I was wondering if someone would get around to posting Project Gutenberg.

Also check out LibreVox http://librivox.org/. Free site of audio books.

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.... great signature line :D

He teamed up with a couple of other authors on some good books .. 'mote in gods eye' and 'footfall' were good.

Look up Frank Norris and his stories on grain. Written a hundred years ago and still interesting and relevant today. One on the Chicago grain traders. Farmers to Traders to Consumers of US grain.

Travel techniques .. as soon as takeoff, switch yourself to the time zone at your destination. Which might require sleeping first and _then_ reading. This way your vacation starts sooner when you get there. Drink water too or you'll feel dried out and hung over when you get there even if no 'drinks' were involved.

What I've seen is the "Literary Critics" keyed in on this book for all the reasons (behind the scenes) that Literary Critics endorse books. The high priests said it was good and so it must be good .. whether it really is good writing or not. It has just been endorsed by the establishment and that's all there is to it.

You need to read Asimov's Foundation trilogy before Hitchhikers Guide to get the underlying currents that Hitchhikers is built on.

Don't read Stranger in a Strange Land! Stieg maybe ok. Moon and Troopers might be ok but after Stranger I read other things so can't say.

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40% of all the books bought are in the 'romance' category. A lot of women also purchase the 'Fantasy' genre so enterprising authors combine these two genres to be more marketable, many of which are cross-over authors anyway. It's pretty easy to pick out which Fantasy Genre book is done that way if you're looking at the advertising blurbs. Romance publishers are very particular about book copy because they know what sells there - since they are successfully pushing 40% of the market all on their own.

I'm a published author in the "Fantasy" genre, but I do it more as "Swords & Sorcery" because my dragons are vicious, the sword-play is fierce, and the wizards destroy things. Example book trailers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTLrXyLI1gA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCFUBT6b9Po
I'm currently writing Book #3 in this series and should finish it over the holidays, get it to my editor, and then have it out in January. While the lead in Book #3 is a woman, she cranks up the violence from the first two books about her siblings.


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Here's a Book Trailer that might influence your reading selection, novel just released (#2 of the series) .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTLrXyLI1gA

While that's all fun and excitement. If you want your company to succeed, you need to learn one thing. You will be successful only if those working in your department are successful. Take your shiny new organizational pyramid and turn it so your point of the pyramid is at the bottom of the page. You're the worker for this whole group, and the output of your department only gets made by that row of workers along the top.

Then of course you should also consider delayering so span of control goes from the 'typical' 3-7 out to ten to twenty. Yes, the middle managers will scream. You'll be closer to the workers and also start giving them more general direction instead of micro managing (because that way leads to madness as you thin the middle). Then you'll become a leader instead of a manager cog. Don't backfill jobs. Constantly see how to improve workflow (with everyone's input). Read up on Lean Manufacturing, it applies in offices too.

Agree. Good that Dell is focusing on fewer machines (like Apple .. compare sales vs machines and you'll see the complexity that Dell has given itself - which is all cost structure). Put machines at $200 or lower and people will buy them like crazy... they did when you could get them on regular sales for under $200. But a lot don't do that now that the cpu power has improved and they 'run' windows7. With linux they fly (mine does). But then the media and manufacturers are all pushing the "I gotta be an iPad" market now. But try writing any kind of document on a tablet and it's annoying. Netbooks are just a more portable laptop .. and isn't that the whole point to getting such a machine? If you're looking for raw cpu power then you are better off getting a standard desktop/tower format.

That's because the el-cheapo Windows 7 home requires massive computing performance compared to that machine running Windows 98/me from ten years ago. I run Linux but even that has a few more lines of code than caparable LInux from that era.

Having just released my second book in a series (book trailer here: The Black Jewel) and following some of the indie discussions. The secrets to big sales:
1. have a lot of books
2. get a lot of reviews via book bloggers
3. price the books right

it seems to be easiest for traditionally published authors to go indie (because they have 1&2 already) and offer books at low prices direct.

They are just locked into their distribution channels. Imagine how the regular book stores would scream to the publishers if the ebook price were $1 and paperback was $10? And a consumer has it in five minutes vs driving across town and standing in a checkout line for fifteen minutes. The publishers also have a huge staff and prime real estate in the most expensive city possible.