A decade or more ago, elearning was heralded by many as the panacea to organisational training needs. The reality? It didn’t live up to the hype. Elearning was too often just a bunch of files uploaded to a website or learning management system; unhappy eye-strained learners read reams of text on screen. Today technology has moved on, and elearning can finally deliver what most learners really want: personalised, interactive, social and mobile learning experiences. So, for anyone who still thinks elearning is dull, disappointing or dead in the water, here are eight tips to debunk your views.

If, like me, you spend a lot of time on the internet (like… y’know… enough to clock when adverts change on the same web pages) you will probably have noticed the intense ramping up of aNobii activity across all digital channels recently. In the past two months, their online advertising reached the level of intense saturation usually reserved for dating websites – displaying as gates on pirated videos before you watch them, weird sidebar ad placement on forums, promoted tweets, heaps of whacky Pinterest boards… and so on.

So given the company launched in 2006, why now?

Last week I over-read someone on Twitter saying that ‘Trad pub expect authors to do most marketing these days’. I jumped in with my contrarian point of view, as ever the self-righteous asshole, trying to disguise the fact that I was windmilling my fists by using an even tone. Thankfully, that particular conversation didn’t leave either participant with long-term injuries. But it did get me thinking: do publishing houses ask authors to do too much?

My love of children’s literature is what inspired me to pursue a career in publishing. Until now I’ve devoted most of my attention to fiction titles, but, since attending Booktrust’s seminar The World into Words: why reading non-fiction is vital for children, I am seriously rethinking my own relationship to children’s non-fiction. And, after listening to children’s non-fiction authors Viv French and Nicola Davies and children’s librarian Jake Hope share their insights, I think the industry as a whole may need to as well.

I’m not going to lie – I’ve always thought audio books were lame as hell.  The disappointing nephew of the hardback; the ugly duckling of the literary landscape. They bring back memories of long car rides to boring towns when my mum would put on a tape of some Victorian period drama read by an artist’s rendering of Jane Austen. Invariably I would hear half of it and then miss some and then hear some more of it and the leaps in narrative would piss me off and the English accent would clash with the Australian landscape, and the cases for the tapes were ugly and would get under my feet  – a car accident waiting to happen. 

You’d be forgiven if you missed the launch of Google’s storefront in the UK – the somewhat optimistically-named ‘Google Play’, which ties together their bookstore (eh?) their music store (coming soon – bet you can’t wait), their video store (you mean… Youtube?), and their apps (Android). Available directly through your Android device your browser (natch), the Google Play is probably the closest thing Apple has ever come to direct competition. Although, Google is about as much competition for Apple at this point as MC Hammer is to Google.

This week I took some time out from sipping a cup of coffee and hitting ‘send’ on an email, and doing various other publisher-related tasks, and read the Guardian article by Lloyd Shepherd on his recent experience with eBook pirates.

I usually don’t read articles on piracy and try not to write about it because the debate is so vast and terrifying and I’m still sitting on the fence about DRM mostly. But this seemed to be pretty neutral as its written by an author, and I’m always interested in hearing pirates justify their actions in case I find something I hadn’t considered.

Unfortunately, the justifications people on this sharing site were giving were really shitty.

If you don’t know about 50 Shades of Grey yet (ie: if you don’t have Twitter) then here’s a brief summary: it’s an erotic novel about a young girl who meets some older guy into BDSM. She works in a hardware shop and one seduces the other (my guess is he seduces her, because girls don’t typically do anything but swoon in romance novels), and I guess there are a lot of double entendres on the word ‘wood’. I hope there are.

That would make it readable. Wait, no. Funny.