Your name in print

 A decade or two ago it was a big thing to 'publish' your own book, to pay some vanity press tens of thousands of dollars for the honor of printing your tome.  Now you can do the same thing for free, well all it costs you is your blood, sweat, tears, and time, and pretty much everyone has an ebook nowadays.  But I will probably never succeed as an indie author, as I just don't have the heart to guilt people into buying my books, it was bad enough selling Girl Scout cookies back in the day and who doesn't love thin mints?  We had a guy in town here, about 156 years old, could barely see or walk but he had ordered a few thousand books filled with his own reminiscences some decades back and spent his retirement years waddling towards random people in public venues trying to sell his book, it got to the point people would just throw $20 at him and run for it.  I don't want to be that person, poor guy!  Buy my books or don't (like most sane people choose to do), no pressure.  I write because I have to, not because I want to be rich (but hey, that'd be okay too) but I'm too soft-hearted to guilt people into buying stuff they don't want or need (a rather poor capitalist).

But I will say I am not impressed with Amazon as a publisher.  I just got done 'publishing' 8 of my titles for print on demand, apparently I get to pay printing and shipping costs out of my royalties (a 60/40 split) which leaves me with $2 on a $16 book.  I don't like their non-KDP ebook options either, I can't list anything for free and get 35% royalties to boot and if you go KDP you can't publish with anyone else.  I have 'published' with Smashwords for years, though their 'meat grinder' conversion system drives me batty on long books (the hyperlinks don't work), which is why I have some double published with direct2digital on my 'box sets.'  I love the flexibility and options on Smashwords, draft2digital prints nice books but the interface is a little clunky, and amazon has the market reach (though I'm sure my books are priority 0 for being seen by anybody unless I pay for the privilege), so I'm stuck publishing in three different venues.  I'd best stick to inoculating bovines for a living!

But I have a book, or 8, in print, yay!  I'm going to purchase an author copy and I'll let you know on quality.  So if you like real books, your wait is over (not that anyone likely cares!).  It was kind of interesting figuring out the differences in publishing for print vs ebook, but it isn't rocket science so yes, even I can do it, maybe you too?

A note on cookbooks: I did do the cookbook hardcover, but only had 47 pages and it requires 75 minimum, so if you notice large fonts and extra front material, there you go.  

Old-fashioned?

 I'm not sure if anyone has been waiting around the past 12 years or not, but I've finally gone and done it: a paperback version of 'Of Tea...and Things,' is available on Amazon, I'll try and do a starter version for each series (except my cookbooks!), but if they are an international phenomenon I might do the whole series, but right now we'll just stick to the first books, as it is a bit of work and I'm netting $10 a year from my writing!

A mess!

 I'm in the middle of updating covers (full disclosure, all are AI generated using Leonardo.ai) on amazon and Smashwords, as well as putting books on amazon that I hadn't yet.  As usual, having trouble with the Smashwords 'meat grinder' and review process, updating as I can but they seem to randomly reject a given book or ten and I have to resubmit it.  I have also made a few errors in uploading the wrong cover but hopefully have caught those as well!  Amazon I still can't offer 'free' books, so if there is something you are interested in, check out the wider inter web to see if you can get it gratis.  Apparently you can only add 3 titles per day on amazon as well, so I guess that will limit how many I can add there as well, since I don't have time to do this every day, it may come it fits and starts.

The great graham cracker travesty!

 Yeah, so I just updated my various cooking-type books, apparently there is an omission in the graham cracker recipe, you need to add 1/2 cup brown sugar with the moist ingredients, and if you are using psyllium husk, it will be a pliable dough, not a semi-liquid.  Also check out the new AI covers on the cooking type books, will be hopefully updating the single volume books as well, but it may take a while as life is currently in session!

Requisite Christmas Hymnody post!

  So someone else beat me to the punch this year, but happily he didn't write about the musicality of the season.  Check out his article on the storied ghosts of Christmas here, much recommended!  I know Charlie Brown really tried to get the true meaning of Christmas, but it's depressing.  I know the Grinch hinted at it, but the roast beast just doesn't cut it.  Even my local Christian radio station seems to be missing the boat, literally playing things like "Let it snow' and "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" endlessly but ignoring the many great sacred classics save an occasional instrumental nod from the Trans-Siberian Light Orchestra, at least there's no Santa Baby, that's a plus, right?  It sounds more like a seasonal mall sound track than anything else, especially a Christian station at Christmas!  While I don't mind that stuff, sadly, like Charlie Brown, I am more than a little frustrated with our whole culture focusing on the tinsel and the glitz and ignoring the glaring ache that this season entails for many.  It seems we can either be insipidly happy or alone in our grief which often manifests as anger towards the season in its entirety.

But if you hate Christmas because you hurt, you aren't alone!  It is a problem native to all humanity, not just the modern post-christian west, our problem is the same as the ancient pre-christian east or even the insipidly pseudo-christian America of our nostalgic recollection.  While Charlie Brown thinks he hankers after that nostalgic, idyllic ghost of Christmases past, there is no such history, no such reality, because that has never been what Christmas has been about nor is it the ache that haunts his heart like Marley in Ebenezor's bed chamber.

Many of the secular Christmas haters are happy to proclaim that Jesus wasn't really born on December 25th and that we're simply recycling an old pagan holiday, and I'm most happy to agree with them, and their point is?  Men have always been religious, keenly interested and much afeared of the supernatural, at least until our materialistic modern age with its electric lights to forever drive off the dark of superstition and the utter night of ignorance, thinking we are quite something, as if we invented the physics behind the phenomenon, content in our assumption that it 'just happened,' and never questioning the Light behind our light and little realizing that by blinding their own eyes thereby, they are now the ignorant!  That is why we demand a Light in the darkness, and celebrate its coming at the darkest time of the year, not because we know Jesus was born on that particular day but rather that His coming at the appointed time relieved the spiritual darkness in which the whole world languished and we celebrate the fact as his first coming at the darkest time of the year.

But our problem is we forget why we celebrate His coming, yay a baby, a light of the world, but why is that significant?  His birth, while miraculous and marvelous and bright, is nothing, does nothing, rather it is His sinless life, His atoning death, and His conquering of death and darkness and sin forever by rising again to new life that we can sing and rejoice and make merry this time of year and all the year long!  But we'd rather sit with our glitz and jingle, aching inside, making merry without, and wondering why we can't be happy when everybody else seems to be as well.

This is where the great sacred Christmas hymns come in, look past the first well known verse or chorus or the haunting instrumental and delve into the depth, the mystery, the sorrow, the joy, the meaning of this babe's incarnation, the very word made flesh.  Only therein can we find meaning and true joy in this paradoxical season of utmost joy and aching loneliness and unrelenting sorrow, only in Him can all find their true 'comfort and joy.'  Santa and Grinches are fine and fun, but let us not forget the true meaning behind it all!

Full disclosure!

 So I'm learning to play with ai art generators, Leonardo.ai in particular but I'm also using canva.com and the previewer on Mac to mess around with the resulting images.  I've updated a few of my book covers just for the fun of it, though the smashwords editions might not be approved as the metadata and the cover wording aren't exactly the same.  I haven't gotten around to adding a note in each book about the cover source (formerly my own photographs) but I will get there someday, until then, this post will have to suffice.  And as far as creative content goes, I would say it is as difficult to get a good ai book cover as it is to take a decent photograph, it requires patience, time, a learning curve, and a little innate skill, but that's just my opinion, maybe I'm just not proving to be a child prodigy but as far as I can tell, to get a good image takes a bit of work and time and luck and a good eye.

AI book covers?

 I finally got around to playing with an AI image generator.  I've long wanted to see what all the hype is about and if it will really put human artists out of business.  I don't think all you content creators out there have anything to worry about, rather you have yet another tool to incorporate into your craft.  If you insist on handwriting your manuscripts even after the advent of the typewriter, then yes, you will become obsolete, but for everybody else, it is a pretty neat tool, but still a tool: it needs human input and creativity and taste to make it meaningful.  It also requires time and talent and creativity, you can't just push a button and there it is.

I played with an image generator and read a couple articles, one an interview with an author who uses AI to help brainstorm and organize his books but found he had the same problems with print as I did with the images: they don't necessarily make a lot of sense!  The human touch was still needed to edit, refine, select, hone, and direct.  The computer can spit out a boundless array of images or text but to make it truly creative and artistic, someone needs to direct it.  I also found several articles on copyright law concerning computer generated stuff and it agrees that to be copyrightable, the computer's junk must be organized and edited and changed significantly by a human person.

It is a ton of fun if you like this sort of stuff but unless you are interested in editing the resulting images, I'm not sure it is a great option for indy ebook covers.  Here are a couple examples:

Robotic sci-fi unicorn on steroids in a post apocalyptic landscape?

Three legs and two moons?

Five legs and a donkey in the moon?

This is a decent image but took editing and learning what prompts to use, of 200+ images, about 3 were usable!

So there is definitely promise here, but like any other tool, technique, or creation it requires time, patience, and the human touch!