I'm on my way to New York for a remarkable "Berkshire" event tomorrow: a China celebration in New York on May Day that brings the renowned author Simon Winchester, a resident of the Berkshires and a friend of Berkshire Publishing, to a lunch hosted by Jones Day and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Here's the
Here's an e-mail (or email -- the difference being the subject of yet another editorial conversation!) exchange between senior editor Mary Bagg and project coordinator Bill Siever, both veterans of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of China, and one of our copy editors. This discussion will give some insight into the details we handle here, and the care
I'm into self sufficiency, but I have to confess that when it comes to HTML, here on the blog and elsewhere, I succumb to cellphone and Skype, because my daughter Rachel is the HTML queen. She's generally kindly, if a little condescending, in her response to my panic over image tags. With her help, I got
We've been working with Exact Editions for a while, but they're really gone above and beyond with the online version of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of China, live as of this morning. The Berkshire Encyclopedia of China Please do try the search box above. Adam Hodgkin, founder of Exact Editions and also Xrefer (now Credo Reference), has
Not only am I doing some research for a new book about community by using Twitter, in spite of thinking it's a silly idea, but I have started writing on a microblog site, Jiwai.de, in China, and even occasionally in Chinese (thanks to Google Translate, kind friends, and copy-and-paste). You can find me there at http://jiwai.de/%E6%B2%88%E5%87%AF%E4%BC%A6/.
If Richard Charkin says it, it's probably good sense, good business, and controversial. The issue of book returns is virtually unknown to the book-buying public, and it isn't much of an issue in the reference book publishing sector, at least for Berkshire, but it's a huge business problem with considerable environmental impact. Nice to see some
Great conference, but what terrible timing: a freakishly beautiful and warm April Saturday and we spent all day inside learning about "Media in Chinese Politics" at Harvard's Fairbank Center. Indoors, in an underground lecture hall! Actually, it wasn't all day. In the morning we enjoyed breakfast on the hotel terrace, watching the rowing crews. In the
I talk now and then about the pleasures of wandering in the library stacks, and about how there's just not the same serendipity online, but living in a small town far from a university, it's a long time since I have actually been in the stacks. But last weekend I went to see my daughter at
I have a feeling that I'm going to learn a lot about "greenwashing" -- and premium pricing -- as I dive into the Encyclopedia of Sustainability determined to make Berkshire Publishing greener. What's great is seeing how much good information there is around. Here's an article about greener business travel, which took me to a less
You can imagine the reaction I get when I tell people I have a company focused on China and global sustainability but am based in a tiny town in the Berkshire Hills, in remote rural New England. I've just come across this article in Business Week, "The Pros of Planting Startups in Smaller Cities". It's thought-provoking.
