A Publisher’s Room with a View: Top Publishing News of the Week, 3/5/10

This photo doesn’t really do justice to the window in my office, but the fact that since the first of the year—after our big move across campus into a newly remodeled suite of offices—I HAVE a window at all after five years of working in something of a cave in our old building is wonderful in its own right. Plus, for the first two months of the year it was gray, cold, and rainy outside most of the time which wasn’t too cheerful a view but spring is finally starting make an appearance with lots of blue sky and sunshine.

For all us here it’s been a busy week: Sheila and Wes are at the Texas Community College Teachers Association conference in Houston, we picked up our new summer catalogs from the print shop, a couple of forthcoming titles are being indexed . . . the last stage for them to go through before being sent to print, and the Lust, Violence, Religion: Life in Historic Waco Facebook page is up to 158 fans. (For anyone who hasn’t been there yet, you can listen to a podcast of the first chapter as narrated by Mike Jones, who is recording every essay in the book for us.) And, on the subject of LVR podcasts, within the next few weeks those audio files will also be available to download for free at Podiobooks during the run-up to the book’s 9/1/10 publication date.

Recommended Business Resources: MBA Working Girl Podcasts

Okay, so I have to admit it: at heart I’m something of a Luddite. I’m still using rabbit ears on the TV, had dial-up Internet at home for six years until going broadband a couple of months ago, and just finally got a cell phone last year only after losing the charger for my wife’s phone and then discovering it was cheaper to buy another phone with the charger included rather than buying the charger alone. For sure, for a guy who fell into book publisher because I liked books as objects all on their own, I was born in the wrong millennium given that they’re quickly becoming a secondary—at best—delivery system for information. But, what did I expect, having the kind of non-tech attitude that mirrors Homer Simpson saying, “I hear they have the Internet on computers now.”

On the brighter side, now that we’ve got broadband at home I have dived feet first into the podcast section at iTunes and have been downloading hundreds of different podcasts on publishing, business, management, marketing, project management, and other related subjects. And for sure, there’s one series of podcasts I’ve happily subscribed (and listened) to: MBA Working Girl Podcast.