The lovely folks at one of the world’s most popular blogs, Gizmodo, posted an excerpt of Made By Hand today. Even better, they commissioned a terrific illustration of Mark Frauenfelder by the wonderfully talented Nikki Cook.
For the full image and the excerpt, head over to Gizmodo.
Time recently announced its list of the Best Blogs of 2010. Unsurprisingly, Portfolio author Mark Frauenfelder’s Boing Boing made the cut in the Essential category. Congrats, Mark!
You can download an excerpt of Mark’s new book, Made By Hand, here.
As a business book editor, I’m always surprised at the yawning chasm between business theory and its practice. Sure, there’s a lot of hokum out there in the business category, but there are also so many really great ideas for taking the most humble business—a hardware store, a coffee shop, a garage—and making it something truly remarkable. Why hire a consultant to save your business when twenty-five bucks will buy you wisdom from the greatest business minds who ever lived?
That’s why it’s exciting to see a business take a chance and try something new.
[Panera] launched a new nonprofit store here this week that has the same menu as its other 1,400 locations. But the prices are a little different—there aren’t any. Customers are told to donate what they want for a meal, whether it’s the full suggested price, a penny or $100.
Have a sandwich, pay what you want, and do good in the process. Kudos to Panera for going in this direction. I think there’s great potential in this concept, especially at this moment in time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of Panera’s competitors quickly jump on the bandwagon.
A young man spoke on his cell phone nearby. “Seriously,” he said. “They don’t charge tax or anything.”
CNSNews: Restaurant Lets You Pay What You Want
(photo courtesy of moriza)
At long last, I can share the news. The team behind Portfolio is launching a brand-new popular science imprint: Current.
See the whole press release below, and please do share with anyone who might be interested. If you like what Portfolio does with business books, you’re going to love what Current does with science.
In publishing, we often say that customers don’t pay any attention to imprints—maybe that’s true, maybe not. But authors, agents, and booksellers do. Portfolio’s sterling reputation makes my life as an editor much easier. The next challenge is to build Current to the point that it’s as synonymous with excellent publishing in its category as Portfolio is in business.
Naturally, Current will eventually have its own Web presence. In the meantime, we’ll share any Current-related news here on the Portfolio blog.
(Photo courtesy of Goddard Photo and Video blog.)
Any of this look familiar?
In the publishing world, we don’t use PowerPoint nearly as much as we should—at most of our meetings with the sales force, it’s just the editor presenting his books while seated at a table. As terrible as these PowerPoint sins are, I do sometimes wish I could throw up a few charts and bulletpoints to bolster my pitch. “As you can see here, sales for the author’s last book were up 14% relative to Q4.”
The debate between proponents of free markets and proponents of government intervention continues, now in rap form. John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek lay it down for you, gangsta-style:
Boing Boing: Keynes and Hayek gangsta rap
If anyone has an idea for a book that explains these two ideologies in an epic poem or perhaps a series of two or three hundred limericks, please send a proposal my way.
