Bestselling Novelist Sells Story Ideas for $1

in Books, Literature | August 6th, 2007

lethem2.jpgBest­selling writer Jonathan Lethem — author of one of my favorite nov­els Moth­er­less Brook­lyn — has put togeth­er an offer that’s hard to beat. He’ll sell you a sto­ry for a book, play, or screen­play for a mere $1. Then you can take the sto­ry idea, make it your own, and move it in new and unex­pect­ed direc­tions.

This is obvi­ous­ly not a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s actu­al­ly more about bring­ing Lar­ry Lessig’s notion of free cul­ture to the lit­er­ary domain. You can get more on Lethem’s ideas here, but the upshot is that Lethem, being a fan of “adap­ta­tions, appro­pri­a­tions, col­lage, and sam­pling,” wants artists to “make mate­r­i­al free and avail­able for [cre­ative] reuse.” (Some of this think­ing informs a recent piece in Harper’s called “The ecsta­sy of influ­ence: A pla­gia­rism.”) The ini­tia­tive, which he calls The Promis­cu­ous Mate­ri­als Project, offers a step in the right direc­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent: Give a lis­ten to this engag­ing inter­view with Lethem where he talks about this project and more. Also check out Lethem and oth­er authors speak­ing at Google.

Tell us what books have changed your life. Three days left. We have over 30 con­tri­bu­tions so far. Keep them com­ing.

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How to Make Your Podcasts More Mobile

in Podcasts, Web/Tech | August 6th, 2007

That sounds like a strange propo­si­tion. Pod­casts are inher­ent­ly mobile, so what can make them more mobile? Appar­ent­ly myPod­der can. It’s a free, cross-plat­form soft­ware pack­age put out by Pod­cast Ready that has two notable advan­tages. Once you reg­is­ter and install their free soft­ware, you’ll no longer need to down­load pod­casts first to your com­put­er and then to your mp3 play­er. Instead, you’ll be able to down­load them direct­ly to your MP3 play­er via the inter­net and cut out the mid­dle step. Beyond that, myPod­der lets you update your mp3 play­er from any­where you can get an inter­net con­nec­tion. Now, you’re no longer forced to update your pod­cast col­lec­tion from one loca­tion (as is the case with iTunes). It’s all free, so give it a good look.

If you have any oth­er good tips for work­ing with pod­casts, please send them our way. Drop them in our com­ments below, or send them ma**@oc******.com”>via email.

If you’re gen­er­al­ly won­der­ing how to work with pod­casts in the first place, please see our Pod­cast Primer.

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The Fifteen Minute Book Machine

in Books, Business, Media | August 3rd, 2007

A cou­ple of years ago I met Jason Epstein in pass­ing and he excit­ed­ly described his new project: a machine to print On Demand Books. The plan is final­ly bear­ing fruit: the Espres­so Book Machine was demon­strat­ed at the New York Pub­lic Library on Wednes­day. Three of the machines are out in the wild, and I sus­pect many more will appear if the pro­to­types live up to the hype.

The idea of books on demand is a lit­tle eerie but emi­nent­ly effi­cient. Pub­lish­ers and book­sellers waste mil­lions of dol­lars, tons of fuel and forests of paper ship­ping, return­ing and trash­ing unsold books every year. And if a machine like this isn’t too expen­sive to run, it could rev­o­lu­tion­ize edu­ca­tion in less acces­si­ble or wealthy parts of the world. The real ques­tion is whether such a machine might do to book­stores what Net­flix has done to video rental stores. The Espres­so machine can only print paper­backs, so for now I think Barnes and Noble is safe. And even if the shelves are replaced with dig­i­tal brows­ing dis­plays one day, many cus­tomers will still want to enjoy their pur­chas­es with an over­priced lat­te and pas­try. The social spaces of book-read­ing have yet to be destroyed by Amazon.com or the blo­gos­phere, so I think they’ll sur­vive a new kind of espres­so machine.

What Book Changed Your Life? Par­tic­i­pate in a Group Project. Tell Us and Become Eli­gi­ble for a Prize .

Check out our col­lec­tion of free audio­books.

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What Books Made a Difference? (Yes, We’re Talking to You)

in Books | August 2nd, 2007

We’re try­ing out some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent today, and we hope that you’ll par­tic­i­pate because by giv­ing more, you’ll get more in return. (So far we have 18 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing, now it is your turn.)

We want to draw on the col­lec­tive wis­dom of our read­ers and find out what great books you’ve read, and which par­tic­u­lar one made a dif­fer­ence in your life. That is, what book has led you to look dif­fer­ent­ly at lit­er­a­ture, think­ing, career, love, friend­ship, death, or what­ev­er you con­sid­er impor­tant?

At some point lat­er next week, we’ll bun­dle the sub­mis­sions and post them for you. We’re hop­ing that this will give every­one a list of great and impor­tant books to read.

If you’d like to par­tic­i­pate, please make a sub­mis­sion in the com­ments below, or ma**@oc******.com”>via email. In what­ev­er you write, please list the name of the book and the author, and then men­tion why the book mat­tered to you. (Your expla­na­tion can be as brief or as long as you like.) When we post the replies, we won’t use your names unless you oth­er­wise con­sent. And we’ll oth­er­wise pro­tect the pri­va­cy of your email address­es.

Final­ly, we’ll ran­dom­ly select one name from all of the sub­mis­sions, and send that con­trib­u­tor a nice $50 gift cer­tifi­cate from Amazon.com.

We look for­ward to hear­ing from you, and thanks for tak­ing part.

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