Looking for a platform to publish your book?

The great thing about marketers is they write great books, but not all budding authors have a platform. Thomas Knoll is looking to change that. He's encouraging people through ThePoint.com, a new activism website, to pledge to write a book on a platform that he'll develop. As long as he receives 20 pledges he'll build the platform. He only asks that people follow-through, participate and be willing to write their book on an open platform - open to collaboration, community and feedback.

It's a great idea. It uses social media to help would be authors write a book, builds a platform for continual feedback (hopefully producing a better book) and builds a community of 20+ people, all starting from the same spot of having an idea that they'd like to put to paper and using a new tool to do it.

It's become easier over the years to self-publish and this is one more step in the open spread of ideas. If you're looking for a platform to publish your book join Thomas and keep me updated on what you'll be writing about.

Image credit: Flyzipper

Follow a story using Google Maps

The biggest gift of a story is its ability to transport its readers to another place. But what if you had the ability to literally follow the characters along with the words? Now you can thanks to Penguin Books' We Tell Stories where author Charles Cumming shares a story, The 21 Steps using Google Maps as the delivery mode.

And the fun doesn't stop there. We Tell Stories is a study of alternate book writing using digital technology. While Cumming's choose Google Maps, Toby Litt decided to use a combination of blogs and Twitter as the main publishing platform for his story Slice. Kevin Brooks is letting readers get in on the writing of Fairy Tales and Nicci French is writing Your Place or Mine live.

Over the next two weeks there will be two more stories written in two very different ways. This is a great exploration of how different industries can adopt technology to engage their audiences. I'll be paying attention to the stories, both for reading enjoyment but also to see how these technologies could integrated into other industries. You can keep track of the updates at Penguin Books' We Tell Stories website. And please share any ideas you garner from this effort in the comments section.

Credit to Springwise for bringing this story to my attention.