Play Room

Welcome Play Room visitors!

Thanks for stopping by the newest star in the Nightingale-Conant universe -- our brand-new blog, the Play Room. We hope you're enjoying yourself! We sure are.

The Play Room is 1) a work in progress, and 2) all about YOU, our readers. We want this to be a place you come back to again and again, finding something new and valuable each time you do. So if you've got any ideas for how we can make it more engaging, more interesting, or all-around better, we would LOVE to hear them!

Is there something you'd like to see here in the Play Room? Something you want to hear about or discuss? Send us your thoughts at [email protected], or leave a comment below.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Makin' my way through the BEA!

I just got back from our two annual industry showcases---the APAC (Audio Publishers Assocation Conference) and the BEA (Book Expo America).  As I attended the "networking" meals and seminars, perused the numerous booths of books and audios looking for what's "hot," and rubbed shoulders with industry "insiders," I detected a distinct mood in the air that permeated every attendee--the mood could only be described with the paradoxical juxtaposition of two words:  Excited/Terrified.

The paradox is this:  Because of the impending new technologies and terms invading the publishing world (namely, the internet, podcasting, downloading, streaming, beaming, flash, bits, bytes, aggregation, disaggregation, blogs, posts, digitization, scanning, texting, "IM--ing"....need I go on?) never has there been a greater opportunity to make your mark in publishing.  Now, take that last sentence up and repeat it right until you get to the last parentheses, and replace the ending with this statement "....never has there been a greater opportunity to lose your shirt in publishing."  Both of those statements are equally true.  Hence, the mood of me and my schizophrenic fellow attendees----excited/terrified.

As one publishing executive told us at the "Future of Publishing" seminar:  "We have left the world of 'read, think and re-read,' or 'listen, think and relisten'.......and have now entered the world of 'search, scan and sample.' "

Hey, man, easy for you to say!  But, last time I checked Sam's Club and Costco don't make their money on the food samples!  But, they do use the samples, to entice people to buy the "whole enchilada."

Hmmmm.....well, friends, I've got to go.  We've got a business model to work on!

Danno

An explosive combination?

I'm sick of all these inferior tv shows being discussed here in the Play Room. "24", people, "24" --that's where it's at!!! Start watching, please, so that we can all stand around the coffee machine on Tuesday mornings and talk about the last night's episode. If I could do that, my life here at NC would be well nigh perfect.

But Dave's post below did get me thinking: What we should really do is broker a deal between "24" AND "American Inventor", to get all of those awesome gadgets Agent Jack Bauer uses to thwart the bad guys out into the mainstream. I mean, the thing he put into the German spy's Blackberry that destroyed the terrorist watch list? The thing that made the gas pipes explode? Who couldn't use nifty little numbers like those on a daily basis?

Quick, somebody get Doug Hall on the phone ... and FedEx Kiefer Sutherland a copy of Jump Start Your Brain, pronto!