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Tell us about your book
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Nov 28, 2017 at 03:24 PM
In the Scapple thread, Franz referenced a book he is writing. It got me wondering how many of us have used our outliner knowledge (and obsession, for some of us) for writing books. And that got me curious about the books we’ve written.
So I am asking, “Tell us about your book or books.”
I’ll start. I’ve written one small book about a historic site in the state of Vermont. I also spent a lot of time and effort editing and rewriting another much larger book about the same historic site. Both projects were self-published. The first totally by me. The second by the historic organization that I volunteer with. Scrivener was the main software I used to write both projects. Though I also did some “thinking on paper” in Tinderbox.
If you’re interested in the latter book, you can learn more about it here (I do not make any money from the sales of this work):
https://mountindependence.org/strong-ground/
Steve Z.
Posted by Graham Rhind
Nov 28, 2017 at 04:01 PM
At the last count I’d written five books.
The first three (in the nineties/early noughties) were “officially” published. I wrote them all in MS Word and didn’t use any outlining or organising software. (Unlike many books my stuff is largely original so I don’t have to juggle sources, references, quotes etc.).
(1) Building and Maintaining a European Direct Marketing Database. (Snappy title ....not!)
(2) The Global Sourcebook for International Data Management
(3) Practical International Data Management
The fourth book was a version of the second book (keep up ;-) ) and was published by a commercial company as a sort of marketing gimic to give free to their customers.
Though the publishing house wanted to publish a second edition of my second book, the whole process was too slow for me, especially as the information in the book is updated regularly, so I put it online, firstly using The Brain, when it allowed exporting to a website, and I then shifted everything into ConnectedText. It’s a huge resource and freely available at https://www.grcdi.nl/gsb/global%20sourcebook.html . I have to hope that CT doesn’t stop working anytime soon as it took me over 2 years to import it and tweak it in CT.
The third book is now out of print but I do maintain a website that contains snippets and examples from that book - also maintained in CT and accessible at http://www.pidm.net .
The fifth book (Better Data Quality From Your Web Form) is short, self-published and free, created in Word, and downloadable from http://www.grcdi.nl/book4.htm (don’t be fooled by the URL - I don’t always count my fourth book when totting up the total unless I’m trying to impress somebody :-) )
Well, you did ask ... ;-)
Posted by Franz Grieser
Nov 28, 2017 at 04:24 PM
I’ve written 24 books on computer software (MS DOS, Windows, Ventura Publisher, Pagemaker, Wordperfect, Star Writer, Outlook etc.), a computer encylopedia and a book on time management. They’re all out of print.
The book I am writing right now is a how-to book on how to deal with perfectionism. It will be published as an e-book in Germany by the end of this year.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Nov 28, 2017 at 04:27 PM
Franz Grieser wrote:
>The book I am writing right now is a how-to book on how to deal with
>perfectionism. It will be published as an e-book in Germany by the end
>of this year.
I thought you were going to write, “It will be published as an e-book in Germany when I can stop tweaking it to make it better.” : )
Posted by Franz Grieser
Nov 28, 2017 at 04:32 PM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>I thought you were going to write, “It will be published as an e-book in
>Germany when I can stop tweaking it to make it better.” : )
In fact, I did write that but deleted it. Might not be the best way to promote my book. :-D