Since I first made the decision to start building a publishing business, I have constantly looked for techniques and technology that would take my normal everyday methods of working and capture the information that I share. This information needs to be in a format that can be easily adapted to create new products. One early change I made was to buy a voice recorder and record conversations whenever I explain things to friends and co-workers. Now, instead of tutoring one person, I can have the audio transcribed into a tutorial to publish. I didn’t have a similar solution for capturing my handwritten notes
Easy BookBinding, by Nathan DeStephano, is the most current and complete resource I have found for learning how to print and bind your own trade paperback and case bound hardcover books.
However, this book is NOT for everyone. It is NOT written for the book arts enthusiast who wants to study the centuries old craft of hand made books. It is also NOT written for those wanting to make arts and crafts projects. If that is what you want, here are a few much better resources:
In an earlier post called Record Your Voice for Fun And Profit, I had mentioned my recent purchase of an Olympus VN-960PC Digital Voice Recorder. My goal was to replace my dead micro-cassette recorder and possibly find an inexpensive solution for recording audio content that I could post on the web and maybe even sell as part of an educational audio series or audio book.
I knew from the product descriptions and reviews that this recorder compresses the audio pretty heavily and stores it in a proprietary format. My hope was, given the narrow dynamic range of spoken voice recordings, with a little tweaking in post production I could get an acceptable quality recording. I figured a close mike would also help by creating a strong input signal.
While reading an article on Yahoo! about search engine marketing, I was introduced to the work of Jennifer Laycock, managing editor of the online Search Engine Guide newsletter. The site turned out to be a useful resources, but the real treat was the free e-book she was giving away. It’s not your typical web market e-book.
Jennifer’s new book, Zero Dollars, a Little Talent, and Thirty Days, is a compilation of thirty daily articles she wrote chronicling her efforts to start a new online business with no cash, and turn a profit. She made money - not the overnight millions folks usually brag about - but a real profit. I also get the feeling she’ll continue to make money from the site and be able to work less to keep it going.
