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Author’s Cuts and Software Development: Incremental changes based on feedback and knowledge
If Shakespeare had the opportunity to re-release an “updated version” of one of his plays some years after he originally published it, would he have wanted the opportunity? Would the world want to see it? JoSara MeDia has recently released an “Author’s Cut” of Paul Levinson’s Locus award-winning novel The Silk Code and will soon release additional Author’s Cuts from Paul and other authors. In Levinson’s own words : The Tor edition, like all books brought out by big publishers, went through extensive copy editing. In this new eBook edition, I reinstated a lot of my original wording, which I always liked better. I see such author’s cuts as a major step forward in publishing. The Silk Code is not only available as a Kindle, but as an eBook on Barnes & Noble and all the digital outlets. I spent the majority of my professional career programming, and continue to not only lead a software and services company but to also write iPad and Android enhanced eBook apps for JoSara MeDia and for our non-profit partners. In our software releases, as with most companies, we receive and review customer requirements and release a software solution that takes not only those requirements into account, but also is bounded by time and money. Often everything that is a desired requirement is left out to accommodate either time or monetary limitations. In subsequent releases, we tend to focus on incremental changes, changes that will enhance the existing product, bring it up to date or meet some customer need. Some of this is from customer/consumer feedback, much is from our own knowledge and experience with the product and the industry. The software industry has many names for this: RAD (Rapid Application Development) is the most applicable. The parallels between this incremental software release process and the concept of an Author’s Cut eBook release are many, and there are also several major differences. Some of the parallels are obvious: a writer gets better at his craft over time, as does a coder, and going back and fixing/changing/updating pieces allows them to use improved techniques on a previous release. some writers write for themselves; most coders, and most writers, write for their product to be consumed by others. Read more…
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Paul Levinson on Phil D’Amato
Guest Post on SFSignal SFSignal published this morning a guest post from JoSara author Paul Levinson detailing the background and bio of Dr. Phil D’Amato, main character of the recently published author’s cut of The Silk Code. An excerpt: Phil D’Amato’s Story With JoSara MeDia’s publication of my “author’s cut” ebook edition of The Silk Code, I was especially pleased with SF Signal’s invitation to provide a biography of the novel’s central character, Dr. Phil D’Amato. The short take on his life and times is that he’s a forensic detective with the NYPD, with an interest not only in DNA, but in subjects ranging from prehistoric history to quantum mechanics. As of his last appearance in my most recent Phil D’Amato novel – The Pixel Eye in 2003 – he’s very happily married to Jenna Katen. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves… The impetus for Phil D’Amato’s conception goes back to 1994, and a brief article I had published in Wired – “Telnet to the Future?” – in which I made the case against the possibility of time travel (travel to the past invokes paradox, travel to the future negates free will). Jack Sarfatti, a physicist, wrote to me, taking exception to my conclusion. But in our correspondence he did allow that Stephen Hawking had a “chronology protection conjecture,” which held that even if time travel were possible, the universe would not allow it, and would put forth physical obstacles to time travel to protect itself from unraveling, which would keep the world “safe for historians”. In my warped brain, this instantly suggested a more sinister scenario – what would the universe do to scientists who might discover a mechanism of time travel, and build a device to do it? I wrote “The Chronology Protection Case” as a science fiction murder mystery, with the universe as the ultimate suspect and Phil D’Amato as the principal investigator. But Phil might have had a short tenure, had it not been for Stan Schmidt’s response when I sent the short story to Analog. Stan liked the story, but wondered why I would kill off such an appealing character, as I had done with Phil in the first draft. The result was “The Chronology Protection Case” novelette, which was published, with Phil surviving, in Analog in 1995. Read more…
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Paul Levinson’s The Silk Code Published as eBook by JoSara MeDia
New “author’s cut” edition available in multiple formats August 25, 2012 (NEW YORK CITY, NY and HOUSTON, TX) – JoSara MeDia and Paul Levinson are pleased to announce the availability of the Kindle and ePub editions of Levinson’s first novel, The Silk Code, published by JoSara MeDia. The Silk Code, originally published by Tor Books, won the Locus Award for best first novel of 1999, and reached #8 on the Locus paperback Best Seller list in February 2001. The novel received praise from The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and reviews in dozens of other places. Levinson is especially excited about this new edition because it is, as he calls it, an “author’s cut” of The Silk Code. “The Tor edition, like all books brought out by big publishers, went through extensive copy editing,” he explains. “In this new eBook edition, I reinstated a lot of my original wording, which I always liked better.” Levinson, who was President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 1998-2001, believes such author’s cuts are a major step forward in publishing. The Silk Code is not only available as a Kindle, but as an eBook on Barnes & Noble and all the digital outlets. Levinson, a prolific author, has published 4 other science fiction novels, and 7 non-fiction books, translated into 12 languages around the world. His latest, New New Media, has just come out in a second edition from Pearson. He appears often as a media commentator on PBS, NPR, MSNBC, and Fox News. The Silk Code Kindle edition sports a new cover, created especially for the novel by Joel Iskowitz, whose designs have appeared on stamps around the world, US coins, and NASA murals. Levinson says he chose JoSara MeDia because he “wanted for The Silk Code a savvy, small publisher, unencumbered by baggage from the pre-digital age.’ JoSara MeDia has published other award-winning authors in multiple formats, including print, eBook and enhanced eBooks in the form of iPad and Android applications. JoSara MeDia also works with non-profit organizations, such as the Texas State Historical Association, assisting them with strategies and solutions to get their content available in these multiple formats. Read more…
Books, eBooks, apps, audiobooks and whatever else we can get our hands in
