dead people's books

religion says the spirit never dies it only separates from body. this is strange situation but if the spirit is alive after death and if there was way to communicate and dead people wrote books that got published would you read them? my friends think dead people's books business is just good marketing to sell books to people who believe in paranormal but if science can prove it can be done what would then your reaction be? would you read it or be scared to death?

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Book lending for air travellers

I was thinking of creating a book lending business in airports for travelers on long flights. Instead of buying the book in the airport bookshop the passenger can borrow it only for the course of the flight by having the credit card charged full retail price of the book. Upon arriving in the destination airport the passenger returns the book and gets full refund in their credit card. The book can then only be re-lent to passengers traveling back to the country airport the book originally came from.

If a passenger really likes the book they will have the option to buy it by simply keeping it. In this case a new order to re-stock the book will be automatically made via the system and a small profit realized from having sold it retail price. People can also donate books in this business and if their used-book is sold they get to keep a portion of the profit.

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I'd like to talk about a book I haven't read!

The title of the book is "How to talk about books you haven't read". First let me tell you this is no joke. The book is real and sells for $14. Check it out on Amazon if you don't believe me. The gist of the book is that a truly cultivated person should not read books but be able to talk about them by understanding how they are related to other books and where they fit into our culture.

That's an interesting argument. As soon as I read the first page I got the author's point right away. I closed the book and put it back on the shelf. Never bought it or opened it again. I can easily talk about it for hours. I am the kind of person who doesn't read much anyway so if I didn't read this one I am actually very qualified to talk about it.

The only problem with that book is that it's full of text from start to finish when its argument is that you only need to read the title and table of contents of any book in order to really understand it. According to the author, reading a book in all its detail from the first to the last page does disservice to your understanding of it. Perhaps it would have been better if this book's pages were left blank with a "no-need-to-read" note in them. I think so. The author would have made his point so much better this way and it would have been the easiest $14 ever written.

Do you see how much I have written already about the book? And I can keep going. I am so happy I got the gist of it right away without reading it And saved myself $14! :)

http://www.thinkaloo.com

My office Is the airplane

No I'm not a pilot. I'm a writer and I always get my best thoughts and ideas when I'm flying. Something about being on air brings torrents of creativity in me. My imagination runs sweet and sour faster when I find myself traveling above cloud level. I really do work better when I'm flying. At the moment, I can't afford to travel as often as I would like but when my next best-seller surpasses the Da Vince code this is what I have in mind to do.

I'll start a new airline and I will call it Sky Author Airways. The fountain pen will be its logo. It will accept as its passengers authors journalists and writers who have published at least one book and want to use a flight as an office space. The decoration will be relaxed, something like a miniature of Google on air. There will be laptops with internet connection to use inside the plane. There will also be a printer and binder to print anything in book format that is downloaded online. This could work in partnership with a major publisher and retailer like Amazon.

There will also be a small library in the luggage compartment below which will be updated based on the passengers' preferences on each flight. Passengers will not be paying on a per travel basis but on a monthly basis. In other words the charge will be the same as renting office space. The only requirement will be that if the flight is booked on the day you want to fly you will have to take another route.

Of course passengers can use Sky Author Airways to combine it with their travel plans but the main goal of traveling with Sky Author is to use it as office space. Instead of working say 8 hours in an office you can take an 4 hour flight somewhere and come back by the end of the work day. Whoever is in the writing or creative business and in need of office space on air will be welcome to use Sky Author Airways!

http://www.thinkaloo.com

Why do we like quotes so much?

I don't like using quotes when I speak. Sometimes the quote is a good fit but it's not your words, you use it to suggest that you read extensively or just want to impress. The truth of the matter is that most people memorize a few quotes to use and never read the original work. "I feel like quoting from books you haven't read is like wearing the t-shirts of bands you've never listened to." Say you read it from me next time you use it :)

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Wiretapping critical thoughts

If I ever publish a book or have my paintings exhibited I want to have a hidden recorder placed behind the frame of the painting or inside the cover of the book so that I can listen to people's raw thoughts about my work. If I own my work, I should be entitled to unfiltered access to its criticism. When that becomes my constitutional right in the form of a Patriotist Act, I wouldn't hesitate to exercise it. You?

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I'm an author and I made this library deal

Yesterday I got the idea to borrow a book of mine from a university library. I had written it 5 years ago. I felt lucky and honored that 2 people in total had borrowed and read it. After all, two is a bigger number than zero, right? Before checking with the library, I had the fear that no one would have read it though I secretly hoped that someone would be out there to disprove me. One of the 2 borrowers, probably the second one to borrow the book, was kind enough to use a pencil and make notes on the side, underline certain passages or put other parts in brackets.

He or she was merciless with the marks so I ended up following easily all traces left on almost every page in my book. But I wasn't getting upset. Ok, initially I was but as I kept following the marks from page to page, I suddenly found it to be a very revealing exercise, if not amusing!

And it just opened up my appetite. I visited as many public libraries there are where I live, looking to borrow more copies of my book so that I could trace more of my readers' marks, compare them and possibly detect patterns in their reactions to my writing.

The experience fascinated me. These days you can get instant reviews on your work online but they bore me. When people write reviews they get into 'review mode', which makes it more probable that you will get an idea of what people think about your book but more difficult to get a real sense of how people felt while reading it.

Besides people tend to exaggerate on reviews, others play the whole work down and often for reasons you can't be sure of. But for someone like me who doesn't believe honest reviews exist, seeing how my readers were marking their reactions as they read my book was quite fun.

So I went to propose this deal to the library people. For every copy of my book that gets returned highlighted, underlined or marked in any way, they will notify me by email and put it on hold for me until I happily replace it with a clean copy for the library. Of course, I get to keep the marked copy.

I figured that if my rate of book markings is 1 book every 5 years, it's definitely worth the cost for I get to keep the traces of my readers' reactions. The library people were naturally happy with the deal.

But so was I!

Now I'm debating with myself whether I should contact more libraries around the world that have my book in their stacks and ask for the same deal...so tempted!

http://www.thinkaloo.com

Does starting a new bank make sense?

My reasoning for starting a new bank is that creditworthy customers would rather trust that their money is held with a bank that is 100% free of toxic assets and that it won't go bust. People tell me I must be crazy to want to start a new bank because a) no one trusts banks any more and b) no one has money any more. I don't think b is true and a happens because existing banks have a lot of bad loans/investments in their books. A new bank that has none of it can earn the trust of creditworthy customers. It seems good business to me to want to start a new bank despite the turmoil in global finance.

http://www.thinkaloo.com

What will bookstores in the future look like?

Despite Amazon, people like to visit bookshops. On a recent class discussion on the future of Amazon, I had the thought of a new bookstore concept that blends Amazon and the traditional bookstore. I was thinking of creating a physical bookstore that sells paperbacks without stacking any of them on its shelves. The shelves will instead stack thousands of kindles with book titles on them. The kindles will look like physical books using 3D holography. When a customer picks a kindle book to browse, the titles of all the books next to it change to become more relevant to the content browsed.

Because there's no physical paper inventory, there are no sections. The customer types a keyword in a little screen and all the titles near him change. It's like browsing online in a physical space. When the customer decides which books to buy, he places the order, pays and laser printers at the back of the store print out the paperback. Books will be less expensive to buy and the experience of a visit to a physical location preserved. The second-hand bookstore will probably not be able to compete and die.

http://www.thinkaloo.com

Reader's Reward

When I buy a book to read, I spend money to buy the author's wisdom, knowledge and thinking process. I reward him for his time and effort. As a reader, however, I also give up my time from doing other activities to read the book. Shouldn't my effort and time also be rewarded? I propose that out of the retail price of any book $1 is discounted at the time of the purchase and the discount is symbolically given the name 'Reader's Reward'. What do you think? Is it fair?

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Can therapy diminish an author's urge to write?

What prompted me to this question was thinking about authors whose books are fiction and auto-psychoanalytical. The themes are always personal obsessions they have which urge them to write about them. The work is never auto-biographical. They write esoteric fiction that reads as very real. They write compulsively, locked in their private space for hours. I wonder if these authors went through therapy and talked about their obsessions whether they might lose the urge to write about them. I'm thinking that if therapy won't diminish an author's urge to write, how it might affect his choice of themes and literary style going forward.

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exhilarating - exciting - entertaining - emusing...

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 27 March 2008 by member nadia

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...enteresting, bulls hit! We read heaps of words that accompany recommendations on the covers of books or on ads about books. What usually works for me is any line in the following 3-words spirit: "Read It! Twice!!"

What's the punchline or kind of recommendation that does it for you? Can you give an example?

Turn the page eye-sensor

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 1 November 2007 by member coolthink

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I was looking at some books on a bookstore yesterday and made the mistake to be standing close to the door.

It was very windy and when someone suddenly opened the door to come in, wind would blow in, shuffle the pages and make me lose the page I was reading.

This is when this idea hit me. Don't know if it is difficult to do technologically. Feel free to brainstorm your thoughts on how it could be done or improved!

Here it is:

What if there was an eye-sensor on books that would read the movement of the eye reading the page and only when the eye would fall on the last word of the page, then and only then it would turn the pages for us?

The sensor could be transparent, like a thin film on the inside cover of the book, maybe glued on the top left or right of the cover inside. It will have in its memory the layout of every page and at every second it would match the position of the eyes with the layout of the book.

You would not have to use your hands to turn pages and the sensor would remember the last page you were reading, so when you open the book again it will automatically take you there!

Recline/Sleeping Chair Lounge

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 13 March 2008 by member jingyi

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I've seen it at Singapore airport. It is free for everyone to use and get a good rest or sleep from a long flight. I think they should have them at every major airport with the option of reserving your chair online either when you book your ticket or anytime before you arrive at the airport. This way you will not have to wait to get a chair when the airport is crowded.

Marvel Killed the Comic Book Store

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 24 February 2008 by member mage_ou

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Not that long ago Marvel Comics began offering digital comic books on the web. Initially comic book store owners cried fowl but at least some complaints have died down.

Ultimately, Marvel faces a strategic problem and their online comics are a clear attempt to address the issue.

There are three kinds of comic book customers: those who want to read comics, those who want to collect comic books, and those who like to do both.

However, there is a conflict in satisfying the needs of collectors at the same time as readers. Comic books are currently made of high-quality sturdy paper and that makes them very expensive. Many comics cost .50 each month or even per issue.

In the golden age of comics they were printed on cheap paper and intended to be disposable. That was a great for young kids who could afford cheap issues of comics but such degradable material doesn't work for collectors.

Marvel Online won't kill comic book stores because most of us who'd like to read comics but consider them too expensive already, years ago, stopped buying at Comic Book Stores. Now Marvel has a chance to build their key brands again by getting their characters before more readers.