How open source is transforming the publishing industry

Posted by: admin under Public

Takeaway: Jack Wallen is one of the many in the midst of a revolution. Find out how Linux and other open source software titles are empowering independent authors and filling an important niche in the publishing industry.

Many of you already know I am not only a writer of a technical nature, but a writer of fiction. In fact, the second in my I Zombie trilogy will hit the shelves next month. I have been working hard to produce a catalog of ebooks and paperbacks for the last three years. During that time I have discovered something that seems to be slipping through the cracks of the majority of computer-type pundits — open source is one of the major players in the new world publishing order.

That’s right — open source is the unheralded darling of the ebook publishing. How? Let’s take a look:

The Amazon cloud is run by Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
The Kindle uses the Linux kernel.
Smashwords is run on Linux.
Twitter is run on Linux (a major PR tool for indie authors).
WordPress is the number one blogging tool of indie authors.
A large number of my fellow indie authors use open source tools such as LibreOffice (to write), Calibre (to convert), and The GIMP (to create covers).