60″home television screens are now available.

Who knows how big they’ll be in a few years.

It may be that the home of the not-too-distant future will have a built in wall screen that will allow tv/internet/sms access and e-reading capabilities. This feature will be de rigeur, and as standard a feature as a microwave cooker in the kitchen of today. Home digital technicians and consultants  will be regarded as being as indispensable as are plumbers and electricians today. The electronic aspect of the home of the future will be as important – if not more – than the material aspect; as access to and mastery of all things digital and internet-related will be seen as absolutely necessary for survival.

Sound far fetched? Overly “sci-fi?”

Then let’s look at what’ happening today in the world of book printing and distribution.

“Big Box” bookstores are fighting for their lives while the sale of fiction in mass-printed form is down over 20% from last year; and even those genres that are still turning a profit for the former – magazines, childrens’ books, and books on art, science, computers and cooking- create obstacles for themselves through their very success, ironically, as customers create an additional source of competition for the purveyors of their once-new volumes in the foregoing categories by selling their now-used copies via online venues such as Amazon, Ebay and Craigslist.

And then there are e-readers, which have also taken up a good deal of space in chain bookstores.

In the end, what determines one’s reading choices and habits when there is a choice of

sources for one’s reading material?

It may be very much a question of one’s age.

According to statistics, if your hair was already going gray before the Internet’s incursion into bookselling and the debut of electronic readers, there is a good chance that you have a preference for conventional printed-and-bound books.

Ironically, the competition offered by Amazon and other internet book sale sites may function as a kind of double-edged sword. and one that makes for an interesting wrinkle in all this.

By allowing people to purchase books…especially used ones… for much less than they’d pay in a store, and thus accelerating the major shifts that are taking place in the world of publishing and distribution, they are giving traditional publishing a new lease on life.

This new lease comes in the form of print-on-demand.

…To be continued

Here are three basic rules of good web writing:

1) Tone / “Voice”

Don’t be overly intellectual. Don’t make your visitors  think.

This is not to suggest that the content should be watered down and superficial. It simply means that it should move the reader / viewer along with a spring in his/her step and a minimum of confusion. E-commerce users in particular are on your site for practical -  not philosophical – reasons.

The reader of a web page is much more likely to scan the text than to actually read it in traditional linear fashion…the way he would a printed page.

He is much more likely to “bounce” or abandon your page and your site than he would with a printed version. To prevent this, a short word is often as good as a long one and a no-nonsense presentation of facts and features about your product will work better than flowery and overdone prose.

Why not provide a link leading to a more in-depth treatment of a particular topic for those site visitors who want more/more detailed information?

2) Granularity

Avoid great big paragraphs.

Instead, use “bite sized” chunks of information, as an authority on web writing so wisely put it.

Bulleted entries that consist of short and factual statements are essential to web writing. Although

“short and sweet” is often the way to go in web copywriting, there are some exceptional cases in which good old fashioned prose may also be appropriate. Good examples of this are often found in academic sites or informational ones that appeal to a specific profession.

Unless your viewer has already been “signed, sealed, and delivered” and very much wants to explore the topic to his or her heart’s content, long and complex sentences / paragraphs may be fine for the printed word but generally not for the web

3) Relevance

Make your site into a clearinghouse / mega emporium. If you are there to sell your products, promote your services and/or to gain new customers for future sales, then your focus must be just that…commerce!

Describe your products and services in a matter of fact way. Be sure to emphasize your unique selling points.

And again, nothing works quite as well on the web as free content.

Do you want to turn your site into an effective means of acquiring new customers for your business?

Then give them some free information!

For this you will want a  blog; something that will keep them coming back to your web site for more information and compelling content..

Having thus received something of value, many of your site visitors will be more than happy to sign up for your “opt-in” list in order to avail themselves of any future articles of interest you might post to your site. By doing so you gain a number of well qualified leads for your next email campaign as well as repeat visitors who may eventually become paying customers.

This core group of loyal readers who are interested in the topics you discuss on your site can help to turn your site into an authority site to which other sites will want to link.

This counts for a lot when it comes to boosting your search rankings.

…to be continued

Feel like the new digital present/future is happening without you or are you plugged into it?

I took my first computer class at the age of 47. My previous experience consisted of a  very painful hour spent at a computer in a busy copy place in downtown San Francisco; trying to hammer out some typesetting for a print job. the staff were encouraging and very, very patient with me all thing considered. What they had to consider and deal with was a middle-aged man virtually talking to  this machine in a fit of frustration; occasionally swearing out loud as he fumbled with the keyboard and unfamiliar software on a device which he had used only a few times before in a very simple way.

Turn the clock ahead twenty years. After many nail-bitingly challenging computer classes in page layout,  graphic design, web authoring, search engine marketing and  spreadsheet management – not to mention  a thoroughly daunting and humbling journey into the inner workings of WordPress and web development -and you have a steadily graying guy in his sixties who likes to think of himself as being bloodied but unbowed in the digital arena.

Anybody else out there who tackled this amazing thing called the computer in midlife or fairly late in the game? Leave your comments and/or words of encouragement here for others!

One day,  in the mounting heat of a May morning, he returned early from his daily rounds in the Great Bazaar, stumbling into the palatial kitchen of the great house in a state that bordered on panic. Prince Hakim, as famed for his kindness as for his wealth, was greatly disturbed to see his trusted assistant so upset.

After several deep gulps from the goblet of pomegranate juice that Master had kindly placed in his still trembling hands, Rashid tried  to calm himself down so that he could recount what had just happened.

“I was in the marketplace this morning; inspecting a bin full of freshly picked melons, when someone bumped into me from behind and made me spill all  that I had purchased for tonight’s menu. When I turned around to see who had done this, who did I see but the Angel of Death himself staring me right in the face.

I was scared out of my mind.

And then I ran straight home.

I don’t know what to do, Great Sir: I  have just seen Death himself.”

Esteemed far and wide for his practical wisdom, Master wasted no time in setting a plan in motion to save his beloved servant from the clutches of the Evil One – even if it meant depriving himself of Rashid’s good and faithful offices forever. He summoned Akbar, another senior house servant, and bade him go straightaway to the caravansary depot and reserve a place for his hapless servant on the week-long caravan train leaving that same day for the ancient city of Aleppo.

But Master was also a man of honor…a man of honor with the heart of a lion; especially where the life of a faithful steward was concerned.  Seeing him clap his hands for litter and bearers, Rashid knew that even one so powerful as Death’s stern reaper was in for it now!

Upon arriving in the marketplace the noble Hakim looked long and hard for the offending party. At long last, with the help of his bearers, he found the dark angel engaged in what seemed to be a pleasant conversation with a kindly old potter in the artisans’ section of the bazaar.

Without introduction or preamble, the merchant drew himself up to his full height and without preamble or pretense angrily demanded an explanation of his actions of that morning.

Now it must be said here that Death….contrary to most peoples’ opinion…is no ruffian.

To the contrary, his reaction to Hakim’s confrontation was, as always, that of a gentleman.

“Ah, I am most glad to see thee, Great Sheik; for I have wanted to extend my apologies to thee ever since this morning’s unfortunate incident. The fact of the matter is, I had no intention of so cruelly disturbing thy faithful servant earlier today. It was just that I was so surprised to see him still here in Damascus that I lost my concentration and literally walked right into him. For you see, most exalted Hakim… in a week’s time he and I have an appointment in Aleppo!”

Based on the forward to John O’Hara’s “Appointment in Samara”

Then you know that it is changing while we speak!

I started out selling business cards and stationery out of a catalog in 1982. Before I’d ever heard of a “bleed” or “camera-ready” artwork, I was told by the print broker who had just hired me to sell printing on a commission basis to get out there and get that all-important first order.

A little more than ten years later, the quantity of digital artwork submissions exceeded the that of mechanically-created files for the first time. And then the problem became one of pre-flighting the artwork. When a client or graphic designer gave you a mechanical you could pretty much see if it was up to snuff. For all the advantages offered by electronic art, there were new problems to deal with.. Were all fonts bundled with the artwork? Was the disk or diskette (remember them?) file  corrupted?

In the nineteen eighties, Mergenthalers and other typesetting machines were “state of the art,” and strictly the province of professionals. With the introduction of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop around 1990, the game changed significantly. Now everyone who could shell out for these wonderful new graphics applications could become a work-at-home graphic designer or typographer. Today these wondrous drawing and photo editing programs are so well known that “Photoshop” has entered the English (and perhaps other languages too) language as a verb.

The scope of the change that has characterized  the printing and graphics industries in the last thirty years is nothing short of incredible.

Can you relate to this?

Have you had similar experiences as a graphic designer, press operator, paper salesperson, estimator, post-press or bindery operator, or just a student and observer of print and graphics technology?

Then please go to blog.kleinprint.com and let us know what you think.

This is a blog about the past, present and future of  printing…commercial, offset, digital, letterpress, post-press,  Photoshop, Illustrator and  everything / anything else that is either  directly or indirectly related to printing.

Are you a “newbie” who wants advice about getting something printed?

Please post!

Are you just thinking about the future of printing and/or communication and want to exchange viewpoints with others?

Hope to hear from you soon!

Are you a diehard non-reader by choice and feel that books are…at  best…odorous, tree-wasting remnants of a bygone or almost bygone age?

Feel free to rant and rave. Just try to spell something correctly (LOL)!

Are you in the business of printing, publishing, writing, editing, bookselling, or bookstore browsing for fun or profit?

The way we process conventional alphabets and glyphs is changing  while we speak, so if you have a thing for printing, books, semantics,  communications or anything remotely related to these topics, please  share your thoughts with like-minded people.

Thank you!

Timothy Egan worked for The Times for 18 years – as Pacific Northwest correspondent and a national enterprise reporter. His column on American politics and life as seen from the West Coast appears here on Fridays. In 2001, he was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that wrote the series “How Race Is Lived in America.” He is the author of several books, including “The Worst Hard Time,” a history of the Dust Bowl, for which he won the National Book Award, and most recently, “The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America.”Anarchists and Tasseled Loafers. His Amazon page is:

http://www.amazon.com/Timothy-Egan/e/B000APEFME/ref=sr_tc_ep?qid=1329938330

Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.

Amid shattered glass and the black smoke of urban pyres, I found myself in a riot some years ago — the anarchists-led assault on the World Trade Organization meetings of 1999. At the height of what became known as The Battle of Seattle, I bumped into an otherwise mild-mannered, libertarian-leaning friend on the streets, gasping at the bitter taste of tear gas. He was ecstatic.

“Isn’t it great?” he shouted. “The established order is coming down!”

Turns out, only Nike Town, the Gap and a few other outposts of global capitalism were coming down, and just for a day or so. But the nihilistic spirit of those window-smashers, whose goal was to bring chaos to a city of passive refinements, seems to have found a home: in the Republican Party.

Who would put at risk, at a time when most people are hurting from a gasping economy, the monthly issuance of life-supporting funds for wounded veterans, disabled children, countless elderly couples living on barely $2,000 a month — all told, over 70 million checks that go out each month?

Who would risk pushing the livelihoods of businesses small and big off a cliff by an interest rate spike, possibly igniting a second recession as the credit-rating agencies have just suggested — essentially saying “blow your brains out, America,” as Warren Buffett phrased it?

Who would risk this anarchists’ storm, rather than a pass a formality: extending the borrowing authority of the United States so the country can pay bills from the past? Certainly, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, cannot find anyone so reckless in Washington. “Nobody is talking about not raising the debt ceiling,” he said last Sunday. “I haven’t heard that from anybody.”

Radical Republicans didn’t go to Washington to find solutions; they went there to destroy the place.

Either he’s deaf to the roar on his right or he’s speaking exclusively to that diminishing other wing of his party, the Tasseled Loafers. Not only is Michele Bachmann, a leading Republican presidential candidate, saying a government default is nothing to worry about, but a core group of 59 House Republicans have indicated they will not raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances, according to House Speaker John Boehner.

That’s right: no matter how much President Obama gives them — from curbing entitlements to cuts in excess of $3 trillion — this cadre of radical Republicans is taking the burn-it-all-down position. They don’t want to see the terms of a deal because there is no deal they will accept. That’s their stated position.

With this step, what the chaos caucus has proven is that they have no interest in governing. They didn’t go to Washington to find solutions; they went there to destroy the place.

Based on Boehner’s math, the anarchists make up perhaps 25 percent of the G.O.P. House. At the other end of party control are the moneyed interests who’ve long bankrolled Republicans. They’re happy, of course, that their favored politicians are willing to go to the brink of catastrophe to keep even the most egregious tax loopholes from being closed. But now they’re getting scared, as the anarchist wing indicates it is serious about bringing the whole government down — and with it a lot of private money.

Symbolic of the Tasseled Loafers’ hold on power was that dinner of Rep. Paul Ryan last week, in which the House budget-writer shared a pair of $350 bottles of wine with a hedge fund manager and a free-market economist. When the story broke, he was embarrassed enough to issue a copy of his credit card receipt showing he paid for at least one of the bottles of 2004 Echezeaux grand cru Burgundy himself, and was not simply being courted in violation of lobbying rules. (If he’d bought American, and had been as frugal with his money as he wants the country to be, Ryan could have drunk superb Oregon pinot noir for a fraction of the French grape’s price.)

The loafers may want to retreat to their wine cellars until this thing blows over.

I don’t care how rich guys spend their money, or even if a congressman pays as much for a single bottle of wine as some fellow Americans get for their weekly unemployment checks. Ryan is the architect of a budget that gives even more tax breaks for the corporate elite while making the elderly pay for diminished Medicare with coupons. Nobody should be surprised when he drinks $350 wine with people who want continue the policies of economic inequality.

But the dinner is instructive as a picture of power. Throughout these debt ceiling negotiations, I’ve been waiting for the Republicans’ corporate overlords to jerk their chain. And finally, a few days ago, the Business Roundtable, in a letter signed by more than 350 C.E.O.’s, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a dire warning — the game of chicken is up. They said what others who have a large stake in this economy have said: that default could cause a multi-billion dollar crash, affecting everything from auto loans to credit-card debt.

And so, in response to the Tasseled Loafers’ concern, McConnell tried again, saying, “We think it’s extremely important that the country reassure the markets that default is not an option.”

Note who is getting the reassurance from the Senate Republican leader. But it may be too late. The loafers may want to retreat to their wine cellars until this thing blows over. A renegade wing of their party is lighting fires and throwing rocks (metaphorically, of course!). Once they got a taste of smoke in their nostrils, the anarchists realized they could smash the place up, maybe even burn it down, and no one would stop them. After Aug. 2, the default deadline, the smell will go bad, quickly.

For the original version of this piece go to http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/anarchists-and-tasseled-loafers/