Six Books, One Binding

We love our multitasking, multi-functional phones, tablets and e-readers, but it seems our ancestors have been rocking that “all in one” vibe at least since early modern times. Practical? Well, we’ll leave it to our readers to decide, but it’s certainly a bravura display of the bookbinder’s art. A tip of the hat on this one to Open Culture. https://www.tumblr.com/erikkwakkel/74300240443/six-books-one-binding-heres-something-special

Making It Sew — and So

This week’s news is that Michael and I have finally begun the process of getting Dead Man’s Trigger (DMT) down from the digital clouds and into a real, physical paperback book. We’d like to apologize for the wait to those of you who have been faithfully awaiting the paperback version, and to let you know it won’t be much longer […]

On the Nature of Roller Coasters

Hey again. This is Alesia, checking in with a little progress report. Here’s the tl;dr version: We’re still here, alive, kicking, swinging for the fences. That’s huge. We’ve had to restructure MetPub to get through this interregnum. Our goals as publishers are changing, and the company needs to change to reflect them. More on this as we actually get “nails […]

The EPUB Connundrum

For readers and publishers both, the EPUB format has everything one could want in a 21st century digital publication — except for one thing: Uniformity of presentation as described by the IDPF Standard. This post looks at some of the more common failings to be found in the EPUB reader ecosystem, and proposes changes that the IDPF could make to the EPUB Standard that would help it live up to its goal of being "the industry standard" for digital publications.

The Slush Pile Flood

It seems to be the issue that won’t go away. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of new titles are being uploaded to Amazon every day. Books and shorts that never would have seen the light of day under the ‘old regime’ can now be tossed up on the web, virtually for free, by anyone who thinks they’re the next Mark Twain. Just […]