Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge Anyone here ever published a book?

Just being an eternally curious fella as usual and was wondering if anyone ever published a book (especially fiction) and knows the ropes around here. Also, do people still buy paperback or are electronic formats like Kindle more popular nowadays?

My wife is a 4-5 book a week person. Never thought I would see the day but she has not had a paper book in her hands for a year. She has a Kindle fire and just downs it from the web and reads away.

There are still some holdouts for paper. I know many who just like holding the book. I think that population is shrinking.

I read on a Nexus 7 these days.

I still read two daily newspapers. And I sometimes read a book a week. I'm gonna miss them when they're gone, and that is a matter of time. Just don't enjoy reading on a screen at all. I bought my wife a Kindle a couple of years ago, she never puts it down, unless it's to play games on the tablet I bought her a few months ago. As to the publishing route, there are a lot of "micro publishers" around. I even have a local one here in a small town just up the road. It doesn't cost much to publish a small run of books. A hundred will cost you a few hundred dollars. I always thought about writing some stuff. A couple of authors I know have encouraged me to do so. But writing is just like work, and I have lots of other things to keep me busy. Maybe someday...

personally , read paper don't like electronic but many do.
wife had a research paper published but no books in our family .

I used to publish a magazine called Highway11 with another friend, about life here and around. We would hire local writers and I mostly did text proofing, layout and pictures.

It was a monthly issue, but that became so much work that we switched to seasonal after a coulpe of years.

It was always a struggle to get enough advertisers to pay for the printing job. Most asians around here view ads as a waste of money.

Basically, we were doomed from the start, but we wanted to try anyway!

Lasted 5 years.

My former neighbor was up to #4 last I talked to him. He was working on #5 - to be loosely based on the ex. He used a vanity press for the first two, but said things really picked up when he hired an editor, which then got him an edge with a publisher. He 's no John Grisham, but it's paying the bills.

I still prefer paper, but electronic is convenient.

Thanassis, I have a friend who is a professional writer. She writes fiction and last I heard had two books published. She moved away so I don't see her much but around 3 years ago I met with her and asked how her writing career was going. She said the e-book thing was a problem for her. I can't remember details from that conversation, only that she was deeply affected by it all.

I've had a few published, but that was the doing of the place where I was working at the time. I prefer P-books, partly because they are not at the mercy of system crashes. But, I have to admit that I have read a number of E-books because I can get them from Project Guttenberg for free.

Project Gutenberg has supplied a lot of the classics for my Nook. Still haven't read most of them, but they're there waiting.

I like paper. Maybe it's just some subconscious tactile thing, but I like the feel of a book.
Also I can see what others are reading and vice-versa. Makes for an easy conversation starter.

My wife reads mostly on her i-pad but that's because she's on a treadmill for a couple hours every day and paper books are hard to manage.

My son had an essay published, but it was for an e-periodical; geeky scientist stuff.

Paper is easier on my eyes than a computer screen

People still read?

I am very proud of my Mother who wrote, published and promoted a factual book about Michigan back in the 70s. I remember it cost her a lot of money and time on the road and she pretty much broke even but the book is in the library of congress in Mi and Washington. I am now in the process of writing a book that I have been working on for a few yrs . I am in. O way a real writer but I have a granddaughter who is working on being one and I am hopeing she will polish it for me but I would never take the route my mother took to get hers done. Maybe someday I will be a published writer but I don't think it will be anytime soon lol she has a Cple more yrs to go before she will be that good and it will prob take me that long to finish it lol