October 18, 2015

My Mother's  Holocaust Diary Book, "From Love to Triumph," Is Being "Crowd Published" on Publishizer.com

ABOUT CROWD PUBLISHING


Publishizer.com is one of the latest entrants in the crowd funding scene dedicated to a particular field, in our case publishing - so we figured we'd give it a try! 




ABOUT THE BOOK


In her epic love story my mother, Susan Kaszas, describes with touching directness, what it feels like to be taken from one's family, to be beaten, cursed at, poisoned, and to witness unspeakable, systematic cruelty. But the hardest aspect of her personal and collective hell was being separated from her one love, her husband, Alex. From Love to Triumph is a love letter to Alex.

It is this love that persists throughout her writing, as the unbreakable golden thread that binds her to life when she is tempted to escape into suicide. Her passionate commitment to her love permeates every day of fear and suffering. It is so strong, she is even more concerned about Alex than about herself, while she is forced into the cattle cars heading for the concentration camps. She says, "It made it easier on me that you did not get to see the long stretch of cattle boxcars we were herded into and I was spared of looking at the expression on your face."

The total devotedness of her heart to Alex gave her the strength to survive the Nazi death camps. The faithfulness of her undying love shines through: "My Dear Alex, you must know that I can't live without love and the only reason I am still alive is that I want to be with you again in this life. If you love me as much as I love you, then my suffering was not in vain."

Love is something that cannot be killed. The body can be crushed, the psyche can be beaten down, but nothing can take love away from the human heart against one's will. That is the meaning and purpose of my mother's survival and triumph.

Today another state, Iran, sponsors terror against Jews, Christians, even fellow Muslims, if they happen to be Sunnis… with "Islamic State" and Boko Haram jihadists committing unspeakable, inhumane atrocites across Africa and the Middle East. One would think we learned our lesson some 70 years ago….

Send the message: NEVER AGAIN, by supporting the publication of her book here: https://publishizer.com/from-love-to-triumph/

April 29, 2011

Push Pop Press - Easy DIY Publishing for Anything "i"

The brainchild of former Apple software designers Kimon Tsinteris and Mike Matas, Pop Start Press is the latest digital publishing platform, specifically for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.





Using Push Pop Press, authors will be able to weave together text, images, audio, video and interactive graphics into immersive multi-touch interactive books, without dealing with the complexities and costs normally involved in software development.
 
Push Pop Press is currently in private beta being used to build "amazing titles," as the website says. In the meantime, here is what we can expect:    

  • True Ease of Publishing:    Lay out and publish interactive digital books without writing code
     
  • Multimedia:   Tell your story using text, images, audio, video, maps and interactive graphics
     
  • Interactive Graphics:   Embed interactive graphics that use the microphone, accelerometer and more
     
  • Multi-Touch User Interface:   Edge-to-edge content without any distracting toolbars or buttons
     
  • Visual Table of Contents:   Browse through hundreds of pages quickly and easily
     
  • Updatable Content:   Update your content without having to update the app.

Updatable content? NOW THAT'S COOL - can't wait to see how it works for us!

December 9, 2010

Seth Godin's Domino Project

Do you want to see, first-hand, where publishing is going?

Let me introduce you Seth Godin, the best and most prolific marketing expert I know of. Here are the first few paragraphs from his recent blog post, titled "The Domino Project:"


"Book publishing is changing. It’s changing faster than it has in a hundred years. I’ve been persistent enough to be part of that change, provoking and poking and wondering about what comes next.

Today, I’m thrilled to report on what’s next for me.

  • To reinvent the way books are created when the middleman is made less important.
  • To reinvent the way books are purchased when the tribe is known and embraced.
  • To reinvent the way books are read when the alternatives are so much easier to find.
  • To find and leverage great ideas and great authors, bringing them to readers who need them.
The notion of the paper book as merely a package for information is slowly becoming obsolete. There must be other reasons on offer, or smart people will go digital, or read something free. The book is still an ideal tool for the hand-to-hand spreading of important ideas, though. The point of the book is to be spread, to act as a manifesto, to get in sync with others, to give and to get and to hand around."

You can read the rest at:  http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/12/the-domino-project.html. It's worth every second of you time. I promise.

October 20, 2010

Google's Slideshow of Interesting Things: Is the Future of Publishing Now?

Google's Creative Labs came out today with a slideshow of interesting things on the web. I find these three especially relevant:

Dynamic Digital Typeface

RCA (Royal Academy of Arts) student Jack Gilbey is developing dynamic typography where the font adapts to contextual changes within the content. I think this is a BIG deal. You don't have to take my word for it; here are his:

"Recently, my practice has been concerned with exploring the possibilities offered to typographers by developments in technology, new media and the apparently limitless dimensions of the Internet. I am interested in challenging the universally accepted concept of a typeface as a static set of visual forms – a tradition born of obsolescent technologies – and investigating the notion of a typeface as a dynamic system that can be context-sensitive or thematically driven. I have developed a body of work that aims to explore the extent to which these new typographic methods can enhance communication."



Cool, Jack - high time too!


MyFry - Stephen Fry's Book App

Stephen Fry and Penguin digital made his latest book into an iPad app that is browsable in completely new ways:






Is this cool or what? I'm REALLY tempted to get an v.1 (version #1) iPad... although, even with Apple, I generally wait till v.2. Microsoft? Wait at least till v.3.1....


Mongoliad: The Digitally Enhanced Genghis Khan

Neal Stephenson is leading/writing a serialised 13th century historical epic, Mongoliad, with community-enhancement, wiki-contribution, a subscriber model, and multiple writers; all to be released on iOS (i.e. as an iSomething app).


I do believe the subscriber model is the best way for authors to make a living from their work. Multiple writers... I'm not so sure about that....

September 23, 2010

Amazon Now Sells More eBooks Than Hardcovers

eBooks have FINALLY hit the mainstream, and for the first time are consistently outselling their pulp-and-ink brethren, according to Amazon.com.

Last holiday season Amazon hit a symbolic milestone, when for one day its sales of e-books exceeded the number of dead-tree books it had sold.

The company now has hit a more significant milestone, selling 143 e-books for every 100 hardcover books sold over the course of the second quarter. And the rate is accelerating: in June, Amazon sold 180 e-books for every 100 hardcovers; it also sold three times as many e-books in the first six months of this year as it did in the first half of 2009.

Amazon’s Kindle bookstore now offers more than 630,000 books -- including Predatoress and some of our other titles of course -- plus 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright titles.

The overall e-book market is still a mere weakling next to print publishing. According to a report from Publisher’s Weekly last year, hardback sales were projected to be about $4.4 billion in 2009 (including both adult and children’s titles), while paperbacks were expected to generate $5.1 billion in revenue, audiobooks $218 million, and e-books just $81 million — less than 1 percent of the print equivalents. That’s not even counting textbooks, Bibles and professional books — with those included, Publisher’s Weekly estimated the overall book market at $35 billion in 2009.

According to Amazon, sales of its Kindle e-book reader have tripled since it cut the price from $260 to $190, although it did not provide any hard numbers about how many it had sold. The Kindle has topped Amazon’s list of bestselling products almost since it was first released two years ago.

You don’t need a Kindle to read Kindle books, however. Amazon also offers Kindle e-book readers for the iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android phones, and for Mac and Windows PCs. This cross-platform reach is no doubt helping to increase the customer base for Amazon’s e-books, but it also provides a security blanket: even if you break your Kindle or lose it, you’ll still be able to read the ebooks you’ve bought.