Bookaholic

Learn as I go… I’m finding new ways, sometimes obscured by weak navigation on the sites, to ramp up traffic. Categories seems to be a good idea; it still takes me awhile with “backward thinking” to see what buyers might like to see rather than the perfectly logical (from my point of view) categorization of books.

I also did a fact check to see what kinds of books were selling, and which were not. Art was high on the list (surprising me), and how-to. Fiction was low, only two (and one was signed). I had been toying with the idea of women writers of mysteries, which seems to me to be an interesting phenomenon, but I discover that there are many more than I had thought, and none in that category have sold, so…

Skip McGrath’s commonsense advice on selling used books online seems to match with my experience, so I’ll continue to value it. College textbooks work — it’s quite an industry, which I know something about from my years of publishing college materials (not yet ended). It’s a very competitive field, some states mandate the publisher for some subjects, which creates a small monopoly. And publishers respond to the fall-off in sales (due to their own used textbooks back on the market after each semester ends) by issuing revised or updated editions to “obsolete” their own work and set high prices on the required texts. In another shift in the wind, ebooks are coming into the marketplace, sometimes chunked into individual chapters (monetized to their advantage).

My own background has been in literature, but that proves to be one of the weakest areas for used books. If a book is a classic, there are tons of reprints and editions. If it’s not, it gets dated rather quickly. Signed copies might attract a buyer, but not every signature guarantees that someone will be interested at any price.

And I’m beginning to progress in PHP, though the book I chose to work with is about two inches thick 8=(

It does become clear to me, on viewing my projects over the long term, that I have a vision for bringing the past closer to us with techniques that are currently available. The vision is to design at least some classics so that one actually participates in the experience, rather than simply watching a spectacle or reading a book. Right now, if anyone cares to visit, I’m working in Second Life (on the newly opened sim Innovation Infoisland) on the Trial of Socrates, with a small arena, Socrates in the middle, and persons mentioned in the dialogue seated around (they are little more than simple posts currently). But with scripting, it’s possible for two of these avatars to “converse” — that is, for one to text a statement, ending with a trigger word. The trigger word then activates a second avatar to respond with a text message, and so on. Getting the scripts just right is tricky, but some of it is functioning now. It’s perfectly possible for human avatars to sit in the same assembly and utter trigger words, which would initiate one of several dialogues. Because of the limitations of SL, speeches have to be only about 3 lines long, so I have created responses for the other avatars to text, varying according to personality.

In case you missed that class, Socrates is to be judged by his peers, some of whom would like to see him condemned, and some of whom are friends, so there’s an air of controversy.

Some years ago I worked at a commercial radio station on the graveyard shift, so had lots of time to work on a project for the campus radio station, where I had a weekly show. Over the course of about a year, I created the script, and recorded individual voices, for The Beechers, based on the letters back and forth between the Beecher siblings, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Catharine Beecher, Thomas K. Beecher, and the rest of the eleven children of Lyman Beecher — all of whom achieved national fame at one time or another. It was a fascinating way to look at history, for the “big” events were simply family gossip topics, while brother Charles’ trip to New Orleans and stories of the slave market informed Harriet’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, though she herself had only briefly been south of the Ohio River into Kentucky. Henry’s big contribution had been a trip to England during the Civil War to convince the textile workers there that siding with the South for their cotton was not in the long run a good idea if it perpetuated slavery. That wasn’t in the history books I was taught from, but it may have turned the tide at a critical time to assure Northern victory.

That was just an early version of my vision. The most complete manifestation to date has been the 4-month creation in Second Life, of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of 1967, the Summer of Love, complete with the Fillmore Theater, Golden Gate Park, a record shop with all the titles of psychedelic and other music, a reenactment of the whole week-long Monterey Pop Festival with actual footage from the Festival courtesy of streaming YouTube videos. One helper had created a color effect which could somewhat simulate an acid trip, the appropriate dress of the time, and a week-by-week reporting of the 1967 news from Vietnam to early computers to the pirate radio ships of England to the “British invasion.” It was a neighborhood with shops and houses to walk among, music in warehouses, a Free Store, the Glide Memorial for free (virtual) food.

In other words, not just reading about it, but being there. That’s my vision. Interested to work with me? Let me know.