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Joining the IBPA board

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I have some news to share: I have been named to the board of the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) for a two-year term, beginning July 1, 2015. The IBPA press release has more details.

I first learned about IBPA after submitting a book to the Ben Franklin Awards program operated by IBPA. The book did not win an award, but I gained something even more important: membership in an organization that is truly aligned with the needs of the independent publishing ecosystem.

While I have worked in various media ventures for decades, I am relatively new to the world of books and ebooks, and still have a lot to learn. Thanks to IBPA’s excellent Independent magazine and the IBPA LinkedIn group, I was able to get up to speed on so many aspects of this industry, especially those related to the business of publishing. The authors of the articles and the IBPA members I have interacted with are true professionals, and the information and advice they shared was invaluable.

I also began to take advantage of the many member benefits offered by IBPA, such as:

  • The cooperative display for IBPA members at the Frankfurt Book Fair. This was a low-cost way to showcase In 30 Minutes titles to prospective foreign licensees without having to travel to Germany. It resulted in a foreign rights deal being signed late last year, based on the boilerplate licensing documentation that IBPA provides to its members for free.
  • Various marketing programs aimed at libraries and booksellers. This was a chance to get titles in front of librarians and independent retailers in the United States.
  • Discounts for Ingram/Lightning Source International, one of the largest print-on-demand services in the world.
  • Discounted membership in IPNE, a regional affiliate of IBPA. Joining IPNE helped me connect with other publishers in New England and take part in IPNE activities.

Through these and other activities such as Publishing University I began to understand that IBPA’s motto, “to help each other achieve and succeed,” is not just a well-meaning phrase. It manifests itself in the many ways the organization conducts its affairs and serves its constituents.

Serving on the board is a way to give back to IBPA and its members, through assisting with IBPA programs, reviewing strategic plans and the organization’s financial health, contributing to the setting of future priorities, outreach, and other activities. It is an honor to be named to the board, and I look forward to serving as a director.

A new guide to setting up a high-performance virtual office

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Today i30 Media Corp., the publisher of In 30 Minutes guides, announces the release of a new book by award-winning author Melanie Pinola: The Successful Virtual Office In 30 Minutes: Best practices, tools, and setup tips for your home office, coworking space, or mobile office.

Virtual Office setup guideThis quick guide is intended to help virtual workers of all stripes (telecommuters, freelancers, independent professionals, entrepreneurs, etc.) set up and maintain a high-performance virtual office. Just as Pinola’s first book, LinkedIn In 30 Minutes, helped people supercharge their LinkedIn profiles and network more effectively, her new book about virtual offices makes it easy for everyone from newbies to experienced telecommuters to leverage new technologies and ways of working to achieve more.

Pinola is a true expert when it comes to this mode of work. Not only has she been working virtually since the 1990s, she’s written about it for Lifehacker and serves as the Mobile Office Expert for About.com. Jessica Lipnack, the author of Virtual Teams and The Age of the Network, calls The Successful Virtual Office In 30 Minutes a “thoroughly useful compendium of tips and tools” for working virtually.

“Once one virtual team member is remote, all members are,” Lipnack notes. “Very little work gets done today without virtual teaming, which means there’s a huge market for this helpful book.”

Why virtual offices are taking the world by storm

Virtual offices represent a huge shift in the way people get work done. If your job takes place in front of a computer screen, chances are you can work from practically anywhere, whether you’re on a beach in Bali, working out of a home office, or setting up shop in a downtown coworking space. According to one estimate published in the Journal of Labor Research, 65 percent of all jobs are amendable to at least part-time telework. In the United States alone, more than 30 million people are already working remotely on a part-time or full-time basis.

The Successful Virtual Office In 30 Minutes addresses everything from the mindset of working remotely to the practical tools and services virtual workers can leverage. Topics include:

Finding the best place to work and creating an efficient workspace (Chapter 1)

  • Recommendations for setting up the ideal virtual office, based on the latest research.
  • How to use alternative offices such as coffee shops and libraries to get more done.
  • Four elements of a productive office.
  • Ergonomics, or how to stay healthy at your desk.
  • Essential supplies for your mobile office.

Learning strategies to help you work more effectively on your own and as a virtual team member (Chapters 2 & 3)

  • How to ward off roommates, spouses, children, pets, phone calls, and other daily distractions.
  • Crucial time-management tips to start and end your day.
  • How to establish a rapport with virtual team members.
  • Best practices for effective communication.
  • Dealing with coworkers who don’t appreciate virtual work.
  • How to cope with isolation.

Using technology to help you stay productive and connected (Chapter 4)

  • The best apps for real-time communication and collaboration.
  • Software to keep distractions at bay.
  • The most important products for securing your digital life.

Chapter 4 is titled “Top Tech Tools to help you work smarter, not harder,” and includes more than 30 software programs, apps, and special services that Pinola recommends. They include everything from 1Password, a tool that stores passwords in an encrypted database, to Zapier, an application that automates repetitive tasks. You can see the full list here or check out some of the tools that are described in more detail on the blog, including MindMeister (sponsored post).

One of the most interesting sections of The Successful Virtual Office In 30 Minutes covers the social aspects of working remotely. It can be lonely and isolating. There are lots of online tools that can help with this. Pinola cites Slack, Webex, and LinkedIn Groups. Some remote workers and entrepreneurs turn to coworking spaces (the guide mentions Regus, WeWork, Desksnear.me, and a cool Wi-fi location app called Cubefree). But the author goes deep in her coverage of the social dynamic, with recommendations relating to family members, resentful colleagues, and managers of virtual teams.

The Successful Virtual Office In 30 Minutes is available today in a variety of formats. Buy the Kindle and paperback edition on Amazon, the iBooks edition for the iPad and iPhone, the Google Play edition for Android devices, and the Nook book. There is also a PDF edition.

For more information, be sure to visit the official website for the virtual office guide, or email info@in30minutes.com.

How to file a DMCA takedown request to remove pirated ebooks from Google

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This week, I spent several hours dealing with sites that illegally post pirated copies of In 30 Minutes ebooks, allowing people to download them for free (or for an illicit fee, none of which goes back to the authors). Ebook piracy not only takes money away from the authors who created the content, pirate sites can sometimes outrank legitimate sources of ebooks on Google and other search engines. It’s almost impossible to remove the content from the torrent sites that host the pirated content, but there are ways to take the fight further up the food chain using a standard DMCA takedown request (DMCA stands for digital millennium copyright act):

  1. Filing a DMCA takedown request with the sites that link to the torrents
  2. Filing a DMCA takedown request with the hosting companies of the sites that link to the torrents
  3. Asking Google to remove references in Google Search by filing DMCA notices

I’m not going to go deeply into what the DMCA is or how it works, but for the sake of this post it gives limited legal rights to authors and publishers who have discovered unauthorized copies of their ebooks (ePub, mobi, or PDF) floating around the Internet. It can also be used to fight bogus “bloggers” who take pirated content and use the text and images for blog posts beyond what Fair Use would allow. Unfortunately, the DMCA can be abused, and I have actually seen cases of authors being hit by bogus DMCA claims by pirates for their own works, as if the pirates had created the ebook!

Why send a DMCA takedown request to Google?

This short tutorial concerns how authors can use a standard DMCA takedown request to fight ebook pirates. I’ve found it’s very difficult to ask the sites themselves to comply — even though many of them contain “DMCA” links which supposedly enable copyright holders to file a DMCA takedown request, half the time the pages lead to 404 errors or dead email addresses. The other half have working email addresses or Web forms, but many of them don’t result in takedowns either. Filing DMCA notices with the registrar or hosting company is also problematic — registrars want nothing to do with copyright disputes, and the hosting company is often hard to identify or claim they can’t do anything (this is particularly true for overseas domains).

That leaves Google. The idea here is if you can remove a reference to a pirate site from Google search, it not only reduces the likelihood of the pirated content being downloaded, it hits the offending site where it hurts by reducing traffic and advertising impressions.

The easy way to identify offending content is to search Google for the title of the book and scroll through the results. You can also set up a Google Alert to automatically mail newly indexed content that features the name of your book. Here’s what happened when I searched for the PDF edition of my quick Excel guide:

Google DMCA takedown request pirated ebooks

The first two results lead to sites that link to pirated copies. They feature unauthorized use of copyrighted content, including descriptions and cover images. They push down links to authorized sites where readers can purchase the guide, including the official Excel Basics In 30 Minutes website. The pirate links also expose readers to potential computer hazards, including malware and other scams.

How to file a DMCA takedown request with Google

How can authors or publishers ask Google to remove these results from Web search? Use the special Google form at http://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_dmca?&product=websearch. The form asks you to identify yourself, to describe the content in question, to include links to legitimate versions of the book or ebook, and then list the offending links. You have to swear to the following:

  1. I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
  2. The information in this notification is accurate and I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Note that your name and complaint may also be submitted to the Chilling Effects project, meaning that it will be publicly available. This could be a concern for authors who use pen names.

Because I usually have to file the same type of complaint against different parties, I use a a DMCA takedown request template and copy and paste the contents into the form, depending on the title being infringed and the content that has been used without permission:

I am the author and publisher of [TITLE OF BOOK]. This is an ebook and paperback (ISBN: [ISBN NUMBER GOES HERE]) that is about [NUMBER] pages long. My company [NAME OF PUBLISHER] holds all rights to this work, including text, logos, and cover images.

The book description and cover image have been appropriated without my permission on the website [WEBSITE DOMAIN] and subsequently appear in Google search results. The site further contains links to download unauthorized copies of the work.

I also have prepared links of legitimate versions of the content to paste into the form (e.g., official website, Amazon, Google Play, Google Books, etc.).

Filing a DMCA takedown request takes about 2 minutes using the template. Google usually responds quickly, although in some instances I have had to follow up with additional information (this is often the case for bloggers who are republishing scraped ebook content). For people with Google Webmaster Tool accounts, you can review the status of all DMCA takedown requests here.

Do you have problems with ebook pirates? How have you dealt with the pirates? Share your story in the comments below.

How to type other languages in Google Docs

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I received an email from India asking about support for other languages in Google Docs. He was a reader of my book Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes, and he had two questions: 1. How characters from Hindi, Chinese, or other languages can be typed into Google Docs, and 2) whether foreign text can be saved in Google Docs.

How to type other languages in Google Docs

There are several ways to save text from non-Latin character sets in Google Docs. The method I usually use is through the operating system. Windows and Mac PCs let users change the input language so people can use their keyboards (or trackpad) to enter Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, etc., into any program on their screen. However, if you don’t have this feature set up or are unable to activate it (for instance, because you are using someone else’s computer) you can use language support that’s built into Google Docs. Here’s how:

  1. Open Google Docs and create a new document (or open up an existing one)
  2. Go to File > Language and select the language you want to start typing in. For instance, to choose the traditional Chinese characters used in Taiwan, I would select 中文(台灣)(literally: “Chinese, Taiwan”)
  3. The input tool will appear on the right side of your toolbar (it may be hard to see, but on my browser, it was to the right of the “clear formatting” button, as in the screenshot below).
  4. Click on the tiny triangle next to the language symbol to choose your input method, which might be phonetic, romanization, or some other keyboard method.
  5. As you enter characters, Google Docs automatically saves them.
  6. Once you are finished, close out of the document or use File > Language to switch back to English.

Example of how to type other languages in Google Docs

In the example below, I used the Google Docs input tool to select pinyin, a romanization method for Chinese characters. As I type pinyin on the English keyboard, choices for the possible characters show up below the cursor with numbers to make a choice (Mandarin has many homonyms, so the numbers are used to pick the right characters). I can type the number or use my mouse to make my choice, and they are entered into the document. In the example below, I have typed “Hello I am American” above some English text. The input tool drop-down is also visible:

Google Docs Language input - Chinese example - How to type other languages in Google Docs

How to type other languages in Google Docs

Note that this method works for me because I am familiar with pinyin. However, some languages require special keyboards or keyboard labels. If you are working with a standard Western-style keyboard, or don’t know the Romanization system supported by Google Docs, you may have a tough time expressing yourself in the other language.

What UK readers think of Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes

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Google Drive & Docs UK
Amazon in the United Kingdom has a separate set of reader reviews for In 30 Minutes titles. I was delighted to see 4-5 star reviews dominating the Amazon UK product page for Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes. Here are a few samples:

Martin:

“A colleague and I had written a technical book that took us 5 years. We communicated by email with attachments that were limited in size. So any images that were too large for email were copied onto CD and posted.

Now four years later we are embarking on another technical book with another author who lives and works in the USA and Luxembourg.

So this time we are using the “Cloud” to collaborate and we all use Google, so “Google Drive” was our choice. So that we are all using the same sheet we needed a procedure to follow and “Google Drive & Docs in 30 Minutes” turned out to be just right for us. Chapters 2 and 6 covers every technique we will need. So I give it 5 stars for my review!”

Anne:

“This was very useful trying to get to grips with the way Google Docs works. I wanted to get rid of all connections with Office and Open Office and I was struggling. And not sure what could be done online and offline. Now I know.”

One of the most interesting Amazon UK reader reviews came from Andy_atGC, one of the top 100 reviewers on Amazon UK (#76 at the time of this writing). To attain this status, you have to have lots of reviews, and Andy has 1,500 and climbing. Here’s what he had to say:

“Google Drive is a multi-platform, free mini-office suite from Google. It has versions for the PC, iPads and iPhones, and Chromebooks (it is a major component of the Chrome OS) and there is a client for Android which allows Google documents created on one device or computer and in its Google Drive folder to be viewed on any other compatible platform. Google offer little or no written instructions on its use and this book is one of a very few to fill that need.

The component apps are undemanding, far less capable and complete than Microsoft Office and those such as LibreOffice or OpenOffice or any other similar package. However, for basic letter writing, inter-office reports, simple spreadsheets and presentations Google Docs will probably meet most people’s normal needs. One thing that it can do that the more complex products cannot do quite as readily or at all is to allow group contributions. One person can edit another’s work provided that they are members of the same network or have access to it via a provided link; instead of saving its files to a local hard drive, memory stick or some other device they are all in the Cloud. It will therefore allow remote contributions from many people, simultaneously or independently, to a magazine, book or other large publication.

The book is a short one, barely more than 100 pages, is easy to read even for those with minimal computing knowledge and is sufficient to cover most of the offered functions in some depth. However, not all options within a function are covered but there is more than enough to get you started. Thanks to its brevity and easy writing style, it should satisfy most of the package’s users.”

I appreciate honest reviews from any reader, no matter where they reside. Currently the Google Drive & Google Docs book is only available in English, but I have explored how they can be ported to other languages, either as a translation or a licensed title.