Category Archives: Technology

On the rising costs of publishing technology

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We love and hate the Internet mainly because it’s been so cheap to use. But perhaps, like me, your tech costs have shot up, or your tech keeps breaking. Perhaps you feel more and more disappointed that technology always over-promises and under-delivers. We’re reckoning with the fact that we get what we pay for.

On the Electric Book Works website, I have a new post on the rising costs of publishing technology, in which I unpack what happened, and what it means for publishing decision-makers.

I explain the main reasons we’ve seen a surge in technology costs in recent years:

  • Investors need a return
  • Open-source dependencies demand attention
  • Platforms evolve
  • As regulation evolves, the paperwork comes due
  • Social costs demand an ethical response
  • User expectations keep getting higher
  • Anxiety about IP requires legal expertise
  • The content flood is infinite

And I say more about what this means for how we invest in tech in publishing. Head over to the EBW site to read the post, and find my thread on it on LinkedIn, where I’d love to hear what you think about these issues.

What to do about AI, and The Great Asymmetry

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Tim O’Reilly’s compelling post on regulating AI, ‘To understand the risks posed by AI, follow the money‘ is a must-read. O’Reilly is one of my publishing role models, the founder of O’Reilly Media and a key figure in the early conceptualisation of open-source software. Among the hundred articles you’ll see on AI today, his credibility should jump the queue.

A key takeaway is that, in trying to mitigate the potential harms of AI, rather than focusing on the technology itself and what it might be capable of, we should focus on sensible regulation. And, more importantly, that that regulation is feasible and has good precedents. We really can influence what people – and people as corporate decision-makers – are able or likely to do with their technology:

So perhaps it is time to turn our regulatory gaze away from attempting to predict the specific risks that might arise as specific technologies develop. After all, even Einstein couldn’t do that.

Instead, we should try to recalibrate the economic incentives underpinning today’s innovations, away from risky uses of AI technology and towards open, accountable, AI algorithms that support and disperse value equitably.

This emphasis on what people do with technology, rather than on the technology itself, reminded me of Stephen J. Gould’s wonderful essay, ‘The Great Asymmetry‘. In describing the great asymmetry, Gould explains:

We can only reach our pinnacles by laborious steps, but destruction can occur in a minute fraction of the building time, and can often be truly catastrophic. […] We perform 10,000 acts of small and unrecorded kindness for each surpassingly rare, but sadly balancing, moment of cruelty.’

A crowd of thousands of people stand beneath an enormous, floating black sphere. The sky is dark and menacing. This image was created with AI.

Gould argues that we obsess too easily over whether a particular scientific development is helpful or harmful, and we should focus rather on the great asymmetry. What science does is exacerbate the great asymmetry, because science makes it easier for people to destroy: ‘our particular modern tragedy resides in the great asymmetry, and the consequential but unintended power of science to enhance its effect.’

Whether or not we’re working with AI, what matters is what our work does for the great asymmetry. I find it grimly motivating to know that the daily slog – let’s not sugarcoat it, it can be a slog – of building things properly, of being kind, and of telling stories that make people better, is the steady work of shoring up the right side of the great asymmetry.

How Books Are Made: a podcast

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My new podcast, How Books Are Made, is about the art and science of making books. It’s for book lovers curious about what happens behind the scenes, and for decision makers who need to get books into the world.

Just search for How Books Are Made in any podcast player. Or listen at howbooksaremade.com.

In episode one, I talk to best-selling author Sam Beckbessinger about marketing and creative freedom.

In episode two, one of SA’s most widely distributed book illustrators, Jess Jardim-Wedepohl, and I talk about her process, and making books under pressure.

And in episode three, Klara Skinner and I take a whirlwind tour through the entire book-production process.

In episode four, I’ll be talking to John Pettigrew, founder of Futureproofs, about innovation in publishing.

Plus, listen to the trailer for a quick intro, and a funny story about my engagement, my mother, and flammable book-making.

Lessons I’ve learned from dysfunctional book projects

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Over at Electric Book Works, my team and I distilled six key questions we ask when we want to diagnose problems with a project. Each question represents a lesson we’ve learned, over and over, when working on book- and web-publishing projects.

  1. Is there one leader and champion?
  2. Is there a single source of truth?
  3. Is there a reliable system for version control?
  4. Is content separated from design?
  5. Can everyone on the team open the files?
  6. Can we effortlessly export a finished publication?

Read more about why we ask those questions on the full post.

 

Book-production experts offering epub conversions

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Right now, the coronavirus is forcing publishers to convert more books to epubs quickly. I’m receiving lots of requests for this kind of work, and we can’t take them all on at Electric Book Works. I’d like to point publishers to experienced, freelance book-production pros. In particular, I’d like to support solo freelancers at this difficult time.

Below, I’ll list the pros I hear about with their details. Please contact them directly if you need epub conversions. (Note that epub conversions are essentially also Amazon Kindle conversions, since you can upload epub files to Amazon.)

Here’s how my list works:

1. There are good conversions and bad ones. Unless I say otherwise, I cannot vouch for anyone listed here, nor the quality of their work. If you’re a publisher who wants independent quality assurance, contact me at Electric Book Works.
2. For now, I am only listing individuals who do these conversions themselves. I’m interested in recording which individuals have the necessary skills. If I’m told that they do their work at or as a company, I’ll mention that.
3. If you have worked with someone listed here, you can leave a review about them in the comments. I moderate all comments on my site, so I will publish positive ones that seem credible to me. And I may choose to hide negative or unhelpful reviews. If I get a credible, negative review, I may choose to remove someone from the list. I can’t and won’t enter into any correspondence about my decisions. Unfortunately I don’t have any capacity for that.
4. I won’t be able to maintain this list often. It may get out of date, sorry!
5. If you’d like to be listed, send me your details. I need your full name, your email address, your city, and a short (one paragraph) description of your epub-conversion skills and experience. If you have a website or online resume (e.g. LinkedIn), please include its URL. Publishers are far more likely to contact you if they can read more about you online first. And I will list your website rather than your email so that you control how people contact you. If you’d like to be removed, just let me know.
6. If you are a company that does epub conversions, I won’t list your company, but you can put your details in a short, professional note in the comments below. All we need is your company name, website URL, country, and a one-line company description. If you don’t include this, and only this, I probably won’t publish your post. Sorry. I won’t be editing anything, so I’ll only approve comments that are already clear, concise and helpful.

Thanks, everyone. Here’s the list so far in reverse-alphabetical order.