Avatar photoSteven Savage

No, New Technology Won’t Destroy Culture, Part Whatever

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Ever encountered the idea that the internet and online technologies will somehow destroy the barrier between professionals and amateurs, leading us to a horrible world without the glorious quality media we're used to?  That's a joke of course, between fears of Harlequin self-publishing to the "Cult of the Amateur" balderdash, we're all familiar with it.

I've recently found yet another reason this fear is a total load of hamster leavings beyond the many I've stated before.

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Weekly Challenge: Educating the Inner Child

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Ever heard the term inner child? I'm sure you have.  As for what it means, well, it seems whatever meaning it once has is now diluted by jokes, assumptions, and pop-psychology.

But, we're going to drag out this tired term for your challenge this week.

You probably think of yourself as mature overall, but there are things where you are ignorant, where you don't know, where you are, in one way or another immature.  Inside the "adult you" are little pieces of yourself that have yet to grow up and mature, parts of you that may be painful to deal with because of their flaws and immaturity.

Pick one of these "inner children", perhaps the ignorance of a subject or a petty and immature behavior.  You're going to work on it.

Take this troublesome inner child, and ask what opportunity is needed for it to grow up – what is the right time, right environment, right situation to let this annoying piece of you mature into something grand.

Now, how are you going to make that happen this week?

Sometimes our problems, our troublesome inner children, are best dealt with by seeking the right situation – and by handling them one at a time.

– Steven Savage

Book Update 2/8/2010

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And now an update on the Fan To Pro book.  I spent a lot of the weekend working on it, so here's the latest:

Status:

  • The book is actually formatted and uploaded at Lulu.com.  This actually took awhile due to PDF conversion issues.
  • I am now working on the cover, which seems to work well as a simple cover for now – though people are still dropping ideas on me left and right.  I think next time I may "fansource" cover design more and hands-off it.
  • I hope to get the cover finished in a week or so and approve the final version in March.
  • Release to Lulu will be earlier than release to Amazon and other stores as it takes a few weeks for a new book to go through the system.  I'm still aiming for March.

What I learned:

  • Typesetting and laying out a book is a very unappreciated skill that you will NOT appreciate until you actually do it knowing a book you set up will be available to the public.
  • PDF conversion is also a massive crapshoot.  Lulu.com's PDF conversion beat the one I had on my Mac Word.  I ended up using Mac Word to get my book PDF, but had to cope with some annoying margin issues.
  • The first time you do set up a book for publishing, take a whole day to do it.  Trust me on this.
  • Examine other books to get ideas for layouts, numbering, and more.  That helped a lot.
  • Don't forget title, copyright, dedication, and other pages.

So the book is all but ready to go.  It needs a cover, a print check, and some tweaking.  But late March is looking awfully good . . .

 . . . and yes when it's done I'll write up my experience with Lulu.com!

– Steven Savage