To summarize, one of the major points that McLuhan seems to be making is that the invention of print is closely connected to a psychological development within man, namely his detribalization and the isolation of a particular way of looking at the world which could be classified as linear and systematical, in the sense of successively removing man from the world in the formation of a new sense of “objectivity”.

In order to understand this better, he takes us on a tour through medieval reading and writing culture which differed significantly from the 20th century outlook on literature but might be experiencing a revival today in the major shift occurring in publishing and reading, as I’d like to show in the following paragraphs.

1. From Isolation To Integration Of The Senses

“If a technology is introduced either from within or from without a culture, and if it gives new stress or ascendancy to one or another of our senses, the ratio among all of our senses is altered. We no longer feel the same, nor do our eyes and ears and other senses remain the same.”

McLuhan argues that due to the invention and proliferation of print, the visual sense of man has been (over)stressed to an extent where i becomes isolated. This can be seen in an extreme in the example of speed reading courses where students are taught to disconnect the eyes scanning the text from the inner verbalization, thus speeding up the information intake.

Compared to most modern writing in books and newspapers, in medieval times the writing in manuscripts looked very different, almost as if it wasn’t meant to be read as much as meditated upon.

In addition to the very visceral style of the letters, these manuscripts were full of colorful illustrations and marginalia.

One could argue now that they seem far more visual than our modern blocks of immaculate black & white paragraphs, but it’s true only in a superficial sense. In fact, if we study the way people produced and read these manuscripts, we find that these works were not generated through isolation of the visual but portrayed an integration with all the other senses. These manuscripts were immersive in the truest sense of the word, inviting the reader to participate with heart, mind, body and soul, as it were.

The ebook and the way electronic texts are being published show signs of returning to a more holistic harmony of the senses, at least potentially:

• On an e-reader, the fonts, font-size, paragraph spacing are not “set in stone”. They can be adjusted fluidly to the mood and capacity of the reader in any given moment
• ebooks can contain not just illustrations which can be explored by tapping or clicking, they can also contain videos and sometimes have a “text-to-speech” function turning the written words into an electronic spoken performance.
• by linking and crossreferencing an ebook to the whole body of human knowledge in form of the Internet the isolation of traditional print has become malleable

2. Authorship

“[T]he Middle Ages for various reasons and from various causes did not possess the concept of ‘authorship’ in exactly the same significance as we have it now. Much of the prestige and glamour with which we moderns invest the term, and which makes us look upon an author who has succeeded in getting a book published as having progressed a stage nearer to becoming a great man, must be a recent accretion. The indifference of medieval scholars to the precise identity of the authors whose books they studied is undeniable. The writers themselves, on the other hand, did not always trouble to ‘quote’ what they took from other books or to indicate where they took it from; they were diffident about signing even what was clearly their own in an unambiguous and unmistakable manner.”

It seems that now in the 21st century we are returning to a state where the author no longer overshadows his work, but where, potentially, the content counts first.

For the last few decades, books have been increasingly connected to their authors. Often, books were only published because their author was a public figure, however marginal. The interest in the person of the author came first, and the text itself was only read because of what it revealed about its author. The very essence of book marketing hinged on the person of the author, promoting the work through talkshows, book signings, etc.This is still very common today, but it seems the significance of authors has reached a climax and is challenged by new modes of electronic publishing

If people like a picture, a song, or an article on the Internet, it is often completely irrelevant who produced it, except for the fact that knowing the source will lead to more and similar works. The blogging platform Tumblr is a good example of this. Something gets reblogged, not necessarily because its author is well-known, but because the image/song/text speaks to the blogger and she wants to proliferate her own experience/opinion/feeling through the medium of the discovered artifact.

Also, in the field of independent book publishing we see a trend where authors need to become ever more creative and inventive to bring their works to a public who doesn’t know or care about the author while potentially being very interested in their works.

The growing disconnection between author and artifact leads to another important issue: copyrights. The burning debates at the moment, as I see them, are not so much about the morality of pirating but rather about the changing entitlement of authors and artists. In a way, it’s already to late for arguments. The fact that we are having these discussions only shows that author and artifact have already lost the cemented relation they enjoyed only a few decades ago.

3. Sharing

“To copy and circulate another man’s book might be regarded as a meritorious action in the age of manuscript; in the age of print, such action results in law suits and damages.”

Social Media seems to return us to this more tribal state where “pirating” (in a strict sense, even posting a picture on Facebook or Pinterest is piracy) is not viewn as a perpetration, but as a sign of respect.

It’s also said that if there’d been copyright laws as we have the today in the time of Gutenberg, the printing revolution would never have happened.

The current copyright wars can be understood from three different camps:

• artists (and their representatives) who have been popular pre-Internet and demand compensation for the unauthorized reproduction of their works online
• media consumers who refuse to pay for something that is also available for free
• artists that have grown in and through the Internet who realize that only because people circulate their works can they gain and maintain an audience.

We shall see in the following years whether the first group (which is also the older one) will be able to withstand the growing demand and insight of the second two.

But again, the fact that we’re discussing this at such a large scale at the moment only shows that the old mode isn’t working anymore.

While artists and their representatives turn into policemen, prosecuting consumers with the help of Internet providers and governments, a new global tribe is growing which is based on an economy of sharing, substituting the system of direct compensation with more indirect and subtle approaches that make for both an accelerated proliferation of works of art and encourage the production of more.

originally posted on andreklein.net

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

This is the story of a book and its creation:

About a month ago, when I saw that my anarchically drawn short story for German learners found such positive feedback, I decided to try something a bit more refined.

From the beginning the idea was to create a children’s book, something that was highly visual and expressive without too many words. I needed two things: a) a character that was simple enough for me to draw repeatedly and b) a topic. People and animals were out of question from the start: anatomically too difficult. So I started looking for dead-simple inanimate objects.

One day when I was doing the dishes (good place to get ideas) it came to me: books.

I was going to create a character who is a book and make the narrative about the changing role of reading in the 21st century.

From Grey Matter To Digital Device

Once this understanding was in place I started sketching with pen and paper. Over the course of the next four weeks these drawings would get revised, scrapped and redone. When I was content with a scene, I picked up a 0.4 black fine-liner and started tracing the outlines. Finally, I scanned all the drawings and colored them digitally while limiting myself to a fixed set of colors to give it a coherent feeling from the first panel to the last.

After that, the digital “book binding” would begin. What binding does an ebook have, you ask? Well, none. But the technical details are relatively boring and I’d rather talk about something else, instead.

Paper Vs. iPads

The newspapers and blogs these days are full with debates whether ebooks are destroying the book culture or revitalizing it, whether paper or e-ink screens are the best way to read, whether a book needs to have a scent to be enjoyed or not, etc.

I’ve written extensively about these topics myself (see at the end of this post for links) and many times what I read about the topic seemed somewhat…childish, in the sense of obstinately clinging to the status quo. Also, I think the word “childish” is unfair because children often make a lot more sense than adults and we should maybe create a new word: adultish.

In that sense, Brian The Book is a children’s book that tackles the prejudices of adults. By working mainly with images my hope is that the book’s narrative will fly under the radar of logic and encourage alternatives ways of thinking about the subject.

All You Can Read: Get A Free Copy!

As usual, we’re kicking off the publication of Brian The Book with a free promotion, which means that you won’t just get a free sample or a brochure, no: You can get the whole book as a free download, no questions asked from Thursday, Apr 19th, 12am to Friday, Apr 20th Monday 23rd 11:59pm Pacific Standard time.

How does it work? Click here to go to the Amazon Kindle Store. And don’t worry, you don’t need a Kindle to read this. There’s a variety of reading apps for every device from iPhone to Android.

Since this is an independent publication and I don’t have millions of dollars to throw to the wind for advertising, I would like to ask you for help. There are many ways in which you can assist, and most of them will just take up a few minutes of your time but will help Brian The Book to soar into the minds and hearts of readers worldwide:

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

It was Clay Shirky who said in a recent interview that publishing is no longer a job, it’s a button.

In fact, I’m staring at one right now. It’s blue and it says “publish”. It’s simple. Shall I click it? No? But it would make me a world-class publisher, wouldn’t it?

Some people will say yes, others no. I’d say it all depends on how you define “publishing”.  But no matter how we define it, we have to admit that it has never been easier for almost anyone to publish almost anything. Needless to say, the content here is irrelevant. To be more precise, the fact that it has become easier to publish something hasn’t automatically made it easier to publish something awesome!

Sure, it may have lowered the bar and allowed people to be heard who otherwise would never have been able to get past the gatekeepers, but it has also brought with it a new tension between convenience and creativity.

When “because I can” is no longer enough

Like many people, when I started my first blog, I was intrigued by the simplicity. I could just write a few words, insert a picture and hit publish. I could do that many times a day, as often as I wanted. Nobody would tell me what to post or what not to post. “My blog was my castle”. This was way before microblogging on Twitter became a daily necessity of digital life, by the way.

Now, almost a decade later, I have sobered up a little. I know how easy it is to publish something and I’m also painfully aware of the millions of blogs that get absolutely zero traffic because they’re full of redundant, inarticulate or irrelevant stuff!

I can do it. But should I?

The English verb can is interesting, but its seeming simplicity is misleading. The French have two words for it, with very different meanings. One of them, pouvoir refers to being able to do something regarding time or circumstance and the other one, savoir, refers to being able to do it as in having learned it

Returning to Clay Shirky’s quote from above, yes, everyone can be a publisher in the sense of pouvoir, because it’s so convenient. But the savoir-faire, or the know-how, as we say in English, is something very different.

Now, I’m aware that measuring competence is a difficult and all too often highly arbitrary endeavor. I leave that up to the professors of publishing 101 classes. Furthermore, I can’t claim that I’m competent, myself. I can only aspire to it. And this is where it gets interesting, because it shifts publication from product to process.

But when anyone can publish anything, what is its value? Are we experiencing a revival of creativity or just a publishing inflation?

More Of The Same And Less Of Something Else

As Sam Anderson wrote in his brilliant piece about contemporary gaming culture, the production of big video games mimics the Hollywood model of ”imitations, spinoffs, prequels, sequels and even subsequels” because it’s just too risky to produce something new and unique and then not be able to sell it. For the consumer, or gamer this means: more of the same and less of something else.

Fortunately, independent game developers are challenging this model. The games they make don’t require millions of dollars and hundreds of programmers to produce. And therefore, if a game fails, it’s not the end of the world. Some of the most creative games I’ve ever seen were conceived, built and distributed in this new way.To give you an example, check out the Humble Indie Bundle and you’ll see that not just the games are very different but also the whole philosophy around them.

And there are not just indie game developers these days, there are also more and more indie publishers.

When I first heard the term, I was happy to finally have an alternative to the dreaded self-publishing, a close cousin to the horrible vanity-publishing. Indie publishing, that sounded like punk in the 70ies: wild creative expression that answered to noone.

Unfortunately, when you look around the web these days, what is self-advertised as “indie publishing” is often surprisingly dull. Not having a lot of money for editors or stylish covers is not what I mean. These are more or less technical issues. What I’m referring to is the endless amounts of more of the same, less of something else, to be more precise: Harry Potter imitations, Twilight spinoffs, Hunger Games wannabees and endless covers with scantily clad females and males hovered over by an aura of paranormal mystery or kitschy longing.

Yes, I know, it’s tough to make a living from writing, and before you start working on that 900 page novel you want to be at least marginally assured that it will be read, not to mention being sold, so why not just piggyback on what is already out there?

Pulp magazines have always existed and they’ve proven to generate cash. So, instead of being one of a hundred type-monkeys collaborating on the next “Gone With The Wind” spinoff for the supermarket aisles, people now do it individually. As long as it brings cash, this is where being an indie publisher literally pays off for most people, but I believe it hasn’t even begun!

Sure, bills need to be paid somehow. But being an indie publisher means you can do something really wild and uncompromising. Many times it will fail. But the times when it works (and sells) it’s so much better than just driving down imitation lane and making a few pennies along the way.

To give you an example, when I published Peter und das Huhn I couldn’t have cared less what people thought about it. The “drawings” were midwifed onto paper by reckless scrawls on telephone notepads. I thought it was some kind of joke. But it just keeps selling and I recently dropped the price as low as possible because I couldn’t see people spending 2.99 for something I came up with in just a few measly minutes.

My secret guess is that what people like about it is that it’s somewhat reckless. It just is what it is and doesn’t try to be something else.

No, I didn’t get rich from this. But I learned something very important. The fact that I can publish something quickly doesn’t mean that it gets easier to publish something great, but it certainly allows for experimentation and creative development beyond my wildest dreams.

For example, only through this process did I begin to take my scrawling more seriously, eventually came up with an illustrated detective story and an elaborately illustrated children’s book (soon to be released).

I’m going to click the “Publish” button now. Feel free to share this article with your friends or leave a comment below.

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img credit: broken glasses  Some rights reserved by helena_perez_garcia, publish button by wordpress

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

( tl;dr – wrote a short story, you can download it here)

I’ve lived both in the Far and Middle East. Both experiences left strong memories, traces, impressions. And I noticed very early that if I wanted to convey any of my experiences to others in writing, an autobiographical account wouldn’t cut it.

Short Fiction Instead of Travelogues

It lies in the nature of subjective experience that what to one person is life-changing, to another may be trivial. In other words, the things that leave a strong impression on us are not just very different, they are often intangible, as well.

This is why at the moment I’m working on a series of short stories (and not travelogues!) about the Middle East. On top of that the Middle East as depicted in these writings (you’ll find the first short story below) is completely fictional in order to avoid the straight-jacket of preconceived notions and opinions.

Individual Publications For Individual Readers

These writings will be published independently, that is without the help of publishing houses, marketing and extensive copy-editing. It is an experimental process and whether I’ll follow through with the rest of the short stories in this series will depend (to some extent) on how people respond to this idea of a fictionalized Middle East that still contains all its defining characteristics of conflict and contradiction.

What You Get For Downloading This Story

This first short story is completely free. You’ll find the download link at the end of this article.

A few notes:

I arranged it in such a way that by downloading it, you’ll get the story in what we call here an “Indie Publishing Pack”, meaning a zip file containing a styled PDF, .MOBI file optimized for Kindle and an .EPUB for Sony and other e-readers.

The idea is that if someone downloads an ebook (or short story) he or she should be able to decide on what device and in which way to read it. So, in order to take out the guesswork, you’ll get three versions at once.

(If you need help with transferring the files to your device, see also here)

Support Independent Publishing

If you like the story and want more, here’s how you can help and support this project by one (or more) of the following ways:

Your responses will determine when the next story comes out and if it published in the same way like this one.

And now *drumroll*, the Download Link

Here it is, the first short story about a fictional Middle East, titled: “Don’t Call Me Naomi”

         —> click here to go to the download page <—

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

Note: The term indie does not have anything to do with Indiana Jones, Native Americans or Bollywood but is simply a short form for independent as in indie rock or indie games.

Indie Publishing Vs. Traditional Publishing

What is the difference between traditional publishing and indie-publishing?

Well, they got money, we ain’t got none…

But, seriously… I would define it as follows:

“The indie publisher strives to provide the highest quality output based on the lowest quantity of physical or financial resources.” 

In other words, as an indie-publisher I have exactly one employee (me) who does everything that in traditional publishing would be handled by whole teams and departments:

I’m everything from my own worst boss, waking me up in the middle of the night to catch that deadline, to the disorganized cover-designer, over-worked tech-guy, bad-tempered pedantic editor and coffee cooking intern.

Why would anyone put up with all of this?

One word: freedom. You can do whatever you like.

This doesn’t mean not being able to process criticism or get all snobbish when someone doesn’t understand a sentence that – to you – was poetic genius but to most of your readers only comes off as syntactically garbled mess.

Freedom without responsibility is not real freedom. It’s just recklesssness. But that’s a different kind of discussion. So let’s just leave it at that.

The indie publisher can choose what to write, how to write it, in what order to present the material, how to package it, and so on and so forth. Traditional publishers may have the benefit of out-sourcing or distributing the work among various professionals, but the indie-publisher can imbue his work with a strong character, spirit or attitude from the way the fonts look to the way the product is being marketed.

It is this wholeness injected by one individual’s spirit that gives this feeling of authenticity, of not just another mass-produced thing off the shelf but something real.

The success of the indie game Minecraft (made by one person) is a good example of how convincing and captivating this spirit can be, compared to all the many corporately produced games that take millions to make and feel just like all the others.

But there are many other examples in the music world. Read this article about Sargent House for example.

OK, enough preparatory preachery. Here are my 5 insights of the year:

#1 Piracy Is Not A Problem: Inflexible Publishing Models Are

If you open any newspaper this day you’ll find the reports of “ebook sales soaring” next to warnings of “intellectual property theft”. But it’s a misconception that piracy destroys writer’s lives. Whether it’s the music, movie or book industry, people have been copying stuff for decades. With each new technology, our abilities to copy stuff have soared but not less music, books or movies are produced. The opposite is the case: The lower the threshold to write and publish a book or record a music album, the more artworks are actually getting out there.

As publishers we have to ask ourselves: If stealing our stuff is more convenient for the reader than buying it, maybe we should do something about it? Maybe we should remove hurdles, reduce complicated sign-up procedures and just deliver the bacon?

And: If the payment process can not be streamlined, then maybe free is the best option.

#2 Free & Premium Is Not A Contradiction

We had a few free offers this year. And what I learned is this: Giving books away for free is the best possible thing you can do. If you absolutely have to, offer the books as a “bribe” for signing up to an email list but the best thing is to let people just download, no questions asked.

Interesting: Some works I put here on the site and simultaneously on Amazon for a low price. The result: The more people download something for free, the more will also buy it.

More about this: >>> 

#3 From Zero To Hero: Publishing A Bestseller Is Easy

Books are not what they used to be. The role of publishing is changing. So is the meaning of a “bestseller”. I found out this year that it’s fairly easy to write a bestseller on Amazon. Why? Because a bestseller is relative to its category or target group, there is not only one bestseller list but hundreds!

More about this: >>> 

#4 Collaboration Still Rules

The book “Education Is A Cow That Anyone Can Milk” was different from the beginning. Instead of just editing it on my own as usual and giving it to one or two friends to proof-read I made an open call on this blog to participate. Many people sent in their feedback and helped to improve the final result. It was so much fun that I’ll definitely do it again. The book is available for free, by the way, or on Amazon for a reasonably small price.

More about this: >>> 

#5 Blogging Is Not An Option, It’s A Must

I published a little guide about blogging this spring and I’m convinced now, more than ever, that blogging is an absolutely essential component of making this whole indie publishing thing work. It has many reasons, but the two most important ones are: developing reach and creating new contacts. In other words: The content of a blog is important but not as much as its context! Its power is indirect (people will find a blog for one reason and become interested in it for another) and asynchronous (people will stumble over older articles through search engines).

More about this: >>> 

Having said that..

I wish you a Happy New Year!

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

It’s not easy being an independent publisher. If you don’t have mountains of cash to fork out so that other people will do the formatting, cover design, price setting, etc. for you it’s all in your hands, which can become quite a lot of work.

Also, by making one mistake after the other you learn. The fun part comes when you’ve made enough mistakes to actually get things right and help others do the same. This is the story of (yet another) collaborative epublication:

From Blog To Book

Eti Shani started writing her Hebrew blog as a hobby about one year ago. In the beginning the idea was to write about Hebrew language and grammar etc. but it quickly developed away from that to something else, entirely. So, instead of going into the differences between Aleph and Ayn, Tav and Tet, Eti took a deep dive into the culture of Hebrew storytelling and came up with one narrative pearl after the other, translating medieval texts and ancient Rashi and Aramaic to simple English.

Some of these stories were simply too good to be forgotten somewhere in a blog archive, so I suggested to take these literary gems, polish them and make a little book out of it.

During this process, I became more and more involved in editing, proofreading and the writing process itself. As I began to understood the inner logic of these ancient stories, I proposed to extend certain parts of the stories, stylize descriptions, turn reported into direct speech, etc., to make it more understandable for contemporary readers.

When the core text was done, we went through the layout, fine-tuned letters and paragraphs and inserted a few images to top it off.

This whole process from the first story to the final publication took about 13 months. (And as is the nature of such projects, it will continue to grow and be updated over time)

The book is called: Jewish Legends, Lore & Lullabies From The Treasure Trove Of Hebrew Tales  and the final result is nothing to sneeze at. (Probably, I’m biased but I believe it’s one of the most interesting epublications we’ve published so far.)

Like other recent projects, this publication is available as an Indie-Publishing Pack which basically means you get three versions (PDF, MOBI, EPUB) for the price of one, and it can also be downloaded straight from the Amazon Kindle Store.

Click here to find out more about this book >>>

I also asked Eti to read out loud one the stories and put it on YouTube so that those who have never heard a Jewish story before can get a feeling for it. Here it is.

P.S.: If you need help with your publications, feel free to contact me and we’ll see what can be done. I’m planning to open some kind of platform for this in the future, but you can always leave a comment here on this blog or write me on Twitter until then.

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

“I’ve been trying to work out your sharing philosophy. I share a lot too, but you work really hard on publishing professional books and then give them away. Is it some kind of karma philosophy where the more you share the more you get back, like a boomerang effect?”

It’s an interesting question.

Why to work weeks and months on something and then give it away for free once its done?

Why do I do this?

The short answer is: Because I can. And it’s fun!

I’d love to tell you that I have a brilliant method worked out from reading bestsellers like Chris Anderson’s Free: The Future Of A Radical Price and poring over endless case-studies which made me see that giving things away for free is economically viable, in the long run.

But that would be a lie. It’s far simpler than that.

1. Everyone Likes Free Stuff

A few days ago I wrote about Sargent House and how they allow people to listen to full albums of their musicians for free, no strings attached. It’s the opposite of the iTunes view of the universe where without a certain software, apple ID and credit card, you get nothing.

It’s amazing how people are willing to put up with all kinds of often unnecessary hurdles, complications and conditions, just because they tell themselves: “Well,this is how things have to be.” and whip out their credit card.

From a corporate perspective, this is great! The more people pay, the better. And as long as they do, why make it easier, cheaper or, not to mention, free?

There is a misconception that free is the opposite of value. But that’s wrong. Actually, the opposite of value is total obscurity: when noone is interested in a product or service (paid or free)! When something has value, it will receive attention (paid or free).

This can often mean that it’s more beneficial to give a great product away for free so that it can reach as many people as possible, instead of limiting it only to those willing (or able) to pay.

2. Publishing For People, Not The Market

Despite the boom of the so called start-up culture, many businesses nowadays still aren’t necessarily run for people, in the end, but for the profits these people bring. As I’ve said before, we have to remember hat this is a Western-centric culture.

Especially when dealing with digital products, global delivery couldn’t be easier! Whether someone from Sweden or Sri Lanka wants to read my book, they’re both just a click away, right?

Well… yes and no.

Due to financial infrastructures around the planet which are almost always beyond an individual’s direct influence, payment can be a big hurdle. Noone chooses to be born in a particular country with a particular GDP.  And it’s not just that some people can’t pay. In other cases, maybe people would like to pay but their country is blocked from using services such as PayPal, Moneybookers or even major credit cards.

Sometimes, you just want to be able to get ideas out quickly to a world-wide audience instead of saying: put a few rupees into an envelope and then in 6 weeks I’ll send you copy.

This digital divide is not just an issue between the developing and the so called “developed” world. Even in the West, while parts of the society are flying high on mobile Internet flat-rates and pay their Lattes with their iPhones, many others simply don’t.

3. Simplicity

Now, even if all the conditions are there: People have the technology, the money and the time to consume the product, often it’s just easier to make it free. Example: If I put out a book for a relatively low price it might be easier to just give it away. Less trouble for me. Less trouble for the people. I get more downloads and more feedback and people are happy for not having to jump through hoops. While some people use this to gamble financially (make people love you by giving them free stuff and they’ll pay) this cannot be done from a purely economic mindset.

4. Value Is Subjective

In order to give away stuff for free without ulterior motives (cash in on my generosity, later) one has to have a strong belief in whatever one puts out there, whether it is music or photography, etc. With belief I mean a sense that the power of the work goes beyond its physical (or digital) form. The value of a book, song or photo can never be fully reduced to the level of its manifestation (weight, length, material costs used, etc.). In other words, the price we give these things is completely arbitrary. Furthermore, they have no value in themselves but are always related to a particular context. Example: One person wouldn’t go to see a particular band even if he got paid for doing so while another one is willing to spend hundreds of dollars on that last ticket on eBay.

In other words: Whatever price I can set for a certain book, it will never be a good representation of its value. All it can be is relatively competitive compared to other similar products in the same space. But this doesn’t say anything about the book, itself.

Therefore, FREE is the most elegant way of saying: Name Your Price!

5. Charity

Philanthropy, to most of us, is a luxury. That is, if it involves donating huge amounts to charity organizations. We can’t just give everything away, unless we have enough! We need to live off something, right?

True. But only partly so.

If I gave away all my books for free, I’d be in trouble. I need to drink my coffee in the morning and eat my oatmeal to write articles like this and publish more stuff. This is basic sustenance.

But even if I charge for my work, this doesn’t mean that I can’t give away things for free.  It’s a form of charity. And, contrary to some people’s belief (often derived from religion) that giving charity should be a goal, I prefer the position that it’s a basic requirement, not an aspiration.

Here Are Some Of My Free Publications

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img:  Some rights reserved by Βethan via flickr

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

First Reaction

First of all let me say that I was blown away by the response! Many people (some I knew before, some not) offered their help, and while not all of them sent back their corrections and suggestions, those who did put great efforts into their comments and constructive criticism through which the final version was greatly improved. (see list below for complete list of voluntary editors).

Not only did I find out this way which passages were potentially confusing or in need of further explanation, also I learned how native speakers (English is not my first language, as you may know) from different countries approach topics such as tense, interpunction, etc.

Amazonification

In order to create some extra motivation I also decided to submit the final publication to Amazon’s Kindle Single program which I did once all the reviews had trickled in.

A few minutes ago I got an automated reply from Amazon Singles Editor that my book “has not been selected for inclusion in the Kindle Singles store”.

What does it mean? Well, I won’t get the extra exposure juice in their Kindle Store but the book is still available on Amazon US, Germany, France, America and UK.

The Bottom Line

I asked. People helped. I was amazed and got into some interesting conversations with people. Amazon didn’t want to include it in their Singles Program, but being an independent publisher I didn’t expect them to, either. If you’re interested in the final version, here’s how to get it:

1. You can download it as an indie-publishing pack (including PDF, EPUB and MOBI) directly from this site. Click here to do that now. Also, it’ll be available as a free download until (at least) the end of 2011. This is my way of saying thanks for all the generous help!

2. If you prefer to get it directly to your Kindle, you can do that, too. US / UK / DE / FR  (I put it on there for the minimum price which is ~ $0.99)

Special Thanks

And now, as promised, here’s the list of all the people who helped in the production of this book. Check out their blogs and homepages, too!

This publication was made possible with the generous help of many volunteers, in no particular order:

María Inés Brumana - eltgoestothemovies.blogspot.com

Sylvia Guinan - salis.gr/wordpress

Mihad Ali - mihadali.com

Michael A. Gyori - mauilanguage.com

Laura Harlow - mauilanguage.com

Jo Furniss - jofurniss.wordpress.com

Sumeer Chadha - albereez.blogspot.com

Niklas Pedersen - www.passwithnik.tk

Erika Zeinerova - zeinerova.blogspot.com

Mike Hohnen - mikehohnen.com

Eti Shani - hebrew.learnoutlive.com

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

A book is still a collection of printed pages. You don’t need any special equipment to read it. You can use it anywhere, lend it to your friends, sell it or even use it as a door-stopper. That is, if you didn’t buy the digital edition…

For the last few years, the digital book has continued to grow in importance. And in its wake a whole industry is changing.

With the new Kindle family, Amazon is taking the next step towards becoming the biggest e-book seller in the world. Amazon sells their devices relatively cheap because it knows the real revenues come when people start filling their Kindles with content from Amazon’s infinite aisles.

In many ways, Amazon seems to be doing to books what iTunes did to music, which is making the process of buying ebooks more accessible and affordable than ever before.

Consumers are happy if they can buy a song or a book for $0.99. So they keep coming back.

But that’s not the end of the story.

The Anachronism Of Vampire Tactics

iTunes for example keeps 30% of each song sold through their platform, Amazon retains up to 65% for each e-book sale (for low price volumes).

So, while consumers are profiting from low prices and huge selections, music labels or book publishers lose quite a bit to the market owners, so that when they, after deducting their own costs, pay out their writers or musicians, not much is left.

In a world where selling books or music depended on keeping factories running and distributing the goods by air, land and sea, it was understandable that between consumer and content creator, a lot of energy (and costs) goes into this physical process.

Nowadays, however, digital multiplication and distribution of a record or book is almost zero. In other words: There is no reason why marketplace owners and labels/publishing houses need to get richer and richer while artists have to live off the crumbs.

Theoretically, musicians and writers can connect directly to listeners and readers, nowadays.

Why do I say theoretically? Because it isn’t really possible? No.

Because it demands a complete shift of the way we look at the publishing process.

In short, it is very much possible. But we have to put on a new pair of glasses.

Managing Bands For The Sake Of The Music

In 2006, Cathy Pellow saw that one her favorite bands, RX bandits, was nearing its demise. Frustrated by bad experiences with the music industry, the ska-punk outfit was ready to throw in the towel and never look back.

But Pellow, a big fan, didn’t let them. Instead, she started managing them, backed up by her production and work with Refused TV.

Sargent House was born. And after RX Bandits, many more bands joined its roster.

But Sargent House is not just another label. As quoted in Wonka Vision, Pellow doesn’t think of Sargent House as a music label but “as a management company that has the finances and whereabouts to be able to help their bands become bigger and better, which, after all, is a manager’s job.”

And instead of disconnecting this managing and nurturing from the process of making and selling records, planning tours, etc., Sargent House does it all under one roof.

Pellow said: “We do it all differently with the mindset that our bands are our partners and we all really believe in each other.”

To get a feeling of just how differently, check out their artists on sargenthouse.com.

Each of the artists has its own tumblr. From there, you can find out more about the bands and get links to their music. Typically, the artists have their digital music on iTunes, Amazon and Bandcamp. (they also offer vinyl and CDs, by the way)

iTunes and Amazon are standards. What is interesting, though, is that they use Bandcamp, and how they do it.

Free Full-Length Streaming Albums

One of Sargent House’s biggest names arguably might be Omar Rodriguez Lopez, the guitarist and mastermind behind the band The Mars Volta. While his band is signed under Warner Bros. and allows him to put out only one record per year, Omar Rodriguez Lopez has a special agreement with them that allows him to put out more stuff under his solo-name, independently of Warner Bros.

On his Bandcamp linked on Sargent House you can find 30 of his music albums.

And you can listen to all of them for free, full-length!

It seems to be a Sargent House policy to do it like this, for most of their bands have full-length streams out on Bandcamp.

You can listen to the albums as often as you like and then buy them, with one click, without registering, and get the download in MP3, FLAC, or “just about any other format you could possibly desire.”

Personally, I can only say that this approach + offering awesome music has made me excited again about buying digital music. Although I have released some of my own songs on Amazon Mp3 and iTunes, I never bought a single song, there… It just doesn’t feel right. There’s not enough flexibility. I don’t want to be forced into using the iTunes software or the Amazon MP3 Downloader application just to purchase a song,while wondering how/if your payment will ever reach the actual artist.

Nah. Bandcamp feels a lot better (purchasing is often illogical), so I buy my music there because I get to choose how I pay, what I download and of course, I get more than a measly 30 minute preview.

Sure, Bandcamp needs to stay alive, as well, so they take 15% off artists’s sales but it’s still less than what iTunes and Amazon takes.

Also, each band has their own page and design with Bandcamp instead of a few lines in some corporately designed store-front.

Summary

Sargent House obviously is a story in itself and I recommend checking out their great music.

But independent book publishers can learn (at least) three things, here:

• allow people to choose how they want to purchase books: Barnes & Nobles, Amazon Kindle Store, your own website
• instead of offering the book in only one version, offer many: PDF, ePub, Mobi, etc.
• publish great stuff that people can’t get anywhere else!

Regarding Bandcamp, I’m curious if there is such a service for books, as well? Also, I’ve been wondering: Would it make sense for ebook sellers to also allow readers to preview 100% of the book for free or does this principle not work for books because instead of music that will be listened to over and over again, most books are read only once and will not be bought if they can be read for free?

Feel free to leave a comment below and share what you think.

img:  Some rights reserved by Thomas Weidenhaupt

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

Two days ago, it hit three Amazon bestseller lists simultaneously.

Since I helped midwife this project I would like to share with you a few thoughts today about how we did it, in the hope that the following information will be helpful to all independent publishers and writers.

Formatting

Despite the fact that Kindle does not natively display Hebrew fonts we found a work-around by simply using images of the Hebrew words. It’s rather cumbersome because each word needed to be “photographed” off the screen with a screen-capture tool but unfortunately at the moment this is the only way to deal with it. Currently, Kindle only supports very few languages natively.

Multiple Versions

Since this Kindle-limitation only became apparent when we were already deep into the project, Eti suggested to release a second version of this publication regardless of Amazon’s restrictions, which was relatively easy because we didn’t need to go the route of using images if we published on our own. So we packaged the whole thing as PDF and did everything Kindle didn’t allow: colors, Hebrew fonts, custom text boxes – and put it together with a printable version and another epub and mobi file just for the fun of it.

I’ve talked about this strategy before, of publishing an indie-publishing pack besides the Amazon version, so that people can get all kinds of different options for the price of one while we as content-creators get to be creative without any limitation at all.

But what about the bestseller, you ask? How did the Kindle version eventually hit the Amazon bestseller lists?

Well…

Climbing The Ladder

Here are three things which I’ve found to make a big difference when releasing publications onto the Kindle Store.

1. Presentation

Regardless of the content of a book, the first thing people notice is the cover. There’s a common moralistic advice not to “judge a book by its cover” but well…we literally do it.

The better the cover, the higher attention and sales it gets, regardless of its content.

Call it unfair? Read this article about a book with a gold cover which was almost empty and became a huge sucess!

The implications are clear: If you want a publication to be noticed, then give it an awesome cover. Either do it yourself or find someone to do it for you. (here’s someone who claims to do it for $5 dollars. I haven’t tried it, but it’s worth the experiment, it seems)

In any case, the closer your final book cover comes to people’s expectations of how it should look like - the better.

2. Title & Meta-Data

This point can be divided into three:

• title of publication
• tags
• categories

All of these are very important because they determine whether your publication can be found through searching on Amazon. But the title has a special significance beyond searching.

The Title

It has to “stand out” together with the cover, be long enough to give people a good idea what to expect, in our example it was: Hebrew Flash Cards: 99 Essential Words And Phrases For Reading And Understanding Basic Biblical Hebrew

As a rule, one should always make sure (for non-fiction) to include not just content features (99 words) but core benefits (be able to read and understand Basic Biblical Hebrew.

The Tags

You can add seven tags to your publication. This is absolutely vital. Readers can then “agree” with your tags later or suggest other ones. All these tags help with displaying your book in search results.

The Categories

For creating a bestseller, this is the most important part. Amazon allows you to pick only two. You can also take a look at other similar publications in your field and see in what categories they are ranking.

If there’s too much competition in a certain category it will be hard to rise to the top.

If you find categories with little competition that are nevertheless directly related to your topic, there the chance of getting a bestseller is highest.

3. Price

This is always an issue with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing.

Should you go the $0.99 route (35 % Royalty) or start at $2.99 (70% Royalty)?

Obviously, there is no blanket solution to this.

Here are two basic things, though:

1. If your publication is relatively short and you are new in the field, using this low entry price will get your writings out there, first of all. You can still change it later, if you like.

2. If you have alternative versions besides the Kindle, you can give away the latter for a symbolical $0.99 cents while offering the former for a more respectable price + additional benefits, like we did with the Independent Publishing Pack.

Personally, I’ve become a great fan of doing it like this because Kindle sometimes is just too restricted for charging a full-blown price. There are no colors, alternative versions for different e-readers, people can’t freely copy/move the book, so it’s only fair to charge less.

I’ve also written about this approach here.

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 img:  Some rights reserved by Gideon Burton via Flickr

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

The world of ebooks is booming. Sales are sky-rocketing. And everyone wants to get their hands on a shiny new reading gadget.

But behind the hype and excitement geared towards consumers, in many ways the ebook market of today is limited by arbitrary (geographical) restrictions and complicated publishing and payout procedures.

For example, the whole business is more American-centric than we maybe would like to believe.

As an independent publisher,  ”anyone” can sign up and publish through Barnes & Nobles’  - only you have to be American.

Over at Kindle’s Direct Publishing Platform anyone can sign up and publish ebooks but if you’re not a U.S. citizen expect to wait a long time for your royalty-payments (which are only paid out six weeks after having accumulated $100 dollars  - through snail-mail checks while Amazon gets their percentages the moment your books are sold.).

These restrictions are just the tip of the ice-berg.

Quintessentially, it feels like a market driven more by the interest of marketplace providers (and their internal quarrels) than the interests of readers and publishers.

What to do?

Going Independent

On the one hand, I couldn’t care less what these big marketplaces do.

On the other hand, if my book is not on Amazon, I’m missing out on a huge readership.

So, what to do?

Ignore “The Man”?

Bend to platform restrictions and swallow the hope that things could be done differently?

Neither.

Instead, I offer my publication in as many formats as possible simultaneously and publish it wherever geo-restrictions allow me to do so.

There’s still a lot of headache-potential in dealing with these platforms and formats individually but after doing it over and over again, I’ve come up with a method which (at least for now) makes the process as painless as possible.

Before we go into the nuts and bolts of it, here’s a general rule:

Publishers want their writings to spread – and readers want to read. The shorter the distance between them, the less friction regarding payments and formats the better.

Therefore since my latest e-publication about blogging, I now release my works parallel on Kindle and as what I’ve come to call the “indie-publishing pack” containing a pdf, mobi and epub version – sold and delivered through my own website.

The following tutorial describes how I handled the formatting jungle without losing (all) my marbles.

From Manuscript To Indie Publishing Pack And Kindle Offshoot

Here are a few simple steps in my current publishing process:

1. Writing The Manuscript in HTML

HTM-what? That sounds rather counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? Why HTML? We are writers, not programmers, right?

The first reason is that the Kindle format is basically just a stripped down version of HTML. So if you’re already writing in HTML from the beginning, you won’t have to struggle with conversion, later.

The second reason is the way certain HTML tags transfer styles across document-formats and programs. More about this later.

Q: So I shouldn’t write my manuscript with Microsoft Word?

Although Word (or Open Office Writer) allow you to save as HTML, I wouldn’t recommend it because the way it structures the code is not very clean and can cause problems later:

Q: So what software should I use?

Basically, anything that outputs pure and clean HTML. I’ve used the freeware Kompozer with great success but WriteMonkey does the same and also Scrivener supposedly outputs clean HTML (I still have to test that).

Note: The way a software like Kompozer works is not all that different from Word. You have all the basic formatting options. But I would make sure (at least in the beginning) to leave all the formatting options like colors and fonts alone and only use bold, italic, underline and the different header styles (very important for auto-generating a table of contents, later)

2. Cranking Out Two Different Versions through Calibre

Once you have your document ready in HTML, open Calibre (freeware) and add the file as a new ebook.

Then, click on the convert button.

There are many things to say about the esoteric settings and methods you can choose here.

Here are two things that I use almost every time:

- TABLE OF CONTENTS

As you can see, I have checked the option “force use of auto-generated Table Of Contents” and then selected 3 different HTML header tags for defining the levels.

In simple words, this means that if in my HTML manuscript I used heading 1 <h1> style for Sections or Parts, heading 2 <h2> for chapters or headlines and heading 3 <h3> for sub-headers, Calibre will automatically output a Table Of Contents that people can use to easily navigate on their e-reader.

- STRUCTURE DETECTION

The same principle can be used to automatically insert page-breaks in your document. In my example, there would be a page break before each heading 1 <h1> or heading 2 <h2>.

Once you got everything set up, select MOBI as your output format if you are planning to publish for Kindle and hit convert.

Personally, I convert my manuscripts to MOBI and EPUB to allow people who have other e-reader hardware than the Kindle to enjoy the writing, as well.

3. Building a PDF and going wild with colors and formatting

So far, both the HTML, MOBI and EPUB are without colors, special fonts, headers, footers and all the  other gimmicks one might wish to have in an elegantly formatted publication.

Enter, Open Office.

There’s a simple trick that allows us to turn dry black & white HTML manuscripts into beautiful formatting: COPY & PASTE

Yes, that’s right. Here’s how it works:

When you copy all your manuscript out of Kompozer into Open Office, OO automatically takes on the different core styles.

That means if you used heading 1 and heading 2 in your manuscript OO will pre-select these styles automatically in its own environment. You can then modify these styles for the whole document so that each heading 1 will have the same color, font-size, etc.

This is especially great if you often update the manuscript. You can simply edit the basic HTML and when your done copy and paste it again into OO. It will remember your pre-defined styles and you can easily replace hundreds of pages of texts while OO brings back all your formatting.

More info about OO styles, here.

When you’re done, export as PDF.

4. Wrapping It Up And Delivering The Goods

Once we’re through with this process we have a core manuscript + 3 different formats:

• PDF: fully colored with special fonts and more
• MOBI: ready to be uploaded to Amazon’s Direct Publishing Platform
• EPUB: same like MOBI, but more compatible with other kinds of e-reader hardware

Questions, suggestions?

Feel free to leave a comment, below!

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img:  Some rights reserved by cubicgarden

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

What Is the Publication About?

It all started with a post I had written a while ago that gave the name for this release which is called “Education Is A Cow That Anyone Can Milk” (see cover below) - which is a modified quote of something my high-school maths teacher was fond of saying.

Basically, this release is a collection of essays that have originally appeared on this blog, coupled with an introduction and a conclusion. The essays have been polished and re-edited and arranged in a completely new way.

The nine essays included in this volume all express a simple idea from different angles: Education is Changing.

Like in any era of change the number of false prophets and premature conclusions is high.

Anyone is “milking” education, be it startups looking for new markets or politicians.

In Hong Kong private tutors are raking in millions while public education all over the world is plummeting.

It’s a time of great changes and even greater confusion.

These essays are not designed to give final answers but to outline the spectrum of discourse and (hopefully) further the debate by introducing more perspectives.

From the beginning, I planned to submit this publication as part of the Kindle Single program.

What Is Kindle Single?

In Amazon’s own words the Single format is “writing that doesn’t easily fall into the conventional space limitations of magazines or print books. Kindle Singles are typically between 5,000 and 30,000 words” with a list price between $0.99 and $4.99

 ”Education Is A Cow That Anyone Can Milk”  is 8072 words long, fitting perfectly in the range. (Price is still unclear but will probably be between $0.99 and $2.99)

The moment I send it to Amazon, its editors will review it carefully. If it will be accepted it will be published in a designated area of the Kindle Store under Kindle Singles and hopefully reach many more readers beyond this blog.

UPDATE: This feed-back round is over. Amazon is busy reviewing.

UPDATE 2: Amazon didn’t want it (their lack) but it’s now available to the public, here. 

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.