Before we begin, I'd like to give you a little background about our work on this project. The Seventh Sun was launched one year ago, partly as an experiment to test the viability of using a virtual world as a publishing platform. My partner in the project is my longtime childhood friend, Greg Campbell, who as “Surfdaddy Orca” is Editor in Chief of The Seventh Sun. We actually learned to read and write together, so that's the secret ingredient in our collaboration!

Each issue is published monthly in-world as a 3D object—which is really like a big flippy book about the size of a door—and then also on our website as html, and as a “print-ready” pdf. And then finally, it's all sent out over the Internet as an RSS feed.

We have newsstands throughout Second Life, which are 3D scripted objects, much like the one you see here—although they don't really fly around on pigeon wings. In addition, each issue of The Seventh Sun—and our backlist as well—is distributed through an online catalog of virtual goods.