi Twist? Exactly.
• The Millions: A Year in Reading
And of course, the predictions:
• Trendsspotting’s 2010 Social Media Predictions In 140 Characters
• CNN Tech’s 10 Web Trends For 2010
• Trendwatching’s 10 Crucial Consumer Trends Of 2010
Lastly,
• 100 Ways To Live A Better Life
A collection of links, ideas and posts by Antonio Ortiz.
What are you looking forward to?
What has surprised you?
What have you learned today?
Copyright © 2009-2024, Antonio Ortiz. All rights reserved. Shop at Amazon.com and support Smarter Creativity.
