Naturally, the popularity of e-books has a lot of people worried. Should this format take over as the dominant medium for books, publishers will be forced to re-examine their place in the world. And if publishers suffer, so do the writers. The issue is even more worrying for bookstores, which face redundancy with the demise of the printed book.

So as a midlist author, what does all this mean to me? Change, but change I can work with. I’ve seen a lot of side-taking amongst my writing brethren. You’re either sticking with a dead technology or you’re part of a brave new world. Personally, I don’t see why I have to pick a side. Maybe I’m greedy, but why can’t I have both? I view e-books the same way I view audio books or foreign translations: They’re another revenue stream. To select one over another seems a short-sighted. If the public demands e-books, print books and audio books, I want my stories in all those formats. e-books are a new source of income for me, so I love ‘em, and no less than any other format that my books are currently published in.

So, I’ve embraced e-books for a number of reasons. First off, e-publishing has a very low barrier to entry. I don’t have to deal with a printer, distribution, getting into stores, or returns, nor do I need access to a recording studio to produce an audio book. All I have to do is format the manuscript to meet the needs of the various e-book-reading devices, and can have an e-book-ready manuscript in a couple of hours. The only real cost comes in the form of cover art, and that’s not much of a hardship. Even if I’m purchasing stock images or commissioning original artwork, I can pull together a professional-looking product for under $100.

Secondly, I don’t need a publisher for an e-book. As a midlist author, I’m used to having to play a number of roles and managing my e-book portfolio isn’t a hardship, especially when I can reap the reward of a bigger royalty. Thirdly, I get to utilize a sizeable backlist that would be gathering dust under normal circumstances. I possess a number of out-of-print works that aren’t financially viable for a new print run, but are viable to resurrect as e-books. The same applies to stories where the electronic rights haven’t been utilized. I’d be a fool not to embrace e-book publishing.

I don’t really know where the e-book revolution will go. It might be a tougher proposition to replace the printed book than people might think. I believe printed books will be around for some time. There’s probably going to be even more consolidation among the publishers, which will limit places for midlist authors, but even that’s not the end of the world. It might not be financially viable for the massive publishing houses to support midlisters, but that isn’t to there isn’t profit to be made. Advances in technology when it comes to book manufacturing and audio production means it’s pretty cost-effective to produce a print book or an audio book. Orphaned writers might want to take a leaf out of W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’ collective book when they created United Artists and formed author cooperatives to produce their own print, audio and e-books. The potential is there.

And before anyone gets too complacent about e-books, who’s to state that in five years something else won’t come along make the e-book redundant? That’s technology.

The e-book revolution might affect the publishing industry with devastating consequences, but the important thing for me to do as a writer is roll with the punches. The one constant in all this change is that the world will always need storytellers regardless of the medium.

Simon Wood has had over 150 stories and articles published. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, such as Seattle Noir, Thriller 2 and Woman’s World. He’s a frequent contributor to Writer’s Digest. His latest works are “Terminated” and “Asking for Trouble.”

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audiobook

This days im interested in SEM

Giving Your Photos and Pics Titles that Are Descriptive and Well-keyworded Can Provide that Little SEO Boost You Need as a Writer or Publisher!

Many writers and web publishers work hard at learning SEO best practices but neglect to give images titles which can be found by Google Images as well as titles that contain their targeted
 keywords. Taking the time to craft a well-keyworded, relevant and readable piece of content only to neglect to properly title the images is like running a marathon in record time and then stopping for a sandwich right before the finish line.

Images are unique in the overall spectrum of Googlism in that you have two opportunities to maximize your content's exposure. Use of Google Images has grown exponentially over the past couple of years; it is now the premire place on the web to find images for wallpapers or any other purpose.

Whether you are using stock images or pics you have created yourself, you need to remember the two-fold approach to image titling. This is relatively complicated to do well, but even a basic understanding of titling images will improve your SERP ranks and appearances on Google Images.

Crafting best-practice image titles: The title format.

Before we delve too deep into the content of image titles, let's take a look at best practices for title format. There is some disagreement on the finer points of the structure of an image title, such as whether to use underscores or dashes (“this_is_the_image_title.jpg” or “this-is-the-image-title.jpg”), but my own training from experts in the SEO field and personal experiments have told me dashes are best.

The second thing to remember is you want to avoid stop words at all costs. Here is a list of 429 of the words usually ignored by search engines when users type complicated things into search boxes. Avoiding stop words is especially important in image titles, as you have so few words to play with.

Separated by dashes and containing no spaces, punctuation or other characters, best practice image titles should shoot for 5 to 7 words long. All of the words in the image title should be lower case.

Zombie meat ::: Pink Tentacle

“Zombie Meat,” an exquisite new Japanese snack for the horror enthusiast, consists of bite-sized chunks of tender blue flesh that, according to the package, has been aged to deadly perfection at the graveyard.

The ghastly meat snack, which tastes remarkably like peppered beef jerky, can be found at shops in Japan for 399 yen (about $4.50) per pack.

MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota woman who became severely ill with an E. coli infection from a tainted hamburger has reached a settlement with the meatpacking arm of agribusiness giant Cargill Inc., both sides announced Wednesday.

Stephanie Smith, 23, of Cold Spring, and Cargill said the terms of the settlement were confidential, but that it will provide for Smith's care throughout her life. The former children's dance was left paralyzed, with cognitive issues and kidney damage.

Smith became ill in 2007 after eating a patty produced by Cargill Meat Solutions Corp., a Wichita, Kans.-based unit of Minnetonka-based Cargill Inc. Her E. coli infection led to kidney failure. She went into seizures and was kept in a medically induced coma for three months.

Smith's battle to recover was the centerpiece story last year in a New York Times series that won a Pulitzer Prize. The story spurred several members of Congress to demand enforcement of food safety laws and a pledge from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for stepped up efforts to fight E. coli contamination. The story traced how the beef trimmings that went into her hamburger came from four plants in the U.S. and Uruguay, and that while such scraps are particularly vulnerable to contamination, many companies including Cargill did not normally test them prior to grinding.

Her Seattle-based attorney, Bill Marler, Smith's case continues to generate public and industry discussion about the importance of food safety.

“Stephanie's tragedy has taken on a life of it's own, and hopefully it will continue to focus people on why food safety is so important,” Marler said.

Cargill acknowledged responsibility when it first learned of her injuries and has been providing financial help to her and her family, the joint statement said. Cargill it “deeply regrets” her injuries, and that it has invested more than $1 billion in meat science research and new food safety technologies to eliminate E. coli and other sources of food-borne illnesses.

“Cargill continuously invests in food safety technology,” stated Mark Martin, a spokesman for Cargill Meat Solutions. “There certainly are things that have preceded the situation with Stephanie Smith, things that will continue to evolve into the future. Food safety – as you can envision being an agriculturally based company for much of our business – is a top priority and always will be.”

Neither Marler nor Martin would comment on the terms of the settlement, which still requires court approval. And Marler declined to grant Smith or her mother to comment. He said they wanted to keep her focused on rehabilitation.

I just spent my whole day doing absolutely nothing. The great thing about YT is that time flies and you don't even realize it.
I did do something, though. I have a subject to base my paper on. Yay! So tomorrow I have to write 3 pages on why I think it should be a relevant theme for a graduation thesis. Why do I keep doing this?
Best way to wake up: My mum calling me to tell I have to wake up at 10 a.m.!!! My brother, that little rat!
I totally skipped classes again. The only troublesome course is Art as I don't know anybody enough to ask for notes. Guess I'll have to just ask nicely to some unknown fellow.
I'm totally depressed over that stupid CG mark (Funny, I found out no one knows their grade yet). I really don't want to get out of bed, least fo all my apartment. And I'm coming down with the flu as usual. I can't seem to wear shoes in winter (or ever) when I'm inside. And I ALWAYS get sick come April. I should have learned already, but I like being barefoot, plus my floor is clean, why not enjoy it? Apparently I'm still 7 and sliding around. I want to go back to high school ar horrendous as it was.
I watched House. I'm still trying to catch up. It's been meh, except for the some scenes of the last ep. The one with House, Chase and Foreman at the bar had me laughing hard and the last one was Agh! Huddy! I take what I can get with these two.
I'm still waiting for the last two three eps of Cita to be upload, and for tonight Botineras. I have to stop picking up shows!! I realized that just on Monday night I watch four shows, five if LUX comes back. I have to get out more, or at least to get a life.
Anyways, Chuck was great! I love me some nerdy spy. And the whole Honey, Sweetheart argument was really nice, if only because they are still them despite being in an actual romantic relationship this time.
How stupid is it to miss a TV show? Because if it is, I'm the stupidest (or however it is said) person on the planet. I still miss T:SCC. I can't even watch the S1 DVD. I start watching and I just can't go past the Pilot. I get so frustrated. I mean, it's a TV show, for PETE'S SAKE! Yet I miss Cameron and all her mannerisms, Derek and Sarah with their badass-ness, and poor John, who'll be so screwed-up come J-Day.

P.S.: Brain, get on the game already, and stop making stupid mistakes!

i like those pix. Nice huh ?

Guest Passes let you share your that aren't public. Anyone can see your public pictures anytime, whether a Flickr member or not. But! If you want to share marked as friends, family or private, use a Guest Pass. If sharing pictures from a set, you can create a Guest Pass that includes any of your marked as friends, family, or private. If you're sharing your entire photostream, you can create a Guest Pass that includes pictures marked as friends or family (but not your private photos). Learn more about Guest Passes!

Fine is not it ?

Learn The Science Of Taking Great Landscape Photographs With Any Camera And A Few Basic Accessories With This $19.95 216-page EBook(R)!The Science Of Great Landscape Photography.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newgadgetworld/xYSj/~3/MkiSCNUeanc/the-science-of-
great-landscape-photography

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One look at the beautiful portraiture from Pierre Manning’s Les Muse series is enough to transfix even the hardest of minds. Based in Montreal, Canada Manning creates such hyper-realistic imagery that the viewer is almost certain to be drawn in, and captivated by his magical photographic skill – not mention the women he shoots are also pretty stunning. But that’s an entirely different story. Great work Mr. Manning.

One look at the beautiful portraiture from Pierre Manning’s Les Muse series is enough to transfix even the hardest of minds. Based in Montreal, Canada Manning creates such hyper-realistic imagery that the viewer is almost certain to be drawn in, and captivated by his magical photographic skill – not mention the women he shoots are also pretty stunning. But that’s an entirely different story. Great work Mr. Manning.

Fine isnt that ?

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