For Readers (and Authors, too)
This blog is for anyone that reads my books, as well as for anyone else who is self-publishing, thinking about self-publishing, or just curious about what it’s like to be an author during rapidly changing times. Whenever you visit here, I hope you’ll share your own comments and thoughts. If you’d like to know whenever I post a new entry, please type your email address into the box in the right-hand column and check the appropriate box (and the newsletter one, too, while you’re at it).
How to Self Publish, Chap. 2: eBook or Dead Tree?
Should you bother to self-publish in print as well as in eBook form? After all, it adds time and effort to the process, and many authors find that they sell very few copies in print, anyway. Like everything else when it comes to self-publishing, the answer is (wait for it), “it depends”). Okay, you say, “depends on what?” Fair enough – let’s talk about that. read more…
Book Review: The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (Paul Kennedy)
Paul Kennedy’s exegesis on the intersection of economic capacity, extraterritorial ambition and political reality is what Monty Python might refer to as “a bloody big book.” Indeed weighing in at 677 pages, it is more than up to the task of putting down your budgerigar, if that’s on your to do list. Notwithstanding that fact and its subject matter, for a serious reader it is an accessible and readable treatment of subject that is often presented in quite the opposite fashion. read more…
How to Self-Publish: a Step by Step Guide
Something over three years ago I completed the first draft of a thriller called The Alexandria Project. I’d had a great time writing and posting it chapter by chapter at another blog, one I’ve maintained for a decade now. After successfully managing the process of creating characters, developing a plot, and bringing the story through to a finish, I assumed that the hard part was over, especially since about 4,000 people had dutifully tuned in each week to read the next installment. If I were to turn that draft into a real book, what could be easier than just telling all these folks that it was now polished up and packaged, and wait for the orders to come in? read more…
More on Google’s Search Algorithm (what’s going on here?)
A week ago I wrote a piece here called Google Search Winners and Losers (and what does it mean for you?) The primary point I was making was that seeking to play SEO games (search engine optimization) with an author site was a waste of time, money and energy. While I supported the point with some Alexa charts for several book-oriented Web sites, that’s hardly empirical proof. Today, I happened to stumble on something that further supports that point, but and may indicate something even more intriguing. read more…
Blog Branding Blues: Can a Blog Divided Against Itself Long Stand?
Yes, I have another blog (you can find it here), and that blog came first. If you go there now, you’ll find the following entry, but remember when you read it that “here” is there and “there” is here, and all of the links you find in that entry there will just send you back here. Confused? Think how I feel. read more…
Review – Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind (Brian Fagan; 2011)
Brian Fagan is an astonishingly prolific producer, for a non-fiction writer, having produced more than three dozen research-based books (at the rate of more than one a year!) focusing mainly on the areas of archaeology, anthropology and the impact of climate change over the millenia on humanity. I’ve read at least a half a dozen of them, and he continues to pump them out faster than I’ve been knocking them off.
That’s rather remarkable, given the fact that they are all intensively detailed, although this is somewhat less impressive when one notes that many of his books overlap in areas that doubtless lie in the sweet spot of his professional areas of expertise (several, for example, are dedicated to various aspects of the entry of humankind into the New World). Still, how does he do it? read more…
Google Search Winners and Losers (and what does it mean for you?)
Are you one of those bloggers that always has a nagging thought in the back of her mind that goes something like this: “I really need to do something about optimizing my site so search engines can find it”? And are you also one that finds, when they do look into search engine optimization (SEO), that the whole process seems bewildering, laborious, and, well, dubious as well?
Review: Blue Bloods, by Ian Frazier (The New Yorker)
One after another, and then in bunches, like helmet tops of surfacing mermen, they came up in the outwash along the smooth wet sand.
What a great sentence. The kind you read and think, “I wish I’d written that.” It’s taken from a piece by Ian Frazier in the April 14 issue of the New Yorker titled Blue Bloods, which reflects on the current status of horseshoe crabs. And with that reveal, you can better appreciate the metaphorical gem at the heart of the sentence, describing a multitude of horseshoe crab shells inversely dimpling the surface of dark water lapping up on a full moon-lit beach in breeding season.
ODF vs. OOXML: War of the Words Chapter 5: Open Standards
Read this book from the beginning
One of the two articles of faith that Eric Kriss and Peter Quinn embraced in drafting their evolving Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM) was this: products built to “open standards” are more desirable than those that aren’t. Superficially, the concept made perfect sense – only buy products that you can mix and match. That way, you can take advantage of both price competition as well as a wide selection of alternative products from multiple vendors, each with its own value-adding features. And if things don’t work out, well, you’re not locked in, and can swap out the loser and shop for a winner.
The Alexandria Project: Andrew Updegrove
Thanks very much to Lizzy for reading my book and for posting such an enthusiastic and favorable review. If you haven’t checked out her site, you should. It’s a great place for readers and authors alike.
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