He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich

[rolanni]

Proof ordered.

To the folks who asked if I had thought about CreateSpace/Lightning Source, the answer is — yes.  But, Amazon is slowing down delivery of Lightning Source books (discussion here), because, um, they can.  And CreateSpace is owned by Amazon and I’d really rather not put all of my eggs in Amazon’s basket (plus, I want to list on BN, too).  So, Lulu looked like a good compromise position.  I note and will look at Booklocker — thank roseaponi for the link — but not this evening.

In other news, the Cat Eating Machine (aka the vacuum cleaner) and I have concluded our bidness.  I note that Scrabble headed for the high ground, as is her habit, but Mozart — Mozart has apparently read Hex’s paper, published in the Journal of Proper Feline Behavior, in which he argues that a Supreme Disregard for the antics of the Cat Eating Machine ultimately nets more points of Cool, and has taken up this new philosophy.  He remained in his cat hammock — asleep — even though I vacuumed right under him.

Pretty dern Cool, I say.

Tomorrow, I have an appointment in town with a person who I hope can (and will) answer my Very Simple Question, then to the gym, and home again.

Who’s got something exciting planned for Monday?

Progress on the Book Presently known as George
53,427 of 100,000 OR 53% complete

“That,” he said in a fierce whisper, “is mine.”

 

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

Self Publish?

[claire774.livejournal.com]

I think I missed something. why do you have to self publish? I thought you are going to be published by Baen?

I know this gal who self published her memoire. But in her case she really did need the help of an proper editor. The book came out way too long and other things.

Regards to Mozart, the bravest of cats,
C.

Re: Self Publish?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

I think it's the "other work" (such as Barnstormer, a mystery, quite good, and those splinters going up) that people want in hardcopy. So our good mistress of the written words is being gracious and trying to find a way to accommodate the clamoring fans. However, the wilds of publishing-on-demand are strange and hungry, sucking money right out of the pockets of careless visitors, so C'pn Rolanni is testing the waters, quite sensibly, before tossing the baby into... hum, that metaphor has grown feral, I'm afraid. Let's just say she's checking things out.

Re: Self Publish?

[claire774.livejournal.com]

Would be great to be able to get Barnstormer and Gunshy now out of print. I'm still dithering about whether to buy an e-reader. Somebody....can't remember where ....spooked me by pointing out that the e-readers will no doubt be declared out of date due to an upgraded kind coming on the market. Like vinyl records, then 8 track tapes, then cassette tapes then CDs. You get the picture. But wouldn't Amazon keep the "oudated" format going. But then only for a while. We'll have to see.

Thanks for the info,
C.

Re: Self Publish?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

If you stick to non-DRM, relatively standard formats (ePub and rtf come to mind, there are some others), you're relatively safe. You can try out some of the readers on your PC or mac before buying the hardware, too. calibre on your PC will let you read things, and also translate between formats if you need it.

Re: Self Publish?

[claire774.livejournal.com]

Hi M:

I'm afraid that you are a whole lot smarter than I am. I have no idea what you are trying to tell me. I'll probably buy a Kindle in the end because a friend has one so I've seen how it works. :) that's about my speed.

Thanks,
C.

Re: Self Publish?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Claire, at the risk of sounding condescending, it really is very, very easy to get the Kindle and the Nook app(lication)s down to your desktop. This is because Amazon and BN have deliberately made it as easy as possible, so you'll buy lots of books from them.

If you want a Kindle app, go here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311

...download the application (you do that be hitting the Big Blue Button that says "Download Now"). It's free; and it dern near installs itself, it's that easy. Really. And then you can see what it is, and play with it -- buy a book and see how you like it -- without committing to the expense of buying the machine.

What Mike said about formats -- Kindles run a kind of file that has a ".mobi" extension. It's one of the couple of standard formats for eDocuments. Nook runs epub files -- another of those standard formats. If you buy books that are DRM-free (the book page ought to tell you that -- it means they're not locked to one device, or credit card number), then you can shift your books from one device to another.

A free program exists to let you move and file your books more easily -- it's called Calibre. You can find it on a Google search, but it's not as easy to install as either the Kindle or the Nook apps, so you might not want to go there, unless your friend can help.

Re: Self Publish?

[claire774.livejournal.com]

Hi Rolanni:

thanks for sending me all that info. I'll just buy a Kindle..I'm planning to buy the very cheapo -est kind where you get ads on it. It may even go on sale. I'll get an extended warrenty for the thing from Best Buy so that if it goes funny they have to fix it or give me a new one. The screen on a Kindle isn't back lit. The back lit thing is supposed to be bad for the eyes. It's just the easiest way for me. At least I'm inching towards actually owning an e reader.

Thanks,
C.

Re: Self Publish?

[claire774.livejournal.com]

Forgot to say. I don't like reading extended stuff on my computer. Maybe I should get a more comfortable chair. Never worry about being condescending with me. I know so little that this is not possible! Be as condescending as you like. Tell all your friends the same thing. Where I work I'm on our computer trouble shooter's short list of older and extremely tech challenged folks. He pretty well has to set up everything for us because we don't understand how to do anything computerwise. We are strictly from the computer dark ages.
C.

Re: Self Publish?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Nope. If I didn't unpack it enough for you to understand, I'm not doing well.

Let's see. First, think of the formats as like fonts -- there's a whole bunch of ways that people store things. A couple of popular ones are ePub and RTF. Lots of readers can handle these. Kind of like a generic format. These are good, because they are likely to be available in the future.

DRM -- Digital Rights Management -- is what several publishers have tried to use to not allow you to copy files. However, if they use this, it usually won't let you move to another system (BAD!). Baen and many small presses have said "No way" so you can move their files easily to another system. This is good. Again, it doesn't tie you to a specific reader. So you want non-DRM ebooks (we need a positive name for that, but I don't know of one. Unchained files?)

Last, but not least -- let's say you're interested in the Kindle reader. If you go to Amazon, they have a program called "Kindle for PC" (I think), which is a program that runs on your PC but acts like a Kindle reader. You can download it (copy it to your system) and try it out, using some of the free ebooks. So you can see what the Kindle is like without buying one!

Is that a little clearer?

Re: Self Publish?

[claire774.livejournal.com]

Thanks M for spelling out more info.
My friend is very happy with her Kindle so I think I'll get one of those.
C.

[roseaponi.livejournal.com]

Thanks :) I'm glad my research won't be for naught ;) eventually, I'll rewrite mine into something independent of the ever-changing business which put my book into obsolescence as soon as I had it finished :p

Mozart

[kalilama.livejournal.com]

Go, Mozart! I am very impressed, never having met or staffed a cat who didn't head for the top of the closet, or the back corner under the bed, when I started assembling the vacuum cleaner.

[dqg-neal.livejournal.com]

Since Amazon uses the Ingram distribution system for distributing their Createspace books I anticipate it is a negotiating tactic that is occurring and LSI and Amazon will come to some deal in the near future. (Although it'll probably be detrimental to Lulu and other POD companies.)