I recently spotted this list of lessons learned from running an open-source project [http://taskwarrior.org/docs/advice.html] and found much of it relevant to creating any kind of work on an ongoing basis for an audience. If you’re interested in software development, the original post is worth

> If you read your contract carefully, you’ll see that we ask for the show to be 90 minutes in length, for it to have this many commercial breaks, and for it to be done for this budget. But nowhere in the contract do we ask for it to

This article appeared in modified form on Boing Boing [https://boingboing.net/2016/01/22/what-publishers-should-do.html]. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can’t work at a book publisher for more than five minutes without someone telling you what publishers should do. (You know, “to survive.” “Be relevant.” Something.) Even literary agents, who

This article appeared in modified form on Boing Boing [https://boingboing.net/2015/12/07/how-to-write-a-book-that-holds.html]. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- User experience design is a holistic field that touches on every aspect of the experience the user has with your product, all the way down to opening the box. As a book

> Carl: Your books are safe. While you’re reading them, you get to become Tarzan, or Robinson Crusoe. > Bastian: But that’s what I like about them. > Carl: Mm hmm. But afterwards, you get to be a little boy again.” > —The Neverending Story (1984) It’s

Last year, I’d seriously considered partnering with various trusted peers in the creation of a new, “hybrid” publisher. It was clear as Gorilla Glass what traditional publishers were doing wrong so I figured I’d start my own. Then I realized I had no idea what to do instead.

In response to my article on how to package your book so that people will pick it up off the shelf [http://mavengame.com/2015/10/06/package-your-book/], Josh Bernoff [http://withoutbullshit.com/] wrote: > Isn’t it more important what browsers on Amazon.com see than bookstore browsers? I

Authors stumble when it comes to titling their work. “Titling,” mind you, not “naming.” Naming says what it is to you, the author. Titling tells readers what it might be to them. Subtle but important distinction. On the traditional publishing side, we’d lump title, subtitle, and cover design under

> Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman’s name out of a satire, then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized, anyhow. Chatterton killed

> “Like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.”—Herman Melville, > Moby-Dick You may have read my previous article, on escaping the New Media cargo cult [http://mavengame.com/2015/07/16/escaping-the-new-media-cargo-cult/]. Well, I take it back. To find out why,