No Starch Press

Grabbing the Bull of Change by the Horns
April 16, 2008

I have just returned from the Publishing Business Conference & Expo in New York (full coverage begins on page 10) and couldn’t help but feel that this year, more than ever, there was a sense of camaraderie, a message of “We can do this. Look at all the opportunity out there.” In an interview for this issue, Jane Friedman, president and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide (see the story on HarperCollins on page 18), said, “I think that, in the past, publishers have been afraid of change. … What we’re all seeing now is that experimentation is necessary, and … everybody is facing the

Can Giving Books Away Pay Off? No Starch Press Publisher Bill Pollock on his decision to offer two of his key titles as free downloads.
March 28, 2008

Bill Pollock, publisher of No Starch Press, is taking a leap of faith that he hopes will pay off for his San Francisco-based company, which specializes in computing titles. After a long struggle against pirated versions of his titles appearing on peer-to-peer (P2P) filing-sharing services, Pollock made a decision last week to essentially give books away for free. He created an official publisher-provided torrent—an electronic file used in online file-sharing—of two of the publishing house’s key titles, author Leander Kahney’s “Cult of Mac” and “Cult of iPod,” available for free download on one of the world’s largest file-sharing communities, The Pirate Bay. As Pollock

9 Considerations for Your Next CD/DVD Companion Project
August 1, 2006

Some production managers have estimated that a unit cost of a DVD might run an average of about 60 cents, a CD 26 cents, and a sleeve about 23 cents, obviously with unit costs going up for small print runs and dropping for extremely large print runs. But those savvy in CD/DVD production stress that there are many factors that can cause unit costs to vary significantly. Here are nine considerations to keep in mind as you begin work on your next CD/DVD companion project to help ensure you don’t get burned with unexpected costs or complications: 1. What features will you require the CD