I’m typing this up from memory and with a mid-grade fever, so apologies for any rambling and/or disconnected bits.  What this isn’t going to be, anyway, is a how-to or a step-by-step.  Those are all over the net, and if you can’t type “publish book lulu specs instructions etc” into Google, then I certainly can’t help you.

Speaking of specifications: Step One is read through Lulu’s FAQ. No matter what your skill-level or comfort with uploaders/layout/publishing/design/whatever… well, okay, honestly?  It’s always a good idea to read the  FAQ, anywhere.  When a site makes a FAQ/Help section, it’s because people have frequently asked the same questions you’re going to have, and very often the questions you’re not going to realize you’re going to have until you’re halfway through the process.  Giving it a browse first is going to save you time and headache.  Hell, I’ve been working publishing for a good long while, and Lulu’s Getting Started guides saved me some time.

Lulu’s user forums are, unfortunately, not as helpful.  And it’s a damned shame, but someone needs to go through and take a flame-thrower to a lot of the undergrowth in there.  For answers I couldn’t find in the FAQ, I found that searching the forums lead me to a LOT of dead-end or not-found pages. Very frustrating.  If you can’t find the answer to a problem in the static help pages, you’re a lot better off switching over to Google than you are trying to find it in the forums.

Which leads me to Lulu’s Contact System.  If you’ve got a problem that you just can’t find the answer to in the help pages or elsewhere, then you’re going to want to talk to a real person.  However, we’re all pretty used to getting an automated “trouble ticked received” email when we contact support — but Lulu’s automated response is a little different than most.  When their system sends you a reply, it closes the ticket.  You’ve GOT to reply to the automated response to get through to a real person.  And I get the why of that — a lot of people’s first line of attack is to ignore the FAQ and go straight to a real person, and Lulu are a truly DIY site, so they’re trying to cut down on questions that people could answer themselves with just a teeeensy bit of effort.  But, ha ha, if you’re like me, you’re used to ignoring the automated contact responses and waiting for the real person… which means you’ll be waiting for a good long forever.

As I said in earlier posts, how you go about putting your book together is completely up to you, and what you’re comfortable with.  The Lulu templates will give you a bit less control over what the finished product looks like, but it’s a really good place for the people that are just starting out.  Do you already understand why your inside margins need to be a titch wider than your outside?  If that question just kinda terrified you: that’s all right, but you probably want to start with the templates.  Trust me, your book is still going to be lovely, the important thing for you is just getting your content into a pretty and readable format.

If you are doing the layout yourself (and even if you’re using the templates), the most important advice I can give you is to give it a proofread after layout.  Yes, I know you’ll have already scanned for spelling errors and typos — but you don’t know how your sentences are going to fall on the page until they’re on the correctly-sized page.  You want to look out for widow and orphan control, yes (those last lines of a paragraph that slip over to the next page), but you also just want to look at general readability.  If you haven’t put at least one forced line-break in your book, somewhere, then you could use just a little bit of polish.  And, you know, this probably qualifies as advanced advice — but if you’ve taken the time to craft enough guts to fill a book, I’m operating under the assumption that you want to make it shine as much as possible.

Pictures:  There are a few pictures in Shivering Sands, and they are all right.  What I mean is, if I’d been making a book of B&W photography and my focus was on crisp and clear images, I’d have gone with something else.  But for supplemental images in a book of otherwise, they’re just fine.  Now, I haven’t looked at Lulu’s full-color books, but online reviews (and many photographers in Warren’s network) seem to say Blurb is slightly higher quality (for slightly higher prices. You very likely get what you pay for.)  Since, again, I don’t have first-hand, hands-on knowledge of either, I can’t speak to that with any authority — but, again, Google is your friend.

For B&W text, Lulu is just gorgeous.  They use a good weight and brightness of paper, and the text is very crisp and clear.  We went with the standard paper (instead of the economy-grade) to keep international shipping rates down.  That’s something to think about when you’re picking your size and format — the economy-grade paper will shave some pennies off your final cost, but it’s going to screw your overseas audience.  It’s a choice you’ll have to make — for Warren and I, it was very clear, but depending on what you’re making, and for whom, your decision may differ.

Order a proof copy.  Seriously.  I went over my PDFs of Shivering Sands twelve billion times, and I still missed a straight quote on the back cover the first go ’round.  Yes, it’s going to mean you have to sell a few copies before you start making a profit, but really? That’s better than the alternative of the first person that buys your book not giving you any feedback except “You misspelled your name on the title page, dork.”

And, after you push your book live — wait a week before you start linking it out to the public.  It can take 3-5 days for it to start showing up in the Lulu marketplace search results, and I know you’re thinking but I’m giving people the link so…, but there are going to be people that go browsing through the rest of the site before they decide to buy — and if they can’t find their way back to you, you just lost a sale because you couldn’t wait a week.  See?

Lessee.  I want to get into some general marketing, and a few more advanced notes, but I really am running a fever, and this is running a little long, anyway.  So I think I’m going to push this first part live, and come back for Part Two.  That’ll give you a chance to ask me any questions, too, so that works.

By the by, if you’ve opened a Lulu account to order Shivering Sands, you can already start looking at their publishing tools.  You should even have a sample book they’ve set up for you on your account page.  That’s worth taking a look at.

Now, I’m gonna go fall down for a while.  You go have some fun.

it is the role of the artist to challenge society. no one who lives within the system and makes conventional choices is capable of expanding the box we find ourselves in. that?s why it?s called, ?thinking outside? of it, and to do so, you have to be aware of it first. I believe ?artists? are people born with the dubious skill of acute box-awareness. I say dubious because, if they are anything like me (and I suspect they are, or I am like them), once aware of the confines placed on our existence it becomes increasingly difficult to tolerate them.

there are a lot of assumptions made about what constitutes a successful life. there is, I think, a certain amount of gender-based difference as to the specific expectations on an individual, but the checklist as I understand it runs: stable job, house, car, children, and subsequently future generations. all as expensive as possible. these things equal security, and if yours is like mine, your family says they ?just want you to be happy,? but what they mean is, ?I just want you to be safe, secure, and never take risks with your future.?

the laughable thing, the thing that keeps me from settling happily into the box, surrounded by wood-chips and a little exercise wheel that keeps me running constantly, going nowhere, is an underlying inability to believe that the checklist is actually working out for anybody.

As of right now, my little brother is 21 years old.* I wish oodles of happy natal felicitations to the lad — who can be found right here online. May he have many, many more gleeful, productive years ahead! And even though the occasion veritably cries out for me to tell embarrassing stories about him as a wee nublet of a boy, I will do no such thing.

At this time.

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* He’s … um … rather significantly younger than me, yes.

My day was actually similar to:

G’night.

(I have no credits for the shot. Please add them in comments if you know.)

So who can tell me what the Deathfall is? Has anyone in the class ever heard of that before? ... Yes, um, Bladeflake? Yes? ... Well, sure, that's one way to put it. It *is* a sort of "crazy blizzard", I suppose.

You see, when you are all grown up and you have done all the grown-up things you were meant to do in your life, and you begin to hear the icy groan in your limbs - the creak and crack that happens as your crystalline bones weaken with age - then you will gather your strength one last time, along with all the other Ice Lords of your age, to make the trek over the mountains, across the plain, all the way around the world to invade and besiege the fiery tropical realm of the Fire Princesses.

Yes, of course it's very hot there! Blistering! The Princesses live in eternal daylight, the sun forever above them, their homes built right into the thousands of sputtering, shaking volcanoes that smolder in the bright, scorching light. And the Princesses themselves run red-hot with the boiling fluid that runs through their veins.

Yes, Stormhammer. It does sound like a dangerous place and yes, in fact, it can kill you. It *will* kill you. It *does* kill you. The Deathfall is the last thing you do in your life: You invade their land and you slake your desire on any and every Princess you can. Their flesh will burn your eyes and splinter your skin but your icy seed can survive - and it will. You will leave it in as many of their boiling wombs as you can before your body can take no more, and you melt.

That's right. You will melt. All that is you will eventually fail to hold and you will break into pieces and vanish as steam off the body of your final conquest. That is how we Ice Lords die. And that is how we make new life.

Yes, babies. This is where babies come from. The seed's stony case will melt and fertilize and the Princesses will bear new children. Those who are girls will be, of course, Fire Princesses, to be raised under the bright and scorching sun. Those who are boys will be Ice Lords, to be raised here in the comforting embrace of night.

How? Well, of course the newborns cannot travel all the way back around the world on their own, and they cannot survive long among the volcanoes. So they must be brought to us. Each year, at the Birthspring, the oldest among the Princesses - the ones who have done all the grown-up things they were meant to do in their lives, who no longer feel the heat of their own blood, whose skins have begun to crack from the smoke - gather their strength one last time to trek across the plain and over the mountains, all the way around the world before the last of their life-spark expires... to bring us our sons.

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For consideration: ...it's like MARCH OF THE PENGUINS meets a Ralph Bakshi cartoon...

a visit to Doctor Beef?s Storm Troopin? set on flickr is always a worthwhile activity.

For those folks who are interested, here's the Slideshare version of the presentation I gave last week at the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute annual meeting. I was asked to talk about foresight thinking, as the event theme was "The Big One of 2056: What Went Right?" a look at a fictional 7.8 quake in the SF region that was handled as well as they could imagine possible.

My goal was to offer a bit of reassurance to the audience that there is some real utility to thinking about the future, and to spell out (in a cursory way) the kinds of big picture issues they should keep in mind while looking ahead forty-six years.

Inflection Points

View more presentations from Jamais Cascio.

By and large, it was a successful talk. The post-talk questions were engaged, with little push-back, and I'm told that the overall response from the audience was quite positive.

The talk was video recorded, and I'm told will eventually be available to the public. I'll link when that happens.

• Keynote: Bruce Sterling (us) on Atemporality | transmediale
  "If progress is to go beyond the banal indulgences that give rise to a never-ending array of car shell designs then we need to analyse our present time with regard to its aesthetics and its media. The second conference session is being introduced with Bruce Sterling's Keynote on Atemporality."
  (tags:video )

Jack Bauer saves the day... with AOL 3.0

unhappyhipsters brings me a special kind of joy.

unhappyhipsters:

At the art opening, he?d been convinced the blank canvas symbolized endless possibilities. Back at home, it was just one more reminder of his own desperation.

(Photo: Raimund Koch; Dwell, April 2009)

true story.

bigworldsmallvictories:

Sentimentality follows preservation.

A

Good morning! Fancy A Fierce Pancake for breakfast?

HOW MUCH IS THE FISH? HOW MUCH IS THE CHIPS?! (Lara! Thank you!)

Egads, how could I have forgotten about these freakwads? I once loved their one-and-only studio album, A Fierce Pancake with the same passion reserved for exceptional goofballs like Primus, Billy Nayer Show, Mr Bungle, Idiot Flesh, Violent Femmes, Fishbone, and Adam the the Ants. But it’s been a long, long time since I last listened…

Is it just me, or does Mick Lynch look uncannily like Siege (yanno, if Siege were crossed with Ed Grimley and a lemur)?

Formed in London in 1983, Stump were a legendary Anglo-Irish indie/experimental/rock group inspired by Captain Beefheart. The lineup was Kev Hopper on bass, Rob McKahey on drums, Chris Salmon on guitar, and Mick Lynch on vocals. They toured a lot in the mid 80s on a couple of brilliant, bizarre EPs, and their energetic live shows quickly earned them a cult following. Then they got signed to a major label, apparently squabbled constantly during the production of AFP and broke up soon afterward, a quarter of a million pounds in debt to their record company, and never to be heard from again.*

The entire album is cracked fucking genius. It’s also very difficult to track down anymore. Beg, borrow, steal a copy if you can.

Read the rest of Better Than Coffee: A Fierce Pancake

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Post tags: Better than coffee, Crackpot Visionary, Dance, Geekdom, Music, Punk, Silly-looking types