Well one of the ideas this year was to do more with my book writing and publishing. The way things no look that might not happen as a change in the job has happened and as with all things new there are lots of hills to climb.
I do have one book project that has been on hold since June 2008 mainly due to the fact that I can not get the book's index sorted out.
The other little snag is that before I have completed the book it is already very much out of date and so I will need to revise it before I even get around to the problem with the index.
The only other problem with it is that I can't sell the book when its done anyway, due to copyrights that would need to be cleared and also because I don't think there is a market for such a book.
Saying that an earlier version/edition of the book was one Lulu for a while due to a mistake that I made when editing the project page and I can safely state here that it was the most expensive book on Lulu at just short of 1million pounds, for some strange reason there where no takers at that price.
Showing posts with label Lulu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lulu. Show all posts
07 February, 2009
31 January, 2009
New book
I have a new book out on Lulu how cool is that?
I know it's great that I have some how or other finally got to publish a book that has sat on the old hard drive for far too long but the job is done and it's also a hardback.
This is what I have said on lulu about my book.
Having found the time and all that sort of stuff I have some how managed to release the latest book that I have written, which has been on my hard disk for a long time and some how or other got stuck there.
Although the new book's title is very close to my older books on chemical elements, it is a completly new book in its contents and its layout. In fact I think I might be pushed to name or even find another book that has a layout like my new book.
The reason that I can say this is that the book has been set up or layed out in such a way that we go from the elements first known to man all the way to thouse elements only found in the labs around the worl in the last few years.
I have never seen a book on chemical elemnts set out in such a way. Beacuse of this layout the book is in some seven or so parts reflecting the fact that the discovery of the various elements went to some extent hand in hand with new chemical and technology techniques, by this I mean that say without electricty some of the elemnts we know today would not have been found.
For me it has been a fun project and as I am not a chemist it was a great learning all this new stuff and I did enjoy myself.
This is what the back of the book says
Description:
This is an almost complete reference to all the currently known elements, set in an easy to read style and at an easy to understand level. Each element has information on when they were found, who found them, how they found them, what uses the elements are put to and what effects some of the elements can have on humans and their health. This book has been set up so that it starts from the earliest known elements to man, all the way to the elements only found a few years ago. The book is therefore in 7 parts reflecting the major eras that most of the chemical elements were found.
And finally this is the link to the book on Lulu
Hope this all works.
I know it's great that I have some how or other finally got to publish a book that has sat on the old hard drive for far too long but the job is done and it's also a hardback.
This is what I have said on lulu about my book.
Having found the time and all that sort of stuff I have some how managed to release the latest book that I have written, which has been on my hard disk for a long time and some how or other got stuck there.
Although the new book's title is very close to my older books on chemical elements, it is a completly new book in its contents and its layout. In fact I think I might be pushed to name or even find another book that has a layout like my new book.
The reason that I can say this is that the book has been set up or layed out in such a way that we go from the elements first known to man all the way to thouse elements only found in the labs around the worl in the last few years.
I have never seen a book on chemical elemnts set out in such a way. Beacuse of this layout the book is in some seven or so parts reflecting the fact that the discovery of the various elements went to some extent hand in hand with new chemical and technology techniques, by this I mean that say without electricty some of the elemnts we know today would not have been found.
For me it has been a fun project and as I am not a chemist it was a great learning all this new stuff and I did enjoy myself.
This is what the back of the book says
Description:
This is an almost complete reference to all the currently known elements, set in an easy to read style and at an easy to understand level. Each element has information on when they were found, who found them, how they found them, what uses the elements are put to and what effects some of the elements can have on humans and their health. This book has been set up so that it starts from the earliest known elements to man, all the way to the elements only found a few years ago. The book is therefore in 7 parts reflecting the major eras that most of the chemical elements were found.
And finally this is the link to the book on Lulu
Hope this all works.
02 October, 2008
Dirk Maggs Book Part 20a
The book is as I last spoke you in the last blog.
Some new news is that the firm that I was going to use to do the private printing LULU.com have changed the costs and stuff, the only problem is that if there email is anything to go by I will not stand a chance of working out what the costs or changes are.
So I am now going to have to put on the to-do list that I don't have find another book publisher...
Bum is all that I can say to this as it's yet more work.
Some new news is that the firm that I was going to use to do the private printing LULU.com have changed the costs and stuff, the only problem is that if there email is anything to go by I will not stand a chance of working out what the costs or changes are.
So I am now going to have to put on the to-do list that I don't have find another book publisher...
Bum is all that I can say to this as it's yet more work.
14 March, 2008
Dirk Maggs Book Part 12
Did i say that all the book in draft is done except appendix 2? Well if I did not I have done now. I have yet to collect each chapter into the master document so I do not know just how did this book of the website is going to be.
I think it will have a page count lower than the second edition mainly due to the fact that the page size has been changed so that it can be printed in hardback, and so with luck it might last a bit longer, as the idea is to have a written record of what The Dirk Maggs website looks like I think hardback is the way forward.
I did have the Idea to present a copy of the book to Dirk, but thinking about it, I decided that it might weird him out seeing his life's work in a hardback book before him.
As I have said before the book is going to be a Private printing so it will not be for sale.
Saying that a few weeks ago something did go wrong with how the book is listed at LULU and you could see the book and buy it (the second edition that is) the cost? a cool 1999999.99 pounds so it was not a surprise that no one brought a copy, can't think why that is
I think it will have a page count lower than the second edition mainly due to the fact that the page size has been changed so that it can be printed in hardback, and so with luck it might last a bit longer, as the idea is to have a written record of what The Dirk Maggs website looks like I think hardback is the way forward.
I did have the Idea to present a copy of the book to Dirk, but thinking about it, I decided that it might weird him out seeing his life's work in a hardback book before him.
As I have said before the book is going to be a Private printing so it will not be for sale.
Saying that a few weeks ago something did go wrong with how the book is listed at LULU and you could see the book and buy it (the second edition that is) the cost? a cool 1999999.99 pounds so it was not a surprise that no one brought a copy, can't think why that is
19 February, 2008
Open Office
As a follow up to yesterday and the troubles with converting a file on LULU so that it was in a print format Pdf, good idea no1 was to use another ep programme.
The idea was to load the file in Open office wp and the resave the file, good idea? well that did not happen all the versions I have of Open Office(version 2.0) opened the file no problem and then stopped working when i asked it to resave the file. No in Open Office's defence I have to admit i was using it as a portable app so maybe some thing with that set up is what is causing the problem.
So other news is that I have not done any more drafts work on the Dirk Maggs book it is still stalled.
On the index fron (eg who many and what type) no progress.
Perhaps progress next time I report in this blog.
The idea was to load the file in Open office wp and the resave the file, good idea? well that did not happen all the versions I have of Open Office(version 2.0) opened the file no problem and then stopped working when i asked it to resave the file. No in Open Office's defence I have to admit i was using it as a portable app so maybe some thing with that set up is what is causing the problem.
So other news is that I have not done any more drafts work on the Dirk Maggs book it is still stalled.
On the index fron (eg who many and what type) no progress.
Perhaps progress next time I report in this blog.
18 February, 2008
Plans that go wrong
So I had this great plan, I would convert an exsisting manuscript to 8.5*11 so that it the right size to be printed in hardback.
Step one, the converting was in the end okay as it only took a few hours and it looked good at the end of it all.
Step two, now thats when things started to go off the rails in a real big way. The upload to LULU was okay and that worked. The next step converting the document into a printable PDF did not go right, in fact it failed. Now the big problem is that I don't know why the conversion failed as LULU don't say why the document failed, they just say that it failed, yeh I know so useful.
So I am at a loss what to do...
I think I shall have another look at the Dirk Maggs book the drafts that I have done so far....
I last thjought I did have was to try a differant wp programme to se if that is the problem. I normally use word 2003 nice and old and it mostly works and so should be without any major problems.
Step one, the converting was in the end okay as it only took a few hours and it looked good at the end of it all.
Step two, now thats when things started to go off the rails in a real big way. The upload to LULU was okay and that worked. The next step converting the document into a printable PDF did not go right, in fact it failed. Now the big problem is that I don't know why the conversion failed as LULU don't say why the document failed, they just say that it failed, yeh I know so useful.
So I am at a loss what to do...
I think I shall have another look at the Dirk Maggs book the drafts that I have done so far....
I last thjought I did have was to try a differant wp programme to se if that is the problem. I normally use word 2003 nice and old and it mostly works and so should be without any major problems.
17 February, 2008
Hardback Books and all of that
Do you know that the actual writing of a book at this moment in time to me looks easier than working out correct paper sizes and what template to use when you want to have your book published as a hardback book?
Why?
I hope that with a little bit more work I will have the answers that I have been looking for. So far the answers are not there yet.
As an expirment I updated and resized the manuscripts for one of my eriler books, what I thought would only take at most an hour soon got out of control and before I knew it I had spent some 3 hours on it, but I think the time has been well spent as I now have edtion 5 of the book in a hardback format at a size of 8.5*11 which is the size I want of so I think at this moment in time.
I am going to upload it to LULU and see what I get. I think that it will be a good test as I think the Dirk Maggs book will be of the same sort of size, that is about 500 odd pages, one thing with this test book that did surprise me was that the table of content runs to 30 pages! I know what? when you see the book it's easy to understand, I don't think the Dirk book will have that size of contents page, but you never know.
Now the index or indexes are another matter, and no I have not got any furthur on what to do or how many indexes I might need.
Why?
I hope that with a little bit more work I will have the answers that I have been looking for. So far the answers are not there yet.
As an expirment I updated and resized the manuscripts for one of my eriler books, what I thought would only take at most an hour soon got out of control and before I knew it I had spent some 3 hours on it, but I think the time has been well spent as I now have edtion 5 of the book in a hardback format at a size of 8.5*11 which is the size I want of so I think at this moment in time.
I am going to upload it to LULU and see what I get. I think that it will be a good test as I think the Dirk Maggs book will be of the same sort of size, that is about 500 odd pages, one thing with this test book that did surprise me was that the table of content runs to 30 pages! I know what? when you see the book it's easy to understand, I don't think the Dirk book will have that size of contents page, but you never know.
Now the index or indexes are another matter, and no I have not got any furthur on what to do or how many indexes I might need.
20 March, 2007
Website Book
As you may or may not already know I have a website that lists alll the work the producer & Director Dirk Maggs has done. As I was looking for a writing project I thought it would be a good idea to produce a book from the contents of the website.
Little did I know what I was letting myself in for, as the book is some 300 pages long when using an A4 layout. The bigest single cause of %%$^%$$ has been Microsoft Word, which for some reason was falling over. I do not understand why as I have written a much larger book and did not have much if any trouble. In fact the last book that I wrote had 26 pages of contents so that should give you some idea as to how large that book was.
Anyway as I was saying the current book is 310 pages of A$ with 6 pages of contents and a file size of 6 Megs. The only thing that I can think of that is making word fall over is the picture that are in the book.
So as I said at the start of this the book is nearly done and I must admit that it has been over a month in doing the conversion from web pages to word or text pages, this was a surprize to me as I thought the task would have taken much less time.
So all I now have to do is get the page numbering right spell check it and then convert it to a PDF file and upload to my Lulu page, I will report back on progress.
Little did I know what I was letting myself in for, as the book is some 300 pages long when using an A4 layout. The bigest single cause of %%$^%$$ has been Microsoft Word, which for some reason was falling over. I do not understand why as I have written a much larger book and did not have much if any trouble. In fact the last book that I wrote had 26 pages of contents so that should give you some idea as to how large that book was.
Anyway as I was saying the current book is 310 pages of A$ with 6 pages of contents and a file size of 6 Megs. The only thing that I can think of that is making word fall over is the picture that are in the book.
So as I said at the start of this the book is nearly done and I must admit that it has been over a month in doing the conversion from web pages to word or text pages, this was a surprize to me as I thought the task would have taken much less time.
So all I now have to do is get the page numbering right spell check it and then convert it to a PDF file and upload to my Lulu page, I will report back on progress.
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