Tag Archives: remote work

Ebook news digest: the honor of ebooks, free writing contests, translating a book

2017-08-01

News on ebooks, writing and remote work

Defending the honor of ebooks (and innovation)
No Shelf Required

A quote from the article hits right into the core benefits of ebooks: “The promise of the digital medium is to democratize and equalize access to knowledge, which, like information, wants to be available to any person, anywhere (important for libraries). The potential of the digital medium, as we’ve already seen with other industries, is to create new ways of earning and generating revenue for content creators (important for publishers). The power of the digital medium is to detach knowledge from institutions, government entities, and most affluent urban areas and spread it to remote parts of the globe so that reading can more easily become an integral part of human existence regardless of a person’s location (crucial for readers).”

31 Free Writing Contests: Legitimate Competitions With Cash Prizes
The Write Life

It seems that there are genuine writing contests that are not only after author’s money. The article lists 31 of writing contests.

How One Hundred Years of Solitude Became a Classic
The Atlantic

If a village of Macondo brings memories to your mind, you may have read a classic One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) by Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The book was published 50 years ago, but it wasn’t an instant best-seller. The article tells how the global trends in culture and politics have an impact on the business of books as well.

Nice, France and the Riviera coast is fully booked in August
Klaava Travel Guide

August is the most popular vacation time for the French. When the streets of Paris look kind of empty, it probably means people have traveled to the coast (apart from a minority who headed to the Alps or the Pyrenees).

The appear.in top 5 remote working locations of the world
Medium / appear.in

These locations are credible cities and places to get work done in an environment where you can focus on work, but also tour the sights when you have time.

The art of translating a book
The Open Mic

A translator’s story how she broke into the market of translating books, and what she has learned during 5 years she has been in business. A must read for everyone who has ever thought about book translations as a career.

Reader Analytics from Jellybooks: Crunching the Numbers to Improve Book Marketing and Sales
Jane Friedman

Jellybooks is a company that collects behavioral data from ebook readers who have signed up to being monitored. Andrew Rhomberg, founder of Jellybooks, tells what kind of data the company can extract from ebook readers.

Writing a Memoir: Here’s What Worked for These Travel Writers
The Write Life

A couple that is traveling the world, writing for work, and at the same time writing a book. How do they do it?

Here are the countries where you have plenty of colleagues who also provide professional services online

2017-07-27

If you are a writer or a freelancer providing writing-related services, like translation, editing, or proofreading, and you manage your assignments through online services, you know how global the business is. Many other professionals, such as programmers, graphic designers, and photographers also sell their services on global online freelance platforms. If you have ever wondered where these different types of professionals are located, now there is a map for that.

Vili Lehdonvirta at the Oxford Internet Institute has collected data from various online freelancing services, and put together graphs that show where professionals are participating in remote work processes and projects, and in which countries specific type of work is performed.

The statistics, titled Online Labour Index, shows which skills regions and countries are providing to the global market. For instance, the most common type of remote work in the United States is writing and translation. Indian subcontinent is a major supplier of software development and technology skills. Europe is divided in north, south and central regions that provide different types of services.

The largest supplier of online labour is the traditional outsourcing destination India, which is home to 24 percent of all the workers observed. India is followed by Bangladesh (16 %) and United States (12 %).

The software development and technology work category is dominated by workers in the Indian subcontinent, who command a 55 percent market share. The professional services category, which consists of services such as accounting, legal services, and business consulting, is led by professionals based in the UK with a 22 percent market share.

The data for the statistics was collected from four large online professional service trading platforms, also known as online freelancing or online outsourcing platforms: Fiverr, Freelancer, Guru, and PeoplePerHour. They are English-language platforms, meaning that non-English-speaking countries are likely to be underrepresented in the figures. Many freelance service platforms exist in other languages, but English-language platforms are the primary ones in international trade. Internet traffic statistics indicate that the four mentioned sites represent at least 40 percent of the global market for platform-based online work. The figures are likely to give a good indication of the overall market, and particularly which skills regions and countries provide to the global market.

Find out more graphs and data from Vili Lehdonvirta’s article at the Unversity of Oxford web site.

Ebook news digest: free ebooks, remote work resources, literary hoaxes, book publishers happy in London

2017-03-15

Ebook news digest on March 15, 2017

Why Writers Lie (and Plagiarize and Fabricate and Stretch the Truth and…)
(Vanity Fair)

“While “fake news” may be a current term of art, the literary hoax is a tale as old as the printed word.” True, but since there are online tools for identifying plagiarism, we haven’t discover it that often (even though it is easier than ever before).

Free eBooks for Web Designers & Developers
(Bradley Nice)

If you want to learn HTML5, Javascript, PHP, WordPress, CSS, or other modern Web technologies, these ebooks are a good start.

17+ Remote Work Blogs and Resources to Follow in 2017
(Transformity)

A good list of resources for everyone planning or already doing remote work.

Shortlist for the Sony World Photography Contest
(World Photography Organisation)

Amazing images in the shortlist that all could win the award.

New media arrives at LBF with ‘huge sums’
(The Bookseller)

London Book Fair 2017 has started, and many book publishers are more than happy that new media companies, like Netflix and Amazon are investing in new shows and movies. Book publishers are reporting from London that an exponential growth in airtime of new shows has been excellent news for the sales of rights of their books.

Travel guidebook covers Europe’s last large wilderness: Lapland in Scandinavia
(Lapland: Finland, Norway, Sweden)

Nordkapp, fells, fjords, the Northern Lights, hiking, road travel, fishing, and many other attractions and activities featured in the book.

February 2017 Big, Bad, Wide & International Report
(Author Earnings)

Author Earnings reports ebook sales numbers that differ from sales statistics big publishers announce. The key difference is that Author Earnings includes independent publishers and self-publishers into the sales figures. The new February 2017 report estimates that 42 percent of all book sales is already ebooks in the U.S.

Source: Author Earnings.

Ebooks news digest: nonfiction writing prompts, best photos of 2016, breakthrough of remote work

2017-01-01

Ebook news digest January 1, 2017

Plan Your Year: Nonfiction Writing Prompt #52
(Write Nonfiction Now!)

Writing a nonfiction book or article requires planning. Often, the hard part is to decide what to include and what to exclude, even though sometimes, a writer has already processed it at the back of his or her mind before the actual writing starts. The article has many other good tips for writers.

Best Photos of 2016
(National Geographic)

A gallery of National Geographic’s 52 best images of 2016. It was curated from 91 photographers, 107 stories, and 2,290,225 photographs. Amazing images – if someone can afford to take more than two million frames, some of them better be really good.

Get to the point! Avoid these words and keep readers happy
(Articulate)

An excellent list of today’s hype words that are forgotten tomorrow. Avoid them and avoid yesterday’s empty phrases as well, such as “don’t get me wrong”, “fast forward to…”, “like … on steroids”.

What Does a Literary Agent Want to See When They Google You?
(The Write Life)

Yes, literary agents will search you on the Internet. The interesting thing is what they are looking for. An agent is not required in many countries outside the U.S., but writers can approach publishers directly. Many publishers have instructions for book proposals on their web pages. Nonetheless, the publishers are more than likely to do the same as agents do: Google the writer. More in this article.

The number of news stories on digital nomads in news sources was so high this time that I decided to list a few articles about the topic alone (it looks like remote work and digital nomad concepts have been discovered by major media companies now):

Why I quit Yahoo and Gmail when I started traveling (Klaava)

Figuring out “Remote Work” Is Figuring out “Work” (Accidentally in Code)

100 Little Things That Happen When You Become a Digital Nomad (The Sweetest Way)

6 Difficult Countries to Be a Digital Nomad (The Nomad Guru)

The 10 Best Cities for Digital Nomads (TransferWise)