Oh Kathryn, oh Kathryn. I hope he comes home too - somewhere he can and does and will. You know that.

We're trying to do something similar for the courses we are developing, Joe. It is a nightmare! I have gained a lot of respect for developers who have to make dozens of different systems work together, with complexity that's far beyond my ability to understand. I understand what Adam is saying - but I think drawing on many different sources is definitely a learning or reading/experiencing method that will emerge in the future. I encourage and teach my students to do this. They have to be prompted or encouraged or rewarded. If I do not specifically guide them through, it is the rare student who seeks to investigate on his or her own. (Like, I have to say, read, watch video, write about this, read that, etc.)

This is all so true, Joe - but in an era when the author websites are those driving the sales, I bet if I check any of the top, most-visited author sites where they interact with readers, a pretty fair number will NOT link to a publisher sales page! Remember publisher bio pages are often separate. And then there's sellsheets and catalogs ... euughahhh!

I love it! I was somewhat hostile to Wikipedia and always instructed students not to use it for their papers. It's fine to use for information, but not "research." But I love this, it's so tempting!!

This is a fantastic idea Joe ... I signed up for NextDoor - unsurprisingly there are 34 others already signed up where I live and I just had a chat with a neighbor online about our coyote issue!

Our premise is that the current industry is so strongly focused on its current market customers and what they bought last month, last week, last year, that it doesn't seem able to see that just about 100% of people can read, and we have well over 40% college graduation rates in the U.S. and over 50% in Canada. It's still relying on near-volunteer labor and chewing up creative professionals like child workers in Dickens' London. 86% of the increase in retail spend over the next 5 years is expected to come from diverse consumers, according to the "other" part of AC Nielsen (market insights, not Bookscan). There is no data to support the commonly-held belief that more people do not regularly buy and read books because of "competition from games, film, TV and other media." Apparently, it's about impossible for many in the industry to get that everything they do is based in the market customer of the past, not the emerging customer of today and the future. It's hard to see how there is zero focus on the product (what's IN the book - not whose name is on the cover or what the cover looks like) and no questioning of what I do every 2 weeks - show one or more young people the current NY Times bestseller list and ask, "Which of these books would you like to read and why?" If it's not zero (often, it is), then it's always a film or TV-related product. Meanwhile, hand them Freakonomics or another interesting book and they gobble it up and ask for more.

Innovation is a big challenge, Joe. Right now, the technology is there in terms of production, but not delivery. Our first mega-enhanced e-book is only really "right" on Apple devices. Lesser functionality is available on the computer and Android devices. Apps are not books; in fact - they are book-minus, not book-plus. EPUB3 is able to do amazing things but we have a pretty in-depth picture of what will run on what and it's very limited at present. The iBook we have produced will not even come close to validating for Kindle and that device option of "pop up" illustrations for children's books, textbooks and comics is not optimal. You may check out Is SHE Available? by Igor Goldkind via the iTunes Store and we will be launching its hardcover edition at Comic-Con next week. We will do more books like this in a variety of sectors. But innovation seldom comes from long-established companies.

Just in from Paul Levinson - the NYU summer reading list is more female than male. I'll make Paul an "honorary lady" LOL! Because his book is on this great list! http://hashtagnyu.tumblr.com/post/85932771956/10-perfect-summer-reads-authored-by-nyu-alumni

I asked Prof. Immerwahr about it and here is his take on a potential factor or reason for the phenomenon (which isn't as pronounced as I thought due to ... heck I don't know!) "... one possible reason why you see women looming fairly large as authors before 1950 has to do with their inability to work in most other areas. From pretty early on in the nineteenth century, it was socially acceptable for women to work as writers, assuming they stuck to certain topics. They still faced considerable sexism, of course, but nevertheless the bestselling book of that century was Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and there are a number of other serious and well-regarded female writers like Margaret Fuller, Lydia Maria Child, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman who wrote in that period. That continued into the twentieth century but presumably the effect is somewhat diminished as women gain the ability to enter politics, business, and government. In other words, on this interpretation it is in part the relative weakness of sexism in publishing that pushed talented women who might otherwise have invested their energies into other pursuits toward writing."

Pat, that is an interesting point. The bestseller list over the past 50 years is running approximately 30% female/70% male ... Ron Collins just informed me I'd counted wrong and those figures were always just about the same and it was never 50-50 early-on as I'd counted up last year.

Thank you so much, Chris ... I cannot understand why literary agents feel they must state this type of thing, since they have zero market metrics and only the performance of the past upon which to base such comments and statements.