I can get that about holding your book in your hands being a thrill. The thing is, most people focus on getting all the things, and they can't even get an ebook right. They redo a print version over and over, and complain about how Amazon won't let them change anything. New editions all over. Blocked books everywhere.

Most people out there, they aren't like us, who learned this stuff, who understood that print was a different thing. They want "AI" audio books, and someone else to just let them fix stuff without having to use up ISBNs, and they think everyone wants their hardcopy blank journal.

There's basically two different groups "self publishing". One learns how to write, they study how self publishing works. They have basic knowledge about what would sell.

The other is the get rich quick schemer group, who thinks uploading whatever fell out of their head is going to make them rich by tomorrow, who doesn't want to learn anything, or spend any time or effort or money, and expects others to tell them "do this, that, and then this other thing", and the money is going to just drown them.

The first group, we can understand, the second is just the growing flood of people who are out for only the money with no grasp of reality. Nothing you say will help them.

I'm not sure that I would give up on the second type of self published author. Some people may become less set in their ways if they get beaten down enough in the marketplace. Whatever we think of AI, I think we all agree that spewing unedited AI out into the marketplace is not a workable strategy at this point. Some people will just give up, but other people will start to wonder what they're doing wrong.

In any case, yeah, people trying to use AI as a cure-all are numerous, but there are probably just as many people like us as there always were. If you really want to be a writer, you might use AI as a tool, but you're not going to be satisfied with using AI to do the writing for you. And some people do have trouble with paperback formatting, but the persistent will figure it out--or get Vellum or the PC equivalent to automate just that part of the process. It used to take me a week to do an ebook interior. Now it takes thirty seconds.

You "interact with the county sheriff's office with some frequency?" Pardon but I couldn't resist the

He doesn't mean any harm.  He's just making his way the only way he knows how and fighting the system like a true modern-day Robin Hood.   

I get a lot of emails about great publicity opportunities. Interestingly, they're all from different people representing different companies, but most of them say pretty much the same thing, even citing benefits in the same order. I wonder if there are scammer templates somewhere...

More than that.

There are scammers who are selling the handbooks/templates to other people to become scammers.

Polarized politics causes us to pick at others in ways we wouldn't under less fraught conditions. I can't say anything more specific without risking a journey too far into poltics.

As business owners (which we all are in a sense, even if we haven't set up an LLC), the goal is to get our work to anyone to whom it might appeal. So we are sensitive to the needs of others, not necessarily for any political reason, but for much simpler business ones. You don't pick a fight unrelated to your business goals with potential customers.

Quote from: Jeff Tanyard on March 15, 2025, 01:44:31 PM

I actually picked up The Complete Works of Shakespeare

But you won't be able to fully appreciate Shakespeare until you've read the works in the original Klingon.

Since you mentioned it...