[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I know you think that we mere hacks don't get it, but we do.

I never called you or anyone else names like that, Hitch, or expressed my derision for what you all do here -- please don't put words in my mouth that I never said.

What you don't get is that--aside from me--nobody here is really talking to you about commerciality. If you want to give it away on iBooks, hey, knock yourself out. You're not paying me, so if you go broke chasing your artistic vision, it's no skin off my nose.

So why are you responding to me as though I just took a scrap off of your nose, personally?

the "choir" that you are preaching to here isn't talking to you about MONEY. They are talking to you about the inability of your book to be distributed on other readers. Since, obviously, you're a Jobbleshead (what it looks like is more important than whether or not it really functions), you don't understand that there are millions upon millions of other reading devices--not even counting Amazon--that aren't i-anythings. Your much-loved book won't work on those.

Why do you say I don't understand that, when I'm the one that has repeatedly said that it will only work on iBooks?

Look, it was two decades ago when I first wrote the main text for my book. My first, original intention was to publish it as a hand-bound book (a "regular" paper book), and I even took courses in hand-bookbinding to that end. But then, right at that same time, I got into web design and it became a website -- which it's happily been since 1996.

Only recently (earlier this year), after having acquired an iPad (because my best friend passed away and left it to me -- I probably never would have bought one otherwise), I thought I'd try my hand at making it into an ebook just for the fun of it, and in the process of doing so I discovered that, hey, I can actually do up that second, "olde" half of my book in reflowable text, too! Yippee!

And now, through all these discussions, I've learned that it will only work in iBooks, and there's the potential that in time Apple might change things and eventually it might not work in that either (but only time will tell on that one, of course).

I'm okay with that -- in fact, if you think about that, I've been okay with that since my very first thought of publishing this work popped into my head. As I said, my first idea was to publish it as a hand-bound book, all on my own, in my humble little home, a very small "livre d'artist" edition of, oh, maybe 100 copies or so.

What you and others have been saying to me here, about my ebook, would have been the equivalent of people telling me two decades ago that I was crazy to hand-bind it, that I would reach such a larger audience if, say, I went through Penguin or whatever other "regular" publisher so that I could get a larger distribution for my work -- but doing it that way would have similarly just not been the same thing at all as a hand-bound book.

Your artistic vision will never been seen on those.

Not in the way I'd like it to be seen, the way it looks on iBooks, no. But that doesn't mean that I couldn't eventually come out with another version -- either using graphics or a different font, or whatever other other solution (or dissolution) I might eventually come up with. But if I can do it the way I'd always wanted to on one platform, at least, why not make it as nice as I can for those people?

If I can fulfil my dream on one platform, and if I'm okay with that, why YELL at me and berate me for doing what is actually bringing me fulfilment and happiness?

I'm done with this thread and this discussion. I hear enough of this all day long, quite frankly, suffering through it for my pittance; I certainly don't need to "listen" to it or hear it in my downtime.

I didn't "drag" you in here, Hitch -- you don't have to go storming out in a huff now as though I did, or behave as though I was demanding that you up and change the way that you design ebooks yourself. :/

And hey, it's not like I'm determined to "break all the rules" on any and every future project I might have. Indeed, I have another project lined up to do right after I get this current one up on iBooks, and for that one I'm going to be sure to "do it right" through-and-through, so that I can publish on Kindle and wherever/however else -- I was going to use this other project to learn those other platforms, and whatever "idiosyncrasies" they have, and once I've done that (successfully) I'll be in a better position to go back to this, my first project, and come up with a second version that will work cross-platform.

But for this first time, for my baby, this work that has truly meant so much to me for decades now, I'm going to be like Sinatra and "do it my way." If that's a problem, then that's my problem, right? But if my doing so gets your feathers all ruffled, then that's your problem.