To E Or Not To E? Litopia After Dark is hosting me on the net’s foremost literary salon

Yesterday I had the pleasure to be the special guest on Litopia After Dark, the net’s foremost literary salon, in a show that was entitled 'To E Or Not To E?'.

The show is available now online and you can listen to the show at http://radiolitopia.com/enclosures/lad/lad_123.mp3

It was my second time on this great show that is hosted by Peter Cox and it was so fun! Here are more details about the show (from Litopia's website):

How green is your e-book? How much do you care about the environmental impact of the words you read… or about the sweatshop workers who assembled your shiny new iPad? Tonight’s special guest is Raz Godelnik from Eco-Libris - the organization that encourages readers to do something to make the world greener – and he’s got some surprising facts about the relative impact of e-readers compared to paper books.

Still on an iTheme, Dave Bartram proposes the notion that technology is changing the way we think and making it harder for us to concentrate on one thing at a time… such as reading. “Reading on my iPhone sucks”, says Dave. “It’s not immersive enough… and it’s far too easy to be distracted.” If this is true, the publishing industry hasn’t even begun to consider what impact this may have on our reading, and writing, habits.

It’s Donna Ballman’s last appearance for a few weeks – she’s off for a highly-merited vacation, and we’ll miss her while she’s gone. She’s leaving us with five habitual lies that authors tell themselves!

And Eve Harvey has picked up on one of Litopia’s own tweets – what makes writers particularly susceptible to the demon drink? Is it cause – or effect? Do some people actually write better while inebriated? If he had not become such a drunk, would Truman Capote have finished Answered Prayers? And if he did – would it have been any good?

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Echo Train, a new collection of poems by Aaron Fagan, is going green with Eco-Libris!

Eco-Libris is collaborating with many authors publishing a variety of literary genres, but we never had the chance to work with an author who is publishing poetry book. Not any more!

We are very happy to announce a new collaboration with author Aaron Fagan on his new poems book 'Echo Train'. A tree will be planted with Eco-Libris for every copy printed!

Fagan's new collection of poems is published with Salt Publishing. It follows two other collaborations we have with Salt authors - Elizabeth Baines (whom we just hosted in her book tour promoting Too Many Magpies) and Tania Hershman.

About the author: Aaron Fagan was born in Rochester, New York, and raised in Victor. He was educated at Hampshire College and Syracuse University where he specialized in poetry. He moved to Woodlawn in the Bronx in 2006 and was a copy and research editor for Scientific American magazine. Harold Bloom said his first collection of poems, Garage (Salt Publishing, 2007) was "vivid and aesthetically disturbing work" and that "his promise is considerable because his originality should prove to be decisive."

About Echo Train: Echo Train begins "Once upon a time / Books began this /Way" and asks us not “to be shocked to find / We must return and /Stand for what we are” when we reach the book’s end. Readers who said they tend to avoid poetry altogether sat down with the intention of
reading one or two poems and found themselves reading it all the way through in a single sitting.

More information on the book, including podcasts of poems and an excerpt from book can be found on Salt Publishing's website (where you can also purchase a copy of it).

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Barnes & Noble is expecting to generate $3-$5 billion from e-books sales in 2013 - is it realistic?

Yesterday, Barnes & Noble, the world's largest bookseller, reported sales and earnings for its fiscal 2010 fourth quarter and full year ended May 1, 2010.

The report is full with interesting data, but one piece of information that caught my eye was that B&N Chief Executive William Lynch said that Barnes & Noble expects to have about 25% of the digital book market by 2013, providing the bookseller with the opportunity to boost revenue by $3 billion to $5 billion.

Now, I think 25% market share may be a bit optimistic, but let's leave it aside for a moment and assume Lynch is right. I still wonder how exactly he came up with the estimate of e-books sales between $3 billion and $5 billion by 2013 - if we take into account their estimated market share (25%), it means that we talk about a $16 billion e-book market in 2013 (in average).

Given that the total books market generates now about $20 billion in sales and that the estimated market share of e-books, which is currently around 5%, is expected to be around 25% in a couple of years, I think that Lynch's estimate of $3-$5 billion in sales is very far from being realistic.

What do you think about this estimate? I'll be happy to hear your thoughts about it.

More related articles:
Is there a future for Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores? Is it a green one?, Eco-Libris Blog

E-Books Rewrite Bookselling, The Wall Street Journal

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Green chat with Elizabeth Baines on the final stop of her virtual book tour for 'Too Many Magpies'

We are always happy to be part of virtual book tours of authors we work with, and today we have the pleasure to be the last stop in the virtual tour of Elizabeth Baines to promote her great book 'Too Many Magpies'.

Elizabeth is collaborating with Eco-Libris to plant a tree for every copy printed of the book. She will also be planting a tree for every copy printed of "The Birth Machine", which will be reissued by Salt Publishing on October 2010. This is also an opportunity to remind you of two other gifted authors who publish with Salt and partner with us - Tania Hershman and Aaron Fagan.

Elizabeth's tour started on May 6th at Sue Guiney's blog and since then had another seven stops in very interesting destinations (check out the tour's webpage for the full list) and we're the ninth and last stop. Since we collaborate with Elizabeth to green up her books, we decided to have the interview more focused on the green side of both her and the book. We hope you'll enjoy it.

First, here's some background on the author and the book:

Elizabeth Baines was born in South Wales and lives in Manchester. She is the prizewinning author of prose fiction and plays for radio and stage. Too Many Magpies was published by Salt in 2009. Previously Salt published her collection of short stories, Balancing on the Edge of the World (2007) which was pronounced 'a stunning debut collection' (The Short Review). In October 2010 Salt will reissue her first, acclaimed novel The Birth Machine. She is also a performer and has been a teacher. t

About the book:
How do we safeguard our children in a changing and dangerous world? And what if the greatest danger is from ourselves? A young mother fearful for her children's safety falls under the spell of a charismatic but sinister stranger. A novel about our hidden desires and the scientific and magical modes of thinking which have got us to where we are now.

And now for the interview:

Hi Elizabeth. We love the idea of virtual book tour as it's also very eco-friendly in terms of carbon footprint. How did you like it? Was it fun?

It's been great fun, Raz. So interesting to see the different things that the hosts have come up with - from probing questions that wrenched my brain to a really fun word association game! The way I think virtual tours win out hands-down over in-person tours is that the audience is potentially so much bigger, and not only that, the visit is a permanent record for anyone to visit at any time.

You're a very eco-conscious writer - why is that and how do you see it reflected in your writing?

I was born in the countryside in South Wales to a family who were closely involved with and passionately interested in nature - some of them were farmers. When I was about nine a power station was built slap-bang on that rural idyll that had been my first home, with loss of some really important wetlands, and it was obvious that the local people, including my family, had been powerless to stop it happening in the face of government decision. I felt a huge sense of grief and later anger, so I guess you could say that at nine years old my political eco-consciousness was born. That scenario appears in my first novel, The Birth Machine (which Salt will reissue in October), and these issues are so much part of me that of course they emerge in my writing all the time.

You plant a tree with Eco-Libris for every printed copy of your books. Do you have other eco-friendly habits you practice in daily life?

I use eco-friendly products and recycle. We have a compost bin. I have an absolute horror, in fact, of throwing things away when they could be somehow used again. I do love clothes, but I hardly ever buy new, and I'm always altering them for the fashions, and when they wear out I cut them up for rags! My husband John and I used to have a car each, but we decided we should only have one. This all sounds very pious, I guess, but it's quite selfish, really, as it's the only way I feel comfortable. And I don't know how I'd feel if I had to do a lot of flying...

When I think about the theme of scientific versus magical thinking, I instinctively think about global warming and how people relate to it in the current debates. How do you see it?

Yes, I think the whole issue of global warming is very much tied up with the issue of magical/scientific thinking. People tend to think of science and magical thinking as opposites, but as I said recently in an interview on the Salt website, while the truly scientific is truly rational and takes account of unknown factors, a lot of magic-wand thinking goes on in scientific/technological practice - an assumption that you can wave a scientific wand and all will be well, a failure to account for possible detrimental consequences of technology - which can lead to environmental disasters.

So we burn fossil fuels for a hundred years and fifty years and send planes up in the air for fifty and assume the atmosphere won't be affected etc... We build nuclear power stations without accounting for nuclear disaster... It's based to some extent in ignorance, and also in a selfish perspective that fails to go beyond the here and now, but it's also a failure of imagination and a childlike, wishful refusal to accept uncertainty.

I see this childlike magical thinking operating in the anti-global warming lobby, the insistence that either global warming is not really happening or that it's not the result of human activities. I accept that we can't conclusively prove that it's the latter, but it seems to me that the only mature response is to take on board the uncertainty and the possibility of our own responsibility...

The theme of nature runs throughout your novel, and I was wondering what's your take on the dissonance between the love many people share to nature and its constant misuse at the same time?

Again, I think this is linked to a certain kind of magical thinking, and it's partly to do with the fact that we've become divorced from nature. We have a romantic longing for nature, but we've lost our understanding of it. We see it as a romantic backdrop for ourselves, yet paradoxically we lose sense of how our activities intimately affect it. So we rush to the rural fishing villages of the world and turn them into acres of multistorey hotels... Romantically we believe that nature will survive whatever, so we drill so deep in the sea that we cause a massive oil spill we can't control...

Would you like to see the book published in other forms such as e-book or audiobook?

Yes, I would love that! For environmental reasons as well as the democratic possibilities. It seems to me that by cutting out the need for printing, transport and warehousing, the life of a book can be extended: books can be made more widely available and for longer. But you'll never stop me loving actual, physical books...

How do you feel about the transition from print to digital? Do you think it will also change the way books are written?

I really find it hard to comment on this. I don't yet have an ebook myself, so I don't even know about that reading experience. And I'm not sure that it would affect the writing experience, anyway. I've heard some writers say they write differently on computers from the way they did with paper and pen (because it's easier to splurge when you know you can so easily cut and paste and so there's a greater freedom) but I and many other writers find that we still have to write our first drafts by hand anyway - for that very reason, that it's too easy to splurge on the computer and then, because it looks so finished, fail to do the necessary editing.

So we're not so sure the changing technology so far has changed the substance of what we write, and I'm not sure that it will be any different when we are writing books for digitization. Although I do think that the internet and the way it favours brevity has already affected prose style: I think we favour economy in prose fiction now far more than we did, and I'm certainly more aware than ever of the need to achieve it while I'm writing.

And what about bookstores? Do you think they could survive in the digital age?

Again, it's another unknown, I think. Current trends would indicate that bookstores will die, but then who is to say that the rise of digital literature won't give rise to a new alternative market in beautifully printed books the point of which would be physical properties that you could only experience before buying in a bookshop?

Can you tell us what you're working on now?

I'm working on a kind of family saga about memory and forgetting, as well as on a new collection of stories around the theme of uncertainty (of course!)

Last but not least, I'm curious if you're a football fan in if you follow your team on the World Cup?

Oh, no, I'm not a football fan, I'm afraid! Well, not in the usual sense. I do like the camaraderie in the pubs at the moment, though...

Thank you, Elizabeth!

If you want to learn more about 'Too Many Magpies', please check the following links:

Flying with Magpies tour page: http://www.e.baines.zen.co.uk/Flyingmagpies.htm

Elizabeth Baines' podcast readings on the Salt blog: http://blog.saltpublishing.com/2009/10/05/listen-to-elizabeth-baines-too-many-magpies/

The Salt web page for the book from which extracts can be copied: http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smf/9781844717217.htm

Links to reviews of the book are in the sidebar on Elizabeth Baines' blog http://elizabethbaines.blogspot.com

A film of Elizabeth Baines talking about the novel:



Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Green printing tip no. 51: Can you help us with recommendations?

We are back today on our weekly series of green printing tips, where we bring you information on green printing in collaboration with Greg Barber, an experienced eco-friendly printer.

Today after a year of providing you with great 50 tips, Greg has a special request from you.

Can you recommend on green printers that print on Organic T-shirts and Organic Hats?

Tip #51

I have taken 50 weeks to write Green Printing Tips featured in Eco-Libris blog, and now I need your help.

My website www.ecofriendlyprinter.com has all 50 tips listed, as well as Eco-Libris. On the left side of my site, near the bottom, I have a section called Promotional Products.

I need your help this week to expand my list of green printers that feature printing on Organic T Shirts and Organic Hats.

I will add these recommendations to my website. I get so many people asking me who can do printing on T Shirts and hats, and I now have decided to reach out to you.

Don't let me down.

Have a great 4th of July and keep printing Environmentally. We have come a long way to eliminating plastic, to re routing our 100% PCW waste into new printing, saving our forests, using chlorine free bleaching, and Green E Energy.

I applaud our efforts. I thank Eco-Libris for the opportunity to reach out to all of you.

Greg Barber.

For additional information, please visit www.gregbarberco.com and www.ecofriendlyprinter.com. You're also invited to contact Greg via email at greg@gregbarberco.com

You can find links to all the tips at http://www.ecolibris.net/greentips.asp

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting green printing!

Green book of the week: The Real Man's Guide to Fixin' Stuff (and a giveaway!)

Today we have a book that wants to help us keeping our stuff working. Real men according to this book don't throw broken stuff to the trash or even recycle them. They fix them.

Our book is:

The Real Man's Guide to Fixin' Stuff: How to Repair Anything You Need (or Just Want) to Know How to Fix

Author: Nick Harper

Nick Harper is the author of Man Skills, and is the features editor for FourFourTwo, Britain's biggest-selling soccer magazine, and writes for Men's Health, The Guardian, Q, and FHM. He lives in England.

Publisher: Sourcebooks

Published on: May 2010

What this book is about?
Real men know how to fix stuff…or at least, when something around the house breaks, it gets handed to the nearest guy to fix it. So if you don’t know a light socket from a socket wrench, this book will have you looking like Mr. Fix It in no time. No longer will you think that something isn’t worth fixing or that it would be cheaper to replace. You’ll be able to fix: Dead remote controls, leaking showers, car scratches, weak vacuum cleaners, your lady’s busted heel or purse, and much more

What we think about it?
Nick Harper writes in the introduction to this book:

"Back in the good old days, things were made properly, pieced together with pride. Now, however, everything's put together on conveyor belts by robots (probably) and you're lucky if it lasts six months before breaking down on you.

You don't complain tough, do you? No, you just throw it away and buy a new one. And when that breaks in six months' time, you throw that away and buy a new one. And when that breaks, the sorry cycle continues: The manufacturer gets richer, you get poorer, and the giant landfill gets ever higher; It's a terrible business."

Sounds very much like the Story of Stuff, right? But unlike Annie Leonard, Nick Harper is not here to explain us the big picture, he is here to help us fix every little detail in it.

I'm not handy, I admit it. But I always wanted to know more, not to mention the envy I have in people who can fix almost everything. I want to be like them! So I was very excited to see Harper's book with the promise of learning how to become a real mean who knows how to fix stuff (by the way - what about real women? I know many women who can do this stuff much better than men - do they have a different book?).

And the book definitely keeps its promise. Although today you can google any problem you have or look for the right YouTube that will guide you how to fix it, this book is definitely a valuable resource, with tons of how-to tips that are described in a simple language. You can find there electrical stuff (fix a broken key on a computer), Kitchen Conundrums (Sharpen a can opener), Furniture (fix squeaky stairs), Garden guidance (rescue rusting tools) and more.

I haven't had the chance to try any of these tips yet, but I looked into some issues I had recently like how to fix a toilet that won't flush and I find Harper's explanations very reliable. I like his systematic approach which I find a necessity especially for less-skilled people such as myself.

In all, we need to remember that keeping our stuff working is really a win-win offer, as it's better both for the environment and the wallet, not to mention the satisfaction you'll get from knowing that you don't need to depend on anyone but yourself to keep your stuff working.

Bottom Line: If you like your stuff and you want to keep them alive more than just six months or so, this book is for you (no matter if you want to be a real man or a real woman).

Disclosure: We received a copy of this book from the publisher.

GIVEAWAY ALERT!!

We're giving away our review copy of this book, courtesy of the publisher.

How you can win? Very simple. All you have to do is to add a comment with an answer to the following question: What was the last thing you fixed? We will have a raffle on Monday, July 5, 5:00PM EST between all the readers that will add their reply. The winner will be announced the following day.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Do you have questions to the paper comapny APP? Now you can get some answers!

Last month we wrote here about a report published by Rainforest Network Action (RAN) which connects children's books to the destruction of endangered rainforests in Indonesia.

The report explained that the connection was made via paper that was sold to Chinese printers by two paper companies, APP and APRIL, which are described as controversial sources of wood.

Later on I read an interesting article on Environmental Leader of Ian Lifshitz, Sustainability & Public Outreach Manager at Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), entitled "Balancing Sustainability with Economic Development in Developing Countries – The Case Study of Indonesia".

I share the concerns brought up by RAN and I also don't agree with Ian Lifshitz on some of the points he made on his article. Nevertheless, I believe in the importance of an open dialogue, especially with those whom you don't agree with. I think this is an important path to achieve positive progress and that's why I asked Ian to interview him on our blog, an offer which he gladly accepted.

I was hoping to use this platform to enable other people who have concerns regarding the practices of APP in Indonesia or want to learn more about the environmental and social dimensions of the company's operations, to get their questions answered.

Therefore, if you have a question to Ian Lifshitz, please add a comment with your question to this post. We'll be receiving questions until this Friday (July 2nd), 5pm EST. The interview itself will be published here in a couple of weeks so stay tuned!

We look forward to hearing from you, so please send us your question and become a part of the dialogue with APP.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting Sustainable Reading!