This week, four of us from Ooligan will be attending the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to promote our upcoming title, Classroom Publishing: A Practical Guide for Teachers. This will be the third year that students have traveled to this conference: two years ago in New York, we were busy meeting educators and collecting many of the stories that eventually made it into the book, and last year in San Antonio we gave a short presentation about how to teach students about the publishing process. Continue reading Ooligan Press goes to NCTE
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During a recession, companies usually do one of two things: cut their marketing budget to the bare minimums until the recession ends, or go on at full tilt, taking advantage of the ability to strengthen their brand while the competition falls back. Although publishing has been thought of as a “recession proof industry” in the past because of a book’s low cost as an accessible form of entertainment, this is not actually true. Books have to compete with other forms of media like video games (which now have the added bonus of a social component via online play), movies, and television. Continue reading Marketing in a bad economy The Digital Content Workgroup at Ooligan Press sounds cutting edge, high tech and super-sexy, but what is it they actually do? Why does Ooligan Press, or any publishing house need a group dedicated to all things digital? Why not just train editors, designers and marketers to blog, tweet, epub and web design? Come on now, isn’t that just a fancy name for technical support? The Digital Content Workgroup is an exciting place to be in this climate of electronic information but its specific role is often confused. Continue reading Digital Whatsit? This is a busy season for Ooligan! Two of our recent titles– Dot to Dot, Oregon by Sid Miller and Killing George Washington by Anne Jennings Paris –were recently celebrated at the Doug Fir here in Portland, OR at an intimate book launch party. The Doug Fir was an excellent venue for Ooligan, Ms. Paris, and all friends, family and fans of these two books of poetry. We look forward to many more successful launch parties in the future!  Dot to Dot, Oregon - front cover  Killing George Washington, front cover Additionally, our forthcoming title Classroom Publishing: A Practical Guide for Teachers will be visiting the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania later this month–or rather, a few Ooligonians will be there, with all sorts of informative material about this exciting new title. We’ve been working with another local press, Pinball Publishing, to create some fun and sustainable collateral items to help us spread the word about Classroom Publishing. We’ll check back with a report of the conference once it’s done…
Artwork, music, and other cultural artifacts are indelibly stamped with the mood, events, and values of the times in which they were created. Just as listening to a big band recording from the late 1930s can give one a vivid glimpse into the Swing Era’s psychosocial atmosphere, a careful examination of a cover design from the early 1950s can likewise divulge a psychological snapshot of the fears and hopes that permeated the post-WWII world as it entered the Cold War. Contemporary cover designs, as Véronique Vienne mentions above, often employ digitally tweaked photography and graphic elements that are indicative of the way computers and the digitization of information have transformed civilization during the last few decades. Continue reading A Program Does Not a Designer Make There are no doubts now that e-books are changing the way we publish. Designers have to worry about how their layouts will look on Kindles and iPhones instead of just the printed page. Those in marketing have to set up Facebook pages and Twitters for their authors and their presses. And gone are the days when all an editor had to do was decide between a semicolon and an em dash (if those days ever existed). Editors are now expected to know how to blog, for example, and explain viral marketing to their clients. Now, suddenly, editors have to worry about links in the written text. This is far different from a reference at the end of the book. Now, the reader can immediately leave the page and be scanning a new document—and whose job do you think it is to make sure all those links work? Editors are now expected to be web and tech savvy. One suddenly has to know the difference between an OCF and OPF, or what an .epub file is, for that matter. It’s true that reading habits don’t change overnight, but now that computer reading is fast becoming an integral part of our life, switching from online reading to perusing text on electronic gadgets no longer seems like such a giant leap. According to Bowker’s PubTrack Consumer service, 48% of all e-book downloads during the first quarter of 2009 were made to desktops and laptops, but the percentage dwindled to just 40% when the first seven months was concerned. In other words, more and more people are used to downloading and reading e-books through their mobile devices. Continue reading Tides Are Turning Given the recent popularity of e-books and Kindle-type devices, print enthusiasts must confront the environmental impacts of the publishing industry if they are to remain dedicated advocates of old fashioned, tangible books. Print on Demand (POD), a digital printing technology that creates a complete book – printed and bound – in less than 4 minutes, is certainly an exciting alternative, particularly at smaller, independent presses like Ooligan. POD makes it cost effective and simple to produce short runs of books (or even just one) at a time when small publishers can’t justify the high production and storage costs of a large print run. POD trades minimal startup costs for lower per-book profits (since digitally printed books have a higher individual production cost than larger scale print runs). How can POD help Ooligan become more environmentally responsible? Continue reading POD at Ooligan Held at the Convention Center on the weekend of October 10 and 11, Wordstock 2009 was a big smash for Ooligan. Two new poetry books, Dot-to-Dot Oregon and Killing George Washington were available to the public, adding to our poetry backlist. We unveiled another new title, Cataclysms on the Columbia, which is about the formation of the Columbia River. Three of our authors Linda Crew (A Heart for Any Fate), Sid Miller (Dot-to-Dot Oregon), and Anne Jennings Paris (Killing George Washington) did readings and an author signing after. Many people inquired about the program and were genuinely interested to learn that the students do all the work. Our sustainability title Rethinking Paper and Ink was a popular choice. Becoming environmentally friendly is important and this title shows the community that Ooligan is committed to doing that by publishing two open books a year. Our acquisitions group held a session with Dennis Stovall about how to get a manuscript published, which was incredibly successful. They also had a pitch table, where potential authors could come and pitch their story. It was a pleasure being at Wordstock again this year and we look forward to celebrating next years festival. For more information about Wordstock please visit www.wordstockfestival.com.
At Ooligan press, the issues raised by this (and all ereaders) is how it will affect publishing. Following is a look at the nook’s features and how we think they might contribute to the future of reading. |
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The virtual world is in an uproar surrounding Barnes and Noble’s upcoming ereader. It is being heralded as the first real Kindle competitor and the first great hope of giving Amazon a run for its money. Barnes and Noble has made it their purpose to deliver “any book, any time, anywhere” and touts the nook as the most recent vehicle for achieving this goal.
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