Monday, October 27, 2008

Update on my PCT book

I have almost completed my book. I have created it and ordered the review copy. If all is well, I will approve my book and it will be available for purchase. It is actually already available for purchase, but I still have a chance to edit if I find any glaring errors. After editing it so many times on screen it will be nice to finally see it in print.

The last time I edited it I accidentally wiped out a day and a half worth of editing. Arrgh. I have read my story so many times now I can see what an irritating person I truly am. I hope people will enjoy my story anyway.

I will let you know when the book is approved and I will provide links to it. It is going to be $18.95, which I admit is expensive. They charge by the page so it is hard to get the price down. If that is too high, you can order a PDF download for $5.00. I actually make more money on the download so either way is fine by me.

The publisher is lulu.com. It is a print-on-demand publishing service that is rated very highly, does not cost a lot to use and allows you to self-publish a book that can be made available through Amazon and other online bookstores. Seems like a revolutionary way to do things to me.

It has been fun writing a book. I have enjoyed it enough I think I will write more books. I am even thinking maybe I should consider technical writing as a future career. I enjoy writing and I enjoy technology so it seems like a good fit. The hot topic in technical writing these days is XML and DITA and that sort of thing interests me as much as writing. I think I would be good at it, but so far I have no experience and have no idea where to begin or how to get started. I hope to find out. But I will keep working on my freelance web development, too. I don't see technical writing as that far off from web development. It's all information architecture and technology. Writing is just more wordy and uses different software.

Meanwhile, I have finally started my job as an acoustical analyst. I'm looking for the sound of whales in the ocean. Seems interesting and boring at the same time, but the people there are very nice. I really think with quitting my job, hiking and now working part-time, unrelated jobs I might have screwed up my employability. At least with big companies. At least temporarily. So far, I do not care that much. I think I was kind of done with big company web dev anyway. You get stuck with whatever out-dated technology they use. C'mon! Font tags? You know who you are. Font tags were so 1997. So out-dated I can't impress anyone with that whole year and two months worth of effort. Nobody can grow a web dev career with font tags.

Anyway, I hope someday I will make enough money to live on again. But so far life is interesting.

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