I Ching You Ching

Out of Cite, Out of Mind

2011-03-20T23:15:00.000-07:00

Looking back on my primary education, I dimly recall sparse, if any, explanation of copyright and the importance of citing and checking sources. I'm afraid that either my artistic hubris declined the possibility that I might produce work so "unoriginal," or truly nothing beyond the imperative, "Don't plagiarize or cheat," was mentioned.

My university papers were therefore a collection of carefully chosen direct and indirect quotes on which I elaborated like a child arranging macaroni art. I received good marks for my work - probably due to practiced writing style and somewhat relevant insights. I was imprisoned, however, by the simple structure of quote - transition - insight - transition - quote.

Following the academic model, I was even more discouraged to see that most of what I wanted to write had already been written, leaving me crunching over the keyboard for something original to say. I watched my classmates get away with quoting nothing but the textbooks, and maybe a few clicks off of Wikipedia. While Wikipedia is not an accepted academic source, it is still the online starting point of much academic and personal research, as opposed to music or medical.

I'm surprised that my disillusionment began before I started reading medical research studies. Most news articles infer conclusions associated with the research that they cite, but they rarely report the actual findings. Findings are boring. Sensational conclusions create revenue. Not to mention, finding a free .pdf of any study requires professional connections.

There's this guy Rands. He's really cool; I read a lot of his stuff. He tweeted this article from the Guardian, which inspired me, but I became so disappointed by the writing that I needed to begin my own discussion here. (Retweet became comment became new post... Screw registering and signing in with the Guardian!) The author (who sadly can't tell the difference between a contraction and a possessive pronoun) blows the whistle on sensational online news sources, reporting their effective misinterpretation of primary sources, followed by a refusal to cite-link. The demand to cite-link on a public, primary source seems kind of lazy, considering that most primary sources are a simple Google search away.

No source can be blindly trusted - even with links to its primary sources.

I just thought of one reason not to cite a source. I mean, how many clicks can a Neanderthal get from a critical review of an article that started as a great idea?

Crow Hunter - Now Available!

2011-03-10T21:39:00.000-08:00

That's right! You can get your very own hand-bound hard copy of my novel Crow Hunter today. Buy one. Heck, buy three!

Here's a little FAQ about Crow Hunter (a southern gothic novel):

Southern gothic? What's that? Southern gothic is a genre of fiction represented most notably by Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner. I took their inspired styles of storytelling and combined them with some even older and more traditional gothic fiction styles that I enjoy, like The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis.
Where can I buy a copy of Crow Hunter? Here on my site. You can pay with Google Checkout, or contact me to arrange payment and shipping directly.
Why can't I find Crow Hunter on Amazon or in the library? If I list with Amazon or any other service, I am putting people between you, the reader, and me, the author. As my press grows, I may grow into a store at Amazon. As for the library, that's a good question! I'll be donating copies to the Austin Public Library ASAP!
What's hand-bound? How are the books at I Ching You Ching different from regular books? I hand-press all of the books I publish, I design and print the cover, cut it to fit, and glue the spine. The finished product sports a professional, reasonably sustainable beauty. I also cut different design paper on the inside covers, so that every book is the same, but different.
Will you sign my copy? Of course! If you want a signed copy, just remind me when you buy it.

Behold! One of these could be yours today.

Spine-Gluing Adventures

2011-03-08T06:57:00.000-08:00

Here's a technique you might want to try when binding books with FlexBond:

All the necessary supplies: block-in-press, brush,
glue with applicator, pre-creased cover

After painting, glue is lumpy
and white. Don't worry!
It will dry evenly.

Bind the block by itself without the cover, and paint on the spine. It'll leave a nice white coat that will dry within 20 minutes. *Tip: I push the block up an eighth of an inch to avoid gluing the book block to the press.
While it's drying, score and fold the cover so that the spine will rest between the folds perfectly.
Remove the block from the press as soon as the glue is clear; otherwise it'll take part of your press with it because it's so strong! (Not a problem if you followed the Tip in Step 1.)
Then paint a very light coat on top of the dry spine, and hand-press it into the cover.

Drying pressed after the spine has been glued.

If you have presses to spare like press-Yoda Hamish MacDonald does, you could pop the finished book back into a press to dry. The glue tends to bubble at the top and bottom, so I wipe it gently with a napkin. The book spines on my novel didn't have any bubbles or warping this way, but I also used a double ply cover with cardstock and specialty paper.

This tester was made with standard copy paper and a single ply card stock.

I'm Too Sexy for Your House

2011-03-01T18:57:00.000-08:00

I have this terrible habit of discovering something awesome and then assuming without any doubt that everyone ever has already discovered it, is actively using it, and doesn't want to hear about it. On the off-chance that I'm wrong (more like the on-chance), I'd like to talk about why I chose not to publish my novel with a publishing house.

It started when I was rewriting my thesis for publication. Suddenly I realized that I didn't know what publication was. I could dimly glimpse an island of published authors across a deep abyss, and I couldn't find a bridge. There was just some dude with a flimsy para sail that read "Writer's Market," and you could pay him a hundred bucks to strap a few copies of your manuscript onto the para sail and chuck it across the abyss. If you were thrifty and clever, you only used a few chapters - enough to make the Loch Ness Publisher hungry so that he might come and feed on your words as you snap his picture for a chunk of change from Star magazine.

Basically, it's like job hunting. I won't apply, or seriously apply, if I don't see the possibility of a result.

The thunderbolt of self-publishing hit me as a serious option and not "something that people who just couldn't get published do" when I was in a meeting with a technical writer and a publishing house for which I was considering contracting. I was supposed to 'jazz' up the technical parts, to be digested by an audience with no attention span. Suddenly I realized that I was doing all this to get somewhere else, to be in the writer's or the publisher's seat, or both.

Since then, I have stumbled across a ton of useful information on self-publishing. While I started out on Lulu, I soon realized that there was little difference between them and other publishing companies. Lulu and MyPublisher are great for glossy family gifts and perhaps photo books, but functionally, they're a lot of trouble. Digitally speaking, Amazon's services and Smashword's ebook services are just getting in the way.

These services define the term middleman. For a control freak that can become playful once I get my playground set up, a middleman is a nightmare. The middleman is what says, "Wait. Don't do anything yet. We have to ~~validate~~ verify your work first." In the publishing industry especially, it's common to need a project completed yesterday, but not having the green light to begin work. I decided to work with the red light.

Making my own books can be a lot of trouble - gluey and messy, but it's worth it to retain complete creative control, to delve into formatting, and to be read. Just a reminder, you can purchase a copy of Crow Hunter - I start dishing out copies March 9, or you can download it for free today.

Print Preview

2011-02-22T19:34:00.000-08:00

So I haven't forgotten about March 9. It's the official release of my printed copies of my debut novel, Crow Hunter.

I can't release the novel without copies. (Although my recent free ebook release does bring that statement into question!) Here are some tales of trial and error as I've been preparing for the big 3-9. That's 3-9-2011. I'm actually 29, a good publishing age.

So I was worried about glue. Hamish, my go-to-DIY-guru, uses hot glue. I can see why; hot glue is really bendable and quick to cool/dry. It also doesn't permeate porous surfaces like paper, so you don't wrestle with a creation only to end up with a wet paper dog.

For me, hot glue is too much pressure - it's too time sensitive. I'm likely to have a heap of glue cooling on the press much too long, leaving a hunchback, wobbly, lumpy spine. So I looked for alternatives. SOBO, Mod Podge... I was even considering rubber cement, until I discovered Rosco Flexbond. It's a water-based epoxy for gluing sets and props for the stage. It's extremely flexible, and a bit hard to come by. I bought a gallon and was afraid I'd end up kicking myself.

After a beautifully successful test run (shown below), I'm hooked. With a little bit of wrestling with Open Office Draw, my printer, and my paper cutter, I got this:

You can order your copy now and I will ship it March 9, sooner if possible.

Crow Hunter Cover Design

2011-02-15T14:13:00.000-08:00

This cover was painted and optimized for print by Doc Hair. All ebook formats have been updated, so enjoy!

Download the free ebook now:
suggested donation, $10

Hard copies of Crow Hunter available March 9!

Crow Hunter ebook Release

2011-02-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

To locals like carpenter Paul Corvus, Somora harbors its residents just like any other small town, but newcomers like fifteen-year-old Darla encounter hostility where they would normally expect warmth and welcome.
As many of the local adults remain oblivious to the mysterious forces that control them, Darla and her friends begin to peel away layers of secrets from the town and its residents. As they uncover an ancient darkness beneath the town's peacefully reserved surface, Somora's denizens stumble into a forked path leading to immediate awakening or eternal slumber.

by emerging author Doc Hair

Download the free ebook now:
suggested donation, $10

Pre-order your hard copy for $15 (release date: 3/9/11)

Change is in the air!

2011-02-08T14:43:00.000-08:00

The ebook launches at midnight CST, so stay tuned!

The novel I'm releasing tonight started out as my senior thesis for the Plan II program at UT. I'm still shocked that in the chaos of my final year at college I cranked out 25,000 words. Advisors told us to avoid novels unless we had the creative writing experience, and I had happened to accumulate quite a few hours of poetry, essay writing, and short story writing.

But that has nothing to do with the inspiration, which came from my stepdad. There was a great deal of lore surrounding crows, and they stood out in my mid-childhood for causing my step-father the most frustration of any game. He would sneak around the house and down dusty roads, bidding us all to be quiet and essentially pretend that we weren't there. If we had to be there, we must pretend that he wasn't there. Or that he didn't have his gun.

I crafted the characters from there, sometimes with purpose, but sometimes I would find later that I had subconsciously directed events to a certain point. I tried to keep the best parts and filled in the plot holes I could find. It's a fun story, I think.

I Made an eBook. I Took Notes.

2011-01-28T11:00:00.001-08:00

I decided earlier to offer a free e-book. I'm so excited - and it seems like it'll be a lot of fun work, in the good cause of getting my name out there.

I thought I'd mention that in the creation of an e-book, I'll have to perform several file conversions, because I want to cater to all types of digital display media. Since I'm running Linux, I get to browse the free distributions of programs to help me do this. Sure enough, there's Calibre, which manages and converts an entire library for free.

I read Mark Coker's Style Guidelines for Smashwords.com. As a DIY, all-possible-proceeds-must-go-to-me-and-not-a-giant-company publisher, I will not be using Smashwords. But if you want to know a little bit about formatting, there's a wonderful little ebook of all the style guides.

I don't like Smashwords because while they recognize the respect that readers have for words, they don't understand the need for authors to respect their own words. I was troubled by their appellation of the term 'Meat Grinder' to what they're going to be doing to your manuscript. No, thank you - and I even understand the great principle of what Meat Grinder does (it packages a default manuscript from your average Word document that can be easily translated into all ebook compatible files). But they called it Meat Grinder, like my words and characters were about as useful as a cow shoulder.

I will, however, make use of all their free information toward the best way to format my ebook. I haven't thought about it because I don't read much online, aside from RSS feeds. I have a stack of PDF's from back in the day that I can't bear to look at. I don't have a Kindle.

Calibre has certainly made my job easier, because I can view my converted and formatted files to see if they look at all right on an e-reader. First, I reformatted my manuscript in Open Office. I resized it to be about the average ebook size per page, because even though Mark Coker claims that the page is dead, I still have to work with the page until I can convert it. But here's what I had to do:

No page breaks, no page numbers, no line breaks - This was an important part in making my manuscript look fluid and professional as an ebook. By no line breaks, I mean not pressing the enter key more than once, no matter what text you're trying to arrange.
Style formatting - I hadn't started working with Styles until the past few months with my manuscript. I can't believe how shortsighted my formatting had been. If you assign a Style to a section consistently (i.e. chapter headings, chapters, secondary headings, endnotes), then you can change them on the Stylesheet instead of having to tab through (as I used to) and change formatting manually.
Paragraph formatting - I used hanging indent, and when I publish non-fiction, I'll use block-style. I edited the Styles to reflect this, instead of pressing enter, then tab to start a new paragraph.

After I finished, my manuscript feels much cleaner!

The Crow Hunter ebook will be available for download starting Feb. 9!

Coming Up Next

2011-01-28T10:59:00.003-08:00

As I am making the final touches on Crow Hunter and waiting for my glue to get here so I can make some really sturdy copies, I had a great idea for a promotion.

A free e-book.

That's right; read it before you buy it, or read it after you buy it, from anywhere!

This week I'll be correcting and reformatting. There will be a donate button, with which you can reserve your hard copy if you donate $20 or more!

I appreciate your support; enjoy the e-book and share it with everyone!

DIY Bookbinding

2011-01-28T10:58:00.001-08:00

I do not plan to cover the details of DIY bookbinding here, because Hamish Macdonald has done such a great job! Please, go to his website if you want to know more about the start-to-finish process. Follow his guidelines if you want to write, make, and sell your book within a year or two.

For me, it has taken seven years. I wrote the first draft of The Crowhunter in 2004, and then I put it down for awhile. I like to let my work breathe. I completed my final draft in the summer of 2010, and then began investigating publishing options.

I've done some freelance copy editing in my time, but I was never deeply involved with any publishers. Nor did I want to be; the industry moves at a glacial, bureaucratic pace underneath, but on the surface, everything needed to be done yesterday. The business is full of people sitting on their asses waiting for work to be approved, only to work at a full pace when the material is 'released' to them.

What a bunch of bullshit. No thanks. Not for me. I don't even want that kind of energy wrapped up with my work, much less to burn the oil as a red-light/green-light peon.

I considered self-publishing services, but again, I have no advantage without a pocketful of spending cash. So I stumbled upon Hamish's site (through Shiva Nata, of all things - it does bring together the like-minded peoples), and voila! DIY is right up my alley, because the only thing standing between me and my published novel is thinking that I can't.

I felt like I was distracting myself at first. I mean, I just got my acupuncture license a year ago. Shouldn't I be treating people? Do I really need to be chilling in the scrapbooking section of the craft store, and drilling the hardware store guys about what wood is best for holding a block of paper together?

The answer is yes, for no other reason than that's what I did. I made a press exactly like in the DIY bookbinding guide, but then I ran into all sorts of trouble as I was making my first 8 blank "tester" books.

What kind of paper?
- Using a 100% post-consumer grade recycled paper can be expensive. Once I wanted a heavier paper, I was in resume territory.
How do I cut it?
- Hamish has this awesome paper cutting machine. I can't even find a good pair of scissors.
- For my tester books, I bought a ream of paper from Office Depot, and asked them to cut it into quarters. I expected four perfect-edged blocks, but instead I got a medley of scrap paper-looking unevenness. Great for the tester books. Horrible for my novel.

Solved: I found a friend in the printing business. Note: It's cheaper to have your book printed by the block than to have someone else bind it for you. It's less work to have someone with the technology available to cut it, and it's worth it to me just to print and bind my covers. While I can't say I handmade the whole book, it looks professional compared to the testers.

How to bind?
- OMG-uh. The press works pretty well, if a little uneven at times. Hamish recommends hot glue, and I must say I had HORRIBLE luck with it. It dries too fast and too hard, and the book block will just come right off of it. I considered switching to a high-temp hot glue, but it just doesn't dry with the flexibility I'm looking for in a book spine. Plus it's lumpy.
- I moved on to Mod Podge and SOBO. These are both too watery to sit up properly - the Mod Podge most of all - and once dry, they simply crack apart.
- I'm waiting on the shipment of my latest solution. I got a gallon of Rosco's Flexbond, which is a very strong and flexible adhesive. From what my research yields, it's the perfect match.

Things I have not dealt with:

making new presses so that I can bind more than one book at once
glue applicator - I was thinking cake decorator
ISBN
sales, signing party preparation

Hello World

2010-12-28T11:15:00.000-08:00

Welcome to I Ching You Ching Press, located in Austin, TX. We offer hand-pressed perfect bound books for the independent author and reader.

Coming soon, we will feature author Doc Hair's Crow Hunter.

Stay tuned for details. We have pressed several copies, but are working on improving the adhesive spine for repeated, long term use.