There’s something about having your writing in a printed book that’s missing from an ebook. I’m not referring to the book as an object in the hand with heft and smell and texture here, I’m talking about the finality of printed pages. There’s no changing the words, no more editing or design tweaks. You can’t fix that typo or anomaly and upload a new version or make your name bigger on the cover. What you are holding in your hand is what it is. The book.
(I took this photo on my computer, using Photo Booth, so the image came out as a mirror image. I promise the real book doesn’t look like this.)
The ebook of where the heArt is went out into the world last year. This week three boxes containing a hundred printed copies arrived at my door. I wrote in an earlier blog (January 2013) that a friend who had completed a course on publishing wanted to do a print layout of the book to practise what she had learnt, and she did, with great care and attention. She also designed a better cover, using a photograph I had taken at HIghgate Cemetery in London.
I’ve sent two copies off to legal deposit at the National Library, inscribed one for my partner and keep thinking of more people to whom I want to give one. As long as I sell enough to cover the printing cost …
Anyone who wants a print copy, email me at peajayar[at]gmail[dot]com. It costs 30NZD, which includes P & P (no, not Pat and Prue, packaging and posting).
Here’s a hint about buying this, or any other book, as an epub ebook (for every ebook reader except kindle): go to the unity bookshop site and click your way through their ebook links to the kobo site and buy it from there. To buy it for a Kindle you have to go to the Kindle store. Or you can buy it from Smashwords.com for any ebook.
To buy a print book you go to a shop, hoping they have it in stock or will get it for you. Or you buy it from a website and wait for delivery. Buying ebooks sounds complicated when you list the options, but in fact we generally learn how to do it for the ereader we own and leave it at that.
The reason I go through the Unity website to buy a book for Kobo on my ipad, is that this way Unity Books, my favourite independent bookstore, gets a tiny credit, both in money and in being part of the ebook thing. I think the future of books is in both print and electronic form, so I want to support Unity in both.
One day soon I’ll write a blog about why I prefer not to buy from Amazon.
out there 