My book, your book: Two friends collaborate

by Bill H. Ritchie, Pat Austin

Bill made a deal with Pat. If she would pay the $100 for an upgrade of Camtasia, he would teach her – at a distance of 2,350 miles – how to make a book using the Kindle Direct Publishing platform - KDP.Camtasia is a program to record on-screen demonstrations like getting started with KDP. It’s a challenge despite that Pat knows Microsoft Word and other programs.Bill described the They’d make a book as an experiment and the book would be titled, “My Book, Your Book.” Theirs would be a blank book, however, because the content – the interior matter – would take too long to write and edit. A book must be at least fifty pages to print on KDP. In addition to a paperback the book can be an eBook and fit the standards of the popular Kindle Fire tablet and the Kindle Cloud reader online so it can be read on any device - desktop, laptop or tablet.Pat is not only a writer of poetry and prose, she’s an artist - as the cover shows. They met about fifty years ago when they were both teaching college art courses. When Pat sent Bill her check, she enclosed with it a drawing of an owl - which Bill took sees as symbolic of their both being wisdom-boomers, members of the age-wave.Although this book is a blank book, it will serve the purpose of showing how to use the KDP platform. It will be an experience worth sharing and, maybe, be a good blank book to fill with text for the next edition of “My Book, Your Book.”Pat had a different statement for this. She At 82, I complained of a lack of creative stimulation in a phone call with Bill Ritchie. He immediately challenge me to collaborate on a project to learn online, “How to make a book and eBook.”Past collaborations with Bill have been fascinating - such as learning to do aluminum plate lithography. Our group of students met in Bill's basement studio as the “Mole press.”We not only learned a new process but discussed extensions of printmaking into other new technologies circa 1970, philosophies of art, contrasted democratic availability against exclusiveness of experience, and print history and shoptalk. I carried Bill Ritchie's style of interactive and inclusive methods when I took over my college teaching in Alaska.So, I was intrigued to consider making a print called a book - starting with a title and a cash investment. The title came from email My book, your book or, essentially, collaboration. I folded my check to mail in a discarded owl drawing which became the cover illustration. Bill then sent me a mockup filled with delightful and insightful text from his My first 20 years. With this in hand I could feel the paper and see the fonts and photographs. All I had to do next was to view the online video lessons, ready my content, learn more, and be content that, now, I made a print in the form of a book.

251 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2019