The Cat's Away

So, with Glenn still out of the office there's definitely a temptation to coast a bit - which John and I are certainly not doing. We're updating a number of status-tracking documents and such this morning, contacting all of our authors and contributors to check on the progress of their work, and reviewing all of the manuscripts that come in. We're also doing some marketing work, but I won't get into that.

The GW Medical machine continues to roll forward, with more than one title beginning to look like an actual book.

Glenn's Trip to the Gulf Region

Hello, all. Early this morning, GW Medical's publisher and CEO, Glenn Whaley, left for the Gulf Region. His first stop is Amman, Jordan, where he'll be meeting with several distributors and book store managers. From Amman, Glenn will be flying to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where he'll be holding additional meetings with several important representatives of the Arab world. As you may already know, the UAE has recently launched a massive campaign to put a definite end to its problem of human trafficking. Glenn hopes to discuss how GW Medical Publishing can help them in their efforts.

So, if you get a chance, drop Glenn an email wishing him a safe and productive trip. With the blistering heat of the Gulf Region's summers, I'm sure he'd appreciate any kind and cool words of encouragement. In the meantime, Kerry, Marianne, Chris, and I will hold down the fort here in St. Louis. Hopefully, Glenn will return to the States next week having ensured the safety of the Gulf Region's children, women, and general population.

GW Author Sharon Cooper at Conference on Sexualization of Children

A nationally renowned group of childhood experts will be hosted by Point Park University, in association with A Home Within, to examine the impact of growing up in a sexualized culture on children’s health and development and what parents, professionals, and policy makers can do about it as part of the eighth annual Childhood & Society symposium, The Sexualization of Childhood, on Friday, June 13, and Saturday, June 14.

Topics to be covered include how boys’ and girls’ gender and sexual development is impacted by America’s sexualized culture; the exploitation of black adolescent girls through rap music and hip hop culture; the dramatic rise in the production and consumption of child pornography; sexual exploitation of children through internet crimes and prostitution; and the falling age of puberty in girls as a result of toxic chemical exposures.

Speakers include:

*Dr. Sharon Cooper

*Dr. Gail Dines

*Dr. Melissa Farley

*Dr.Diane Levin

*Dr. Susan Linn

*Dr.Sharna Olfman

*Dr. Sandra Steingraber

*Dr. Carolyn M. West

To register or to obtain additional information, check out the symposium's web site.

Back from BEA

So, I spent last weekend in Los Angeles at the annual Book Expo America. It was exhausting, but one of the most amazing experiences I've had recently.

I had no idea everything there was free; it rocked my world - hard.

Setting aside the super-awesome things that I may or may not have brought home for myself, I had a chance to meet with several of our distributors, some potential printing partners, and even some publisher support professionals.

I was only there for Friday, but I was shocked both by the sheer number of exhibitors at the conference and the astounding number of attendees. I'm used to medical conferences, at which 1500 is a pretty great turnout; this was easily ten to twenty times the size of the San Diego conference in January.

Quite possibly the coolest thing I had a chance to do was talk to one of the Sony reps about their new eReader (it's like Amazon's Kindle) - which has some pretty amazing DPI capabilities and can, apparently, even play music. From the perspective of an STM publisher (that's Science, Technology, and Medicine), unfortunately, it lacks one capability mandatory for us to consider offering our titles through their technology at present: neither the Kindle nor the Sony reader can support color images, let alone color images at 300-600 DPI. When that does happen, I'm certain that we'll be among the first in line to work towards digitizing our content in that format. Sadly, the Sony rep wasn't able to give me an on-the-record timetable for the introduction of those features.

Well, that's about as long as I want a single post to be; you can always drop me or John a note if you have any questions or want to talk about anything mentioned in the blog.