I am very passionate about the independent publishing business and the power of the printed word. Although I will continue to write articles and blog posts, I am adding recorded videos to my body of work as a way to get the message out and reach more people.

Look for the first videos to start coming out in August.

It looks like I was right on those two issues.  Not only this, Amazon included a whole lot more.  I had been on the fence on the original Kindle.  Ultimately, I decided against getting one for myself since I still prefer books.

However, this time around, I decided to break down and pre-order the newly-announced Kindle 2.  I have more of an open mind because the product seems to be greatly improved.  But more importantly, I am a publisher and, as such, I believe the Kindle will be a force to reckon with.

Whether or not I personally prefer a Kindle to read books, the truth is that I believe the Kindle is here to stay and that means I need to become familiar with it quickly.  I also believe that I will have start publishing my books in the Kindle format.

Whether or not the average consumer base eventually adopts Kindle in a widespread format is unimportant to me.  What is important to me is that the Kindle audience are passionate folks about their Kindle and passionate readers in general.  For someone to spend $360 for a reading device either means they are affluent or simply serious in their reading.  Either way, it would be a mistake for me to not produce books for this audience.

I cannot wait to get my Kindle 2 at the end of this month.

The ongoing problem of publishing is that books and audio programs are “snapshot” products.  These products do not evolve with the onslaught of new information that often needs to be incorporated into existing titles.  As such, I have avoided subjects, such as technology and Internet, that are extremely time-sensitive in nature.

No matter how much current information I gather for a book project, 6-12 months later the information begins to stale and become outdated.  Unless the title is going to be a great mainstream seller, it is simply not practical to do update these titles for very niche titles and subjects.

A technology review and reporting project that I started writing last year continues to sit in my computer unshared and unpublished because it is a niche title that only select readers will want to read.  It is not for the mainstream audience.  It contains valuable and proprietary information I have gathered over the years and incorporated into my technology and online operation.

It is something I want to publish and feel would be a great product but I cannot simply wrap it into a singular eBook because I want the ability to continually update the product.  At the same time, I have to find a way to make sure that updates only reach legitimate buyers of the product.

And so, what I have come up with is the concept of an eBook Subscription.  Specifically, I will be offering a 1-year subscription to a high-end technology eBook that will be continually updated over the course of a year.  People are not going to buy this book based on the literary prose.  They will be buying this eBook for the hard-to-find and hard-to-review information and technology products I use within my various business ventures.  My technology list is updated approximately every 2-3 months because I tend to incorporate updates or new technology into my operation.

I will be launching this within the next few weeks and carefully monitor the eBook Subscription concept.  If it works, I will continue to expand it.  If it does not work as well as I would like, then I need to make adjustments to the implementation.

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One of my pet peeves on the Internet is the phenomena of cybersquatting and domain speculating.  Basically, most cybersquatters are people or companies who register blocks of domains for the purpose of reselling them to end-users or developers who ultimately want to create content around a given domain name.

Because we live in a capitalistic society, I won’t say it is morally or ethically wrong to cybersquat for profit.  However, as a website creator and content developer, I find myself blocked from using many domains that would be appropriate for a project or venture.

If there was a corresponding live website to a registered domain name, it would not bother me so much.  But most of the time when I view a registered domain, it shows nothing or a generic parked page.  That tells me that there are lots of people who either are not developing content for the registered domains or they are cyber-squatting.

There are domains I register and hold on to.  But it is not to resell them.  I have intentions of developing a website around the name.  For the most part, the days of domain speculation are over and yet there are many domains still being sat upon.

With ICANN’s recent expansion announcement, the Internet domain space will soon be expanded to the point where it will become unprofitable to cybersquat.  No longer will we be limited to .com, .net, .org, .info, etc.  We potentially will have a limitless supply of domain names with the creation of new top-level domains.

Up to now, I have been a strong proponent of getting a .com in a domain name.  However, I have softened my opinion on this because I have registered some .org domains as appropriate.  The biggest problem years back was that most of the public was ignorant of Internet conventions.  So if you did not have a .com, you were not as credible and you ran the danger of less sophisticated users not being able to recognize your Internet address as an accessible website.

I am tired of cyber-squattting and domain speculators.  In my eyes, they profit but they really add no value to the big picture.  With domain names soon becoming plentiful and diverse, the power shifts back to the website creators and content developers.  That is what people want, that is what I want to provide.

We are in the middle of 2008.  ICANN claims they will start accepting new applications around this time in 2009.  I predict that sometime in 2010, the domain space will begin to widen.  I also predict that cybersquatters and domain speculators are going to start dumping their domains when they realize it is going to be quite unprofitable unless they have a super-unique domain name.

As far as I am concerned, there isn’t a project I have worked on that I have not been able to be creative and work around cyber-squatters.  I simply will not allow them to profit from me.

Cybersquatting and domain speculating will soon become an obsolete and unprofitable thanks to ICANN’s recent decision.  The end, and new beginning, cannot come soon enough for me.  Start watching domain names not being registered next year.  The dumping will start slow but will eventually come fast and furious.