New trends in Indian writing

Anyone in India who likes reading and visits libraries frequently would have noticed that the shelves labeled ‘Indian Writing’ or ‘Indian Writers’ are getting filled with new books each day. This is because the number of Indian writers getting published is gradually increasing.

The interesting thing about this new development is that most of these writers are young and are targeting an audience which is also young and shares the same mindset as theirs. Most of these books are based on life in college or life as working professionals, and they become a hit with the audience, as most of them identify with the writers’ ideas.

India is also growing in terms of technology. This is the age of tablets and smartphones, what with many homegrown brands competing with each other to provide users tablets as cheap as they can be.

Indian writers can cash in on the tablet wave which has hit the country, by publishing eBooks. That audience of young students or semi-professionals starting their career, are also the consumers of mobile devices that can be used to read eBooks.

MetaPlume is making a push to reach out to Indian writers. This is the time to publish eBooks and reach that new growing audience! Find out how MetaPlume can help Indian writers here.

Tweet and win a copy of TweakTown’s Ultimate Guide to PC Cases eBook!

TweakTown is all ready to give away 10 free copies of ‘TweakTown’s Ultimate Guide to PC Cases’ eBook. All you need to do to win the competition is tweet “I want to win a copy of TweakTown’s Ultimate Guide to PC Cases eBook- http://tweaktown.to/rb41cQ” on Twitter.

TweakTown have reviewed literally hundreds of PC cases and their main PC case reviewer, Chad Sebring, reflects and summarizes all of his experiences and knowledge in the field in this comprehensive guide to choosing your next chassis. The eBook explains what you need to consider when choosing a PC case, including the form factor, motherboard compatibility, materials and construction, and the weight, durability and look.

This is your chance to get the USD 10.99 eBook for free! The competition ends on October 7^th. Tweet and win!

Get to know the mysterious Red Goddess on your smartphone

Your Android device is opening up a broad way of understanding the mysterious spiritual symbolism of Indian tantric tradition in a succinct but lucid way if you are interested.

The eBook “The Mysteries of Red Goddess” brings together the magnanimous goddess of Indian tantrik tradition, Lalita’s, key attributes and symbolism. All creation, manifestation and dissolution is considered to be a play of the goddess as the name mentions, Lalita means ‘She who plays’.

The eBook also includes an English translation of the Vamakeswara Tantra, one of the most authoritative and oft-quoted manuals of Sri Vidya and the 65^th independent tantra, referred to in the famous Soundaryalahari.

“Many commentaries exist on the Vamakeswara Tantra, and without doubt it is one of the most important of the works belonging to Sri Vidya. Vamakeswari is the Devi in her aspect as emanating the universe, hence producing the sense of difference. In this for she is figured as the Sri Yantra, which is within the wheel of time or the Kalachakra, and high symbol of both microcosm and macrocosm.”

If you’ve been brooding about turning your smartphone or tablet into a tool for figuring out Indian tantric tradition, you may start with ‘The Mysteries of Red Goddess’.

eBook publishing: from illegitimate to appealing

I had the pleasure of talking to Elly Hamilton yesterday, a busy and pioneering woman who runs two websites, Aus Writers and new one called Writers Downunder. Both sites are enterprises which she runs outside of a full time job. Admirably, there are no ads on either site; Elly runs the sites out of a genuine desire to help writers in Australia with their art, and to ultimately get published.

Elly helped to run a day course at the recent Melbourne’s Writers’ Festival and I asked her if digital publishing was discussed … no. The many speakers and all the advice was only geared towards print publishing. But she said, there is interest in eBook publishing now.

About five years ago when I studied professional writing and editing, with quite a talented bunch of aspiring writers, the students and certainly the teachers, curled their lip at eBook publishing. It was seen as a lesser option, almost illegitimate. Now writers are beginning to view it as an affordable option. On Linked In, a writer introduced themselves this morning to an eBook discussion group, explaining that they recently self-published their first novel on Smashwords:

“After over a year of trying to get agents to even look at the book (I don’t mind rejection after looking at it, but only one even asked for pages), I went this way. I formatted via their style guide. I paid a graphic artist to make a wonderful cover. It’s now up and I get a real thrill every time I sell a copy (14 and counting). I personally prefer paper, but the cost… the cost. With this, the only cost was time and the cover.”

This writer followed the Smashwords lengthy but comprehensive formatting guide to get their novel published digitally. It’s a great option for the technically competent. With the WordPlume Choice Program, we’re offering to do the fiddly formatting for Australian writers and get published on Amazon.

I’m looking forward to talking to Elly more. She started Aus Writers in 2002 and has a keen sense of what Australian writers aspire to in publishing options.

Choosing a PC case is not rocket science … anymore

“Just as with any trade, workers demand the best performance at reasonable pricing. For most skilled workers, quality will outweigh both of those in the right situation. I know any $50 case will hold your parts, keep them out of harm’s way, and may offer some airflow; I want to show you that unlike boards, processors, memory, even GPU’s, guys with bleeding edge hardware even tend to put four, maybe five, systems in the same case.”

That’s just so well said by Chad Sebring, the Case and Cooling Editor at TweakTown, in his eBook, ‘TweakTown’s Ultimate guide to PC Cases’. Selecting a computer case, the most neglected part of PC building, is actually pretty important … it often outlives all the hardware!

I was impressed by how simply Chad explained the mysteries of PC cases in this eBook, giving information on all form factors such as desktop, ATX, HTPC, SSF, even mid towers, full-towers, and even super towers, etc. It’s a must read for a n00b like me with zero knowledge of PC cases as it explains PC building issues in layman’s terms.

Unraveling the mysteries of differences

I was quite good at mathematics during school, but my sister was just ok in the numbers game. She loves cooking, and I love the mouth watering dishes she makes, but I can’t tell the difference between soy sauce and cola!

As you grow up you notice differences between yourself and friends and siblings and when you visit or start doing business with other cultures, you also notice differences. Habits differ and so can even fundamental things, like how to measure right and wrong. The Chinese have a different culture, different customs, different manners and a completely different way of seeing things compared with many other cultures.

“If you look at Chinese as a puzzle to solve, a mystery to figure out, you will fail! Why? Because if you start out looking at the Chinese as a mystery you will find what you are looking for, a mystery, and the more you try to solve the Chinese mystery the more mysterious the Chinese will become.”

Greg Bissky has been part of several funny incidents over the years where he has been puzzled by the mystery of Chinese. He has penned his experiences in a book titled ‘Wearing Chinese Glasses: How (not) to Go Broke in Chinese Asia’.

“Chinese do things differently than you do, often very differently, but they are just people who want the same things you do. The key to success is just that simple, looking at Chinese as people, not as mysteries or puzzles.”

His book is an excellent insight for any non-Chinese that wants to view and understand things from a Chinese perspective, a skill that’s very valuable for building strong and lasting business relationships.

Connecting with local talent

MetaPlume has offices in Australia, Taiwan, India and the UK. Over the next few weeks we’ll be making a concerted effort to connect with writers in Australia and India.

In Australia, I’ll be endeavouring to make contact with writers who are published in print and want to get their books into digital format, and aspiring unpublished writers looking to reach a global digital audience.

I will be making contact with writing workshop groups, writing support groups, professional organisations and local informal groups alike.

If you’re a writer in Australia or part of a writer’s group, check out our information page and make contact.

‘System Tools’ eBook: all ready for a second edition

The great success of the eBook “Top Ten System Tools for Android” is prompting MetaPlume to release a second edition. Testing and updating the Android system tools apps for the eBook is well under way.

System tools apps are crucial for Android devices. They are used to modify system settings and run Android well. You can modify your files, run and protect any apps you’ve on your Android device, maximize your battery level and a lot more using system tools apps!

The first release of the eBook showed people how to systematize their Android device. Five months later, it’s time for some new apps to earn their place in the eBook … or will they? Will the original top ten stand the test of time? We’ll all find out soon.

What’s behind the culture of bookstores closures in Australia?

At the moment I live in an outer south eastern suburb of Melbourne Australia and over the last two years I’ve seen my choice of bookstores go from about 8 within 20 kilometres to just 1. Apparently in Greater Dandenong there’s none! I’m moving to Central Victoria at the end of the year and although my closest supermarket will be a twenty minute drive away, so will my nearest bookstore … plus a small handful of excellent second hand options. So is it the culture of the burbs to not want bookstores anymore? Somehow I don’t think so.

In Australia, as this article in the Age reports, the collapse of REDgroup wiped out about 30% of bookstores country-wide, leaving many major shopping centres without bookstores. Apparently rival bookstores that could have come in to fill stores that were run by Borders and Angus & Robertson, have decided not to, because the rent in large shopping centres is just too high. So is this a culture of greedy businesses in Australia making bookstores unviable for the burbs?

Of course you know the next cultural change I’m going to suggest is eBooks, that Australians are quite happily purchasing digital books online instead of buying print books from stores. Kobo (in Australia) say their traffic has increased by 30% since the closure of REDgroup.

The bookstore closures are a mix of retail overhead woes and eBook popularity, but the culture of reading in Australia is very strong still, even when more and more Australians have a tyranny of distance between themselves and the nearest print bookstore.

How important is marketing skill in using social media?

I have been following an interesting discussion … and debate at times … on Linked In which started with this question:

“One of the key problems with “Social Media Marketing” is that many practitioners are focussed on the technical or the communication aspects – and don’t really understand Marketing. Agree or Disagree?”

There are really two questions in this aren’t there? Being too focussed on technical aspects and being too focused on communication aspects.

I think that my core reaction to the first question is that yes, it can be easy to get blinded by the technicalities of using social media in marketing, and for that to become the focus of the task, rather than ensuring that the messaging is correct. Assuming that tweeting 20 times a day is a good use of Twitter as a social media marketing tool simply because there are technical tools out there that allow you to automate posting, doesn’t make this a good practice. So if the sentence is re-cast as “many practitioners are focussed on the technical or the communication aspects – and don’t really understand Marketing” I’d say that I agree.

On the other hand, if you take the second part of the question, “many practitioners are focussed on the technical or the communication aspects – and don’t really understand Marketing” it becomes a bit of a confused issue. Marketing is all about communication. Communicating an idea, an image, a brand, a story, and with social media, a profile, a message and a conversation.

I like this response to the discussion which I copied and pasted earlier today and the discussion has grown so much I can’t find it again to be able to attribute it (sorry to whoever posted it):

“Social media is one giant electronic cocktail party – the trick is to talk to as many interesting people in the room as possible and, hopefully, stimulate their interest at the same time.”

This alludes to one of the key aspects of social media marketing and that’s reaching the right people. In that cocktail party there are some people who would enjoy hearing what you have to say and others who have no interest. Social media marketing, like all marketing, will involve a bit of fluff and fun, but it’s about communicating something of value to someone who is, or could be, valuable to your business. It’s about knowing how to use the technical tools to find them and use your marketing and communication skills to get your message across.