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June 28, 2005

Why we were down last week.

We were hacked by script kiddies. They didn't accomplish anything but they did trash the web server. We're back up now and we've tightened security measures. I won't go into details because why draw the vandals a map?

Posted by xian at 10:02 AM | TrackBack

The essence of publishing

Patrick Nielsen Hayden from Making Light points us to an article he's quoted in from the Book Standard:

The Book Standard, an up-and-coming online trade magazine about the book industry, does a reasonable job of covering experiments in the online distribution of free-and-unfettered novel e-texts as a means of building an audience, including ventures from entities as diverse as Cory Doctorow and Baen Books. Among those quoted are Cory, Jim Baen, Charles Stross, Tim O'Reilly, and me. I'm particularly glad they used this bit of summing-up:

"Publishing is not about just making a paper copy of a book," says Hayden. "The essential enterprise of publishing is finding texts that audiences want to read and signaling to those audiences that, hey, this is something neat," he says. "Those skill sets are going to be just as valuable with new forms of publishing."

Not as well-put as I might have managed if I hadn't been blathering over a long-distance phone line, but it's a point I find myself making a lot, and I'm glad to see it passed along.

Posted by xian at 6:20 AM | TrackBack

June 26, 2005

Avoid getting unpaid

Some fresh book-deal advice from Matt Wagner, my old agent at Waterside (after Bill Gladstone and before Danielle Jatlow and Margot Maley), warns about how, if presented with a book deal, you should do all you can to avoid agreeing to a cross-collateralization clause: The Varieties of Co-Accounting.

Posted by xian at 2:07 PM | TrackBack

June 22, 2005

View image

Posted by xourmas at 4:33 PM | TrackBack

Art Department

Media Junkie's New York Office Art Department has officially opened
with veteran image maker Xourmas at it's helm!

Posted by xourmas at 2:52 PM | TrackBack