Lulu

Link Roundup 9/11/2013

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Career:

Job seekers recruited via Social Media more likely to be hired. Not surprising really, but worth thinking about.

Culture:

Steve found this about Meritocracy – this blog post notes it came from a satire, before going on to eviscerate sexism/classism/racism in text.  Remember that next time someone says they’re in a Meritocracy.

Publishing:

Lulu is adding new features – They include new templates and, according to their press release, “four new solutions for publishing e-books, each allowing authors to make their books available quickly and easily on tablets and e-readers through the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Bookstore and the Lulu Marketplace.” Notice that Amazon is conspicuous by its absence.

Try and follow this.  Tumblr’s book club picks a novel about a fangirl as it’s first book club pick.  First, congrats to the author on promoting such a subject and I’ve heard some good things on it, secondly Tumblr has a book club.  Wow.

Technology:

Tivo moves to the cloud.  Sure it’s experimental, but they’ve got some foundation, lead, and alliances – and a need to save themselves from market changes.  Probably worth watching and there might be some good opportunities – though since everyone else is doing the streaming/TV/cloud thing who knows . . .

Video Games:

Ouya’s “Free The Games” is a bit of a debacle.  More here.  I’ll say again I treated the Ouya as more a milestone or experiment.  But this is kind of sad.

– Steven Savage

Cosplay And Fanart Books In Print!

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Focused Fandom: Cosplay, Costuming, and Careers and Focused Fandom: Fanart, Fanartists, and Careers are now in print!  Physical print.  The kind of print that  . . . well makes gift giving easier (which was one of the motivations).

You can get them here:

You’ll notice this isn’t on Lulu.  I wanted to give CreateSpace a try for these two.  I don’t like putting all of my eggs in one basket, but I figured I should give it a shot – and CreateSpace and Lulu share a lot of similar technologies and styles.

First of all, the files used are pretty much the same – a PDF.  My files were mostly compatible, and in fact the CreateSpace tool caught potential printing errors that Lulu doesn’t.  CreateSpace also provides a vastly superior preview function that simulates the physical book, both inside and outside – an impressive bit of technology.

Making a cover is less friendly – the easiest way is to simply do your own graphics and upload them – but that means measuring and setting up the entire cover if you want to do it yourself.  The other options aren’t as deep as Lulu’s.  This is one area of needed improvement.  Fortunately I could use my existing covers with a bit of scaling – but having to design the spine in to make a “wraparound” PDF took some work – you’re not going to do it without being at least basically experienced in making graphics.

The proofs came fast and were cheap, and were good quality, though twice I’ve gotten books via CreateSpace that seemed a bit beaten up.  Not sure if it was delivery or not.  I’ll keep an eye on that.

Now I have to consider if I want to split my time between the two or pick one.

But as for now – enjoy the books!

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Update on Focused Fandom Print Versions

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OK, a quick update on the Focused Fandom print versions.

I’ve got a friend trying out Create Space and getting great results, and I decided it’s time I try them out.  So I’m taking a few extra weeks to semi-start over and see if Create Space works for me.  The Lulu versions are pretty much done, but I figure it’s time I find out if this works as well as some people say.

So upshot is you’re going to have to wait 2-3 more weeks for the print versions.  Sorry about that.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.