Over at the Atlantic, I describe my experience creating an ebook. First lesson: I don’t want to be the author of a Microsoft Word file. Check it out.
My deep thanks to Alexis Madrigal, the technology editor at the Atlantic, for inviting me to contribute my thoughts.
Originally published October 14, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
I’d like to introduce you to my latest book. It’s called Brain Cuttings: Fifteen Journeys Through The Mind. ( Amazon/BN/ Mobipocket ) It’s my ninth book, but it’s my first dip into a new kind of publishing. And it was spurred on by you, dear reader.
Last year I put a survey on the Loom to find out about your reading habits — current and future. The 761 responses I got were surprising in a lot of ways, and they guided my thinking about what sort of new kinds of formats I could explore. I’ve been especially curious about how books can become blogified: in other words, writers can think up ideas for books, create them, and then quickly offer them up for sale at places like Amazon, regardless of whether they fit into the well-worn grooves of traditional publishing.
Continue reading “My new book–ebook, that is: Brain Cuttings”
The Atlantic, October 14, 2010
For about fifteen years now, writing books has been an essential part of my life. But this summer I started to rethink what it really means to publish a book.
This year well-established authors like John Edgar Wideman began to do something radical: they started working directly with eBook sellers like Kindle and Lulu. I was reminded of the early days of blogging. Blogging presented a new way to publish an article. A writer could get an idea, create a piece of whatever length the idea demanded, and publish it with the press of a button. I started blogging myself, and have done so ever since. But I didn’t give up writing those conventional articles; blogs simply opened up a niche that didn’t exist before.
Continue reading “How Writers Can Turn Their Archives into eBooks”
Tomorrow I’ll be speaking in Washington DC at the Koshland Science Museum about communicating science in new media. It’s going to be a retro-future kind of talk. For one thing, I think Vesalius was a great model for thinking about science in new media. He had a lot of things figured out 450 years ago that we’re just rediscovering.
Plus the semi-super-secret project I mentioned last week. I’ll explain that tomorrow morning.
Continue reading “Reminder: Tomorrow I’ll be talking in DC, live and live-streamed”
Last week I posted a story about an experiment suggesting monkeys can recognize themselves in the mirror. One of the experts I contacted was Peter G. Roma, who was the lead author of a 2007 paper that failed to find evidence for this kind of self-recognition. Roma responded today with an interesting response, which I’m posting here, and at the end of the original post.