After launching the eBookPie eBookstore last year we started hearing from publishers wanting our help to develop their own digital content platforms. To meet that demand we added web development to our list of services. Now we build customized tools, marketplaces and digital content platforms for publishers wanting to more effectively showcase, sell and share their e-content.
PatternSpot.com - A Marketplace for Pattern Designers
C&T Publishing, a large crafts book publisher, asked us to build a marketplace site that would enable their global audience of pattern designers to upload and sell their own patterns. After a lot of hard work we are excited to report that PatternSpot.com, “A Marketplace for Pattern Designers” has launched and is already receiving positive attention in the crafts world.
If you are an aficionado of quilt making, sewing and garment patterns, you are going to love PatternSpot.com.
Here is what C&T Publishing’s CEO, Todd Hensley, had to say about working with eBookPie:
“We wanted to create an online marketplace to enable pattern designers to upload, sell, share and promote their own patterns. eBookPie listened to our ideas and worked with us to build PatternSpot.com, which is just the highly interactive, social site we wanted. Working with the folks at eBookPie was a joy. We couldn’t be happier.”
eBookPie developed PatternSpot.com utilizing a lot of cool functionality that will soon be available in a new version of the eBookPie store, including some slick marketplace tools great for publishers and independent authors wanting to publish and promote their own digital works. eBookPie 3.0 (as we call it internally) is currently scheduled to launch in Summer 2011.
Jill Tomich will be at BEA this week, so feel free to email jill@ebookpie.com, or ping her on Twitter @jilltomich, for more information about our eBookPie digital content platform services. The phone works too – 720.635.3464.
Well, not Fall only, but being a big fan of Fall road trips, I was thrilled to see four new very tempting ebook titles from Fodor’s enter the eBookPie eBook store catalog, and all focused on travel in national parks.
During the summer vacation months we tend to throw down the anchor on our mobile office and hunker down with our laptops while the summertime throngs swarm the highways and national parks. But come fall, relative peace returns to road ways, the pulse of places like Yellowstone and Grand Canyon drops a few notches, and while you never know when the weather might turn in the northern reaches of Wyoming and Montana, September is a fairly good bet to be glorious.
We’re particularly excited by the new Yellowstone guide. One of our favorite areas to park our mobile office in the Fall is along a river not far from the west gate of Yellowstone. On a very good day, when we can manage to carve a gap between the piles of email, programming design and customer service demands that snowball daily, we like to drop our fly lines in the Firehole river or take a drive out to Lamar Valley and see if we can’t put the spotting scope on a meandering grizzly.
But Yellowstone can be unpredicatable. Wildlife sometimes visibly abounds. Some days you can’t drive a mile without encountering a field of green generously sprinkled with buffalo and elk. You might spot an eagle nesting near the road way, and any time you come across a group of people all pointing their spotting scopes in one direction you are likely near either a pack of wolves feeding after a kill or maybe a grizzly and her cubs considering whether to take over the feast.
Yet we’ve driven through the park on other days and saw neither hide nor hair of anything resembling wildlife. Curious, but somehow it didn’t matter much. We took pleasure instead from the many waterfalls, twisting streams and towering snow capped peaks of the Grand Tetons. It remains a favorite regional office for eBookPie. If time and schedules permitted we’d probably plant ourselves somewhere nearby the Yellowstone area from May to October every year. Someday.
We’ve spent a fair amount of time working from various locations amidst the canyonlands of Arizona and Utah as well, usually later in the fall or early winter. Maintaining our communication networks is a little more challenging in the Utah canyons however. We can almost always find a satellite signal to stay online with as long as we have an open view of a south facing sky, but cell signals are spottier in that region than probably anywhere else in the US. Still, we can usually make it work with a little effort, and it is worth the effort when it means an office view of Brice, Zion, the Canyonlands and so many other spectacular vistas in the Utah area. Or cross down to Arizona and you have 21 National Parks, Monuments and Historic sites to choose from, including the Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree, Organ Pipe…sometimes it is hard to pick a place and stop – you just want to see all of it.
Then there is California. Because we have so much family in both the north and south of California we probably spend less time in our mobile office there than any other state, yet the richness of national park beauty is as great as anywhere. We just need a long holiday to see it all. Someday.
Coach shares his personal philosophy on family, achievement, success, and excellence.
“Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.”
- John Wooden on Success
I know, I know, John Wooden’s death is old news.Over two months since he died. The throng paying tribute has moved on, the tweets have shifted to fresh targets.
But I downloaded his Pyramid of Success this morning from the eBookPie ebook store and realized again one of my earliest roll models was maybe the wisest of my teachers as well, and, ironically, only just down the block.
In my 20s I was of those who chased wisdom in far off places. I studied with Buddhist monks and Chi Gong masters in Asia, always on the hunt for secrets I thought could not be found in the West. I studied under spindly old Tai Chi adepts who lived in forest tree houses and plump, robed mystics who sat in quiet temples for hours controlling their breath. I was sometimes dedicated, more often restless, frustrated, impatient and always broke. But I also loved to gamble, and sometimes made a few bucks playing cards with other practicing monks.
One Chinese temple where I’d been studying surprised me with a much coveted invitation to live in the temple and become an apprentice monk. It would be a life of study, silk robes with wide yellow sashes, shaved heads, meditation, chinese medicine and practicing kung fu – seemingly all I wanted at the time, the life of Grasshopper. As it happened, that same day a black jack dealer friend called from Nevada and surprised me with a job offer from Harrah’s Casino Hotel in Lake Tahoe.
Make a decision! Failure to act is the biggest failure of all!
I reluctantly turned down the invitation to be a monk, embraced my inner gambler and hopped quickly to the casino job. I have looked back many, many times.
“Be yourself. Don’t be thrown off by events whether good or bad.”
I grew up in Los Angeles in the ’60s amidst a family and neighborhood thick with athletes and sports fans, and I was as avid as any. I was particularly devoted to UCLA basketball, led by the iconic Coach Wooden. Throughout my childhood Wooden’s teams won and won and won some more. I couldn’t get enough. My father once took my brothers and I to LAX to greet the team following one of their many triumphant returns from the national tournament, and I recall being speechless as the mystically towering Lew Alcindor (not yet Kareem Abdul Jabbar) strolled coolly by me in dark shades with a tall, fluffy afro. When Coach Wooden approached he seemed much more my size, and when I asked him to sign my little cardboard poster I’d made from newspaper photos of the team he graciously agreed. I don’t have many keepsakes in my possession, but I still have that little poster.
As UCLA won title after title the Wooden legend grew, the local press heaped praise at his magical consistency and gave him the title of Wizard (which he didn’t enjoy). Our grade school teachers would reverently write his Pyramid of Success on the chalkboard, hoping our often confused and misguided selves would absorb one of his enlightened tips on how to be. We puzzled over his zen-like advice to “Be quick but don’t hurry.” As a role model, John Wooden seemed to me both infinitely wise and calmly invincible. Winning for him began to seem almost a given.
Yet as we later came to realize, and as the world is re-discovering now after his death, John Wooden represented so much more than winning. He was above all a teacher of life, and he practiced a simple life of calm modesty. I remember he used to say that, when his players come out of the locker room after a game, the fans shouldn’t be able to tell if they’ve won or lost. He advocated the blue flame approach, a steady heat.
“Perform at your best when your best is required. Your best is required each day.”
I’m pretty sensitive to annoying advertisements. I recently watched a movie at an AMC theater and swore I’d never go back. The bombardment of ads blasted out at painful volume levels for about 40 minutes leading up to another 20 minutes of previews nearly pushed me out of the movie theater screaming before the movie even started. I feel a fool for paying them to advertise at me, yet I’d pay extra if they’d cut the ads (especially if they added a few Road Runner cartoons instead – those were the days).
I used to enjoy watching NFL football , but I can’t seem to sit through a game anymore due to the time sump of loud TV ads. When I do occasionally have a look, the mute button is my best friend.
I really enjoyed the World Cup partly because of the ad-less flow of the game.
And now an article in today’s Wall Street Journal forecasts the inevitability of advertising in ebooks. Though I instinctively shudder at the thought, as we are book retailers at the eBook Pie eBook store, I get the reasons why. Publishers are increasingly behind the eight-ball as the Wal-marts and Amazons of the world drive prices and margins down and leverage books as loss-leaders. And then there are those thieves who cross the line into pirate territory and download their books for free (you know who you are), further putting the squeeze on those who do the creating and producing.
So if authors and publishers can make a little extra from hopefully not too obtrusive ads in my ebooks, probably I shouldn’t complain. But lets see how they look and feel first. I reserve the right to cringe, but I really hope I won’t have to do any muting…
It includes ebooks from leading computer book publishers, and showcases eChapters available, http://bit.ly/9awgpw, as well as DRM-free ebooks.
It’s the first of several dedicated microsites coming soon – travel, business, medical/health. What other dedicated ebook microsites interest you? And what features would like to see?
If you are a beginner just discovering the joys of smoke cooking, this quick-read piece provides recipes for an electric, gas, or charcoal smoker, including gourmet brines, magical marinades, unique rubs, and savory sauces.
As we work, travel and work while we travel, one way I relax is to grill and BBQ outdoors, whenever possible, sometimes several times a week. What’s the difference? Depends on who you ask, but for most grilling means using direct heat, like the way you grill a steak. BBQ on the other hand means cooking slowly with low indirect heat. I’ve also heard some refer to BBQ as a technique and the grill as the tool. Whatever works.
When I have the time and inclination I like to play with smoke as well. Pork butt, salmon, veggies, back ribs, I like it all. But I’m still a novice, so I asked my friend the professional chef and smoke master Dan George for some pointers. Dan used to operate a popular BBQ restaurant before he started the renowned Smoke & Pickles, a unique catering company based in Westport, Mass that makes creative use of smoke to wide and growing acclaim. (The popular review site Design Sponge recently did a glowing profile of Dan and called Smoke & Pickles the “rock star caterers.”)
Here are some of Dan’s embers of wisdom for those who wish to pursue the Way of the BBQ:
Like to play with fire
Not be in a hurry
Know that bbq is a technique — a process — not a recipe or a sauce
And is as much a refuge from life’s rush as a way to cook food that’s well worth waiting for.
The whole thing’s about using low, indirect smoky heat to slowly transform certain rubbery, inexpensive cuts of meat into something tender, tasty and yes, priceless.
The drinking of beer or bourbon is said to enhance this long slow process.
There are almost as many different contraptions for attempting bbq-many quite simple and home made – as there are people willing to give it a try. (eg., A friend used a wheelbarrow with an aluminum foil canopy to bbq a goat when he was in the Peace Corps in Africa last year)
Personalities differ among bbq contraptions.
Part of the challenge and fun of cooking with a wood fire is getting acquainted with and trying to “master” whatever kind of bbq set-up you happen use.
Since a chunk of good bbq requires a good chunk of time and takes about the same effort to cook for ten as for two, you might as well invite some friends to help you eat it and to testify to your incredible taming of the wildness of fire and the toughness of beef brisket or pork butt.
Featuring 100 bold new recipes, along with lots of savvy tips for spicing up your backyard barbecue, this get-the-flavor guide a healthy dose of barbecue passion as it delivers practical advice and great recipes from some of America's best competition barbecue cooks.
A few years back, while choosing the next direction to aim our mobile office, we felt an urge to taste the difference between Texas, Memphis, Carolina and Kansas City BBQ, each of which makes loud claim to the title of Best. We decided to complement the BBQ theme by visiting a variety of blues clubs along the way, as the two go together well. From Colorado we turned south towards a working Spring tour of Texas, where BBQ shacks seem to sit around every other corner, and as Jill drove I read of Texas’s BBQ history, the origins, rivalries and the myriad claims to fame. I discovered determined tales of forced BBQ marches where brave culinary explorers attempted to taste from a different Texas BBQ 3 times a day for a month. I also studied up on some emerging Blues acts, hoping we might discover some local talent. We referred to this handy map of BBQ competions by region and popular BBQ joints as we meandered through Lubbock and Amarillo, Austin and Houston, South Padre and Galveston, even through dusty, barefoot little Crawford (backwater home of the former Western Whitehouse — how did that happen?) On and on through so many other smaller towns, we ate a lot of smoked meat – brisket, ribs, more brisket, hot links, more brisket and listened to blues where we found it.
We visited hallowed grilling towns like Lockhart, a town given the official title of BBQ Capital of Texas by the Texas State Senate. They serve it old-timey style in Lockhart. You order brisket by the pound and get it served on wax paper. Sauce is anathema in Lockhart, the grease is your sauce.
One day we drove long miles, and despite our hunger we resisted the pull of so many little BBQ joints along the way to instead attend a state BBQ competition at the Galveston County Fair. We wanted to save ourselves for what we hoped to be some serious competition BBQ, the really good stuff they say. We watched the awards show, toured the rows of hugely chromed and gleaming smokers the contestents had towed in, sniffed and drifted within a rising cloud of rich meat smoke, our stomachs growling expectantly, but then we were told the tastings were invitation only. So we had to settle for corn dogs at the rodeo.
Not long after we passed through Kansas City and stopped at Arthur Bryant’s BBQ, which opened in the 1920s. Some believe Arthur’s to be the very best BBQ in the country (Texans don’t). We joined the long line of what appeared to be local businessmen and construction workers that stretched out along the sidewalk past the shop, all anxious to get at Author’s meat. They gave us a load of ribs and pulled pork sandwiches and hot links, so much that we ate it for days after. Was it the best? We didn’t talk much while we were eating it, a sure sign of a contender. But better than Texas?
“If you think great BBQ requires splitting hardwood logs and sleepless nights stoking fires, Mindy Merrell and R.B. Quinn deliver the good news: killer 'cue needs nothing more than an oven or a slow-cooker.
We did pass through parts of the south, including Memphis, and we visited Clarksdale, Mississippi the Crossroads area that spawned Robert Johnson, WC Handy, Sonny Boy Williamson, B.B. King and so many other legendary bluesmen. We listened to the blues in old Delta juke joints, but we missed Carolina, and somehow got so distracted by the local catfish, gumbo, shrimp and grits that we never really tasted the local BBQ. Or perhaps we just needed a break from all that meat (tasty as it is, it was our experience that you can indeed have one too many plates of Texas brisket). I’ve played with Carolina style sauces some and enjoy the vinager base, but we can’t yet offer a definitive opinion on Memphis or Carolina style BBQ. It will come though.
Because I mostly cook for just Jill and I and our storage space is minimal, I carry around only a baby Weber gas grill, and sometimes a little baby Weber charcoal kettle as well if I want to do some small-scale smoking. If I have to smoke a big pork butt for a party, I have to borrow or improvise with whatever is around. Recently I watched Alton Brown on the Food Network demonstrate how to smoke a pork butt using just a cheap terra-cotta pot and a hot plate he picked up at a local home improvement store for just a few bucks. Hmmm…
Jill was recently asked by the folks at Leadership Courseware to contribute an article to their blog summarizing the pros, cons and how-tos of managing teams of people remotely. For the last several years Jill and I have worked either from home or from the road (and for the last 5 years, the road has [...]
Welome PoliPointPress! As the their tag line describes, they publish “Progressive Books on Politics, Culture, and Sustainability”. Based out of the picturesque waterfront town of Sausalito, California, just a hop over the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco, they opened in 2004 “…to publish lively books on politics and current affairs. Our authors share their [...]
One of eBookPie’s more enthusiastic customers, Daniele Nicolucci, a web developer from Italy, just posted a robust review of the Cybook Opus e-reader on his blog. As he notes in his review, “The Opus is a great and cheap way to join the e-book reader revolution. After just a few hours of use, it felt [...]
Today we sent out a press release announcing 0ur new Chapterizer service, which enables us to quickly slice up an eBook into individually packaged and saleable eChapters, articles, sections, you name it. We’ve been talking to publishers about chunking their content in this way so to give customers the option of purchasing content by-the-slice. Nearly [...]
