A Visit From Erik Hanberg

Our guest speaker was Erik Hanberg, who started off his lecture by telling us about his beginnings with web design and being a founder of sites such as The Horatio, Exit133.com, Suite 133, and Side x Side.

Erik has also dabbled in writing novels on the side, as well as writing some nonprofit books. In his lecture, he emphasized the struggles of being an author and how your works can be found in our modern electronic lives. Many small authors these days “print on demand” instead of ordering a massive quantity of copies that will pile up in your garage. This is important considering many people will buy novels in the eBook format or on their kindle device rather than a physical paper copy these days. Authors also tend to have to rely on getting good reviews on amazon as well as Amazon’s algorithm to lead more readers to them.

In addition, Erik shared a couple important quotes with the class: “The amount of privacy you have now will be the most you ever have” and “The riches are in the niches.”

Overall, I personally felt like I did not really connect strongly to Erik’s lecture. However, I did recognize the importance of his experiences in the sense that he had to deal with a shift of technology and culture, and adapt in ways to become successful in this newer environment. I primarily derived that from the way he dealt with the changing industry of books and reading, and how he was able to use the new platforms to effectively share his creations with others.