publishing

Are you the next Stephen King? There's no way to tell, unless you write a page-turner. But writing that book can be difficult. So, you might be looking for some help publishing it, or you just might want some advice. In either case, the Web is a great place to find some help.

DoXtop DoXtop allows you to upload documents (including books) that can be embedded into sites across the Web.

Uploading content to DoXtop is quick and easy. Simply pick the file you want to upload, choose your desired format, and you're all set. What I like most about DoXtop is its many community features. You can discuss your content with readers, ask them to rate your book, or respond to surveys. It builds a readership around your content. It also helps you determine what readers are looking for. If you're trying to deliver your manuscript to readers without printing a book, DoXtop is a fine solution.

iUniverse iUniverse is a self-publishing platform that goes one step further than simply allowing you to see your book in print. Unlike some competitors, it's a supported self-publishing service, which means that you can have your manuscript edited, ask iUniverse to acquire an ISBN for you, and more.

iUniverse offers a variety of plans for you to pick. You can get the basic plan, which costs $599. That gives you access to the service's one-on-one author support. You'll also get a custom cover, but you won't be able to receive all the extras you'll find in its Premier package ($2,099).

That plan includes the ability to choose a hardcover and the option to have your book previewed by buyers. It's a hefty price to pay, but it might be worth it, if you're serious about selling your book. iUniverse even gives you the option of publishing your book in Amazon.com Kindle or Sony Reader versions. It's a neat service.… Read more

New features in Google's Reader product make it easier for users to share, manage, and discover content. Reader users can now pick certain sites they want to share to. It's very much like the drop-down sharing tool we have here at CNET, although Google is giving users the option to pick which ones they want to see from the drop down, as well as add their own. This may seem like an extra step, but for people who are really going to use the feature, it cuts down on both how fast the menu appears, and how much … Read more

A 17-year-old from Michigan has filed a lawsuit against e-commerce powerhouse Amazon after it deleted a book he had purchased for his Kindle device.

The high school student, Justin D. Gawronski, filed suit in a Seattle court along with California resident Antoine J. Bruguier, and they are seeking class action status.

Amazon forcibly (and ironically) recalled copies of George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" earlier this month after it was revealed that they were unauthorized. Justin Gawronski's complaint alleges that he was reading "1984" as summer reading for an advanced-placement class and … Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Ben Mezrich's new book "The Accidental Billionaires," a dramatic and contested account of the early days of social network Facebook, is on the fast track to Hollywood.

But Thursday night's inaugural public event for the book, which first hit stores on Tuesday, was a humble affair well suited to this relatively quiet university town. Held in the Brattle Theatre, a basement-level space in a 120-year-old brick building just off Harvard Square, Mezrich was interviewed on a small stage by Scott Stossel, managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly, his onetime roommate, and a fellow Harvard … Read more

The Microsoft Office 2010 technical preview is available today through invite only and--though it's not in its final form--there are plenty of feature enhancements to be excited about, if Microsoft can pull it off. According to Microsoft, the focus of this update was on three things: to make work flows more efficient; to effectively use Web applications to make your work available anywhere; and to make collaboration with others much easier. In this CNET First Take, we'll take a look at some of the notable feature changes across many of the applications. Microsoft says Office 2010 will let … Read more

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm well-acquainted with legal filings from analyzing Microsoft's legal travails for the last nine years. I've seen a lot of aggressive lawsuits, but a copyright infringement suit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee is one of the boldest--and, I'd argue, short-sighted--filings I've ever seen.

The suit appears to have been initiated by Music Copyright Solutions (MCS), which claims to administer copyrights for more than 45,000 compositions. MCS is named as the lead plaintiff, along with a number of songwriters including Mark Farner of … Read more

This review contains some spoilers about the plot of "The Accidental Billionaires," but most of them are common knowledge to people familiar with Facebook's history.

There's a reason why there aren't more lurid tell-all books about Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial elite: Generally, their lives are kind of a yawn.

Author Ben Mezrich attempts to prove that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is an exception to the rule in "The Accidental Billionaires," a testosterone-flavored tome of beach reading that hits stores on July 14. CNET News obtained an advance copy.

Telling the tale of Facebook'… Read more

This story was corrected at 9:48 a.m. Details are below.

Michael Jackson's position in long-time efforts to make the much-coveted Beatles catalog available digitally is one of the most misunderstood aspects in the very complicated negotiations.

The sudden death of one of the world's best known entertainers on Thursday will have no impact on whether songs from the Fab Four will finally make it to iTunes and other Web music stores. Rumors aside, no deals are imminent, music sources told CNET News.

Jackson bought ATV Music Publishing, the company that owned the words and music to … Read more

With its professionally designed and visually appealing interface, ACDSee Pro makes a good first impression. While novice users might be overwhelmed initially, the tools to organize and view images proved easy to use.

This program's sleek interface looks sharp and well-designed. Four main areas dominate the screen. The middle section, and largest, is for thumbnails of your photographs and allows you to view an entire folder's worth of shots at once. The lower left side gives a larger preview of any thumbnail you click on, as well as a small graph of its color composition. Above this box … Read more