Category Archives: Communication

Ebooks and Supporting Local Indie Bookstores and Authors

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Independent bookstores face increasing financial pressure from the rising use of ebooks. Amazon offers many ebooks at a significant discount. This makes it tempting for frugal readers to buy there, especially if they own a Kindle (which device itself is sold at a loss to entice owners to buy their ebooks from Amazon). But there are other options which support indie bookstores and authors directly.

Currently (July 2012) IndieBound.org (a community-oriented movement begun by the independent bookseller members of the American Booksellers Association) member bookstores will sell you Google ebooks though their bookstores’ websites, which gives the store you choose some share of what you pay. You can read Google ebooks with the Indiebound reader app for Android and iOS, with Google’s Play app, with Adobe Digital Editions software on Nook, Kobe, etc, and can be side-loaded onto Kindle. Find links to independent bookstores selling Google ebooks here.

Unfortunately Google has decided to stop the bookstore reseller program in January 2013. But keep an eye on IndieBound.org for a replacement program.

Other options:

Powells Books (in Portland OR and on the web) sells Adobe Digital Edition ebooks, and DRM-free PDFs ((meaning they are not locked to your use only).

A number of publishers sell ebooks directly from their sites. since I read a lof of SF, one of which I know is Baen. They also have an awesome FREE library of some of their older titles and 1st titles in a series. MacMillian will also sell your their ebooks.

Check the author’s website, as more are choosing to self-publish and self-distribute. And if you buy directly from the author more of the money actually goes to him/her since they don’t need to split it with a distributor.

Interactive Workshop Tip

Aside

If you are presenting a workshop/class in which you expect the participants to interact with you and each other, at the first meeting you may want (or need, depending on the material to be covered) everyone to go around the room to introduce themselves and say why they are there.

Unless you are specific in limiting them to only saying their name, be aware that this exercise will most likely take MUCH longer that you think. You may feel that it’s unwelcoming to set a time (ideally with a device that audibly indicates time has expired to everyone), but in my experience people so seldom get to talk with others who listen they do not know how much time they are taking.

My worst experience of this was at the beginning of a weekend retreat with a spiritual leader who arrived at the venue jet-lagged and sick, with a co-leader also not in great shape. We started going around the room of about 25 women at 7:30pm. By the time it was 12:30am we were still 5 people from the end, and had dealt with several people who claimed to be in need of exorcism, and others who would not take a hint to wrap up – the leaders just did not have the energy to stop the flood of TMI!

BCC is your contacts’ best friend

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So much of our modern communications technology gets dumped in our laps without instructions other than USE ME! Oh, there’s usually a “help” button on it somewhere – but honestly, how many of you click that, or if you did quickly gave up because it wanted you to  view a bunch of slides/verbiage and your eyes quickly glazed over?

Thus it’s no wonder that you may be accidentally annoying your friends, as well as exposing them and many strangers to spam address collectors and hackers if you don’t know about using BCC.

BCC = “Blind Carbon Copy” (forget that anyone under ~25 may never have seen carbon paper used!). BCC is one of the fields available in the header when you are composing an email (in some applications you may need to expand the header to find it). Any addresses you put into the BCC field will be delivered normally… BUT… unlke using the TO or CC fields,  the recipient will not see any other addresses you put into BCC – hence “blind.”

When sending email to many people, if they do not already know each other (e.g., people who subscribe to your newsletter or who want to be kept informed about your band’s gigs) you do NOT want to send your message in such a way that they all can see each others’ addresses, for several reasons:

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Are you the host or the presenter?

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I’m listening to the recording of an on-line presentation of a well-known author by a life coach with whom I’m not familiar. She lost me in the 1st five minutes – first by continuing to jabber on while ostensibly introducing the author (and cutting the latter off as she tried to respond), then controlling the interview (which was billed as a “presentation” but the author  was allowed little independence) with reams of prepared questions. I could tell that the author caught on to the situation immediately and fell back on just answering the questions… which by the way have little to do with the stated focus of the project.
I don’t think I’ll bother with the other dozen “presenters” based on this sample, since I’m not interested in hearing this one woman’s controlling chatter.
If your purpose is to learn things from a person, listen more than talk.