Kindle, I-Pad, the New Books - READ!

        Today I read that in 2006 there were 7,000 published e-books and in 2011 there were 87,000 authors publishing their own e-books. Wow. The technology of book publishing for the e-reader has democratized the anxious need to tell a story. Authors no longer have to wait months on end for a word, encouraging or devastating, from a big publishing house where busy “readers” plow through endless manuscripts in the “slush pile”. When the word is rejecting, the author tries another publishing house and waits again for months in the same game. Theodore Geisel, Dr. Seuss, reportedly endured 27 rejections before his wildly wonderful To Think That It Happened on Mulberry Street was finally accepted. The first criteria of acceptance by the big publishers has been money; how much of the market share will a book provide? But most writers just want to share an instruction or tell a good story.

Those who were brave enough, or financially able to by-pass the publisher and print their own book had to also endure the public stigma of not passing the literary judgment of the big houses indicating the work is not really worthy reading. The century old power of the publishing industry controlled the market for stories until this fantastic digital revolution.

          We are humans, after all, and telling stories is as much a part of us as preparing a meal. As we get older we have a big collection of stories including favorites that we like to tell as often as possible, or so my kids tell me. Not all of us write our story, however, which reaches a wider audience and gives a sense of permanency.

       The e-book format not only allows a much greater number of authors the opportunity to share their work, but readers experience a much easier way to read more stories (or personally reject undesirable work instead of depending on a distant editor). The e-book is cheaper to publish and should be cheaper to read, though some publishers still grip e-book sales with higher prices. The books are environmentally friendly, no trees are sacrificed, much less oil is consumed in delivery, and storage/discard is minimal. The reading itself can be managed to the comfort of tired eyes. Both publishing and purchasing are incredibly fast. Literally speaking, we are living in exciting times.

       I published AHomestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life based on  encouragement from those who listened to our “back-to-the-land” stories. We chose the e-book format because producing was made easy by Kindle Direct Publishing, we could keep the price low ($2.99), and readers could get the book instantly through Amazon. So far we are very satisfied. We do have some folks who want a printed copy and we are working on that, which has also been easier through the new publishing of print on demand.

            If you haven’t had a chance to read the Crunchy Granola book please check out a sample copy for free at Amazon.com. You can read any of the e-books on a great electronic reader like Kindle or on most tablets, cell phones, computers, one friend even read hers on a tiny little MP3 player. My, my. I appreciate all the reviews and personal comments. Thanks for sharing and don’t forget to eat your granola.

Love,

Helene 

After the Book

My 94 year old Aunt Genevieve used to ask me about raising goats and chickens. She would laugh at the stories, commanding me even to the last week of her life, to write the stories down and share that intriguing part of our life.  That was the get-serious motivation to write, A Homestead Decade – How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life. I say get-serious because it was always one of those someday things we carry around in our to-do lists.

I was also motivated by the new world of the e-book and the ease of facilitating an outlet for such a book. Crunchy Granola, our shortcut to talk about the memoir, is now available on Amazon Kindle Books for a meager $2.99. We are grateful for the wonderful comments received about the book, yet we are also haunted by so much that was left out in our excited haste to get the thing done.

Therefore, in this new fantastic world of e! , we can continue the story and comments about “back-to-the-land” movements, then and now, through a web log. Join us as we see just where the blog takes us. It should be another intriguing journey of its own.

One such story is associated with getting water in and out of the house. I don’t find this topic discussed very often except in trade journals for plumbers and backhoe services. Not that these trade journals are easily accessible to me.

While we were building our homestead house, we planned for a 4” well to obtain water. Only one well-driller in the county had the equipment for such a wide pipe. We were told he was also a dowser, he could find water anywhere using the ancient dowser trick of grasping the forked ends of a branch in his hands and “feeling” the vibration of water from the point of the branch as the point dipped downward pointing to the source of water. Uh-huh. 

So we hired Mr. B to come find a good water source and drill a fine well for us. Well, Mr. B came on a Sunday evening after dinner dressed in his Sunday duds, a woman sat in the truck waiting for him. He sliced a forked branch of a young wild cherry grumbling a bit to himself about no willows on the property. Dowsing rod in position he began walking slowly over the land surrounding the house. We followed trying to see the point of the stick around his large body. In a moment of anticipating some country magic we heard a grand almost musical fart burst through Mr. B’s aura. Joel glanced at me wide eyed before he began to laugh out loud. Mr. B was not fazed. He continued walking over the building site up the western slope through briars and mud at the edge of the trees finally declaring “There it is.”

What? No shimmy on the stick, not even a downward point? And look at the spot, Joel protested, the unprepared west side of the house, up a hill, in the woods! There was no way we could get a big well drilling rig up there. By some dowsing mystery, Mr. B rather quickly “found” water on the flatter south side of the property, where he eventually dug our well 80’down. Now that was a powerful dowsing rod.

 
So goes the stories of our country living. I am hoping to have some fun with this blog sharing stories and recipes and comments on the desire to live in the country. If you would like to take a look at the book, A Homestead Decade – How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, you can read a sample chapter free on www.Amazon.com Kindle Books. Or better yet, just order a copy for your Kindle or PC or smartphone. Cheap. And it’s a fast and funny read. Let me know what you think.

Helene