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November 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Paper vs. ebook

It’s not really a dichotomy; you can, and probably should, have both. Thanks to print-on-demand machinery, you can get your book out there for very little money (consider Lulu.com if you can handle terrible customer support; otherwise my favorite is Booklocker.com). And you can simultaneously publish your work as an ebook, getting it formatted for the different readers, as well as offering it for computer reading.

A paper book can be a “big business card,” as Dona Kozik puts it; it’s a physical presence in your prospect’s hands, and then in their home or office, that constantly reminds them of you. It’s authoritative, and establishes you as an author–hence, an authority.

An ebook has very low production costs and is almost free to distribute. If you sell it, it’s almost pure profit; if you employ it as a bonus or giveaway, your marginal cost per copy is essentially zero.

One poorly exploited aspect of ebooks: Media richness. Your ebook can contain color, audio, video, and links–all of which are expensive, impossible, or cumbersome to put in a paper book. Yet they are easy and inexpensive to have in an ebook.

But why invest the additional work? Here are some reasons:

  • Reach readers with different learning styles
  • Rich more media-jaded younger readers
  • Enable a reader to reach you with a single click
  • Build a broader-bandwidth relationship with your reader
Why not?
  • Good media can be expensive or difficult to produce
  • The results may not be worth the investment
  • Your audience doesn’t respond well to media
Writing a book is something you need to do, to establish yourself as an expert. But having a media-rich ebook is something that may or may not enhance your business. Don’t decide by default; think about it and do what makes sense.
Filed Under: book love, book printing, publishing, steps to write a book, write a book
October 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

What’s happening to punctuation?

Henry Hitchings’ article in the Wall Street Journal regarding the changes in punctuation over the ages is so interesting I am willing to send you away from this site to read it… :-)

Filed Under: book writing, write a book
October 13, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Misusing language

One of the quickest way to lose intelligent readers is to misuse English in your book. This is a site that is full of common examples. The entries are clear and concise; they won’t make you feel like an idiot if you’ve been guilty of any… :-) Here’s an example:

ACRONYMS AND APOSTROPHES

One unusual modern use of the apostrophe is in plural acronyms, like “ICBM’s” “NGO’s” and “CD’s”. Since this pattern violates the rule that apostrophes are not used before an S indicating a plural, many people object to it. It is also perfectly legitimate to write “CDs,” etc. See also “50’s.” But the use of apostrophes with initialisms like “learn your ABC’s and “mind your P’s and Q’s” is now so universal as to be acceptable in almost any context.

Note that “acronym” was used originally only to label pronounceable abbreviations like “NATO,” but is now generally applied to all sorts of initialisms. Be aware that some people consider this extended definition of “acronym” to be an error.

I wish it had more, like homing in/honing in. But it’s a great start.

Oh, and Professor Brians also has a site devoted to usages commonly thought to be wrong that are not. A fun and informative read!

Filed Under: book writing, editing, write a book
October 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

MindManager 9 for the Mac: A worthwhile update

I’ve used MindManager on both the Mac and the PC from its earliest versions. (The story of how it was developed by Mike and Bettina Jetter while Mike was undergoing leukemia treatments is amazing; read the book.) It is the most popular mindmapping software on the market today.

Mindmapping in Wikipedia: “A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea.”

This is not a complete generic review of MindManager; I am not interested in its extensive task- and project-management capabilities, for example, or in its ability to generate a slideshow. My interest in mindmapping stems from my use of clustering. (Here’s a short video on how to cluster.) Clustering is a way–perhaps the best way–to get stuff out of your head and onto paper, in front of you. It’s how to find out what you know–and what you don’t know–about a subject.

Mindmapping is typically used for presentation, or for gradual and deliberate planning. Clustering is much more streamlined. It is a mining tool, to let you get at the riches you have stored in your mind. Gabriele Rico devotes an entire book to it:Writing the Natural Way.

How do you cluster? Here’s a description from the blog of writer Dustin Wax.

Here’s the basic idea:
1.    Write a word in the middle of a sheet of paper.
2.    Circle it.
3.    Write down the first word or phrase that comes to mind and circle it.
4.    Draw a line connecting the second circle to the first.
5.    Repeat. As you write and circle new words and phrases, draw lines back to the last word, the central word, or other words that seem connected. Don’t worry about how they’re connected — the goal is to let your right-brain do its thing, which is to see patterns; later, the left-brain will take over and put the nature of those relationships into words.
6.    When you’ve filled the page, or just feel like you’ve done enough (a sign of what Rico calls a “felt-shift”), go back through what you’ve written down. Cross out words and phrases that seem irrelevant, and begin to impose some order by numbering individual bubbles or clusters. Here is where your right-brain is working in tandem with your left-brain, producing what is essentially an outline. At this point, you can either transfer your numbered clusters to a proper outline or simply begin writing in the order you’ve numbered the clusters.

I am a geek. I love using computers for anything–and often have difficulty admitting when I’d probably be better served by pen and paper. But years ago, when I first started to cluster, and I tried to do it on early versions of MindManager, it just didn’t work. I couldn’t get access to the stuff in my head that just came pouring out when I used pen and paper.

I think I know why. At the time, mindmapping on the computer was very much a left-brain activity. Even though the results were graphical, the process of producing a mind map involved lots of keyboarding and menuing. So I couldn’t cluster productively with a computer.

But over time, computers became more powerful; graphics became higher in resolution, and far smoother; and MindManager grew up.

Today, I cluster on my Mac, using MindManager 9. The process of creating a new “topic” or “subtopic” is so simple that I don’t have to stop to think about it. I can quickly create a cluster without planning or cogitation; it just flows out from my fingers, little engaging my left brain. So my right brain can “dump” its contents onto the screen.

By using MM9, I don’t have to worry about running out of room. MM9 unobtrusively reconfigures the layout of the cluster or mind map according to preferences I can set.

So my most favorite aspect of MM9 for the Mac is that it is unobtrusive enough for me to cluster with. For me–and I believe, for any author–that is a biggie.

But there is a lot more to this highly polished product. It integrates well with both Microsoft Office and Apple software, interoperating with word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents. It links to URLs on the Web, as well as to other mind maps. It comes with a large list of templates, giving you a starting place for any mindmapping project you might have in mind. Here’s a full list of MM9′s features.

Although it is not quite as rich as some dedicated outliners, MM9′s outlining facility is respectable. You can switch back and forth between map and outline view very easily.

As an update, MM9 for Mac is a big step ahead of MM8. Its user interface has been simplified; its esthetics have been refined; its presentation, printing, importing, and exporting capabilities have been improved; and it works under Lion. (For a full list of upgraded features, click here.) All the improvements make it an incredibly useful tool for the aspiring author.

 

Filed Under: book love, book writing, tech, write a book
February 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Autocrit: Almost-free editing site

A Google ad suggested I go look at Autocrit, an on-line editing wizard. I was blown away by its power! In seconds, it identified a bunch of subtle problems with the block of text I dropped into the free version.

Running into the limitations of the free version, I signed up for the $47/year account so that I could put in multiple blocks of text–blog posts, articles, pieces of fiction, whatever. (Knowing that I have a 60-day money-back period gave me confidence too.)

Autocrit is transparent; it explains what is wrong with the writing, covering things like:

  • Overused words
  • Slow pacing
  • Appropriate dialog tags
  • Clichés & redundancies

You can try it for free.

I liked it so much I signed on as an affiliate. The links in this post are affiliate links; I’ll get 25% if you decide to buy a subscription.

Filed Under: book love, book writing, editing, steps to write a book, write a book
December 30, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Hello again!

I traveled to Israel (and spent 3 days in Cairo) for the entire month of December. It’s great to be back in California, although I always love visiting Israel.

View from Cairo Tower
Image via Wikipedia

Speaking to many old friends and new acquaintances in the world of engineering and high-tech, my conviction that writing a book is the number-one way for professionals and startups to promote themselves has been confirmed and strengthened. People invest so much in printed marketing collateral that just winds up being thrown away. Books hang around, and continue to deliver your message for a long time.

So many startups have complex stories to tell, stories that require more than some pretty pictures and a few bullet points. Books provide an opportunity to wax eloquent on the complexities and make them understandable.

Of course, the same applies to individual professionals. What do you want your prospects to know? A book is a vehicle for conveying it in a comprehensible way.

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Filed Under: book love, book writing, write a book Tagged With: , ,
September 20, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Back in the saddle again

I took off the period from the Memorial of Trumpets (what most Jews call Rosh HaShana) through Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, at least in terms of blogging. I didn’t stop working entirely, but I did focus on just a couple of things, and on taking full advantage of joining with my people in reflection on the past year and the coming year, and on making things right with fellow humans.

In the Yom Kippur prayerbook, it says that in observing the day we can find forgiveness for offenses against God, but that for offenses between people, we must go to them. That’s a very practical and loving point of view, and I appreciate it.

blowing the shofar (by Alphonse Lévy)
Image via Wikipedia

And that goes for both asking and giving forgiveness.

Hmm…what if I cast a broader net here? OK. If I have offended you, my reader, in any way, I ask your forgiveness. And I invite you to write or call me and tell me about it, so that I can also seek not only forgiveness, but a place of reconciliation. I mean it. My cell number is 650-336-3937.

I’ve grown more and more aware of the significance of emotions in my life and in my communications. When I was a math grad student, good writing was elegant, and elegance meant succinctness. Expressing a thought in the fewest possible words and symbols was the peak of elegance. Unfortunately, I carried that over into my writing. My greatest challenge is to being juicy, and not just concise.

It’s odd, because I’m a very emotional person. I just didn’t accord emotions–mine or those of others–the weight they deserve in human discourse. Now I can say that I feel bad about that. Sorry, even. And determined to do better. (See? Feelings! :-) )

Feelings enter naturally into fiction and memoirs. But less naturally into the books being written by my typical clients, who are typically trying to explain their “special sauce” to prospective clients. And that fact makes them all the more important. Emotions are what engage the reader, not facts. Facts are important, but feelings communicate.

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Filed Under: book love, book writing, people & ideas, write a book Tagged With: , , ,
September 7, 2010 by Leave a Comment

After the book

Read this from Bob Stein, of the Institute for the Future of the Book:

the future of the appPost date 08.02.2010, 10:37 AM

posted by bob stein

Assuming that whatever replaces the book in the futurist landscape to come will not be called “a book,” people often ask me why I named our group The Institute for the Future of the Book. My answer has consistently been a variant of the following: while it’s true that whatever replaces the book as a crucial mechanism for moving ideas around time and space is not likely to be called “a book,” since we don’t have that word yet, “book” works better than “institute for the future of discourse” or “institute for thinking about what comes after the book.” I end my answer by suggesting that one day we’ll realize that a word describing a new-fangled object, or perhaps a word referring to a range of behaviors has come to signify the dominant media form which has in fact supplanted the book.

I’ve always assumed that day would be years or even decades off. But recently, while listening to the Flux Quartet play Morton Feldman’s First Quartet on a gently swaying barge in the east river, i suddenly recognized our first candidate — “app.” It’s not the pretty or expressive word I was hoping for, but it feels right.

The aha moment went like this . . . . while zoning in and out of the Feldman piece I started to think about the iPad that I’d been using for the past six weeks — not only for most of my reading, but for playing expressive games like my current favorite, SoundDrop, answering email, surfing the web, watching videos, and listening to music. The iPad has become the center of my media universe, much more than my computer, iPod, or iPhone have ever been. My text used to come in an object we called a book; movies came on tapes, laserdisc, and DVDs, music on records and CDs and games on cartridges and CDs. Now they are all appearing as apps of one sort or another on my iPad.

The distinction between media types was a lot more important during the analog era of the mid-twentieth cenury. In 1950 no one would confuse a novel with a movie or a song with a TV show. But today we have e-books with video sequences, and movies published with extensive text-based supplements. Is Lady Gaga a music star or video star? More

What do you think? And if you’re in the neighborhood on September 13, come to my Meetup here in Mountain View, CA, to discuss it.

Filed Under: book love, book writing, inspiration, publishing, tech, write a book Tagged With: , , , ,
August 31, 2010 by Leave a Comment

A book-writing tip from Clippy

Well, it’s not really from Clippy, the hated Microsoft “helper” that came with Office and was finally buried in 2007. Clippy is mentioned in this fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal by Stanford professor Clifford Nass:

[W3 illo]Alex Nabaum

By CLIFFORD NASS

When BMW introduced one of the most sophisticated navigation and telematics systems into its 5 Series car in Germany a decade ago, it represented the pinnacle of German engineering excellence, with great advances in accuracy and functionality. Yet BMW was forced to recall the product—because the system had a female voice. The service desk had received numerous calls from agitated German men who had the same basic complaint. They couldn’t trust a woman to give them directions. More

Go ahead, read the article. Then come back here.

What speaks to me in this piece is the significance of rapport, and the ease with which it can be created and broken–even with semi-animate objects. It makes me think: What about my book is generating rapport with my reader? What’s breaking rapport?

I’m using “rapport” in the sense that it is used in NLP–neurolingistic programming. Here’s one definition:

Rapport is the quality of harmony, recognition and mutual acceptance that exists between people when they are at ease with one another and where communication is occurring easily.

Why use this?

In general, we gravitate towards people that we consider similar to us, because people like people who are like themselves – like likes like. In rapport the common ground or similarities are emphasised and the differences are minimised.

Rapport is an essential basis for successful communication – if there is no rapport there is no (real) communication!

I’ve not seen writing teachers address rapport categorically. Maybe it’s time we do. What do you think?

Filed Under: book writing, inspiration, people & ideas, steps to write a book, write a book Tagged With: , , ,
August 26, 2010 by Leave a Comment

If this is what happens to your brain when you think about a book, get a coach

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