My friend Alejandra gave me a new project to work on last week. I had the challenge of rebinding a copy of Much Ado About Nothing that was published in 1901! This frail little book had the covers falling off and half the signatures falling out, and it was in serious...
I wish I had more photos to show, but honestly, it was so messy I didn't dare pick up my phone! I tried marbling some paper over the weekend, and I picked two different ways: using shaving cream, and using cornstarch. I treated some paper with alum before starting on...
I've created a number of notepads and sketch books with blank pages, and I've re-bound a few second-hand books, but this is my first proper book - one that I typeset myself, printed myself, and bound myself. I think the end result is pretty good! The paper on the...
Okay! There's a few things to talk about, so let's get stuck in. I completed a book, and sent it out for beta-reading. The question now is what do I do once I get feedback. See, I've been staring at this book for hours over the last few weeks. True to the creative...
Piracy is still a big issue for ebooks, in spite of the fact that DRM has been optional for a while now on Amazon (the only platform that counts*). I'm still of the opinion that it's basically irrelevant - you can't control it, can't prevent it, and worrying about it...
I watched a video on Youtube today from the PBS Game/Show channel about crowdfunding, and the obligations of creators to the consumers of what they create. Crowdfunding causes users to be invested in the successful creation of media. The rise of Patreon.com and other...
It is now 8am in Vancouver, and I think I've rewritten chunks of this post at least three times. Who's been keeping up with the shenanigans going on in the Hugos? The five second summary is as follows: a couple of straight white dudes took umbrage at the fact that,...
A while back, I wrote about Tate Publishing, a subsidy publisher that had been in the news as a result of some... rather callous business practices. I think it's a good time to revisit publishers like these in light of a recent comment on that post. (For the...
You may have noticed that I finally got my act together and cleaned up the website. My friend Fay was nice enough to lend me one of her themes! I did some edits on it, and I think it came out okay. Being a web designer, my site is always a work in progress. Anyway -...
As you may know, I'm sometimes a web developer as well as being a writer/swordfighter. Being a dev means knowing all kinds of random stuff about what makes the Internet tick, and incidentally, it also lets me understand a few things about ebooks. Ebooks can track the...
So this came up while I was chatting to a couple of writer-inclined friends, so I thought I'd put together a list of some useful free and not so free apps that I use and have used in the past. This is specifically for writers and authors - enjoy! Workflowy This is...
So... let's talk about the business of writing. It's definitely a business, unless you're writing and posting your stuff for free online. (Or just using it as parrot cage lining.) Being a professional writer is a tough gig. It's hard to convince readers that your work...