HOOKED on eBOOKS

I'm totally hooked on ebooks. I know  many people prefer print, but when I read on my 11" tablet in landscape mode with two columns, it looks familiar, like print. But it’s better. I can changes text sizes on a whim and read in the dark when Other is sleeping. Best of all, I can highlight with abandon and view highlights apart from text, instantly search to keep track of who’s who, share passages without retyping, add volumes of notes ... so many things I never did or can’t do with print. This ability to find things in the book is a boon for writing reviews and preparing examples for classes.

Those are only a few of my reasons. More than thirty years ago, when I ran out of wall space for shelves, I made the decision  that my book collection had to enter no net gain status. If I bought one, I had to off-load one. The Friends of the Library love me for all the contributions I’ve made to the Used Book Sale. This book diet comes at a price. I've often wished I could check something in one of those old books. Most have also been weeded by the library. They exist now only as ghost prints in memory.

 
In spite of this limit, right now my house holds over fifty cartons of packed paper books (only a dozen, about 600 lb., are mine). In print form, my digital bookshelf would fill at least another dozen boxes. When I think of the time saved by not packing and unpacking and all that involves, and the money saved on shipping from Pittsburgh to Austin, I love digital even more. I keep my digital volumes well backed-up.

 
There’s more to the story. I recently bought an absurdly large cell phone. Since it does not fit comfortably in a pocket, I may come to regret that size decision with regard to the phone, but to my amazement, I love reading on it. My eyes barely move as I scan the entire page width. It's easier for me to read. It feels good.

 
When I look back now at some of my old books with wide pages, tiny type and tight line spacing, my eyes cross as I recoil. How did I ever READ this stuff? Small, tight print on a paper page five inches wide is impossible for my old eyes and brain. Besides, how can I find the passage I want? If I can't find a book in digital form, I'll still read paper, but today I far prefer pixels to print. 

 
Yes indeed, I am HOOKED ON eBOOKS.

 
Write Now: Write an essay on your thoughts about ebooks. Share your thoughts in a comment.

Hooked on eBooks

I’ve been known to scoff at new devices. Before I plugged in an Epson ProWriter in 1982, I made no secret of my disdain for ugly, “unreadable” 9-pin computer printer output. You can guess how fast I changed my tune after I plugged in that ProWriter.

I had the same impression of eReaders. My brother-in-law was hooked on his Sony reader when we visited them in 2008. “I can’t imagine I’d like that as well as a paper book. Nothing can replace paper,” I countered.

Last fall, after receiving an iPad as a gift, I immediately installed eBook readers to preview the eBooks I planned to write. Besides the built-in iBook reader, I loaded Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Stanza, Bluefire and Overdrive. It was clear that eBooks are the wave of the future, but I still had no intention of abandoning paper for my own reading.

To get the hang of it, I loaded a dozen free eBooks, though I was slow to begin reading. Then I took the iPad on a cruise and I was hooked. Although the iPad is a bit heavy, it’s no heavier than a hardcover book, and it’s bigger than a dedicated reader. In fact … with the iBook reader in two-column landscape mode, it looks quite similar to a paper book.

Do you detect a change in tone? Sure enough.

A couple of weeks ago I read three library books. Paper books. I can’t highlight sections of library books. I can flag them, but if I want to copy sections to refer back to later in quotations or reviews, I must retype the material. I can’t insert notes in the book with reflective thoughts about the content. I still support libraries 100%, but I did keep wishing that material was on my iPad!

Now I have two books at hand that I’ve promised to review. One is paper, the other pixels. I bet you can guess which one I’m reading first.

What I like about eBooks

As mentioned earlier, I can highlight material for future reference.

I can open a note and write my thoughts about a passage, effectively turning the entire book into a series of journaling prompts. I can copy these notes into a document later if I wish.

I can instantly find highlights and notes through the reader’s indexing system.

I can search for words and names – if I forget who a character is, within seconds I can locate the answer. Try that in a paper book!

Built-in dictionaries are expanding my vocabulary. There’s no excuse to overlook unfamiliar works.

I’m nearly always online when reading, so if a question arises, Safari is a tap away. Yes, this slows me down, but it vastly enriches the reading experience.

I can set it to a dark background to read in bed at night without disturbing my spouse.

I don’t have to go in the other room to to check something in another book – unless it’s an old paper book.

iPad vs. Readers

I lack experience with dedicated readers, but I do like the versatility of the iPad. I can read both mobi (Kindle) and ePub (Nook) formats as well as pdf files.

IPads display full color in books – a featured available now on the Kindle Fire and sure to appear on more readers soon.

I don’t know about copying material from hardware readers. I must open Kindle books on my PC if I want to copy a passage. You’d need to do that from a standard Kindle anyway, because there would be nowhere to put text after you copied it.

Readers weigh less.

Readers are smaller.

Readers cost less. Way less.

Summary

I’ll still read paper books, but with less protective passion than before. When I publish future books, I’ll make Print-On-Demand paper copies available, but I see eBooks as the primary way I’ll be selling and sharing books in the future.

By the way, EReader apps work equally well on android tablets, and presumably will do likewise on the forthcoming Windows tablet.

Write now: Please write a comment with your thoughts about eBooks and readers. Are you Pro or Con? What reader are you using? Do you plan to publish any of your work in eBook form? What about your lifestory?

End of the Line for Lulu

For several years I’ve been an enthusiastic supporter of Lulu.com for those wishing to self-publish a small number of volumes of their lifestory or memoir. I’ve posted several times about my experience publishing my preschool memoir, The Albuquerque Years on Lulu. 

Over the past five years, many friends and students have followed my advice and lead, using Lulu to publish their projects. I’m now recommending Amazon-owned CreateSpace, the no-fee Print-On-Demand provider of choice. Let me explain why I’ve removed The Albuquerque Years from Lulu’s website.

Without asking for my permission or notifying me, Lulu converted my document to ePub format and uploaded it to the Apple iStore and the Barnes & Noble digital catalog, setting the price at $2.99.

That was not okay with me! If that isn’t illegal, it’s certainly unethical. I immediately removed it from those catalogs.

I was never given the opportunity to review the conversion for formatting errors. The Albuquerque Years includes over two dozen embedded photos, which are notoriously difficult to position in ePubs. When I finally discovered how to download the ePub file, I noticed that the pictures do display between paragraphs, but not always between the ones they are relevant to. It needs some work before I re-release it, probably via Smashwords.com, as a free download.

I never added a “royalty” markup to the book, intending for any interested readers to purchase it at my wholesale cost, which has risen from about $2.79 five years ago to $3.99 today.

To my surprise, tens of unrelated people opted to purchase a paper copy. Today, if the book were still listed on Lulu, the “retail” price would be $7.99. I’m relieved that nobody (including me!) has ordered a copy since this outrageous inflation began. I certainly don’t want anyone thinking I caught the greed bug.

A LiveChat customer service agent (Lulu does not offer the option of phoning them directly, toll-free or otherwise) fed me some corporate line about “the stated current manufacturing price”, but was unable to explain why my wholesale price was lower. I can’t blame him. He’s just doing his job. I refuse to support the executive attitudes behind his explanation.

The free eBook (pdf) dowload link disappeared.

I intended for the pdf version to be free, as it was for over four years. Just before I “retired” the project (I discovered you cannot delete published projects), I discovered that the link to download the free pdf ebook was missing. I have fixed that. The link to The Albuquerque Years in the right sidebar now connects with my personal server for free digital downloads. (Click here now to get your own copy if you don’t already have it.)

Lulu’s pricing has become unpredictable.

Over the past year or two they have begun sending out a steady stream of “special offers” like 10% off, free shipping, 20% off, third book free, etc. Although I’m a die-hard bargain shopper, when I’m ready to buy a book, I don’t want to feel like if I waited another week, the price would drop, and I especially resent having retail prices inflated to cover this system.

By contrast, CreateSpace offers consistent pricing far lower than Lulu’s, free phone support, and they scan your uploaded document for typos and punctuation/grammar errors. Wow! The volumes I’ve seen coming off their presses are first rate in quality. Forums are full of great recommendations. Jonna Ivin is delighted with her experience using them to publish Will Love For Crumbs (see her guest post on this topic). I plan to upload a project myself to give them a whirl in the near future.

Write now: if you haven’t already done so, visualize a completed volume of your life story. It may take the form of a collection of individual stories or a memoir integrating those stories into a unified account. You may be writing more about family history. Perhaps your book will include lots of photographs. Let your vision grow and pull you forward. Set up an account at CreateSpace to add magnetism to that goal. 

Alice’s Adventures With Self

Who would have guessed that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland would be a source of inspiration to modern memoir writers? I can’t recall the last time I read this classic that I often enjoyed  as a girl. A couple of days ago I snagged a free ebook copy and dug in. I noticed many things freshly.

Nobody will be surprised to hear me confirm that Lewis Carroll is a master of metaphor and brilliantly creative. And of course the illustrations delight me even more now than when I was ten.

But those are not the parts I’m referring to. I was struck by the candor and complexity of Alice’s conversations with herself. I didn’t even try to count all the various facets of herself she brought into play via internal dialogues. Note that I said dialogs. It’s not unusual to hear recommendations to include internal monolog in memoir, that is, self-talk. But Carroll takes it one step further and has Alice talking to her selves.

This technique especially fascinated me, because it seems so true to life. I suspect we all do this, that a “core self” interacts with peripheral “others”, but we do it so automatically that it largely escapes our notice. I’m working on tuning in to see how many inner channels I can find. Then I’ll practice writing some “Conversations With My Selves.” I expect that will be both entertaining and enlightening. I’ll keep you posted.

My hunch is that as we start writing these conversations, we’ll become more aware of facets of self we never realized existed. We’ll become more complex and fascinating to ourselves, and including snippets of this dialogue in stories will add both authenticity and sparkle.

Why don’t you pull a copy of Alice off your shelf, out of the library or off the web? Free eBook editions are easy to find, and you’ll surely relish it again yourself. You may get a fresh inspiration while you’re at it.

Write now: write some internal dialogue between two facets of yourself that you are aware of. Since two personas are involved, punctuate it as regular dialogue rather than internal monologue.

Gift from the Heart

Are you among the growing number of people searching for ideas for more personal, low-budget gift ideas for people on your Christmas or Hannukah  list this year? Many are motivated by the sagging economy, others by a desire to cut down on frivolous consumption and a general shift toward sustainability.

One gift you can give, in place of or in addition to others, is the gift of story. If you already have a pile of life stories and you’ve been thinking about pulling them together into a volume, you have plenty of time to pull it together and place your order by Thanksgiving or shortly after to ensure delivery before Christmas.

If you don’t yet have a pile of stories, you still have time to write several. You could write a personal story for each recipient, recalling a favorite memory of that person and why they are special to you. You might write humorous or poignant stories about your own life or perhaps shared ancestors.You can include essays about your beliefs and values. The list is endless.

Many years ago Thelly Rheam, the original Story Lady from California’s Cardiff on the Sea, began writing short vignette stories documenting her life and lessons she learned, planning to distribute stories she’d written through the year to family members each Christmas. The year she began, she gave each child and grandchild a binder with labeled dividers for each decade in her life and an assortment of stories already filed. In subsequent years, they received envelopes with additional stories and instructions on where to file them in the binder. She has set aside funds and made arrangements for the collection to be printed in bound volumes upon her demise.

Writing a memoir, a rewarding though complex undertaking, is one way to organize your stories, and but it’s far from the only way, and no single memoir can encompass all the stories that come to mind.

In The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing you’ll find oodles of ideas for organizing collections I refer to as story albums. These can range from a random assemblage of miscellaneous memories to an compilation of family recipes including the story of each, or a composite of photos and the stories surrounding them. This khelpful book covers all the basics from inception of the idea to writing tips and prompts and layout tips for self-publishing.

Publishing options abound. High-end photobook publishers produce gorgeous full-color volumes, but options for accomanying text are limited, and price soars as page count rises. No-setup fee Print-On-Demand services like CreateSpace or Lulu,  are economical alternatives for commercially printed and bound volumes if black-and-white print is adequate. They can also handle color printing, though at a much higher cost. For special projects, you can print pages at home or a copy shop and put them in binders or similar alternatives.

Thinking outside the box, they don’t have to be printed at all. You could make your own eBook in pdf format, using one of  the free pdf “printers” such as PDF24. Smashwords is a free service that coverts print documents to Kindle and other eBook reader formats.  Or you could use the free Audacity software to digitally recording  yourself reading your stories for an audiobook. Going one step further, you could use the free Windows Live Movie Maker to  combine those recordings with photos and turn them into a movie. Similar applications are available for Macs.

Due to limited space in this post, I can’t expand on individual options. If you have questions about specific ones, please leave a comment and I’ll cover them in a future posts.

However you go about it, give your family the gift of story, for  their reading pleasure and to preserve a legacy of your life.

Write Now:  write a story to share with  at least one person as a gift this holiday season.