June 2007
Monthly Archive
Jun 25, 2007
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For years I’ve been thinking that we eventually will see machines in libraries and bookstores that will print books on demand. The Espresso Machine from On Demand Books is the current buzz that is trying to make that happen.
And perhaps all the buzz about the Espresso Machine from industry observers and publishers is causing the Web site of On Demand Books to exceed its bandwidth this month. Or, it just shows the power of an Endgaget post.
We’re all in favor of devices like the Espresso Machine and fully believe that these types of machines will be an inevitable presence in bookstores and libraries. Yet, I do get a little worried about a technology-based company that can’t handle the basics of keeping a Web site operational.
Sure, a publicity crunch brings a lot of traffic but this is why technology planning is important. Anyway, we wish Espresso Machine a lot of luck and will be thinking about the implications of these machines for book design…more on that in a future post.
update:
Design the Web Site Before Launching Your Product
Well, I guess I should have been in no hurry to look at the On Demand Books Web site since there’s very little information there.
Somehow, I thought that a company that is utilizing technology in an attempt to revolutionize publishing would have had a striking Web site filled with information about its system. There’s a lot of potential there but, again, for a company that says it is “finalizing technology to access a vast network of content”….well, there’s something to be said about first impressions. And I’m saying that not just as someone who manages a graphic design firm but also as a person who spent years developing digital libraries and managing IT in academic libraries.
A type of on demand book machine is needed and, eventually, will be a reality but it looks like there’s still a long road to travel. Anyway, again, I’m still wishing OnDemandBooks the best success.
Jun 14, 2007
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It’s impossible to determine exactly how many author Web sites are in existence. Well, maybe not impossible but we certainly not going to attempt it.
Instead, we examined the fiction reviews in the May 1 issue of Kirkus to see how many of the 65 authors in that list had Web sites. Answer: 40 (62%).
How many of those Web sites are good quality? (Yes, that’s a subjective evaluation but we’ve seen a lot of Web sites over the last 14 years and know a few things about graphic design): 13 (33%)
How many of these authors have blogs? 3
Wait, make that really only 1. The other two are “blog like” but do not take advantage of easy-to-use blogging software. More on that in another post.
Here’s the list of sites we examined. Some of these sites could use a lot of improvement but, obviously, we’re not going to say publicly which sites are badly designed.
The process of reviewing these sites has raised a number of issues and we’re going to be talking about those in upcoming posts. Also, it’s often difficult to determine which site is really the author’s site as opposed to a fan site or put up by the author’s publisher or academic department. We’ll be talking about those issues. Also, we will be highlighting some of the sites that we thought were particularly good as well as offering some suggestions for how other sites can be improved.
Jun 13, 2007
Jun 12, 2007
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One of the main tasks in my job years ago as a student assistant in the library was shelf reading. And, oh, is that boring, shelf by shelf, checking to make sure every book is in call number order. You’re supposed to just look at the classification numbers but I usually would look at the titles on the spine, also. You had to do something to make the job a little easier.
Later, throughout my library career, like all librarians, I spent a lot of time browsing among the stacks, reading a lot of titles on the spine and not thinking much about how those titles were positioned.
Top down or bottom up?
One of the things I love to do in Buenos Aires is to browse among the many great bookstores in this city. On my first visit to the bookstores here in Argentina I noticed something odd but it took me a minute to figure it out. Then I went home to examine the books in English that I had brought with me from the U.S.: almost all of the Spanish-language books in Buenos Aires have the titles on the book spine printed from the bottom up. All my English-language books are printed with titles from the top down. (I only have about 100 or so English books here but the spines are all consistent).
Honestly, I don’t know if there’s some kind of international standard for this type of thing or if it’s just convention in different countries or publisher preference. (In the library world there seems to be an ANSI standard for just about everything!)
The Impact: browse from left or right
The direction of the title on the spine isn’t that big of a deal but you do notice it when browsing in the bookstore or the library - which way you stand, which way you tilt your head, which way you step from side-to-side or around the customer browsing next to you.
Yet, I have noticed in Spanish-language books that there is a little lack of consistency: 90% of the Spanish-language titles I see have spine titles printed from bottom to top but a few are the opposite.
I took a photo of one of my shelves at home to illustrate. Look at the Saramago books: the English version of The Stone Raft next to the Spanish version of Ensayo sobre la ceguera. But then just a couple of books over is Arqueología de Buenos Aires.
(Click the photo to see a larger size).
Jun 12, 2007
Historical. The 1990s seem like so long ago now. This piece in Flak Magazine is worth revisiting.
Rather than compile a traditional best-of-books feature (one of those Top 10 lists that dot publications around the new year), we decided to praise those books published in the last decade that did one thing exceptionally well, from cover design to punctuation use, and everything — from sentences to end notes — in between.
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