Voltaire would have loved Nirvana Chronicles.

It is with electronic magazines as it is with people: a few good ones make all the difference.

Voltaire

I’ve been a publisher for a LONG time — over 35 years and counting.

Since I established Authorcloud a couple of years ago, I’ve been struck by how similar the issues facing indie-publishing authors are these days. The brave new digital world that’s sweeping the old publishing paradigm away is one full of both peril and possibility. The bottom line is that, last year, almost 250,000 new book and ebook titles were published in English. Making the challenge of standing out in the crowd daunting, to put it mildly.

I’ve been grappling with the question of how best to assist authors in gaining some visibility for their work. To stand out in the crowd. How best to assist them in gaining an audience, and hopefully some traction in a horribly crowded marketplace, at a time when most traditional publishers do little if anything to promote their authors’ works.

My answer? A new electronic magazine, called Nirvana Chronicles.

Imagine a gorgeous, monthly e-magazine, easily available to hundreds of millions of iPad, iPod, and iPhone owners around the world. A beautifully designed, fully interactive e-magazine, that will include fabulous photography, awesome art, vivid videos, moving music, and… riveting writing, featuring authors like you!

Every issue of Nirvana will showcase original work by talented writers. Short fiction. Excerpts from works in progress and previously published material. Non-fiction. Poetry. Author interviews. Feature stories on authors. Reviews. And lively, opinionated news from the rapidly evolving world of publishing, info of interest to writers everywhere.

I asked myself what I would choose to take with me if I were sent to a desert island (one with high speed WiFi available!), and was allowed to take along an iPad and a single e-magazine app. Nirvana Chronicles is the answer.

To pull this off, I need your help. There are three things you can do to make Nirvana a success.

Rockethub makes it easy to become a Nirvana supporter!

First, you can make a contribution. I want Nirvana to be editorially independent. No mega-corp telling us what we can and can’t publish. I don’t want to be beholden to a board or a bunch of bottom line-driven shareholders. So I’m looking to raise a bit of capital through an innovative “crowdfunding” organization called Rockethub. So far I’ve received contributions ranging as high as $500. But contributions as low as $5 are equally welcome. Contributing is easy: just CLICK HERE, then click the big red Fuel This Project button, and away you go. For as little as the cost of a Starbucks double latte, you can help create a fantastic new vehicle for authors, artists, musicians, and filmmakers.

Secondly, you can consider submitting your work. It’s easy. Just contact me, at randy@authorcloud.com. Let me know what you have in mind, and we’ll take the conversation from there. I know how tough it is to have your work noticed, in a professional way. If I can help, I will.

And lastly, spread the word! Let all your social media friends and contacts know about Nirvana, and urge them to lend their support.

I started this post with a paraphrased quote from Voltaire. I’ll end with one, too.

Life may indeed be a shipwreck. But don’t forget to sing in the lifeboat!

Jess Waid’s long-awaited Mike Montego trilogy is poised for publication

Former Los Angeles policeman Jess Waid’s sprawling, three-book saga featuring Hollywood Division cop Mike Montego is set for imminent release.

The first two books in the series, Shades of Blue and 459 – Framed in Red, will be available as trade paperbacks in September, 2012. eBook versions for Kindle, iPad, Nook, and Kobo tablets will closely follow. The final volume featuring the exploits of Mike Montego, set in the L.A. of the early ’60s, The Purple Hand, is slated for publication in October. As with the earlier volumes, an eBook version will also be available.

Stay tuned for more on Waid and his work.

Authors are so concerned with how to best publish or distribute their work these days, they often forget the fundamental importance of content. What’s inside the book or ebook is still the single most important consideration for any author. Which is why professional editing is so crucial. If you’re serious about your writing, then you seriously need an editor. Seriously!

Traditional mainstream publishers and booksellers are rapidly disappearing. Many authors bemoan the demise of The Book. But they forget books are simply a (500-year-old) means of delivering the author’s ideas to an audience, and that, now that a more efficient way of doing the same thing has come along (the web), so long, Gutenberg! Authors need to embrace the change. There are more ways of telling a tale, more ways of reaching a virtually limitless audience than ever before in human history. The book is dead — long live the (e)book!

After 244 years in print, the Britannica says farewell

The Britannica‘s gone. And I say, “good riddance!”

If ever there was a poster child for the changes being wrought by the web specifically, and digital technologies generally, the Britannica was it. Its final edition, published in 2010, includes 32 volumes and sells for around $1,400. It will of course, never, ever be updated — although it must be said, it always took a long, long time for any of the previous editions to be updated, so never doesn’t seem much of a stretch.

Meanwhile it took only a couple of hours after the announcement was made at Britannica‘s Chicago HQ for word of the antiquated info-porkster’s demise to be reported and duly documented on Wikipedia. If the shoe had been on the other technological/editorial foot, we would have learned about the free, web-based “universal encyclopedia”‘s end in the pages of Britannica by, oh, say around 2020.

Some things cease to exist simply because they're, well, stupid!

There have already been plenty of commentaries on the end of this venerable publication. The hippest amongst them point out (rightly, I think) that the Britannica‘s model — that of providing one voice (often, but certainly not always considered a leading expert) explaining The Truth, just doesn’t cut it. Knowledge, fed by research, vetted by peer review and the merciless crucible of the Real World, constantly changes. Making the approach taken by Wikipedia far better suited to keeping those who simply must know, properly up to speed at all time.

I would add another angle. For me, Britannica always represented a sort of upper middle class snootiness — if you didn’t have a set, it said something not very flattering about you and your family’s socio-economic position.

The company’s business model was ruthless, a classic example of aggressive, guilt-inducing, bottom-feeding capitalism of the worst kind.  I’m old enough to remember waves of merciless door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen sweeping regularly through our neighborhood, barging in and shaming countless working class families into shelling out what was for them a not-so-small fortune (“no problem, simply avail yourselves of our easy, monthly payment plan!”), desperate that their children have every chance to carve out a better life for themselves.

Of course, for most of us whose families did manage to acquire this Holy Grail of home reference works, once obtained, we scarcely cracked a cover, outside the occasional furtive search for articles on heady topics like Sexual Intercourse, the Kinsey Report, and Hitler’s Bunker.

In a world where it costs almost as much to send a book to someone as the book’s cover price, it’s little surprise the Britannica has gone where cowboys who smoke went before.

Adios, Marlboro Man. Vaya con Dios, Britannica

But let’s remember amidst all the inevitable nostalgia for “a simpler, less troubled time” (tell that to folks still alive who lived through Auschwitz or Pol Pot, or get on the ol’ sat phone and have a quick chat between mortar shell bursts and machine gun fire with anyone still alive in Homs), that Britannica never actually democratized knowledge. It merely provided those who owned it with the facade, the appearance they knew something those who didn’t have it didn’t know. It was a smug, dust-gathering reminder on the sagging bookshelf of one’s inherent superiority, a several-hundred-pound trophy that said to all who gazed upon its long row of gold-embossed spines, “these people have got it.” Literally.

Those who didn’t, or those who sported cheaper, less prestigious alternatives (mine was, sad to say, a World Book household), didn’t. Losers.

So after almost two-and-a-half centuries, no more print edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Good riddance. The Britannica is dead. Love live Wikipedia!

Ken Kesey once said his psychedelic bus, Further, was his greatest work. Easy for him to say, with books like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion under his belt.

Most writers I know are not yet ready to move on to auto art. They have a ways to go yet, creatively and commercially, before they feel they have the luxury to cash a royalty check and invite some pals to hop aboard and go cavorting down the West Coast, dispensing wisdom and hallucinogens to an unsuspecting public.

In fact, for most authors, their own personal Magical Mystery Tours have little to do with Peace, Love, and LSD, and a lot to do with effective writing, decent design, and trying to figure out how to reach an audience in the 21st century.

Which is why I’ve decided to create a new Authorcloud — a web-based dispenser of author services for discerning, self-publishing authors. Authorcloud will provide professional editorial and design support, as well as advice, coaching, mentoring, news, opinion, and links, all tailored to help writers create works they will be proud of.

IN A HURRY? SKIP THE REST, CLICK HERE, AND WATCH THIS!

In short, the new Authorcloud is intended to become the place on the web for self-publishing authors who really care about the quality of their work, would like some advice, support, and tips from a seasoned publishers, and enjoy sharing experiences, suggestions, and encouragement with other writers.

So big functionality is on the way. In the meantime, if you have a manuscript kicking around and would love quick (FREE!) professional feedback, send it to us. We’ll take a look and give you some brief, unvarnished feedback from publishing industry pros (led by me — I’ve been working with authors & publishing books for 35 years). Just send it to: info@authorcloud.com. I mean, why not?!

And for those of you who already know you need some professional help (no, no, not that kind of help — I’m thinking of editing and/or design assistance here), again, just drop us an email at the same address. We’re open for business during our site construction project — in fact I’ll tell you about some of the terrific editorial and design projects we’ve recently done or are currently working on in upcoming posts — it’s always inspirational to hear stories about people who just do it!

R.G. Morse is the founder of Authorcloud, and the author of six books. His latest, MAN UP IN TEN LESSONS, is available as an ebook, for Kindle users, Barnes & Noble NOOK users, KOBO users, and in the Apple iBooks section of iTunes.