Rethinking Redux

I was using Blogger for two different things: one, for remembering cool sites, and secondly, for commenting on technology issues.

I decided to delete all of the 'random site' posts, and just leave posts where I have something personal to say. My goal was to get the entire blog to fit on one page. Since Blogger limits the blog to one megabyte this has taken a lot of pruning. The site finally fits on one page. (The pictures don't count in the one megabyte because I serve them from Above the Garage.)

As it turns out, it is fairly difficult to prune a blog using Blogger. And it also turns out Blogger will only let you see the last 300 blog entries. (Thanks Jack for the tip on how to see more than 300 posts.)

I am continuing to prune. Then I will probaby open up a sibling blog about sleep problems, since that deserves it's own blog, and maybe a another sibling blog about politics! And Nano-Plasm, my novel, will be published one chapter every few days on a separate blog.

Also, I left Thomas' Airsoft Tips up at the top for a week... nobody sent him a dollar. Come on, someone send him a dollar! It will make his day (even though he'll only get about $.73). (Update: Thomas received two clicks from kind friends. Thanks Jack and Rhett!)

Update: 2006 10 06: I first posted this last February. Since then I tried out the multiple-blog thing and it failed miserably. Nobody visited the other blogs. Plus Google/Blogspot implemented some kind of crazy ass filtering technology (I use the term loosely) that was supposed to detect blogs that are created solely for the purpose of boosting link counts. So my idea of a sibling blog that just kept cool links failed because the blog was tagged by Blogger as some kind of evil link count increasing blog.

I also tried posting my novel one chapter at a time, but nobody showed up for that either. I'm currently looking at LuLu and going the publish-on-demand route. The sales price is not too much, until you add in the shipping fees... then a $9.50 book becomes $14.50, which is a bit steep for a paperback.

I ordered a book from LuLu as a test - it's called The Disneylands That Never Were and I enjoyed that quite a bit, even though it cost $15.00. LuLu also provides forums where people can chat about your book. I enjoyed this book a lot and I think it's a book that would never have seen the light of day without LuLu, so I think the POD thing has a great future, if your expectations (as an author) are reasonable.

And (for a fee I think) you can get your book distributed to Amazon.com and BN.com, which could really help with the shipping fee.

Of course, once you submit it for publishing, it's expensive to make changes, so if you want a person to have a good experience with your book, you need to edit the hell out of it.

So ultimately I just might post the PDF. I think my book is terrific airplane reading - just about perfect for a trip across country and back. That's actually what I had in mind when I started writing it about five years ago.

© 2006 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.