Cyberflanerie: Instacart Mexico City, Anti-Surveillance Mask, Lil Crabe the Flying Pretzel Man & etc

Not. I mean, it's not here in Mexico City yet. So my registering and trying out Instacart for a California zipcode was sort of totally pointless except for the fact that, wow, what a user interface!! Years ago I tried a couple of on-line grocery services, they both were bigger headaches than, oh hell, just getting in the car and going over there myself. Seriously, have a look at Instacart's super elegant & easy user interface. 

Also very interesting (this is the economist in me): the implications of such services for the labor market. Seems to me an enterprising student/housewife / retiree could put together a tidy little income from working Instacart, Taskrabbit, etsy and Craig's List, with a much better fit for one's schedule. Downside, of course, is no benefits.

Another amazing user interface is www.gumroad.com -- which I'll be using shortly for some of my ebooks. Meanwhile, you can get my ebooks on amazon and a few on iTunes-- plus, there's one that is a free PDF download. Check 'em all out here.

>See NYT article on Instacart (via Tyler Cowan's Marginal Revolution).

More totally random cyberflanerie:

Antisurveillance mask

Lil Crabe the flying pretzel man

The Case for Fewer Clothes

Voodoo Doughnut

Mr Heisenbug: Respect the Microbiota (not the voodoo doughnut, I guess).

COMMENTS always welcome.

Updating a Kindle and a Print-on-Demand Paperback: The Never Ending Story

In Days of Yore, when printing book meant 2,000 + copies shipped to a warehouse, the mistake of, say, having called Jorge Luis Borges "José Luis Borge" would remain in one's book and upon one's conscience (like an itchy scar) until the reprint-- which, for most books, never happened. And even if it did, one's publisher might not trouble to make corrections. But now, with digital print-on-demand paperbacks, and of course ebooks, fixing mistakes is like being able to text message your kids-- you never have to really let go! Wonderful! Terrible!

Back in the fall of 2011 I put up a Kindle edition of my translation of Francisco I. Madero's 1911 Manual espírita as Spiritist Manual. I gave a talk about it for the San Miguel de Allende's Author Sala in November of that year, and then another talk for PEN San Miguel in 2012 (link goes to the podcast). Why no paperback edition? I wasn't ready to commit because the five pages of introduction I offered with that first Kindle edition were OK, but rather like having recounted a multilayered mega-saga such as Anna Karenina in the teacup of a paragraph. I refer not so much to the Spiritist Manual itself but to the origins and spread of Spiritism, Madero's own life, and Madero's role in that movement and in Mexican history. For those of you don't follow this blog or Mexican history, Madero was the leader of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and President of Mexico from 1911 to 1913, when he was assassinated. And the powerfully radical significance of his secret book, Spiritist Manual, cannot be appreciated without this, well, rather novelesque context.

Finally, late last year, I got that introduction done to my satisfaction. I took a breather over the holidays and then, in January, published it as a proper paperback: Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual. 

So back to the Kindle for an update. Librarians will sniff rather loudly that, with a different title and 200+ pages of new material, I should have used a new ISBN-- that is, published it as a different book. But I wanted the people who had bought the earlier version to be able to go to "Manage My Kindle" on their dashboard and get a free update.

So then what is the copyright year on this thing? Can it be entered in thus-and-such a competition as a first publication (or not)? A dozen wiggly little questions all over the place! But digital publishing isn't considered the Wild West for nothing. Ain't no sheriffs I can see. So I just went ahead and updated the same old Kindle-- same ISBN. And since January, I have updated the Kindle, fixing typos, adding a map, another book to the bibliography, oh… 5 or 6 times.  Just yesterday I fixed a couple of typos. (I swear, typos are evidence of parallel universes.)

It's so easy! I just go into Sigil, type in or delete what I want, then upload the epub file to Kindle Direct. A few hours later, bingo, it's live on amazon.com.

P.S. Why am I so enthusiastic about Kindles? This chart from Bowker (hat tip to Jane Friedman) says it all.

P.S.S. Seven Reasons Why Ebooks will be Big in Mexico

COMMENTS

How I Published My Kindles (Easy Peasy, Sort Of)

Gosh, I've been having at least a couple of conversations per week (oftentimes more) with fellow writers looking to bring out their own Kindle(s), so I'll just quit yammering and copy/paste this blog post into my email replies. And here's hoping this may be of use or interest for you, also, dear reader-- I know that many of you are writers.

It's changing all the time, and there is more than one way to skin this cat, but so far, here is what I can tell you:

ROUTE #1

My Kindles as of 2014:

+ Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution; 

+From Mexico to Miramar or, Across the Lake of Oblivion; 

+ The Building of Quality; 

+ Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico; 

+ Podcasting for Writers

+ and the Spanish translation of my novel, El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano. 

UPDATE 
and
Odisea metafísica hacia la Revolución Mexicana, Francisco I. Madero y su libro secreto, Manual espírita

My novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire is also available in Kindle, but that was my publisher's doing (Unbridled Books).

1. Get your book's text into in a clean WORD.doc. 

This was not easy for some of my older works, which were written in Wordperfect and, alas, converted to babble in .epub (see step #2.). And one was in a PDF that did not convert well either. Most of them had multiple corrections made after it had landed in my original publisher's hands-- and to the galleys, as well. Oh well, I got it done.

2. Convert the WORD doc to an .epub by using a free open source program such as Sigil.

Download Sigil here.

3. Using Sigil, arrange your table of contents and chapters.

There are a multitude of Sigil tutorials on the web, Google and ye shall find. (I hired an IT guy to help me on this-- and that did save some time and head-aches.) 

***UPDATE. A reader writes: "I keep the process easy by setting the paragraph indents to .2 in .docx, then saving the file as Web Page, Filtered. It becomes an HTML file. Upload that rather than ePub (use for Smashwords)." 

4. Open a Kindle direct account on amazon.com

Click here: https://kdp.amazon.com 

You will need to provide your email, password, contact info and your bank account number-- they do need to be able to pay you!

5. Purchase an ISBN from Bowker at www.myidentifiers.com 
(For a Kindle this is not absolutely necessary, however.)

6. Make a cover.

Amazon provides some free templates. You can do it yourself or hire someone. The Kindle Direct publishing website provides all the relevant guidelines here.

7. On Kindle direct on amazon.com, upload the description of your book, the files for your book's content (that would be the .epub you created with Sigil), and the cover. Select the rights territories, the price you want to charge, and then the button that says PUBLISH.

In about 12 hours, oftentimes less, you will be emailed the link to your book's page on amazon.com. Update your website, tweet, tell friends and family, etc etc etc.

ROUTE #2. 

1. Get your book in a clean WORD.doc.

2. Open a CreateSpace account (this is part of amazon.com)

3. Follow the very easy instructions to do a print/on-demand paperback edition of your book. (You can do this yourself, hire someone to do it, or pay CreateSpace to do it.)  Once that is all done, click the box that says "Make this a Kindle."

ROUTE #3

Multiple ebook editions all at once, for a fee, Smashwords does it all for you. I do not have experience with this. 

+ + + + + + +


Related blog posts:

>Seven Reasons Ebooks will be Big in Mexico
> My Excellent (If Occasionally Head-Banging) E-Book Adventure (Note: this is from 2011, ancient history, but includes many crunchy links)
>Guest-Blogger Deborah Batterman: "Publish Or Perish: 5 Links on the New Digital Imperative"

P.S. See all my ebooks in English here and in Spanish here.

MY BIG FAT OPINION ABOUT KINDLE EDITIONS:
Because they are quick to download, easy to read (especially for older people who need larger type and travelers of all ages with sore shoulders) and cheap, whatever one's own opinion about them may be, to expect that they will not continue to erode the traditional book market is to fight the winds and the tides. For those who would lament the loss of bookstores and paper books, take heart! There is the rare book market! (Cherish those autographed first editions with their dust jackets intact!) I say, paper books are like horses and candles. With the coming of cars and electricity the roles of horses and candles in most people's daily lives vastly diminished; nonetheless, horses and candles have not disappeared and probably never will.

Ceteris paribus, I'll take the paper book. But ceteris paribus is rarely what's actually going on. I have been buying and reading Kindles (and iBooks and free PDFs from www.archive.org) at a rather voracious pace.

More links of relevance:

> To read Kindles, I use my iPad's free Kindle app.
> Cyberflanerie: Rare Books Entrepreneurship Edition
> Michael Suarez, SJ on the Flow of Books and Money and Information
> A Super Brief Introduction to the Opportunity Cost of Rare Book Collecting

> Your COMMENTS are always welcome. 

I welcome you to register for my free newsletter which goes out every other month, more or less, with podcasts, best of the blog, upcoming workshops and more. Click here.

Self-Publishing for all the Right Reasons (Reporting on The Writer's Center's "Publish Now!" Seminar)

Last month I gave a talk for the Writer's Center's "Publish Now! digital publishing seminar-- such a hoppin' topic that it sold out before I could even alert my own writer friends and workshop students. Unlike how-to-get-published conferences of yore, which inevitably featured the panels of nose-in-the-air agents and the other panel of nose-in-the-air editors, all trying to out-groan the others about their Himalayan "slush piles," this one had, among the attendees, a number of previously well-published authors-- and by well-published I mean, you know, the big famous NY agent, the big famous NY publishing house, reviews in the New York Times, and so on and so forth. (Wannabes might imagine glowing reviews and invitations to glamorous parties falling like little showers of lotus petals upon said authors' heads... Uyy! That's another blog post.)

One of the speakers at "Publish Now!" was my fellow Writers Center board member, historical biographer Ken Ackerman, who found that his big NY publisher wasn't interested in reprinting his Young J. Edgar Hoover-- even though the Leonardo DiCaprio movie was about to come out (!) In the seminar, Ackerman talked about how he then plunged into self-publishing and, step by step, put together the paperback POD (print on demand) editions of Young J. Edgar Hoover-- and his other biographies, all then languishing in publisher's warehouses or effectively out-of-print-- through CreateSpace and Lightning Source, plus ebooks for Kindle, iTunes and Nook. He held up the four self-published new paperback editions of his books and my, they did look beautifully designed. Seriously, Ken, you are an inspiration.

As another well-published writer friend of mine put it, we authors are suffering from "an erosion of support" from our publishing houses. Well, in my own case, this is indeed the case with some of my publishers, but certainly not all. Over the years I've had several books placed with an array of publishers, from international corporate behemoths (Planeta and Random House Mondadori) to university presses (Georgia and Utah), small presses (Milkweed Editions, Unbridled Books, Whereabouts Press) and.. drum roll... yes, I have self-published.

It used to be that self-publishing was for those whose work was not up-to-snuff or who were too naive or lazy or easily intimidated by the traditional publishing process. Yes, there has always been some work of great but not commercial value, but in a word, "self-published" was not a label anyone with a shred of ambition would want-- unless they were Walt Whitman, but that's another blog post. And today self-publishing is wide open-- it doesn't even require money to do a Kindle, and compared to the past, very little to do a paperback, so just about anyone can publish just about anything. And therefore, we have an unimaginably vast and exponentially growing mountain of... well, let's just say I do not know how to appreciate most of it.

But I did self-publish back in the Crustaceous, I mean, 2002, with The Visitors / Los visitantes, which is the second chapter of my memoir, Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico, a book that was published by the University of Utah Press in 2002 and Milkweed Editions paperback in 2007. (And much later, the ebook of Los visitantes, pictured left, by Yours Truly.) It was both time consuming and expensive-- back then POD wasn't really done, that I know of, so I had a professionally designed cover and interior and the whole thing was offset printed in Canada. (And not to mention the design and printing, boy howdy was shipping expensive.) But I was able to sell a few of the books and give away more, and no doubt this helped more readers find Miraculous Air. In all, a learning experience. I was not eager to repeat it, however. But ebooks, that is another story. Yes, some headaches with formatting and figuring out to work with the iBooks Author app and Kindle. But in all, compared to the past, it is jump-up-and-down cheap and easy. I love it! Why?

(1) No cash.
(2) No expensive designers.
(3) No printing.
(4) No shipping.
(5) No having to give up space in the garage. And best of all,
(6) NO PAPERWORK HEADACHES DEALING WITH FULFILLMENT.

In other words, when someone orders one of my ebooks on amazon.com or iTunes, all I have to do is wait... I will get paid. I don't have to provide an invoice to individual customers, I don't have to ship anything. Oh, wonderful, wonderful.

Basically, once you get your ebook up there on amazon.com or iTunes, what you have is a variable rate annuity. Probably with a very low yield-- indeed, for most authors, a Kindle edition of their book won't earn back the cost of their time and trouble. But should things change, the upside is the moon. What's interesting-- to say the same thing a little differently-- is that the marginal cost of increasing supply to meet any increase in demand is essentially zero. Whether one person or 100,000 people download your ebook, it doesn't matter; they click, they get.

Another speaker at Publish Now!, also a fellow Writer's Center board member (bless his heart), was novelist Neal Gillen, author of the memoir 1954 Adventures in New York. He gave us an overview of his experience and the various pros and cons of the the various self-publishing services. (Takeaway: you're probably going to be happiest with amazon.com's Createspace.)

Barbara Esstman

Of course the importance of editing-- that step so disdained, and to their detriment, by most self-publishers-- was underscored by novelist and freelance editor Barbara Esstmann.

For last year's "Publish Now!" seminar I gave the talk-- her title-- "The Manuscript is Ready -- or Is It?-- What's Next?".

My own talk focused on travel writing and interactive books. I mentioned my own ebooks, Podcasting for Writers, From Mexico to Miramar or Across the Lake of Oblivion, and others, and for examples from the cutting edge, Mary Lynn Patton's children's iBooks with sounds, including Sounds of Mexican Beaches, and Rich Shapero's Too Far.

P.S. I lifted that title, "self-publishing for all the right reasons," from Kevin Kelly. Check out all he has to say about his latest nondigital self-publishing venture here.

More anon. Much more.

COMMENTS

Publish Now! One Day Seminar at the Writer's Center

Before I had a chance to even mention it, the October 26 one day seminar "Publish Now!" at the Writer's Center in Bethesda MD (near Washington DC) has sold out. Sincere apologies to my workshop students... all I can say is, do sign up for the Writer's Center's newsletter because obviously I am not so on-the-ball in the blogging and newsletter department. On my Resources for Writers page, I will be sure to post some of the material for my talk, a break-out session on traveling writing and interactive ebooks, so stay tuned.

One of the speakers this Saturday will be my fellow Writer's Center board member, Wilson Wyatt, editor of the Delmarva Review, who shares this article (PDF download) in the Maryland Writers Association Pen in Hand, "Publishing in the Digital Age".

My own adventures in self-publishing ebooks continue-- rather intensive this very morning as a matter of fact, because I just uploaded to Kindle my translation of Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual of 1911 with the all-new title, Metaphysical Odyssey Into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual Introduced and Translated. This required more Advils than I would like to admit. (Don't get me started about iTunes' iBookstore.)

A few of the interactive books I'll be mentioning in the seminar

Mary Lynn Patton's Sounds of Mexico / Sonidos de México

Rick Shapero's Too Far

My own "The Building of Quality"-- the iTunes (iBook) edition includes a video and an audio Q & A.

My own Los visitantes iTunes (iBook) edition, also made with the iBook author app.

My own Podcasting for Writers, both iTunes (iBook) and Kindle editions.

And of course, my own Metaphysical Odyssey Into the Mexican Revolution.

And I'll also be talking about publishing travel writing and podcasts. My main experience here is with the "Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project: Exploring Marfa, TX & the Big Bend in 24 Podcasts"-- listen in anytime.

A few preliminary thoughts:

1. The whole experience of self-publishing ebooks is not so much something you can figure out once-and-for-all, but a wriggling target (just when you've got it figured out, they update the software!!)

2. Design matters (and it's expensive, sometimes)

3. Marketing digital books to customers via amazon.com is a very different enterprise than trying to sell books in bookstores (uyy there is a reason why publishers keep such a big slice of the pie)

4. The bar to publication is so rockbottom low now...and it is terribly tempting to skimp on or even skip the editorial process. 

5. Now what I really want to talk about is rare books. In other words, enough with the candy store, let's get back to the chocolate factory!

Much more anon, and especially about rare books.

COMMENTS

Seven Reasons Why EBooks Will Be Big in Mexico or: El Kindle es el futuro

Ebooks are already in Mexico, as are zebras and ice skating rinks, by the way, but I've had this "it's not going to happen" conversation with so many head-in-the-sand Mexican writers and editors (all my age and older), I thought I'd offer my thoughts in more precise order.

Yes, a paper book is splendid thing, and yes, I myself prefer them to ebooks, and I understand why other people would prefer them to ebooks; nonetheless, I say the ebook phenomenon is going to take over the Mexican literary scene faster than anyone here imagines, and for seven reasons:

1. You can see it for yourself, Mexicans adapt-- maybe with a lag vis-a-vis, say, Palo Alto, but fast. Middle and upper class kids in urban areas from Mexico City to Tijuana, Queretaro to Merida, Puebla, Guadalajara, you name it, are all just as addicted to their handheld devices, texting friends and updating their Facebook pages at all hours, as anywhere else. And the Mexican middle class is a far sight more susbtantial than most north of the border would guess. As for middled-aged middle class Mexicans, they've figured out Twitter and Facebook as well as everyone else. (Is there a Mexican pundit / senator / university student without a Twitter feed?) True, Mexicans don't all read books anymore than do their counterparts north of the border, however, there have always been readers, avid readers, in Mexico. It may be small, but Mexico's literary culture is vibrant and thriving.

2. Mexican economists, always with an eye on development, know that putting Wi-Fi in a small town is akin to putting in road-- on steroids. And people in the small towns want to sell good and services. Once the Internet is there, how hard is it to discover that, oh by the way, you can download an ebook?

3. Internet venture capitalists are looking at emerging markets, such as Mexico, as prime targets for investment, especially given the grim outlook in the US and (way gnarlier) Europe.

4. Though Mexico does boast some mighty fine bookstores, they are thin on the ground and rarely well-stocked. It's a heap less trouble to download an ebook.

5.  Ebooks are cheaper than paper books and Mexicans, like everyone else on the planet, prefer to spend less money. This goes for both readers and publishers / self-publishers.

6. There are many great reads in Spanish, from Don Quijote to Cien años de soledad, and more popping out of the oven every season. P.S. Download mine why doncha.

7. There are even more maybe not so great reads that haven't been able to land a commercial or university press publisher, and, Whoa Nelly, here they come.

I note that one of Mexico's most award-winning and prolific writers, Agustín Cadena, recently launched his new novel, Maljuna Knabino, not as a print edition but as a Kindle.

I also note that many gringos in Mexico are already quite happily downloading Kindles galore.

I further note that the best way to do that is to forget buying a Kindle and download the free Kindle app for the iPad. iPad rules.

My Excellent (If Occasionally Head-Banging) E-Book Adventure

What do best-selling historical novelist Sandra Gulland, marketing guru Seth Godin, genre-writer Joe Konrath, spirituality writer Mare Cromwell, goddess and tarot expert Kris Waldherr, and Kevin (What Technology Wants) Kelly have in common? They've all made a foray into the swashbuckling and glitch-ridden landscape of self-publishing e-books. Add Yours Truly to the growing list. No, I have not abandoned my publishers, but I am publishing some of my own e-books.

In 2009, when Unbridled Books published the hardcover edition of my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, they didn't waste more than a moment before bringing out the e-book. It was news in 2009, though it isn’t anymore: the e-book market is exploding. And what of my other books? Like the above-mentioned writers, with several books published more than a few years ago, I own the digital rights because my various publishers didn't care to keep them or, going further back in time, didn't even contemplate them in their contracts. I figured, how difficult can it be to upload an e-book? So I expanded my writing workshop company, Dancing Chiva, into publishing and, voila: a catalog of e-books.

Miraculous Air, my memoir of travels through Mexico's nearly 1,000 mile-long Baja California peninsula, is the one I am most delighted to have been able to turn into an e-book. Based on my travels in the late 1990s, it's a book I put both shoulders and heart into, and even now, more than a decade later, I think it's one of the best things I've written. Originally published in hardcover by University of Utah Press, and still in print in a paperback edition from Milkweed Editions, it has found many readers over the years but, I know, travel books are the most fun to read en route, yet, with suitcase space at a premium, even the most avid readers often pass them up. Got a Kindle? Problem solved.

But preparing e-books-- as Kevin Kelly's blog posts should have warned me-- has not been as easy as I anticipated. First, one has to prepare an absolutely clean unformatted Word doc, a tedious and frustrating task when it comes to a nearly 500 page book originally written in Wordperfect. (True, for a fee, I could have farmed out that job, but I wanted to learn how this works.) It turns out that, though one can convert a Wordperfect to a Word doc easily, when it then goes through the program for e-books, the punctuation comes out all whichwaysly wacky. (What to do with a 500 page manuscript where every dash is now a question mark?!) Then, the programs for converting Word docs to Kindle are riddled with glitches: figuring out how to address these required many hours with my computer coach (bless you, Rubén Pacheco). Then, there are more decisions than turn-offs on the highway through LA: ISBN? Tags? Which comes first, the Kindle or the Nook? PDF or iBook? How to navigate amazon.com, itunes, and etc? Which program to use for the cover? Cover image? Font? What to do with the maps?! What price?

And now, publicity. Ayyy... Buy my books here. Read all about Miraculous Air. Kindle version of Miraculous Air here.

In sum, I have been getting an all new appreciation for the multifaceted and time-consuming work publishers do. What I want to do is, um, write.

But here's the elephant: sometimes, for some books, a traditional publisher is not the answer. And nor are brick-and-mortar bookstores. As I told Jada Bradley in a recent interview for inReads.com:

"There are several works I want to publish but that I know are not commercial, so in attempting to place them with an agent or directly with a publisher, I would be wasting my time and theirs. But I believe in these works; I know they have readers, relatively few as they may be. For example, this November, I am publishing my translation— the first into English– of Francisco I. Madero’s Spiritist Manual. Mexican historians have written about this unusual and little-known work, and it certainly deserves to be brought out in English with a proper introduction. Why not for its centennial?"

Later this year I will also be publishing an e-book edition of a very unusual memoir of 1860s Mexico, from the Bancroft Library, Marie de la Fere's My Recollections of Maximilian. In writing my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, I came upon this and several other works (most in the public domain) that I would love to be able to bring out of the musty back shelves of libraries and share; with Dancing Chiva, I now have the platform to do it.

Similarly, my essay, "From Mexico to Miramar or, Across the Lake of Oblivion," about a journey to the Emperor of Mexico's castle in Trieste, Italy, is not, on its own, long enough to interest a traditional book publisher. (They prefer to publish books with spines.) But there are people interested in Maximilian and Trieste, and willing to pay a small fee, thank you very much, to download the e-book.

Nonetheless, when I have a new novel, believe me, I will send it to Unbridled Books because they know how to get reviews, get the book out of the haystack and into quality bookstores. We can't be all things to all people. Time is scarce. As someone who writes, I am glad indeed that there are people out there who want to take manuscripts and turn them into books, and then find those books readers.

So what would I advise other writers about self-publishing their e-books? There's no formula; what's right for one writer with one title, might be different for a different writer or a different title. First, check in with your intentions. Second, make a realistic assessment of the costs and benefits. (I have more to say about intentions here.)

Alas, a realistic assessment of costs and benefits is not easy. My own experience, including my recent adventures in e-book publishing, has shown me that writers tend to underestimate the amount of work publishers do.

Though publishing e-books has been more time-consuming than I anticipated, knowing what I know now, I would still bring my older books into digital editions under my own imprint and publish works I believe in but that would not appeal to a traditional publisher. On the other hand, I want to spend most of my time writing, so when it makes sense for me and for them, I will continue to work with established publishers. But when it doesn't make sense, how wonderful to be able to publish what I want to publish! The amazing thing is, this is true now for anyone with a computer, an Internet connection, and the determination to do it.


SURF ON:

Deborah Batterman, "Self Publish(?) or Perish: 5 Links on the New Digital Imperative"

Daniel Crown, "The E-Reader Boom Begins"

Kevin Kelly (of Wired fame) on Screenpublishing

Kindle Direct Publishing video tutorial and step-by-step instructions

Novelist Sandra Gulland, "E-Books: Feast or Famine for Writers?"

Novelist Nina Vida, "How One Writer is Riding the E-Book Revolution"

Seth Godin, "You Should Write an Ebook"

Joe Konrath "What Works: Promo for Ebooks"

Nate Hoffelder, "Vook Explains Why $3, $4 or even $9.99 Isn't Always the Best Price for an eBook"

Christian Harder, "E-Reader Reality Check: 4 Limitations to Consider"

C.M. Mayo, "At Play in the Fields of Keynote: A note on designing e-book covers"

Interview by Jada Bradley for InReads.com

... in which I talk about Dancing Chiva and bringing some of my books into digital editions. Read the interview here.

More interviews about Dancing Chiva Literary Arts here.

More anon.

At Play in the Fields of Keynote: On Designing Dancing Chiva's E-Book Covers

So what's Dancing Chiva? It's a company I set up a few years ago to do writing workshops, and recently expanded into publishing. Like many writers whose book contracts of yore left them the digital rights, I am bringing some of my already published books into new life as e-books. But with Dancing Chiva I am also publishing some new works as e-books, for example, a collection of blog posts on creative writing and my translation of Francisco I. Madero's Spritist Manual, as well as long out-of-print or, in some cases, never-before-published works of Maximiliana. Check out the Dancing Chiva catalog here.

AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF KEYNOTE:
A note on the covers by C.M. Mayo
As a writer, I've had the sometimes disconcerting (if othertimes also joyous) experience of having someone else—a person I have never met and perhaps never will—design the covers of my books. I am talking about the professional graphic designer. Book cover design is a specialty informed by both graphic design principles and marketing. A publisher wants a book cover that fits with their brand image and— everyone hopes— will fly off the shelves to the cash registers. Alas, though sometimes fortuitously, the author's vision for the cover is not always taken into consideration, and in fact, very few publishers will cede approval to the author in a book contract (believe me, I've tried). . .CONTINUE READING.

Follow Dancing Chiva Literary Arts on Twitter @dancingchiva




P.S. Tuesdays are the day I usually update the Maximilian ~ Carlota research-sharing blog, but, as you can see, I've been otherwise occupied. I still have several file cabinets worth of research to share there, and I'll get back to it, asap.

Weekend with the Goats

Kind of a bizarrely fun way to spend the weekend: using Apple's Keynote program, I'm putting together a YouTube thingamajig about the cover design for the e-books I'm publishing with Dancing Chiva Literary Arts (the mascot is a little goat), and gee, neet-o, I figured out how to make the little goats dance along the website URL. This actually became extremely absorbing. I had seven of them doing the can can. But that got canned. The video should be up by next week; meanwhile, here are a few images from the project:











The video, as well as information about these and other e-books, will be posted at www.dancingchiva.com