Edible Book Festival Needs Volunteers

The Second Annual Seattle Edible Book Festival will be held on April 1 atanew location: 826 Seattle, 414 Greenwood Avenue North.

Following on the success of the 2005 "Cook the Books," the Edible Book Festival is currently searching for donations and volunteers. Top on their wish list is:

• An inexpensive printer for a flyer
  
• Volunteers to help distribute the flyer
  
• Volunteer photographers for the event
  
• Help with publicity
  
• Lots of entries*
  

To contact the Seattle organizers of the Edible Book Festival, e-mail ediblebookfest@yahoo.com or check out www.frybooks.com. To learn more about the international movement in edible book arts, check out the website: www.books2eat.com.

*If you decide to turn one of your publications into an edible entry, please send a description or photo to BPNW News. We’d love to show it off!

Beta Version of Quark 7 Available

A public beta program for QuarkXPress 7 provides an early look at the upcoming changes to the program. For publishers who use Quark or are thinking about adopting Quark, this is a free way to test the software. Anyone thinking about using the beta version of QuarkXPRess 7 should note the following:

•The QuarkXPress 7 Public Beta only will be functional through March 31, 2006.
•Not all of the features in QuarkXPress 7 are available in the beta release and users "may experience unexpected results" when using certain features, according to Quark's press release.
•QuarkXPress 7 public beta software is not intended for use in a production environment.

To download the QuarkXPress 7 public beta software, go to Quark’s website.

RSVP Needed Today for SPGA/Seattle Guild

Program: 2006 Employment Trends

Seattle’s graphic artists guild is meeting Wednesday, January 25, to discuss what employment experts expect for the coming year, what businesses are hiring now, which ones are expected to hire later, how hiring trends have changed, and how to make yourself attractive to 2006 employers.

Their panel of Employment Experts will discuss:
•The changing workplace forecast for 2006
•New employment trends in communications
•How to work with temp agencies to find jobs

If you want to get the early bird price for this meeting, you need to sign up on their website by 5:00 p.m. today. Check the details at www.seattleguild.org.

PANELISTS:
Jacqueline McCarthy, principal at Vivitiv, formerly known as Art-O-Mat Design. www.Vivitiv.com
Erin Lowe, technical recruiter at Volt Technical Resources. www.Volt.com
Carol Bowser, J.D., attorney and human resources consultant. www.ManagingConflict.com

Practicing What We Discussed

For our January meeting in 2006, our topic was "Blogging." While everyone in the room knew what blogs were, only three publishers were actually blogging. As busy as we all are creating books, we perhaps don't spend enough time communicating about those books and blogs appear to be a great, low cost way to let more people know what we do. By the end of the terrific discussion, led by Tom Masters of Orion Wellspring, we made the following New Year's resolution: BPNW will blog.

We will use this space to catch up members and interested others on events involving publishing, news about NW publishers, and news about books published by NW publishers.

And, because we see this as an extension rather than replacement of our regular means of communication, we will continue to create newsletters, send e-mails, and meet on a regular basis. So don't forget to check out all those other means of communication on our website or e-mail us at bpnwnews@aol.com.