HarperCollins crowdsourcing community

Stumbled upon this gem via @brainpicker's article on Crowdfunding for Creativity. authonomy^TM is a writing community for writers, readers and publishers, conceived and developed by book editors at HarperCollins. Their goal is to flush out the brightest, freshest new literature around. Basically they want the crowd to spot the next big bestseller. At the end of every month the top 5 ranked books are delivered to the desks of HarperCollins editors. The board reads them and delivers feedback to the author’s authonomy profile. Each book only has one chance at this. In addition, you can submit your own manuscript, get advice, or write reviews of others. This is a fun idea-- there's no way any one editor can interact with all the content available on any given day or read all the thousands of potential books out there. Tapping the crowd for their collective curation seems like a good way to address the problem-- as long as the crowd is educated. Any other publishing companies doing something similar?

Literature Action Dolls

The Brontë-Sisters (and their supersize mustaches?!) have been correctly cast as power dolls!

Books by hand

Sounds daunting right? A ton of craftsmanship involved in an old handmade book (check out the video). It seems that this attention to detail has been lost over the years. You'd think mostly because no one is willing to pay for it. We're a society that at the moment is demanding 1/2 off coupons (Groupon and all its clones), not better quality.

And then Sci Fi was born

Apparently it wasn't quite as simple as popping out of a belly. Check out artist Ward Shelley's beautifully detailed diagram of the history of Sci Fi.

Plunge into your book

Check out the clever Baleine bookmark by Atypyk.

Be me for a day

I couldn't resist spreading the word about this. Writer and director Clay Weiner is out with a book (Try-Ons) that chronicles his attempt to "Be Somebody." Basically Clay tests out the old "try walking a mile in their shoes" by living the lives of an eccentric array of real and imaginary characters. “Growing up, I was always told to be somebody,” says Weiner. “In an attempt to find myself, I tried 85 personas. I’m still confused.” I love the idea behind this. We spend our whole lives trying to figure ourselves out-- why not make at least make it fun.

File this under WHOAAAA Amazing!

Artist Brian Dettmer explores the richness of the physical book, in an effort to preserve history by constructing amazing visual pieces out of original novels. In his own words, "In this work I begin with an existing book and seal its edges, creating an enclosed vessel full of unearthed potential. I cut into the surface of the book and dissect through it from the front. I work with knives, tweezers and surgical tools to carve one page at a time, exposing each layer while cutting around ideas and images of interest. Nothing inside the books is relocated or implanted, only removed. Images and ideas are revealed to expose alternate histories and memories. My work is a collaboration with the existing material and its past creators and the completed pieces expose new relationships of the book’s internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception." How cool is that!? Head on over and check out his collection of amazing pieces. His online image gallery goes back as far as 2005.

Have you heard of Push Pop Press?

Push Pop Press is creating a new breed of digital books by bringing together great content and beautiful software. These books let you explore photos, videos, music, maps, and interactive graphics, all through a new physics-based multi-touch user interface.

They recently shared a sneak peek at their app, with co-founder and former Apple designer Mike Matas showing off an interactive iOS version of Al Gore’s book Our Choice. Confused about what their app could bring to the book? Here are a few examples: there’s about an hour and a half of video content, 20 interactive infographics, and all photos can be plotted on a map so the reader knows precisely where it was taken, and Gore narrates parts of the book.

Mashable states that, "The interface goes far beyond what one would find with Kindle or iBooks. The entire screen is occupied by content, and multimedia items can literally be lifted off the page using finger gestures. You can also pinch and zoom on just about any piece of content, and you can move through the book’s various chapters using your finger to scroll."

Crochet Sock Monkey Bookmark

Skip to my Lou has a great list of handmade bookmark ideas including fabric bookmarks, a beautiful wood bookmark, paint chip bookmarks, and the crochet sock monkey one pictured to the left.

Shaking the Publishing Industry Up

26-year old Amanda Hocking is the best-selling "indie" writer on the Kindle store and is making millions cutting out traditional publishers. Hocking keeps 70% of her ebook sales -- and she sells around 100,000 copies per month, each for $3, and some $.99. But that's the point: by lowering the prices, she can make more on volume, especially impulse buys. Hocking's fan base stems from her blog, not having had a contract with a traditional publisher in the past-- truly a self-made author. This is why Amazon may dominate. Read more.