A personal announcement and a request.
Look to the right side of the page. Notice that, under Support This Page, there's a Carousel of products from Amazon.com for you to buy and enjoy.
Flip through and you'll now see something new. Some of my past fiction, and non-fiction, available for download on the Amazon Kindle. And at super-low prices — as low as 99 cents each.
Choose from my award-winning history of technology, now called Moore's Lore, at just $1.99. Or check out some of my fiction, including The Time Mirror, which I wrote in the late 1990s, at just 99 cents, and my mystery story from 2003, Baptists Are for Dunking, at just $2.99.
Don't have a Kindle yet? There's an awfully nice one in the carousel. Works with WiFi or your phone company's 3G network. Just $189.
And, of course, a portion of the proceeds goes to keep Dana going in a style to which he has grown accustomed.
Dana,
Thank you for giving me a good laugh this morning. I realize that sounds awful, before unintended offense is given, let me explain.
For the past two years or so, I’ve been working on a book. I’m now in the final stages of writing, editing, illustration, and design. I have a publisher, and if everything goes well, it will be released in electronic format at the end of this month.
Though I have a publisher and there is a marketing plan in place, working on this book taught me a rather a frightening lesson about the publishing business. As an author, not only do you have to write, edit, proofread, and (in my case) design/illustrate your work, you are also the major promoter.
I find this tremendously ironic since I have a terminal inability to sell anything. I often struggle to give water away to thirsty travelers in the dessert. Having talked with others that have been in the same boat, I’ve found out that I’m not alone in those sentiments.
Which is why I got a chuckle from your post this morning. You’re clearly promoting your work and asking for people to give you money. And I realized that there’s nothing awkward about it.
Your Open Source Report column was one of the few reasons I read ZdNet and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the work you’ve posted here. For that reason, I was more than happy to buy your book and two stories. Knowing that it will keep you stocked with raman (who can afford Filet-Mignon on a writer’s salary?) is a tremendously worthy secondary reason.
With that said, do you have any plans for future work? Maybe a Kindle Single on the outlook of renewables? An analysis of the future of nuclear energy in the face of the Japanese disaster? A longer work based work on the mainstreaming of open source with Android at its center? Or a character driven piece on the bizarre economics of open source? Canonicals misadventures over the past several years would provide an enormous amount of fodder for that last one.
Your reporting/analysis on the aforementioned topics has been amongst the best I’ve seen anywhere, and I would love to see it in longer form. I bet that I’m not alone. More importantly though, Amazon seems to think that might be a market for that type of work too. Or why else would they launch something as ambitious as Kindle Singles?
Regardless, the best of luck with your personal projects. I bought all three and look forward to seeing more.
Cheers,
Rob OakesR
Dana,
Thank you for giving me a good laugh this morning. I realize that sounds awful, before unintended offense is given, let me explain.
For the past two years or so, I’ve been working on a book. I’m now in the final stages of writing, editing, illustration, and design. I have a publisher, and if everything goes well, it will be released in electronic format at the end of this month.
Though I have a publisher and there is a marketing plan in place, working on this book taught me a rather a frightening lesson about the publishing business. As an author, not only do you have to write, edit, proofread, and (in my case) design/illustrate your work, you are also the major promoter.
I find this tremendously ironic since I have a terminal inability to sell anything. I often struggle to give water away to thirsty travelers in the dessert. Having talked with others that have been in the same boat, I’ve found out that I’m not alone in those sentiments.
Which is why I got a chuckle from your post this morning. You’re clearly promoting your work and asking for people to give you money. And I realized that there’s nothing awkward about it.
Your Open Source Report column was one of the few reasons I read ZdNet and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the work you’ve posted here. For that reason, I was more than happy to buy your book and two stories. Knowing that it will keep you stocked with raman (who can afford Filet-Mignon on a writer’s salary?) is a tremendously worthy secondary reason.
With that said, do you have any plans for future work? Maybe a Kindle Single on the outlook of renewables? An analysis of the future of nuclear energy in the face of the Japanese disaster? A longer work based work on the mainstreaming of open source with Android at its center? Or a character driven piece on the bizarre economics of open source? Canonicals misadventures over the past several years would provide an enormous amount of fodder for that last one.
Your reporting/analysis on the aforementioned topics has been amongst the best I’ve seen anywhere, and I would love to see it in longer form. I bet that I’m not alone. More importantly though, Amazon seems to think that might be a market for that type of work too. Or why else would they launch something as ambitious as Kindle Singles?
Regardless, the best of luck with your personal projects. I bought all three and look forward to seeing more.
Cheers,
Rob OakesR