Austin, TX.

Fans of reading and a certain galaxy far, far away have reason to rejoice: Star Wars Reads Day, a day-long celebration of literacy and Jedi, Sith, Wookiees, and all things Star Wars, is returning. The second annual Star Wars Reads Day is to be held this October 5, 2013. Last year, 30 authors and 1,500 costumed volunteers participated in over 1,200 Star Wars Reads Day events across North America. On October 5 of this year, Star Wars fans, authors, and artists will again come together in this multi-publisher initiative …

I’ve left sunny, friendly Austin behind and returned to colder, crankier Philadelphia, and can now reflect on my virgin tour of SXSW. The verdict: good, but not great. I had looked forward to attending this festival for so many years, and I fear I may have missed my window, the window when I had the stamina to tramp all day from session to session, and still be alert and energetic enough for nighttime events that begin at midnight and beyond.

Perhaps it was good but not great because there was no big new thing announced at the fair. Perhaps it was good but not great because, while sessions were uniformly good, there were speakers who were disappointing and less than revelatory. But hey, I learned new things, met interesting people, and there was that free Samsung battery replacement for my Galaxy S3!

Firebrand Technologies, a leading publishing industry technology services company, announced today that they have acquired eBook Architects, the premier eBook design company handling complex content and enhanced eBooks, founded by Joshua Tallent. The acquisition fits into Firebrand’s mission to establish itself at the nexus where “publishers, content and readers meet” through a true end-to-end service.  Firebrand will retain the eBook Architects brand, and the company’s staff will continue operating from existing offices in Austin, TX.

Maybe we have an answer to all our prepress problems. It's called PDF. That's short for Portable Document Format. It's Adobe's file format. It's not difficult to grasp the basic principles of what PDF is all about. But it takes more than the page I have here, so please go read our related stories, then come back. All done? Good. (OK, for those of you who hate to flip pages, you should at least know that a PDF file can be made from a PostScript file. PostScript is the final format of a file made with Adobe's PageMaker or Illustrator programs and Quark's QuarkXPress, among others.) So, you

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