Actually, it’s the headlines that are most entertaining–at least here in Silicon Valley. First there was the Steve Jobs performance at the announcement–speculations about his health; comments on his presentation style; and ultimately, admission by Valley and industry insiders of their own iPad lust.

Act 2: Between the announcement and the delivery, all the comments on what’s missing from the device–multitasking; built-in camera; Flash…

Act 3: Press and commentators love the iPad, gushing over it. But yesterday’s San Jose Mercury-News: “Not clear if consumers will like it.” Oh, yeah? Just let them at it, and we’ll see…

I think it’s a milestone. Yeah, it is a bigger iPhone, without a 2-year contract. But it’s more than that: It’s a gorgeous, light, sexy, powerful thingy that does video and audio, has a decent typing solution, and just makes you want to touch it. It is the Kindle you fantasized about (and the Kindle app is one of the first on the device).

What does it mean to the world of books? It adds acceleration to the ebook phenomenon. It opens up the market for multimedia books, with movies, sound, and links built-in. Personally, that excites me; much as I love print books, and love to write them, being able to include sound, movies, and links in my creations really gets my creative juices flowing.

So, yeah, it’s expensive, and the early adopters will be the gadget-lovers. But if it really can bring the sensuous iPhone experience to more-efficient typing and browsing than you can do on the small iPhone screen, and it sure looks like it can, I think it will quickly capture many hearts and minds and credit cards. Amazon has sold over 1.5 million Kindles at $300-$400, with no color and much less functionality. I don’t think the current exuberant estimate of 6 million iPads by the end of 2010 is unbelievable. (Actually, I just checked–Morgan Stanley is projecting over 10 million!)

And yes, I want one.

While I help authors of all kinds of books, my main focus is on people who want to enhance their business presence and their client-getting abilities by writing a book. So I want to remind you of some the benefits of having a book to share with prospects:

• If you write a book, that makes you an author. An author is an authority. Whatever your area of endeavor, it’s not likely that many–or even any–of your direct competitors have written a book. The mere fact of having written a book sets you apart.
• The process of writing a book–well, my book-writing process–forces you to take the information in your head, and put it into a form that is easy to communicate. A form that can easily serve as the basis for a wide variety of additional products. You can sell each of those products, and generate a separate income stream from each.
• A book is a product you can sell. Many authors who are also public speakers find that after they have negotiate their speaking fee, it is easy to say, “Would you like everyone in the audience to have a copy of my book on the subject? Its cover price is $19.95, but I’ll be glad to provide 500 copies for $12 each.” (Your cost: $3/book.) Meeting planners generally agree enthusiastically.
• Books are revered in our culture. We happily throw away expensive color brochures–at least, I do–but we keep books. You don’t throw away a book. Consequently, your book hangs around your prospect’s office or home, a constant reminder of who you are and what you offer.

  And if you’ve followed my recommendation, your website‘s url is in the footer of every page of the book. So when the book-owner decides to contact you, you are only a click away.

Here are a couple of definitions of “book” from the Web:

• a written work or composition that has been published (printed on pages bound together); “I am reading a good book on economics“
• physical objects consisting of a number of pages bound together; “he used a large book as a doorstop”

But if you think about it, you’ll realize that not every object that matches those definitions is considered a book. One big determining factor: Binding.

A saddle-stitched pamphlet–a stack of sheets folded in the middle and stapled–is not usually recognized as a book. Publications with spiral or comb bindings are generally not called books. Material distributed on 3-hole paper in binders is not typically regarded as a book.

Why does this matter? Because a book is written by an author, and an author is assumed to be an authority. A booklet is written by a pamphleteer, not by an author. A workbook or action guide is recognized as coming from a teacher, not from an author.

So if you want to be an author, your writing must be published as a book. The simplest distinguishing factor of a book is that it has a spine. And it is good if the spine has letters on it.

I’ve seen 120-page booklets; the people who wrote them are not considered authors. I’ve seen frankly lousy 48-page books that had a spine; their writers are authors.

It’s not particularly reasonable, but it is a fact of our culture.

So if you want to be an author, you must produce a book. With a spine.

Writing a book? Short of ideas? Go to Google.com. Do a search on anything related to your topic. Click on “Show options,” in the upper left. A sidebar will appear, in which you will find, “Blogs.” Click on “Blogs.”

You’ll get pages of blogs related to your topic. Some of them will have interesting conversations, which should inspire you.

One of the best pieces of sales advice I ever heard was, “Enter into the conversation that is already taking place in your prospect’s head.” By going to blogs on “how to write a book” (one of my keywords), for example, I do just that: I find out what influential people are talking about, and what their followers are saying. That goes a long way toward entering into that head conversation.

Skinny books can be more effective
Joel Orr

If you are writing a book, or thinking of writing one, you are probably at least somewhat aware of average book sizes in your field. In non-fiction, 220 pages is a common size.

But if your goal is for your book to be your “large business card,” your “credentializer,” or to replace your color brochure, it can be much smaller. In fact, it probably should be much smaller.

Excuse me if this sounds brutal, but most people who receive or buy your book won’t read it. They may scan it; they may start to read it; or they might not even crack it open.

Now, that sounds like very bad news, but it isn’t. The book itself establishes your authority, serves as your credential, and will probably not get thrown out. It will hang around, read or unread, and remind the owner of you. That’s much more than any brochure will do.

However, if you have important information to share with people–say, about the uniqueness of your approach to your profession, or simple things the reader can do to alleviate some pain, and so on–put it in a small book. 64 – 128 pages are plenty.

And although some might accuse you of “padding” if you use large type and lots of white space, your older readers will be grateful.

If you’ve been following what I’ve been blogging about FastPencil.com, you’re going to want to get a copy of my new book, FastPencil Your Book In 30 Days or Less! It takes you step-by-step through my trademark BookProgram process, within the context of FastPencil.com. And of course, I wrote it in FastPencil.com!

Viral Loop Chronicles Part 1: Forget Everything You’ve Heard About Book Publishing

BY Adam Penenberg47 minutes ago

Part 1: Today’s Author, Yesterday’s Business

Forget everything you’ve heard about book publishing.

For instance, recently at a party to celebrate the publication of my latest book, a number of people asked, “Is your publisher sending you on a tour to promote your book?”

Dicl;dsCKWDfce9qdck. Sorry, I was laughing so hard recounting this story that I hit my head on my keyboard. More

New HP service undigitizes books: HP believes this whole print-to-digital book conversion push is very much a two-way street — sometimes, for some things, you really want a hard copy. And for a company with roots in printing and ambitions in services, the next play was a natural: How about we offer custom book printing services? And so we see making its formal debut from HP Labs an initiative that puts powerful publishing abilities into the hands of the masses.

The service is called BookPrep, and it enables any publisher “to digitize any existing book and turn it into a virtual asset that can be sold over the Internet and printed on demand — either as is, or personalized by the consumer. … BookPrep automatically aligns and flattens scanned texts of current and out-of-print-books, cleans and brightens the fold and corners of the pages for consistent coloration, and outputs a professional and print-ready PDF eMaster. … BookPrep makes it possible to give consumers access to every book ever published as a high quality replica of the original that they can even personalize.” The appeal here is in the long tail, all the fodder for those with passionate niche interests residing in the estimated 90 million books that are out of print, millions of them out of copyright. The latest addition to the books available for on-demand printing is a collection of 500,000 rare or out-of-print titles from the University of Michigan Library. And while the cost of a custom run was once prohibitive, new technology will let HP price a 250-page book around $15.

“Others have questioned the impact of the agreement on competition, or asserted that it would limit consumer choice with respect to out-of-print books. In reality, nothing in this agreement precludes any other company or organization from pursuing their own similar effort. The agreement limits consumer choice in out-of-print books about as much as it limits consumer choice in unicorns. Today, if you want to access a typical out-of-print book, you have only one choice — fly to one of a handful of leading libraries in the country and hope to find it in the stacks.

“I wish there were a hundred services with which I could easily look at such a book; it would have saved me a lot of time, and it would have spared Google a tremendous amount of effort. But despite a number of important digitization efforts to date (Google has even helped fund others, including some by the Library of Congress), none have been at a comparable scale, simply because no one else has chosen to invest the requisite resources. At least one such service will have to exist if there are ever to be one hundred.”

— Google co-founder Sergey Brin defends the company’s book-scanning intentions in an NYT op-ed piece. (Via SiliconValley.com)

IRex is providing additional details about the marketing of their new digital reader in the US this fall–which will be sold through Best Buy, where the NYT reports that the chain “is training thousands of its employees in how to talk about and demonstrate devices like the Sony Reader and iRex, and adding a new area to its 1,048 stores to showcase the devices.” Up until now, the retailer has sold ereaders online and only “in limited tests in stores.” Best Buy svp for entertainment Chris Homeister says “we feel that this is a technology that is beginning to emerge and that we can bring a unique experience to the marketplace.”

iRex is pricing their new device, which will be on sale by next month, at $399. With a previously-announced 8.1 touchscreen, it’s bigger than a regular Kindle/Sony Reader but smaller than a SuperKindle/Plastic Logic reader. Verizon has been announced as their provider of wireless access–and unlike Kindle, the iRex’s wireless chip will allow it to connect, and download reading material, outside of the United States.
iRex site
NYT