The Business Insider

Kurt Andersen's Reset: Passionate Call to Change the World

By Tim Rosa, Publisher

I just finished reading Kurt Andsersen's short book, really an essay, entitled Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America. At 72 pages this book took me less than an hour to read and it was time well spent. Resetis a passionate call to change the world. The style is bit breezy for me, more of a journalistic approach than an academic study. Andersen has a keen eye for summarizing the tumultuous events since 2008 in pithy yet informative ways.

He also peppers the essay with lots of quotable quotes. Among my favorites are:

"History doesn't repeat itself," Mark Twain is supposed to have said, "but it rhymes."

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." (Rahm Emanuel, current White House Chief of Staff)

One of the best parts of the essay to me was Andersen's analysis of the amateur and how the status of amateurs was highly regarded at one time and almost a disdainful role now. Historically, amateurs were very serious people who didn't make a living by a certain pursuit. For example, Benjamin Franklin's profession was printing, but he was an amateur scientist, inventor, and politician. Daniel Boorstin writes: "The amateur is not afraid to do something for the first time...The rewards and refreshments of thought and the arts come from the courage to try something, all sorts of things, for the first time. An enamored amateur need not be a genius to stay out of the ruts he has never been trained in."

That for me is the rub...the courage to try and the courage to fail.

Find an hour to read Reset and tell me what you think.

—Tim

The Age of Outrageous Ideas

By Jack B. Rochester, Managing Editor

A remark attributed to the great French philosopher Voltaire goes something like this: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It seems a fitting phrase for the plethora of views of our modern world, economic systems, ways of life, etcetera: think of a problem or issue and somebody's written an article, blog, or book on how to correct it.

The latest entry is Joshua Cooper Ramo, weighing in with his first book, The Age of the Unthinkable. Ramo, a former editor at Time [a magazine - remember?] and currently employed by Kissinger Associates [yes, that Kissinger], gives us a great read and much to think about regarding aspects of the world and its systems that we can do next to nothing about.

Books of this seem to be proliferating. They're reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and at the book's Amazon Web page. Who reads them? Or even parts of them? Why do publishers think we'll buy them?

How about you - what book of outrageous ideas are you reading, and why? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Cheers,
Jack

Kindle: The Final Chapter

By The Business Insider Editors

Two previous posts here have discussed the business potential for the Kindle. For the last post on this phenomenal new device, we discuss what's happened to its core technology.

But before we do so, we thought it worth a yuk-yuk to mention that the future of electronic publishing was discussed last week in New York at a bookseller's fair, where The New York Times reported that author Sherman Alexie saw a woman on an airplane reading on a Kindle and said, "I wanted to hit her." ( Alexie subsequently said he'd meet with Amazon folks to learn more about the "machine" and promised not to hit anyone.

In a previous post, the commenter Mike had mentioned that the Kindle didn't have color capabilities. Well, needless to say the need for it was not lost on the E Ink people, who created this amazing display technology and have licensed it to a number of companies, including Sony for its e-book reader and Samsung for its smartphones. But E Ink needed a capital infusion, and it went wanting from U.S. investors.

 

Thinking Big in Taiwan: The 101 Tower in Taipei

But Prime View International, a Taiwanese company, saw the potential value of E Ink and has acquired the Cambridge, Massachusetts company for $215 million. We think that's a steal. "We commercialize advanced technologies," is PVI's motto.

Hey, Prime View, you rock.

We may be seeing the renaissance of Taiwan as a prime-time player in high tech. Two Taiwan PC manufacturers, Asusus and Acer, have a commanding share of the netbook market, and Taiwan is still a leader in semiconductor manufacturing. 

Here's the takeaway for those of you in business or technical writing: e-books will surely become the most efficient and economical way of "publishing" in the future. Forrester Research is leading the way in explaining this. Yesterday is a good time to begin exploring and understanding the benefits of this technology.

The Business Insider Editors

Writing a Book? Read On

By The Business Insider Editors

We like Jerry Simmons and what he's doing.

The publishing world, as a business, often makes no sense; consider Houghton-Mifflin's decision to stop soliciting new manuscripts. The state of this indsutry is clearly evident an article originally published in Publisher's Weekly, the top trade rag of this industry. This is a reposting of an excerpt from Jerry's e-newsletter:

"This is Your Wake-Up Call" by Jonathan Karp in Publishers Weekly (excerpted below - full article at this link).

"For all of the uncertainty surrounding the future of the publishing industry—from the poor economy to the painful layoffs and restructurings in the wake of the digital transformation—to understand what's really hurting us, all you have to do is visit your neighborhood bookstore.

"Here are some of the titles I saw displayed at my local bookshop recently: in new nonfiction, I came across Speaking of Freedom: The Collected Speeches of George H.W. Bush. Any collection is suspect, but you really have to question the need for a volume of political speeches two decades old.

"In the sociology section: The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women. Who exactly is the audience for this book? Self-hating virgins? Those seeking to deflower them?

"On sale now: A History of Cannibalism. Illustrated! A gift book! The subtitle is stupendously, kaleidoscopically all-encompassing: From Ancient Cultures to Survival Stories and Modern Psychopaths.

"Just a few shelves away: Jesus, Life Coach, with the subtitle: Learn from the Best, a companion to the bestselling Jesus CEO, not to be confused with Jesus, Entrepreneur; Jesus on Leadership; or Jesus in Blue Jeans.

"Then there are the arcane books, the ones that dare to be obscure on the assumption that if people will read about cod, or oranges, anything is possible. Who could resist a history of the potato, titled, of course, Potato. Amazingly, this wasn't the only work available on the subject. There's also The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World. Wasn't it intellectually responsible of the publisher to limit the scope of the subtitle to the Western world?

"We all know that a good book should make a promise. But some of those promises have gone outrageously over the-top: How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You… How to Make Someone Fall in Love With You In 90 Minutes or Less…The 4-Day Diet… The 3-Hour Diet… I Can Make You Thin…Stay Rich for Life…Have a New Kid by Friday.

"On the new release table sat two instant Bernie Madoff books, issued in trade paperback, presumably because the people he swindled can't pay hardcover prices. Within two weeks of the Madoff scandal, I received queries about seven different Bernie-related projects, all from well-regarded literary agents. All of this brings me to a point I have made relentlessly for the past four years: publishers must control themselves!

"We are acquiring and publishing too many books. We buy them opportunistically, and at times thoughtlessly. We edit and launch them too quickly. We market them carelessly and ephemerally. Too often, we abdicate our responsibility to be filters, guides, guardians and gatekeepers. And now, as in many other industries, we are suffering the effects. Anyone in a bookstore can see that.

"The underlying problem facing the industry is twofold: there are too many books, and too many of them are derivative of each other. You've heard of Gresham's Law—the idea that bad money drives out good. Our industry has long suffered from Grisham's Law [our emphasis] , where opportunistic authors and publishers try to imitate John Grisham and other category leaders with books modeled on someone else's commercial success. That strategy might make sense if there were great demand for these imitators, but in today's overcrowded, competitive marketplace, this kind of thinking is dangerous, because it devalues the environment into which we present our work.

"It seems likely that the influence and cultural centrality of major publishers, as well as other producers of information and entertainment, will diminish as digital technology enables more and more people to create and share their work. This is exactly why publishers must distinguish themselves by doing better what they've always done best: champion books that offer carefully conceived context, style and authority.

"Other mediums may be faster to market, but publishers will always be the ones best situated to invest time and resources into major works and to market them with overwhelming force. Whether it's Robert Caro on LBJ, or What to Expect When You're Expecting, masterly works will continue to stand out. No technology or competing enterprise is likely to pose a serious threat to that endeavor.

"Our world and our industry are firmly in the midst of a transition in the way entertainment, information and ideas are delivered. There will be more upheaval to come. The essential things that attracted us to publishing, however, the love of a good story, the quest for meaning and illumination will go on. But we must change our ways."

By the way, industry veteran Karp is publisher and editor-in-chief of Twelve.

Your takeaway: Still want to write that book? Drop Jerry an email at jerry@writersreaders.com. He'll offer you good advice.

The Editors

The Kindle DX, Part 3

By Jack B. Rochester, Managing Editor, The Business Insider

We've been watching developments with the amazing Kindle these past few weeks. While the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2 are designed for everyday readers, the Kindle DX - the large-screen version - is really a business machine with more potential applications than even Jeff Bezos has likely thought of.

Amazon's intent was to create a device for learning, and its first market is college textbook publishing. Yet it's easy to see there are all kinds of additional business and educational environments where an electronic reader could replace, supplant, or at least augment learning and training.

Rather than recapitulate what has already been written and explained quite well, I'm going to redirect you to another blogsite where the story of the Kindle DX and the three publishers who have jumped aboard is told. The site is Course materials, Innovation, and Technology in Education, or CITE. Be sure to scroll down the right hand side and read the "In the News" section as well for some other observations.

The Kindle is a quite an innovation in a business that started with Gutenberg and has been going strong for over 500 years. Not only can you wirelessly download and read books, but you can also read a number of newspapers and magazines and blogs as well. Your takeaway: Writing for, or implementating on, the Kindle, should be part of your thinking for the future.

Cheers,
Jack

Jack B. Rochester is a professional writer and editor who has worked in nearly every aspect of publishing since 1974. He heads Joshua Tree Interactive, and is Managing Editor of The Business Insider blog.

The Kindle DX, Part 2

By The Business Insider Editors

Last week's post concerned the introduction of the Kindle DX, intended for the college textbook market. We've had a number of responses, including one from a publisher's sales manager who informed us that Pearson Education has jumped on the bandwagon with the Kindle. More on this next week.

Today, we are publishing the reply from "Mike," a 30+ year veteran of college textbook publishing, whom we briefly quoted last week. He read our post and made the following comments:

Interesting that you have a Kindle; so does the bright sunlight of a Jamaica beach totally wash out the screen display like it would do on a laptop or video camera LCD view screen?
I like gadgets as much as anyone, but I still think they have this new Kindle wrong –- at least for now.

First of all, it appears the displays of the Kindles are monochrome.  Give me a break; it’s a color world, color displays are ubiquitous, and intro textbooks are all in color. $500 for a super-size-me Kindle is a game-breaker price.  Jeeze, one can now buy a netbook mini laptop at Costco for $350-$400 where one can read a digital textbook in color AND still do all kinds of research and goof-off things on the internet.  The netbook gives more bang for buck than a Kindle. If I was a student today, that’s what I would bring to school -– not a larger, pricey laptop, nor a Kindle.

I agree, students like gadgets, too – but gadgets that fit in their pockets like iPods and cell phones, and not clunky and apparently fragile-looking things (without a cover?) like large Kindles. From what I observed, most students don’t lug ANY textbooks around unless they plan to study one of them while on campus on a particular day.  With a netbook (or even a Kindle) they could bring all their books in a lighter-weight pkg, so that would be good.
For the Kindle to be truly viable as a textbook delivery system, it has to: cost much less, be in color, be more than a reading machine (i.e. be a flat “laptop” with capabilities to at least use a built-in browser on the internet and for email (oh, then don’t forget to add a usable QWERTY keyboard).

It I had a chance to develop an e-textbook this is what it would be/do: 

• be in color
• have oodles of hyperlinks to flash videos, etc. to bring the graphs, illustrations and people to life
• have built-in pop quizzes to mention a few. Basically, the e-book would incorporate the book’s “student website” material along with the text. 

In other words, be just like a website with all the bells and whistles such as any of the big media company websites have (WSJ, CNN, yada, yada.)

If and when the Kindle can do all this at an affordable price, then I will be “impressed.”

Comments, readers? Do you agree with Mike? Oh, to answer his question about reading on the beach: No, the screen is perfectly viewable because it's not an LCD, but a new technology from E-Ink.

Until next week,
The Business Insider Editors

Kindle: Lighting a Fire Under Textbook Publishers

By Jack B. Rochester, Managing Editor, The Business Insider

I just returned from a week's vacation in Jamaica, yah mon. I planned to spend lots of time catching rays on the beach, so I took fourteen books along with me. Conveniently, they were all on my Kindle. I was an early adopter, last year, and recall a colleague asking if I didn't miss the smell of ink and the feel of holding a book in my hands.

Well, no, not really. The only down side I've found is I have to switch off when the airplane I'm on is taking off and landing.

With the advent of the second-generation reader, the Kindle 2, we have a handheld electronic reader that's been improved by reader feedback. Amazon's technical people actively solicited comments, and it looks like they took our comments and suggestions for improvement to heart. Stephen Windwalker is to be commended for both his evangelism and his technical documentation, a book pre-installed on the Kindle. Then in March, Amazon announced a Kindle application for the iPhone. No moss growing under these people's feet.

Yesterday, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, Amazon announced a large-screen Kindle intended for use as a college textbook reader. The device goes in the opposite direction of the iPhone application, for obvious reasons: It has to display many illustrations, graphs, artwork, and photos that enhance the textual explanations. No way to squeeze all that content into a 2x3" screen.

A friend of mine from the college textbook business, whom we shall refer to here as Mike, wrote me an email about this new innovation, from which I excerpt:

"Do any of you really think [the Kindle will replace a printed textbook]; at least in your lifetime?  I don’t; no more so than today’s digital textbooks for the PC have. I’d bet that the sales of current digital textbooks are dismal relative to the quantities of books printed, and likely will remain that way for this good reason: traditional textbooks = no batteries required.  Printed textbooks are just way more practical and convenient and a whole lot easier to really study from. Bottom line for me: printed textbooks can be greatly enhanced by digital media, but not replaced by it."

How do you feel? Me, I think Jeff Bezos and his Amazon people are genius-grade. I never was, nor have I ever met, a college student who enjoys lugging heavy textbooks around. Nor do they want to pay the high prices textbooks command [hence sharing, hence buying used copies]. But what they do like is electronic gadgets, and this one makes a lot of sense - even to helping cross the final hurdle of getting a student to read the book. And they can still do all the traditional highlighting, markup and bookmarks - electronically.

Batteries? Schmatteries. There's always a place to plug in, and besides, this thing will go for weeks without a recharge. Colleges can buy the Kindles, like they did computers, for  students as part of tuition or make the price low and attractive. If textbook pricing follows trade book pricing - e.g. $24.95 in paper, $9.99 as a Kindle download - everybody wins.

Business and technical writers ought to be thinking of the Kindle as an emerging publishing platform, because it's good for many other formats and types of documents - PDFs, Word files, newspapers, magazines, etc. Indeed, companies that must provide business or tech docs to accompany expensive, complex products would do well to explore putting the docs on a Kindle instead of the traditional, far more expensive, PPB paper-based manuals.

That's what I thought about as I sat in my beach chair, facing the beautiful waters of Montego Bay: yah mon, this Kindle has so many uses that are just beginning to be explored....

Cheers,
Jack

Sharpening Your Writing Skills While Having Fun

Amid all the dire economics and cutbacks, both real and inflicted, I think we still need to take a time-out for humor or a smile, so here goes. This is, verbatim, an email I received March 15, 1984, from my brother who worked at a company called Digital Equipment Corporation. I was probably on MCI Mail [anybody remember MCI Mail? - flat monthly fee, plus a per-character charge for both incoming and outgoing messages, PLUS connect time charges. Look at the progresss we've made!] But I digress, and as well all know, digressions should be examined as they may deviate from the main point....

HOW TO WRITE GOOD
by Sally Bulford
(reprinted without permission from somewhere)

1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren't necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. Be more or less specific.
15. Understatement is always best.
16. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
17. Analogies in writing are like the feathers on a snake.
18. The passive voice is to be avoided.
19. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
20. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
21. Who needs rhetorical questions?
22. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

By the way, I don't think there was a real Sally Bulford, so feel free to share this with others without fear of copyright infringement.

Cheers,
Jack

Jack B. Rochester is a professional writer and editor who has worked in nearly every aspect of publishing since 1974. He heads Joshua Tree Interactive, and is Managing Editor of The Business Insider blog.

Omit Needless Words!

By The Business Insider Editors

In these days of Twitter, one need hardly be reminded that the shorter the message the better. Or so it seems, at least. Who has time to write anything "long" any more? As one famous writer once said, "Forgive me for writing you a long letter, but I didn't have the time to write a short one." Nobody writes letters, just quickie emails, often filled with a plethora of errors.

And it's that last point that's important: no matter whether your emailing, Twittering, or writing a memo or report, you need to sound literate. You lack credibility if your writing contains errors in usage or spelling (no one can be excused for spelling errors when using a computer, for spelling checkers are not only found in word processing but in email programs as well).

And so it comes as no surprise that The Elements of Style by Strunk & White, the little book that launched the famous phrase, "Omit needless words!" has just been republished in a 50th anniversary edition. You don't need to buy this new edition, avariciously published by Pearson/Longman for $19.95; it's the same as the 2000, edition, the 1979 edition, the 1972 edition, and even the primary 1959 edition (Strunk first self-published it for use in his classes at Cornell in 1919). In fact, if you don't own a copy, I recommend you buy one from Amazon's 264 used from $1.93 plus $3.99 shipping. It's even less if you download a copy to your Kindle  (you'll love the cover art). Click here to read the New York Times review of the 1959 edition.

But have one you should, and you should use it frequently. In a New York Times article yesterday, the writer Roger Rosenblatt expressed it quite well: "You really ought to know the rules before you break them."

"Strunk & White," as the book is commonly referred to, also states, "Make every word tell." Good advice, regardless of your art or profession.

Fact-Checking: The Final Frontier for Business Writing

By Jack B. Rochester, Managing Editor

John McPhee has an interesting reminiscence in the February 9th & 16th, 2009, issue of The New Yorker entitled "Checkpoints." McPhee tells several stories about working with his favorite fact-checker at the magazine. His bio, on page 6, says he's been writing and getting fact-checked for 46 years, and has written 28 books - many of which were compiled or derived from stories he wrote for The New Yorker.

One of the most memorable McPhee books I've read was The Control of Nature, which came back to mind in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - how McPhee had written some 15 years earlier of what needed to be done with water management in the Mississippi Delta.

But reading this article, "Checkpoints," made me realize once again how critically important it is to get facts straight when writing any nonfiction - business or otherwise, from newspaper to book. And that caused me to remember an incident from my more active days of print journalism as a senior editor at Computerworld and shortly thereafter, when my first bestseller book, The Naked Computer, was published and I'd become a stringer for USA Today.

I wrote articles and created many sidebar features called "Timeline", containing facts and factoids about the people and events in the computer industry. One day a staff fact-checker phoned me to ask about one of my sources. How did I become acquainted with the man I was quoting? she wanted to know. I said I had met him in person. Did he say what I'd quoted to me? she asked. Yes, I replied, during our interview. Where was the interview published? She was beginning to sound a little incredulous. "In my book, The Naked Computer," I replied. "The Naked Computer?" she shot back? "Why, that's the book we use for our computer fact-checking here at USA Today!"

The story is fun personal history, but the job of fact-checking is damned important. Hearsay creates more hearsay, and pretty soon people think it's a fact. That's why I'm always suspicious of statistics that are cited without reference to their source and those innumerable emails exposing the dangers of Tupperware or the secrets of exploding spacecraft, which 99% of the time turn out to be hoaxes or urban legends.

Your takeaway: become a good fact-checker in your business writing. Find original sources for facts and statistics, and be prepared to cite them. If you use the Internet to do this, make sure you use original sources or qualified referring sites, not the first one that pops up in Google. You'll be glad you did: Fact-checking sharpens the mind and makes you a more professional professional.

Cheers,
Jack

Jack B. Rochester is a professional writer and editor who has worked in nearly every aspect of publishing since 1974. He heads Joshua Tree Interactive, and is Managing Editor of The Business Insider blog.