The “We Are Smarter” website is http://www.wearesmarter.org/ and you can go there to learn more about the process and to help write the next version. All proceeds are being donated to charity.

You can also learn more about Barry’s message discussing the power of community in my blog post – http://www.myca...97/Default.aspx

I had a chance to see a whole collection of Blurb books at a Dealmaker Media conference. They simply blew me away. The stitched bindings. The thick paper. The amazing photo quality. Blurb has the highest quality self published books I have ever seen.

Blurb will do well.

The “We Are Smarter” website is http://www.wear...aspx?tabid=1580 and you can go there to learn more about the process and to help write the next version. All proceeds are being donated to charity.

You can also learn more about Barry’s message in this blog post – http://www.myca...97/Default.aspx.

Quoop is adding this feature too I believe.

Before starting Fridaycities.com, I was co-founder of The Friday Project, a publishing company that specialised in talent spotting on the web, and turning online content into ‘traditional’ books (i.e. sold in major book chains, with authors paid in a traditional way). We were backed by the former CEO of Orion and our sales and distribution were handled by Macmillan. So we were pretty mainstream, business-wise (although we were none traditional in our approach to Creative Commons, online promotion, etc etc).

So, in other words, I’ve sat on both sides of the gates. The fact is that the only thing that really frightens publishers is their existing titles being made available through things like Google Books or (even worse) some kind of Limewire-for-books.

Currently, the web 2.0 book companies – like Lulu and now Blurb – occupy completely different worlds to traditional publishers. Traditional publishers are generally looking for books that will sell in volume, and they work hard to build a distribution system to support that. They generally pay authors advances as well as royalties and they frequently have marketing budgets for each title. Again, it’s all geared to volume sales of a widely popular, professional product.

Publishers 2.0 on the other hand use technology to allow niche titles to exist – maybe even titles with a print run of one. They distribute online and in (generally) low volume. Very, very few authors make any money.

Personally, I don’t think the two markets compete. If I put together a book of photos from a corporate retreat, I don’t want to make money from in, and nor do I care if it’s available in Borders. That’s not the “author”’s motive for publishing, and so distribution features not a jot in the publisher 2.0’s business plan. Likewise, a book that is going to sell one – or a hundred – copies is of little interest to most traditional publishers. And if a book does really well on Lulu, you can guarantee a traditional publisher will put an advance on the table and the author will switch markets. At that point it becomes a different product.

The only blurry exception is the academic market, where a run of 100 can be very lucrative and online distribution is the most logical way to get the title to purchasers.

And that’s why companies like Macmillan (who have big scientific, technical and medical divisions) are working very closely with the web community to work out what their digital future looks like.

I guess my point is that, suggesting that traditional publishers fear the web is something of an oversimplification.

At mixbook, you can do the same thing, but the design of the book happens online.*

*Disclosure: I’m a self-proclaimed Flex fan-boy, but have no stake in mixbook.

http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com