Want my priceless signature inside your copy of Head in the Sand? No problem! Or, do you want my autograph inside your paperback copy of Mein Kampf or Fear of Flying? I can do that!

Send a self-addressed, stamped envelope, along with the name to use to personalize the bookplate, and I’ll send back both the bookplate and a business-card-sized bookmark! What a great deal!

Normally I’d say here, “Supplies are limited!” … but really, they’re not. I’ve got a ton of these things and enough black Sharpies to cramp up my hand until the middle of next year. So, send those SASEs on over!

Linda M Au
PO Box 133
New Brighton, PA 15066-0133

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so let’s just wrap up the National Novel Writing Month discussion with a picture:

The story’s not done yet, but I hit the NaNoWriMo monthly goal of 50,000 words. Somehow I managed to get enough writing in even during that final week—which included Thanksgiving, a trip back to my home town for a class reunion, and time with my girls—to fall across the finish line around 8 p.m. on November 30.  I’ll pick the story back up in January, along with two other novels that need some serious revision. I’m thinking 2010 will be a year of revision and editing rather than more new writing (aside from finishing the 2009 NaNo). Time to get these puppies out there in the world!

In other news …

KINDLE UPDATE: ONE YEAR OUT

I’ve had my Amazon Kindle for about a year now. I’ve tried to make note of any book-buying patterns that have changed since getting the Kindle. And, as you might expect, there are some:

First, when I see a book I’d like to read/own, I see if a Kindle edition is available. Usually, there is. Assuming there is a Kindle edition, I then ask myself a series of questions about that particular book:

1. Do I need to have it immediately? Like, really immediately? 1 vote for the Kindle edition. (Available in about 30 seconds.)

2. Is it available only in Kindle and mass market paperback? 1 vote for the Kindle edition. (I hate mass market paperbacks—hard on the ol’ eyes.)

3. Do I want the physical copy taking up ever-dwindling shelf space in my house? 1 vote for the Kindle edition.

4. Will I want to lend the book to anyone else in the future? 1 vote for the dead-tree copy. (Still not possible to lend Kindle books, which doesn’t really bother me. I don’t lend out books all that often anyway.)

5. Will I want a first edition copy or a hard copy that the author might someday autograph? 1 vote for the dead-tree copy. (Still kinda hard to autograph the Kindle edition of a book, which goes without saying, although apparently I said it anyway.)

6. What is the price comparison between the two editions? If all other variables are not relevant, then 1 vote for the cheaper edition, if it is a LOT cheaper. (Sometimes Kindle editions are oddly high-priced, even near the price of print editions, and this puzzles me, since I so often hear about the high cost of paper, ink, and book production in general.) 

Let’s use a book I bought just this morning as an example: Robert Sawyer’s Flashforward.  Trade paperback edition: $8.51.  Kindle edition: $7.99. 

The prices of the two editions are unusually close for a book that’s not a current bestseller. Which one did I purchase? Going through my list of questions, I decided that I didn’t need the physical edition of the book taking up room on my shelves. I also didn’t see myself lending the book out, and I doubt I’ll run into Mr. Sawyer while carrying a copy of the book, to give me the opportunity to get it autographed. Plus, I was extremely curious to start reading it … soon. Like, right now.

The Kindle edition won, and I had the book on my Kindle before I could get across the room to pick it up.

In the past year, I’ve found the Kindle to be indispensible for traveling and for leisurely reading in my wing chair at night. Having just purchased Stephen King’s 1,000-page Under the Dome in first edition hardcover (the Kindle edition isn’t due out for a few more weeks), I was immediately reminded of two of the Kindle’s best features: It’s easy to prop up and read without the weight of a large book or the annoyance of the pages flipping backwards if you shift in the chair. And, the adjustable font size is a balm to my eyes (having recently been diagnosed with ocular rosacea as well as the omnipresent chronic dry eye). And, if I’m not done with King’s tome by the time the Kindle edition comes out, I might purchase that edition too just to continue to read in more comfort. And yes, I know that’s precisely what the publishers want me to do. For some authors, such as King and also Diana Gabaldon, I’ll keep buying first edition hardcovers no matter what. The Kindle editions are merely icing on the cake.

A year later, I’m still buying print books—probably too many for my own good—but the Kindle has given me options for many of my future purchases. All told, I’m buying more book content than I did pre-Kindle. And I know I’m reading a lot more than I did a year ago. Happily so. For hours on end when I  can manage it.

And that can only be a good thing.

I have suffered from what I thought was mere procrastination for much of my life. It’s caused me no end of frustration and self-loathing over the years, since deep down inside I have always wanted nothing more than to write. So why was I never finding time to actually do so?

To be fair, in my earlier adult years I was preoccupied with mundane things such as, well, paying for rent and food and birthing and then raising four children. It’s easy to find real-life excuses for not writing when one’s time is taken up with diapers, more diapers, bills that can barely be paid, and spousal educations that need to be subsidized. Poverty-stricken parenthood is its own excuse.

But lately I’d begun to wonder why I still wasn’t writing regularly. Don’t get me wrong: I write. And I write really well when on deadline. The unfortunate thing is that I am rarely on deadline for my writing. The proofreading, the copy editing, the typesetting—all of those time-suckers come with deadlines and I get a lot done in those situations. But writing is still very much a freelance event for me, and therefore there is always another load of laundry I could be doing, another person I could be e-mailing or having lunch with, another part of the house I could be fixing up. And then, the writing gets shoved aside.

It never quite felt like procrastination, though I always called it by that name. And yet, I am intimately familiar with the creeping, sinking feeling of true procrastination, and not writing did not feel like that.

So what was it? Why wasn’t I writing more? Why wasn’t I staying up till all hours (which I usually love to do) in order to pen the next great American novel?

Then I picked up Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. An amazing book. You could say, for me, an epiphany. I sabotage myself. I put up my own walls of resistance and then don’t get anything done. I highly recommend this book to any writer (or artist of any stripe) who struggles to find or make time for his work. It’s a short book—approximately 130 pages—and it can be read in a single sitting if you can afford to procrastinate on the household chores a little longer. And you know you want to. 

His premise of self-resistance is simple. His writing is straightforward. It rings true to me. In fact, it rings so damned loud that I nearly had to cover my ears to keep reading.  If you need a kick in the pants to get back to your writing, you can wait a little longer and read Pressfield’s book first. The several hours it will take you to read it will be well spent because the next time you sit at your desk—or at the library or coffee shop or wherever else you write—you will be armed with the knowledge that you’re taking the first step in disarming your own self-sabotage.

Resistance, as they say, is futile.

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Dear Carol,

We met on the cruise ship Carnival Legend earlier this month, and at dinner we ignored our husbands and talked about books, books, reading, and books. When my Amazon Kindle went squirrelly on me partway into the cruise, I was left bookless, as you know.

After getting back on dry land, I went to a Books-A-Million here in Port Charlotte and bought, at your suggestion, One for the Money, by Janet Evanovich. I’m happy to have SOME kind of reading material for the remainder of my vacation and the plane trip home tomorrow. (A Kindle is a marvelous device when you have access to 400+ books, but when it goes wonky you have access to zero.)

Anyway, I thought you’d get a kick out of the fact that there is a TYPO on the front cover. If you look at the bottom of the close-up shot, you’ll see there is a space in the middle of “Washington,” as “Washingt on.”

Who knew I’d get to read a fun story AND practice my proofreading with the same book?

It was fun meeting you and Dave on the Legend. Here’s to many more fun days at sea for us all!

Linda

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I should have been clearer in my earlier post about the Amazon Kindle that I will never give up actual books. In many ways, I still prefer them. And, I didn’t buy the Kindle so I could supplant my dead tree library of beloved books. It is a common mistake for folks to assume that e-reader owners now never buy or read “real” books. The same week I bought my Kindle I also spent $40 at Barnes & Noble on dead tree books (and enjoyed every browsing minute of it).

But I now see a use for e-readers that I did not see six months ago. But yes, they’re not for everyone. And not for everyTHING. But for traveling, yes. For buying books that I don’t want to take up room on my already burgeoning bookshelves (such as current bestsellers), yes.

I’ll still always buy certain authors in hard copy (and probably hard cover too). And I like having the classics in print. (Note: Due to the lack of paper and printing costs, many classics are free as e-books because they are in the public domain. I have several hundred free e-books on my Kindle right now.)

But I can see a place now for e-books—they have a niche. I don’t see them replacing paper books. But I do see them supplementing them in cases when hard copy isn’t needed.

The Kindle also does newspapers and magazines, delivering them to your Kindle automatically. I think newspapers in real print are fading fast, and they seem to be a waste of paper and resources, considering how short a shelf life they have. Reading them on the Kindle is a nice option.

Also, there is talk of e-readers and e-books for students—no more lugging around 50 pounds of very expensive textbooks. And textbooks could be easily updated each year without having to reprint them (and make students buy new copies every year).

So, those are a few qualifiers to my earlier post. In my giddiness to get up some photos, I short-changed the actual post of some important information.

Also as a clarification: The black cover shown in the pictures is the OEM cover that comes with the Kindle. Other third-party manufacturers make lovely covers of all types, but for now I actually like the original cover. The elastic band that can hold it closed reminds me of my Moleskine notebook.

Oh, if I’ve talked you into purchasing a Kindle, please click on the Amazon link on the right-hand side of this page to purchase it (or anything else from Amazon, actually). A bunch of us Kindle owners joked about getting a commission from sales garnered from our loving gushiness … and it turns out, we actually can. But, now, our commercial break is over …

We now return you to our regularly scheduled Web site, already in progress….

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