In the dojo of Ebook Ninjas
Listen closely, and you can detect a hint of laughter during the opening of this eBook Ninjas podcast, with "Guest Ninja" D.C. Denison.
That's because we're winging it.
Lead Ninja, Joshua Tallent, was on a client call until just a few minutes before air time. As soon as he hung up, we were off and running, with just the barest of preparation.
"Just say your name after we say ours," Joshua told me. That was about it.
And we were launched, the Ninjas clearly amused that we were off the ground.
The Ninjas, who all work at Ebook Architects, can pull this off.
These guys all have deep, practical experience with the real world of ebook production. The stripped-down, no-frills nature of the podcast perfectly reflects their daily hand-to-hand combat with ebook production: the mutliple formats, the persistant bugs, the secretive cultures of Amazon and Apple.
Sometimes an ebook project demands a surprise attack from an unexpected angle, or the ability to cling stealthily to a ceiling. That's why these guys are ninjas.
When other tech podcasts touch on ebooks, it's usually device-centric: the Kindle Fire versus the Apple iPad. Or it's broad, "future of the book"-oriented.
Other podcasts cover what ebooks could or should be. The Ninjas deal with ebooks as they are.
The eBook Ninjas are realists: they know that promises of smooth PDF to ePub to Kindle conversions are booby trapped with small landmines that are likely to explode unexpectedly.
And the episode I appeared on? One of these days I'll force myself to listen to it. I think it went well, even though I was dealing with a slightly laggy Skype connection.
What I remember: we talked about Amazon's new ebook lending offer to independent publishers, PDFs, books in browsers, Seth Godin's Domino Project, and a bunch of other random topics.
It's probably outdated by now anyway. This pack of ninjas keeps moving. It's all about ebooks this week. They are pretty good about uploading new episodes. I recommend you listen to their latest podcast instead.
Oh yeah, I asked the Ninjas to nominate their own ebook publishers to watch. As I recall the suggestions included Bob Mayer, Evo Terra of Podiobooks, and Open Road.
Ebook Ninjas isn't the slickest podcast in the iTunes Store (that disctinction probably goes to the This Week in Tech) but -- this recent lapse in guest selection notwithstanding -- it is one of the best podcasts if you're interested in ebooks.
After nearly sixty episodes it's still the only podcast I make sure to catch every week.