Personal Magazines with the help of H.P.

There are thousands of magazines out there, ranging from animal care to zoos. Magazines can be informative or they can be an easy fun read for someone who doesn’t have time to read a whole newspaper. Most people buy or subscribe to a magazine that they relate to, such as an outdoors-savvy person would subscribe/read Outdoors. Yet what happens if on the off chance you wanted to make your own magazine that specifically targeted what you like- say books you enjoy? Who knows, maybe this will help spark the creation of an Editorial Campana magazine as well as a Campanita Magazine.

It used to be that you could create a magazine, but at a high cost. If you wanted to print your own magazine, the cost could start at about $2,000 dollars. That’s a lot of money for a magazine that probably wont get the same wide-spread attention as Maxium or People Magazine. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. H.P. has created a new web-based service that will lower the price of creating a magazine. MagCloud, as the new service is called, “hopes to make it easier and cheaper to crank out a magazine than running photocopies at the local copy shop.” How is this possible you ask? According to the company, by charging about 20 cents per page (which is paid by ONLY when the customer orders a copy) magazines can be created for roughly $50.

This new program may help revolutionize the magizine industry. At a time when magazines are begining to decline due to the Internet and the abundance of free material.

“It is not clear how big a market there is for small runs of narrow-interest magazines when so much information is available free on the Internet. So far, users of the service, which is still in a testing phase, have produced close to 300 magazines, including publications on paintings by Mormon artists, the history of aerospace, food photography and improving your personal brand in a digital age.“

For now it looks as though the magizine still has a function in our society. Magazines serve as a great outlet, especially for small companies and organizations looking to expand their visibilty (whether within the community or around the world). Programs such as MagCloud could help companies and organizations improve thie popularity while at the same time saving money (which is something that everybody is thinking about first).

H.P. understands that this new printing format may NOT work. The point is to see what type of mrket there is for personalized magazines. If there is none, H.P. plans to simply move on to another  type of media.

The Digital Book War Continues

Amazon’s Kindle may be one of the most popular digital book readers out there, but the Sony Reader and applications made for the Ipod and Iphone are close behind. In fact Sony recently struck a deal with Google in hopes of increasing sales as well as popularity. According to an article by the NY Times by the end of the week, Sony hopes to include roughly “a half million copyright-free books available for its Reader device.” By doing this, Sony is attempting to divert attention from the Kindle as well as invite new digital readers to its Reading device as oppose to Kindle or similar devices/applications.

This will certainly be a difficult task for Sony. Amazon currently has 250,000 books that are available for the Kindle (and that number continues to grow). Furthermore, titles that are available for the Kindle are “books people are most interested in reading, like new releases and best sellers.” Whereas Sony’s Reader, with the help of Google, will allow individuals to download free non-copyrighted material. The reason that these titles are non-copyrighted are due mainly to the fact that the books are old- or have been in print long enough to lose the copyright once associated with them. The titles add up to roughly 7 million books that will be available for FREE!

“The books available to Reader owners were written before 1923 and include classics like “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” by Mark Twain, and “The Awakening,” by Kate Chopin, as well as harder-to-find titles like “The Letters of Jane Austen.””

If you happen to like reading classics, then this will be great. However you won’t find any titles by Editorial Campana or Campanita books.  Google is working to increase the copyright-free materials. In the meantime, through the Google Book Search Program, books that are copyrighted will be visible only with either selected pages/text or only the first few pages. 

Once Google and Sony team up, will readers turn their attention to the Reader for classics (and maybe one day new releases/bestsellers)? Or will Kindle’s emphasis to provide new books and hot releases over-power Google and Amazon. Maybe in the end- neither will progress- applications made for computers and mobile devices may turn out to be what’s on the next page!

Editorial Campana Event!

Editorial Campana is pleased to announce another event!!

Monday March 16th, 4:00-5:15 p.m. This event is bilingual English/Spanish B.M.C.C. (Borough of Manhattan Community College): Room: S-605. Reading and conversation with Sonia Rivera Valdés (Casa de las Américas Award winner) author of Stories of Little Women and Grown-Up Girls (Historias de mujeres grandes y Chiquitas)

For more information please visit Editorial Campana or the BMCC website. Also look for future events hosted by Editorial Campana!

Robin Hood Strikes NYC Schools.

“We had a room with some books but nobody ever went in there.” This is a quote from Alan Cohen, P.S. 69’s principal. Imagine being a student in NYC and not having access to a proper library? Many students in low income communities face this issue daily. Rooms that are dedicated to being libraries, are often  found bare and deserted due to low or no funding and lack of materials- mainly books. With the economy tumbling and still uncertain, many budgets for NYC public schools have put Libraries at the bottom of the list. It seems there just isn’t enough money to support a program that is so essential to students.

There may be hope! A foundation known as the Robin Hood Foundation is looking to change the direction and image of many poverty stricken NYC public schools. The foundation over the past nine years has been:

 “dedicated to fighting poverty in New York City, and the city’s schools administration have built, with the help of private donors, libraries in 62 schools in low-income neighborhoods.”

The Foundation has had such success that many of the libraries that have been built in these schools have been adorned by murals from famous artists. These libraries and pictures have transformed schools that once seemed headed in a one way direction with the students having no choice but to follow the same dooming direction.

Another example of this transformation is Public School 47, located in the Soundview section of the Bronx. The school is in need of space. So much so that the gym has been transformed into classrooms and administrative offices have been created from bathrooms. Yet with the help of the Robin Hood Foundation, the school now seems to have a promising future- thanks to the addition of the new library located on the second floor. The room is described as expanding in a somewhat magical way. Above all, the new library (home to roughly 7,000 books) is the first “proper” library that the school has had in many years. All thanks to the Robin Hood Foundation.

Please visit their site to learn more information about how their program works and how their efforts have helped to keep literature within the NYC public school system. Foundations such as this one and books such as A Very Smart Cat/ Una Gata Muy Inteligente, My Brain Won’t Float Away/ Mi Cerebro no Va a Salir Flotando, and A Caribbean Journey from A to Y (Read and Discover What Happened to the Z) aim to improve and inspire reading among young students and children.

March is Small Press Month!

“Small Press Month is a nationwide celebration highlighting the valuable work produced by independent publishers. Held annually in March, Small Press Month raises awareness about the need for broader venues of literary expression. From March 1st-31st, independent, literary events will take place from coast-to-coast, showcasing some of the most diverse, exciting, and significant voices being published today.” [More info…]

For more information please click on the picture above and do your part to support small and independent publishers!

Editorial Campana Event!

Editorial Campana is pleased to announce the first event for MARCH 2009.  In Celebration of International Women’s Month with Margarita Drago, Jacqueline Herranz Brooks, Sonia Rivera Valdés(Casa de las Américas Award winner) and  Paquita Suárez Coalla.  The authors will read from their new works and chat with the audience. The event will take place Thursday March 5th, 8:00 p.m. at Librería Caliope, NY. PLease visit editorialcampana.com for more information and for directions.

 

 

To blog or not to blog… depends on if you have permission.

Everywhere you go, either someone is telling you to check out their blog or to read this blog. Blogs have become mainstream ever since the web went 2.0. With the ability to easily add your own personal comment on a website, it seems silly not to make your mark on a website. Everybody is doing it. Many sites including wordpress have become phenomenon’s in the digital realm thanks to their ability to make anybody feel life an html expert. Thanks to the abundance of information flowing through fiber optic cables, bloggers are free to make their mark on just about any topic or subject. From the presidency to the Oscar’s you can comment on any article. 

However, some bloggers forget that there is an etiquette to blogging. Just like in school when you learned about plagiarizing and work’s cited pages, you can’t just cut and paste without making reference to the original source. If you do, expect that you will be found and you will get in trouble. In fact due to the alarming rise in copy infringement, many bloggers better be wary as to the un-sourced material they provide:

Copyright infringement lawsuits directed at bloggers and other online publishers seem to be on the rise. David Ardia, the director of the Citizen Media Law Project, said his colleagues kept track of 16 such suits in 2007. In 2004 and 2005, it monitored three such suits each year. And newspapers sometimes send cease-and-desist orders to sites that they believe have crossed the line.

As a blogger, we have the right to write and discuss on any matter we want, thanks to the freedom of speech amendment. At the same time however, we must exercise that right RESPONSIBLY. The information that we gather to create our stories need to be credited when and where the credit is due. Just like a research paper, you let your audience/reader know that the information you are providing is from another source. That source took the time to research the information and they deserve the credit. 

One must also keep in mind that when articles are cited or referenced from a newspaper article, in essence we (the blogger) are distracting the reader from the original source. Doing this gives less revenue to the newspaper or magazine. Despite the fact that these articles are online, there is a real person writing and/or editing those articles. They may depend on the money that is taken from that article and when we do not credit them or link a blog to their article we are preventing them from being paid. Sort of like pirating (a form on stealing digital media), when you do not give credit where it is due, you are stealing from the author.

In the end, the blogger needs to realize that when we refer to someone else’s work, we are hoping to improve upon and/or strengthen our own blog. With that said the blog that is created in essence would not be made possible without the article that is being cited or referenced. The whole blog is partly yours, but it is also made up of other people’s words/thoughts. As the picture illustrates (taken from the NY Times article that is referenced in this blog) a blog that has other articles is only whole when the parts are stitched together. Without providing correct links and credit, the blog is not whole, and even more severe- to many illegal. Keeping in mind that lawsuits are on the rise and the fact that newspapers and magazines are increasing their efforts to stop copyright infringement, bloggers need to take a minute to realize that when they are blogging, they should also be asking, “If I don’t provide proper credit to the source (if any) who am I hurting or preventing from getting paid?”

As a publishing company, Editorial Campana understands the importance of protecting copyright material. When we blog, we make sure to directly link to the source that we are quoting (or any material that we are using to enhance our blogs). As a service to readers and as a responsibility to the literary world, check out this site: COPYSCAPE. Simply type in your website address and you can see where your material appears on the internet (other than your own website).  Also check out the U.S. Copyright Office Website.

What the future holds for librarians.

Remember a long time a go when you spent the day at the library learning how to find books and getting aquatinted with the card catalog system? There was a time when the one computer in the library was used to find books and to locate useful resources for a book report or for that big science project you had to do. Then came the Internet and it made its way into the library system. First it was a great way to see what other libraries had and a way for librarians to keep tabs on new books and where to send people if they needed a specific book. So for a while the librarian needed to know basic computer skills and how to read the card system. Welcome to the new library age.

Librarians face a new job. On top of their traditional roles, many are required to help students use computers aside from finding books. Powerpoint presentations fill the classrooms as students are well versed in the computer world, therefore librarians spend a lot of their time showing students how to use the information they have gathered as part of their presentations. Other programs that are used on a normal basis include word ( a typing program) as well as the Internet itself.

For new students, the Internet is a house-hold name, but many many do not have access to a computer or have never ventured into the digital world. Here the librarian must be well versed in the language of Google and similar search engines so they can help that 3rd grader find resources outside of the library for their book report. Many books on the shelves have outdated material or not enough material, so going online helps expands on resources. Librarians around the nation and around the world are 

“part of a growing cadre of 21st-century multimedia specialists who help guide students through the digital ocean of information that confronts them on a daily basis. These new librarians believe that literacy includes, but also exceeds, books.”

The Internet is like an ocean- if you don’t know how to search properly, you can drown in the abundance of useful and not-so-useful material. Knowing how to navigate these waters is a critical skill that goes beyond the classroom and is used everyday- including at work. Knowing this, librarians, like teachers make up lesson plans to help students better understand how to use the Internet in a way that will get them the information that thy are looking for and how to pick out information that is false or irrelevant. Far gone are the days of “just re-shelving a book,” as stated by Ms. Rosalia, the school librarian at Public School 225, a combined elementary and middle school in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. The responsibilities of  the new digital librarian parallel that of many school teachers.

Yet with the economy the way that it is and with the tendency of schools to cut back, librarians are one of the first to be cut out of the school system.

“Mesa, the largest school district in Arizona, began phasing out certified librarians from most of its schools last year. In Spokane, Wash., the school district cut back the hours of its librarians in 2007, prompting an outcry among local parents. More than 90 percent of American public schools have libraries, according to federal statistics, but less than two-thirds employ full-time certified librarians.”

Parents, teachers, school administrators are all well aware that librarians are a crucial part to the educational system. However a non-certified librarian in the end cost less. More and more schools are cutting back. That means that a certified librarians are becoming rare at an alarming rate. 

The Internet is part of everyday life. If you step into a classroom, whether elementary or college level, many teachers use the Internet as an aid in the classroom. Not having these skills can impair a students chance of excelling or getting the job they want.

Librarians are faced with a new challenge in this digital age. Is it as important to be certified or knowing how to harness the powers of the computer? Schools are meant to educate. Teachers are certified in order to provide the best quality of that education. A school can not function properly without the right resources. Cutting back on these resources such as knowledgeable librarians can have serious implications to the students. How does a school rightfully decide to cut back on librarians, when now more than ever, they go beyond indexing books and keeping the shelves tidy?

Watch the NY Times video related to the article quoted in this blog!

Reading on the go.

Google and Amazon have just recently announced that they will be pushing many books to be released into cell phone format. As many of you may know from our last post, the iPhone has many applications that allow you to read books, and there are other devices such as Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader. Yet as many of these devices are still expensive, people don’t want to spend more money at a time when most are watching what they spend. Knowing this, Google and Amazon have decided to make books available on many cell phones. 

Keep in mind that this news comes at a time when Amazon has announced that they will be releasing a newer version of their popular Kindle- the Kindle 2. Maybe Amazon hopes that even though mobile phones will allow you to read books, the new Kindle will offer features that will make consumers want a Kindle to read “Stories of Grown-Up Girls and Little Women,” written by Sonia Rivera-Valdès  Kindle already offers over 200,000 titles and with the release of the new Kindle, many  more are sure to follow. So why then would Amazon decide to make mobile phones have access to this library- exposure and profits. Although the Kindle is costly, it does make reading an electronic book easy. It’s large screen makes the reader feel as though they are reading an actual book than a cell phone would or even the iPhone.

But just as camera phones have not replaced digital cameras, smartphones are not likely to replace dedicated e-book readers like the Kindle or the Reader from Sony, analysts said. These specialized devices have screens about the size of a paperback book and use a technology that does not require backlighting, which makes them easier to read in most light conditions. They also have longer battery life.

The point however is that e-books are taking over. Although the future is still unknown, every day, e-books are proving that they will most likely become the new standard. With the growing popularity of Kindle, Sony’s Reader, applications, and now cell phones that can access books, it is just a matter of time when we will know libraries as digital vaults and monitors will become the new pages that we bookmark and instead, readers will say they can’t wait to find out what happens on the next screen. Books seem as though they will soon be found in museums (if they aren’t replaced by something digital) and maybe holding onto a couple may be a good investment as they might easily become collectors items.

Books and Newspapers not playing very nice- Not in Washington at least.

If you live in Washington and read the Washington Post, you might notice something different with the Sunday edition. It’s Book World (a book review section of the newspaper) is moving and being integrated into the newspaper instead of having its own section. The Post launched Book World in the 1960s, folded it as a separate section in 1973 and was reviewed in the early 1980s.   Instead book reviews will be found in the outlook section of the newspaper on Sundays, and in the style and arts section during the week.  As well, Style will have a daily Book World review and touch upon literature and publishing topics. The section will also house interviews and profiles of authors more prominently than in the past. So ends another chapter in book review history.

The Washington Post has decided to shutter the print version of Book World, its Sunday stand-alone book review section, and shift reviews to space inside two other sections of the paper.

Book World, aside from the book review section in the NY Times was one of the last standing book review only sections found in a newspaper across the country. Why has the newspaper decided to make this change? In a nutshell, advertising decreased making the section no longer practical:

“The advertising in Book World didn’t justify the amount of space that we dedicated each week to books coverage,” [stated] Marcus Brauchli, executive editor of The Post, in a phone interview.

The last “issue” of Book World is scheduled to be between February 15-22. It will continue to be published online as an independent section. When rumors arose that the section would be turning it’s last page, many signed a petition in hopes of bringing back the section. The Book World section, as many suggested, honored books and highlighted their significance simply by having a section to itself. Although the attempts to keep Book World alive failed, many were happy that section would at the very least be available on the internet.

Yet there are some who are saying that like other media that gets support, so should book review sections in newspapers:

Douglas Brinkley, the historian, suggested that the book industry and book reviews deserved some kind of public bailout. “I think that just like public television — I think book review sections almost need to get subsidized to keep the intellectual life in America alive,” Mr. Brinkley said. “So if we can do that for radio, and we could do it for television, why can’t we do it for the book industry, which is terribly suffering right now?”

Despite the state of the economy, should newspapers be subsidized in order to make sure sections are kept in print? As he states, the book industry is suffering dramatically right now, and this change could have even more negative implications. If there is no book review section to inform the public about must-reads and new books, how are they to know about them (especially if they do not have access to the internet)?

Luckily, the NY Times still has it’s own section for book reviews. This change by the Washington Post makes the NY Times Sunday section the largest:

publishing at least 24 and as many as 30 or more pages a week with a staff of 15 and contributions from dozens of freelance reviewers. In addition to being included in the Sunday paper, the Book Review is sold as a separate section to 23,500 subscribers. An additional 4,200 copies of the section are sold in bookstores across the country.

Unless you live in NY, it may be harder to find book reviews in your favorite newspaper (or any newspaper).