A.C. Flory's Blog, page 106

Poignant and lovely

My thanks to Lori Greer for introducing me to this lovely little video. Only 12 minutes long and worth every second of viewing time. Enjoy

Self-publishing via Word and Createspace – overview

This is the first in a series of how-to posts that will help you publish a print version of your book…without making all the mistakes I made with Innerscape. The posts will focus on Word 10 and Amazon’s Createspace. The information is accurate as at April, 2017.

Right, first and foremost – what is Createspace?

Createspace is the print book arm of Amazon’s self-publishing toolset. Createspace allows you to publish a trade paperback version of your manuscript which will be produced on a ‘Print On Demand’ basis [POD]. POD is a fast way of printing small to very small print runs of books.

How small? Try just one.

Essentially, when a customer buys a POD book, they are placing an order for a book that does not yet exist in physical form. Once the order is placed, the book takes 1-3 days to produce, and then it’s posted out to the customer just the same as a book printed in the ordinary way.

PROS

Amazon will place your book for sale just like any other book – i.e. it will have the same visibility, or lack thereof, as any other book.
Self-publishers can have the pleasure of holding a physical copy of their own work.
Readers who do not like ebooks can find and buy your work in a physical format.
POD costs nothing up front, and printing charges* are subtracted from the sale price of the book – no sale, no charge.
POD books do not have to be warehoused.

CONS

Because POD books lack efficiencies of scale, they are not cheap*.
Because POD books come from Indies [and may or may not be returnable], bookshops generally do not accept them.
Most Indies sell far more ebooks than POD versions, but that may simply be a function of price [see above]
Preparing your manuscript for printing via Createspace requires a fair bit of work, or at least I found it to be so.

This is a cutesy video that walks you through the sales and royalties side of the process:

*Before you can calculate your royalties, however, you have to set a price that will not only cover your print charges, but will also bring in a small profit…to you. Working out the print charges, however, is a little bit like finding the end of a tangle of string.

Print charges depend on the total page number, BUT >>
the page number will change depending on the trim size of your book – i.e. how big or small it is, BUT >>
Word documents are in A4, not in standard trim sizes, so a 200 page Word document could be up to 400 pages, depending on the trim size.

Trim size

I admit, I struggled with this. Trim size refers to the actual physical dimensions of the book you end up with after the printing process is finished. But what are these sizes? And how do they relate to my Word document?

After much floundering I found this table of trim sizes:

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This information is from the Createspace website and the sizes shown in bold are the standard ones. Without going into too much detail, ordinary printers can print any sized book you can imagine, but POD printers like Createspace can only print the standard sizes. So, go standard.

Saving the planet, one innovation at a time

This is a video of a new process that turns waste plastic into one of the components used in road building:

This is what I call innovation.

My first purchases from iStock :)

I can’t tell you what I’ve been working on just yet, but I will show you some photos I just bought from iStock:

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I was looking for a visual image of Nabatea when I found this first one on iStock. It’s a lovely image and only cost $36 AUD, but then I also found this one:

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This is a painting of an oasis and nowhere near as beautiful as the previous, photographic image, but it does have a ‘waterhole’…and it’s no more real than Miira’s Nabatea.

As most of you have already guessed, I’m struggling with a cover for Innerscape. Here are two more images that I’m pondering, both created by The Offspring :

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and…

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I’m still a very long way from being happy with any of my preliminary concepts so I’ve turned comments off for this post. Tomorrow I hope to begin a new technical series on how to prepare a manuscript for Createspace. It’ll be full of the things I learned while making every mistake under the sun, so stay tuned.

The Case For Compulsory Voting …

We take democracy for granted at our peril. It’s actually a fragile thing, and like a good relationship, you have to work at it.

Filosofa's Word

There are a number of reasons that we in the U.S. find ourselves with a madman at the helm.  Certainly, the Russian connection played a role, though it remains to be seen just how much of a role.  James Comey, perhaps pressured by another, played a role.  Voter laws that disenfranchised members of certain groups had a role.  But perhaps the largest reason was voter apathy … many were simply too lazy or too disgusted with both candidates to take an hour out of their year to go vote.

Only about 25% of eligible voters voted for Donald Trump.  Let that one sink in for a moment.  About ¼ of citizens over the age of 18 voted for Trump, yet he now sits in the Oval Office.  Voter turnout in the 2016 election was only around 55%.* Barely half of all those who had the opportunity to…

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Coal to Newcastle or #robots to #China UPDATE 18/4/2017

I was going to post a recipe for plum cake, but then I found this video clip on Quartz. What can I say? I like robots.

Coal to Newcastle or #robots to #China

I was going to post a recipe for plum cake, but then I found this video clip on Quartz. What can I say? I like robots.

Mesmerizing Animated Masterpieces

I’m not religious, but if it takes a religious celebration to focus our thoughts on kindness and goodwill to our fellow man, then so be it.

This weekend I’m posting nothing but uplifting information, and here’s something close to my heart – beautiful graphics made even more clever by modern technology. Enjoy.

Email to the PM re #Adani

I just sent this email to the Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull:

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Just for the record, I do not know the PM, but I did ‘chat’ with him by email after he lost to Tony Abbott, way back when. At the time, I wanted to congratulation him on being a man of integrity, even if he was a Liberal. I still receive updates from his staff.

And that brings me to the second point I want to clarify: I know the PM won’t read this email of mine. It is quite possible that his staffers won’t read it either. In all likelihood, the subject line of ‘Adani’ will be more than enough to get it binned sight unseen.

But…

I know Climate Change is real.

I know its caused by us, and

I know that our long-term survival requires that we do something about it.

Digging up more coal is not the answer. And neither is paying a ridiculous amount of money to gain a very few jobs in Queensland. The 10,000 jobs bandied about were never a reality. The truth is that if Adani goes ahead, we’ll be lucky to get 1500 jobs.

$900,000,000 [the cost of the rail link] divided by 1500 equals $600,000.

Think about it, one job will cost us 600,000 dollars.

I’m no mathematician, but that doesn’t seem like a very good deal to me.

If you agree, please pass this on. The more Australians who know what’s really involved, and get angry, the better our chances of actually stopping this madness. Trickledown economics has never worked, especially when it comes via the Cayman Island tax haven. We really are smarter than this.

Meeks

Filed under: My soap box Tagged: Adani, bleaching, Cayman-Island, coal, Great-Barrier-Reef, India, Malcolm Turnbull, pollution, Queensland, rail-link, Solar, tax-haven [image error] [image error]

Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion – The Prayer

Just because it’s beautiful.