RicDay on Publishing

Updated mid-2011.

I do not intend to write a year-by-year curriculum vitae here. I would much prefer that you judge my writings by what I say, not who I am. So perhaps you should explore what I have written in my blog and articles, then return here if you feel the need.

I will say that the opinions I express here are mine alone. They are not so far as I know those of anyone for whom I work currently or have worked with in the past.

I have been involved with publishing in one way or another for as long as I can remember. My parents and various aunts, uncles, and other relatives were all published authors, so books and periodicals, as well as the people who wrote and published them, were an early part of my life.

Despite my early exposure, I had no intention of pursuing a career in the media. I fell into it when I discovered the sports editors at my university newspaper got free tickets to sports events and the arts editors got to go to plays, films, and concerts on opening nights.

In a roundabout way, all that led to a management job with a small business newsletter publisher in Hong Kong. The newsletter was acquired, along with my services, by a start-up business magazine publisher. I stayed there more than two decades, helping grow the business into newsletters, books, lots of monthly magazines, and the start of digital information services using the Internet and EDI.

I next moved to Canada. Members of my family have been in BC for nearly 150 years. So while I was neither born nor raised here, I do have roots here.

After a foray into the software business (text management), and a few years as a freelance consultant, I decided I really did not much enjoy gardening and went back to publishing. I am currently the publisher for a non-fiction book publishing company.

My avocation for many years has been computers, which I first came across in California in the form of coding on punch card terminals in the 60s. By the late 70s I was using a hacked-together device with a stunning 6K of memory to write programs in Basic and store them on a magnetic tape. I bought an Apple ][ as soon as they were available and soon modified it to run the CP/M operating system.

Within a couple of years I had a system in place allowing my editors to send copy by modem from Hong Kong to Chicago and London for editing. Taking advantage of time zone differences, we had an editorial operation that effectively worked 24/7. I suspect we were one of the very first publishers to do this.

In the late 80s I was deeply involved in overseeing the development of a very large database system which had two primary goals: provide accurate publishing information, and facilitate communication between our business readers and our advertisers. That system eventually became the foundation for one of the world's largest B2B website networks.

I still build my own computers (64-bit Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP 64-bit Windows 7), still do some programming (such as this site), and remain an “early adopter” of new technology ranging from smartphones to e-book readers. I am currently working on a system to produce ePub books using a mix of inexpensive commercial software and open source software. Yes, since you wondered, I drive a hybrid.

Update: I have switched to an i7 powered iMac as my main computer in the home office and a Mac Mini at work. Too many years of unstable Windows software. I still use Ubuntu and Linux servers, but no Windows. I'm happier.