Craft Congress Invite

So Craft Congress is in the planning stages again. You can check the site here, or you can just read the about info right here on Marimello if you, like we are lazy:

CRAFT CONGRESS, the first-ever gathering of organizers in the DIY/indie craft community, is now a sweet memory!

Fifty indie craft organizers came together in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, to share ideas, find ways to work together for our mutual benefit and to make our craft community even better.

While some questions were answered, many more were raised. So, that leaves us with the task of planning the Second Annual Craft Congress in 2008!

If you'd like to help plan the 2nd Annual CC, contact: Gloria in Pittsburgh at: gtforouzan (at) gmail.com. We'll need your help with:

1. Planning topics for discussion.

2. Fund raising to keep Craft Congress affordable for participants.

3. Getting the word out to all of the organizers around the world.

We’re reaching out across the U.S.A., U.K., Canada, Australia and every where that crafty types are at work. Please help us get the word out.

Organizers please join our Yahoo group, (to brainstorm, plan, etc.), by going to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/craftcongress2007

Ideas Unbound: Interview with David Bernstein Part II

Digital content (i.e. your patterns, your words, your pics) will find an audience who doesn’t want or need to pay. This is faboo if you are posting on say Instructables, but not so if you are trying to make a buck. So, we’re back with part deux of the David Bernstein interview where in we discuss the desire for digital content to be free, what gets the New Pamphleteer out the door, and the future of print in the digital age. The New Pamphleteer has embraced the ideas which big publishing houses have not and has big plans for navigating the murky waters between print and digital formats.

M: Many publishers, small and large, are worried about giving away any scrap of their merchandise, including allowing access to a book via Google Book Search or Amazon Search Inside the Book. But you send out an ebook version of your pamphlets to everyone who orders. While we may be so sated with the instant readability, who says we're not gonna turn around, print it out and circulate it our damn selves?

DB: Our mantra on this is unoriginal, but true: Digital content wants to be free. Ebooks are to, me, a not particularly attractive product as a reader. What advantage do they have, as currently constituted, over printed books? The bottom line is, if someone really wants the content, they want to own it in physical form. If they only want to read it, but aren't willing to pay ... well, they would just borrow the printed book from a friend or a library, or but a used copy fro a buck from Amazon. For us, ebooks are just an easier way to let people pass around our stuff to their friends, which I don’t see as a bad thing. The more people who see our pamphlets, the better it is for us. Marketing guru Seth Godin proved this a few years ago, when he gave away the ebook version of one of his books and saw sales of the physical copies skyrocket. Most publishers are terrified of this model, but we're pretty certain that it’s what the future will hold – at least until someone comes up with a more interesting (meaning interactive and fun) way of creating ebooks. Which I might add, is one of our goals as well.

M: Your background in big publishing houses suggests to us that you've had lots of lots of in-house resources—designers, copyeditors, publicists, worker bees, knuckle draggers, etc. Are the Pamphlet Guys handling these tasks with freelancers or what?

DB: We have a VERY talented pool of freelancers who do our design, copyediting, and publicity. But we also do quite a bit ourselves.

M: Aside from revolutionize publishing and the digital stream of consciousness on the web, have you got any big plans in the works? Because we think you are onto something. We think the fate of creative industries, and those that support them lie in the hands of the indies.

DB: As I alluded to earlier, we have big plans for the future relating to ebooks. Print and digital are going to continue to converge in ways that are difficult to predict, but we plan to be right at the center of it, creating a whole range of innovative products. Our logo says "The Future of Print in a Digital Age" which I think sums it up perfectly. Print is going to look different. Digital is going to look different, as our ways of accessing content continue to evolve as a result of new products and technologies. And I think the line between the two will just get blurrier.

Ideas Unbound: David Bernstein of the New Pamphleteer Part I

For some time we've been thinking about how the ever-expanding world seems constantly to be reeled in by indie minds and indie ventures and so far it has involved some of the most interesting people we've ever met. Most recently we've had a chance to chat with David Bernstein of The New Pamphleteer (or one of the Pamphlet Guys as we have been referring to him). A joint venture of David Bernstein and Adam Bellow, The New Pamphleteer started out as an effort to sift through the best of online writing and putting it into print. Fascinated with the way The New Pamphleteer mantra has lined up with the digitization of the craft world through online mags, zines and social networking sites, Marimello traded a few friendly emails. We'll post the rest tomorrow.
Sample their wares here.

M: A little background por favor: What's your inspiration for filtering the digital stream; taking blogs and putting them on the printed page?

DB: Initially, we saw value in preserving some of the most interesting online content in print for both commercial and archival reasons. However, over time we have become less interested in blog content than in we are in the bloggers themselves, many of whom are terrific writers and thinkers. The reason that blogs have become so popular as an outlet for talented writers is that there are numerous artificial barriers preventing these folks from publishing with mainstream outlets – from the need to get an agent, to having a media profile, to gaining the right contacts. What we want to do is open up the publishing process a bit, by allowing talent to find an audience over time rather than being beholden to the vagaries of the Barnes & Noblization of publishing – the trend that increasingly requires every book to be a “bestseller.”

M: Can you help elaborate on the difference between a zine and a pamphlet?

DB: Well, to me 'zines have this underground, haphazard feel to them. Multiple authors under one cover, no real point-of-view or consistency throughout. Not that 'zines can't be fun and interesting, but what we are doing is different – a pamphlet has a single point-of-view, a consistent voice, and a purpose in terms either providing concrete information or advancing an idea, argument or viewpoint.

M: Why'd ya pick a fashion blogger like Manolo [the shoe blogger] (aside from the fact that he is genius complete)? What's the submission process?

DB: Manolo is the ideal example of what we look for in an author – a rich blend of talent, a strongly passionate connection with a loyal online audience, and a mischievous entrepreneurial streak. In the case of Manolo, he was one of the first authors we sought out. But at the same time, we are very eager to see unsolicited submissions as well. One of our most successful, and I think best written, offerings is “Raising Wild Boys Into Men: A Modern Dad's Survival Guide” by Kansas blogger Tony Woodlief. Tony sent us about 6 pamphlet proposals by email before we settled on this one. We're also working on putting together a contest where we invite submissions, and we'll post them as ebooks and let the public decide which should be published in print.

M: Who are your target readers? What's the distribution process like?

DB: Our readers are the same people, by and large, who read blogs. We see the pamphlet as a physical extension of the online connection which top bloggers have with their readers. In pure marketing terms it's a “brand extension”-- like when you buy a Spider-Man t-shirt to go along with your closet full of comics. Currently, we distribute primarily through our own website. We sell a bit in independent bookstores, and we also have negotiated several bulk distribution deals with brick and mortar partners. In general, though, we have stayed away from traditional retail channels (and I count Amazon among those) because, first, they take too much of our money and second, we like having direct relationships with our customers, which is something you lose with retail sales.

M: Do you see these pamphlets as possible promotional tools for say a community effort? Say a publicist who reps a bunch of writers or designers? Or for that matter a bunch of writers who can't get it all together at Kinkos?

DB: The cool thing about the pamphlet format is that it can be purposed for pretty much any kind of content. We are looking at a wide range of opportunities and ideas right now, including using them for promotional purposes, reprinting classic or archival material, and even doing short graphic novels. So yeah, any ideas people have we're willing to entertain.

Functionality Friday: Wear Black this Weekend

Good news first, or bad news?
Bad news? You sick freak.
JT Leroy defrauded the movie company, a federal court said today. Why is this bad news? Well one, because finding out JT Leroy wasn't real in the first place was, as David Segal said in the Washington Post, "like finding out John Updike is a robot." If that didn't make 2005 bad enough, finding out two years later that the courts now get to decide when fiction is business fraud, is way worse. It's a sad day for creativity and a sad end to a really interesting tale.
Also in the sad news department, indie publishers took a hit, well a while ago, but it's all flooding back with the sort of fire sale over at McSweeney's. Real quick, the distributer for McSweeney's and 130 other indie publishers, Advanced Marketing Services (AMS) went bankrupt back in December. What's so indie about having a distributer anyway? Well Priya Jain puts it simply in Salon."You can't sell a book if no one knows where to find it, and in helping [indie pubs] overcome that problem , PWG [who was bought by AMS] had become indie publishers' most indespensible partner." It's a valuable lesson for anyone looking to expand their audience/market, and we suppose it's the only sunny side to the story; stay indie, stay self reliant, and stay strong. See it as a big lesson on corporate accounting and take a page from Richard Nash, publisher of Soft Skull, who states, "the independents got fucked by the Enron of publishing."

So what could possibly be the good news? Aside from the rather somber lessons to be learned? Well Marimello enjoys a good celebrity sighting as much the next Angeleno, so not to get all Crafty TMZ on you all, but did any one check out the cover of Woodturning Basics? That's right William H. Macy is coming out crafty. How sweet it is.