Explanation: A protestor at yesterday's Google I/O keynote shouted “you're all working for a totalitarian company that builds robots that kill people.”
Did you self-publish or work with a publisher? What were your margins like in the end?
You're right, this is not a new model per se, but it's becoming more mainstream.
What fascinates me is the power of print-on-demand because it allows anyone to easily get into the book business. If Gutenberg's invention of technology giving people access to books was a revolution, it would make sense that technology that gives people access to printing presses is also going to cause a stir.
(I keep a notebook of links to articles about the book business here spundge.com/notebook/6774/ , in case anyone is interested.)
I know my karma is going to get nuked, but as a datapoint to the authors of Priceonomics: I'll never buy a book with a curseword in the title. It screams "amateur hour".
EDIT: Maybe you can use that topic for an upcoming blog post.
I agree with you somewhat that using curse words in book titles can be amateurish, like clickbait in the physical world.
PS the reason you're being downvoted is most likely because you prefaced your comment with "I know my karma is going to get nuked, but...". That's very Redditesque and is usually not tolerated.
I agree, and I got nuked as well, but I'm still going to express my opinion. It seems to me that it's possible to come up with a creative title to draw people in without resorting to profanity. Profanity has shock value but also will turn off some people, so it's risky and possibly counter-productive.
There's a ton of established (and YC) startups in the city: Shopify, Upverter, 500px, Chango, Wattpad, XMG, Uken Games, and PagerDuty are all based here or have offices here, just to name a few.
I wonder why it isn't. I'm in Montreal, and startups are definitely in the air. The advantages Montreal has I can think of are:
* It's very cheap; good for getting started
* A VERY high number of students per capita. At least five major universities, plus many CEGEPs
* It's not near Waterloo. I imagine much Toronto talents gets sucked down to Kitchner-Waterloo.
* It's the center for French talent. English talent in Toronto has other places to go, if it wants.
> I imagine much Toronto talents gets sucked down to Kitchener-Waterloo.
I'm not sure about the actual numbers, I don't think movement is in any one direction where a reliable conclusion like that can be made. While a lot of talent is attracted and bred there, I'm not sure about the actual retention of talent. A bunch stay, but a lot leave for the US and there's an interesting dynamic between Waterloo and Toronto given that they're so close to each other.
There are some investment "bridges", usually ran by Canadians who made money in the States and are now helping out. I'm not well versed enough in the legality of US-entities investing in Canada, but in principle yes, the opportunity is there.
