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Andrew Savikas

http://www.twitter.com/andrewsavikas

Publishing technology and digital publishing strategy blogger, speaker, author


Areas of Expertise:
  • Publishing Technology
  • XML
  • DocBook
  • speaking

Biography

Andrew Savikas is the VP of Digital Initiatives at O'Reilly Media, and is the Program Chair for O'Reilly's Tools of Change for Publishing conference. He blogs at toc.oreilly.com, and is also a regular contributor to the O'Reilly Radar blog.

Andrew has worked on several key publishing technology initiatives at O'Reilly, including the design and deployment of an open-standards-based XML content distribution platform. Andrew is an advisor to Safari Books Online, O'Reilly's joint venture with Pearson Technology Group. His recent work has also included helping to plan and execute O'Reilly's ebook and digital publishing strategy.

Andrew holds a B.S. in Media Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an MBA from Northeastern University in Boston. He is a frequent speaker at publishing and content management conferences, and is also the author of "Word Hacks: Tips & Tools for Taming your Text".

Books

Word Hacks Word Hacks
by Andrew Savikas
November 2004
Print: $24.95
Ebook: $19.99
Bundle: $32.44
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(Read Reviews)

Articles

Blog

Recent Posts | All Posts

TOC Coming to Frankfurt

July 01 2009

I've had the opportunity to speak with quite a few of my industry colleagues in Europe during the past year, and it became increasingly obvious there was an opportunity to... read more

"Being wrong is a feature, not a bug"

July 01 2009

A thoughtful piece from Michael Nielsen on the disruption of the scientific publishing industry includes a lot that's very relevant to other publishers and media companies. For example: In... read more

New on O'Reilly Labs: Open Feedback Publshing System

May 21 2009

O'Reilly engineer Keith Fahlgren has formally launched our new Open Feedback Publishing System over on O'Reilly Labs: Over the last few years, traditional publishing has been moving closer to the... read more

Undocumented Kindle "Clippings" Limit?

May 20 2009

O'Reilly author Shelley Powers is a heavy user of Kindle's "clipping" feature, and has run into an apparently undocumented clipping limit imposed by Amazon: I tried to find information about... read more

Scribd Store a Welcome Addition to Ebook Market (and 650 O'Reilly Titles Included)

May 18 2009

The document-sharing site Scribd has launched a new "Scribd Store" selling view and download access to documents and books. As part of the launch, there are now more than 650 O'Reilly ebooks now available for preview and sale in the Scribd store, and all include DRM-free PDF downloads with purchase.… read more

Scribd Store Sets New Standard for Ebook Ecommerce (and 650 O'Reilly Ebooks Included)

May 18 2009

There are more than 650 (DRM-free of course) O'Reilly ebooks now on sale in the new Scribd store, which officially launches Monday morning. Full details over on O'Reilly Radar: For... read more

Amazon's Physical vs. Digital Dissonance

May 18 2009

In March of 2008, I wrote about the frustrating experience of trying to get this blog added to Kindle. Fourteen months later, apparently that "rather large ingestion queue" is still... read more

Ebook Piracy is Up Because Ebook Demand is Up

May 12 2009

My email, twitter, and "real-world" information stream is abuzz today with references to a New York Times story about the increase in piracy of ebooks: “It’s exponentially up,” said David... read more

Authoring Tools from Alpha Geeks

May 11 2009

Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) has posted a nice article covering some of the tools he's built or borrowed to make his writing life more manageable. I'm especially intrigued by the Flashbake... read more

Over 160 O'Reilly Books Now in Kindle Store (without DRM), More on the Way

April 17 2009

I'm happy to announce that more than 160 O'Reilly books are now available on Kindle, and are being sold without any DRM (Digital Rights Management). Though we do offer more... read more

Google's Distribution Advantage Has Its Limits

April 13 2009

Scott Karp has an insightful (and provocatively titled) piece over on the Publishing 2.0 blog about just how deeply Google has inserted itself in Web distribution of content. While much... read more

Open Publishing Distribution System -- an Open-Standards Catalog Format

April 08 2009

It's no secret we're big fans of the iPhone/iPod reading app Stanza. While the Kindle App has overtaken Stanza for the top-spot among free book apps in iTunes, Stanza offers... read more

"Bite-Size Edits" from BookOven

April 02 2009

Hugh McGuire's startup BookOven has opened up an alpha version of a project they're calling the Gutenberg Rally, an attempt to harness collective intelligence Mechanical-Turk style to proofread Project Gutenberg... read more

Readers Boycotting Kindle Titles Priced Above $9.99

April 02 2009

Pricing is a red-hot topic among publishers when it comes to ebooks. As I said in a Q&A for Forbes.com last week, cost-driven pricing (especially when the costs in question are calculated based on printed output) is a poor approach for ebook publishers. Readers simply don't care how much it… read more

Software Development as Collaborative Writing

March 31 2009

Following a lively backchannel email discussion, I'd planned to blog about what writers, editors, and publishers can learn from software developers (specifically their tools and techniques) but Tim beat me... read more

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Andrew Savikas