Media Bleg

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I started blogging at my “homebase”, Life In The Great Midwest on November 20, 2004. Here is my first post:

My first post, I guess, should be a quote from one of my heroes, Ronald Reagan.
“Whatever else history may say about me when I’m gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty’s lamp guiding your steps and opportunity’s arm steadying your way.”

LITGM is an immense collection of posts about different subjects. It has been a small group blog for some time now. We have a lot of fun there and I have made a lot of wonderful friends. I also blog at some half dozen other locations.

People have different reasons for blogging. My main reason was to keep my (admittedly poor) writing skills sharp and to keep up on new technology as far as the sharing of ideas goes. I know that my writing will never be as good as someone like Ginny, but I do try my best.

It will be interesting to see where blogs end up in another five years. Frankly I am surprised that they have lasted this long. Best buggy whip around, I always say.

To the meat of this post. It seems that I have now come full circle. I have decided to write a small book, and I hope that my blogging over the last 6 years will help me with the writing of it.

The subject matter will be how physical fitness has changed my life. I am now an upper end amateur athlete, and I participate in running, strength training, cycling and Muay Thai kickboxing. The changes in my life have been nothing short of amazing and I not only want to share my story with others, but I want to help others receive this gift.

I want to give the information away for free and my initial idea is to put up a website where people could download a copy for free by clicking a link for a pdf file. I don’t know much about print on demand books.

Any help our commenters could provide here would be greatly appreciated as to what you think would be the best way to distribute this. I hope to get it done by Spring and have made it my winter project.

I just hope Jim McCormick doesn’t review my book, as his review will most likely be better and longer than my text :).

11 thoughts on “Media Bleg”

  3. I promise another sale for the book!

    Chicagoboyz commenter, Sgt. Mom, had a comment about this some time back under Lex and Jim Bennett’s book post, I think. Doesn’t Kindle have an epub platform? Zen had the following, too:

    http://zenpundit.com/?p=3522 “FASTPENCIL”

    and the Barnes and Noble website has this:

    http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/pubit-self-publish-ebook-publishing/379002433/

    Pubit is for self-publishing ebooks. This is a topic that fascinates me. Both the self publishing and physical fitness.

    I have a mild (very mild – knock wood! ) form of multiple sclerosis. I’m a naturally “small” person and don’t put on weight easily. I never developed good work out habits although I do go to the gym. I’ve had personal trainers, but I will work out regularly for six months, and then take a month break or so. I eat pretty healthy, but I break down on busy days in the hospital sometimes and raid the vending machines.

    I want to transform my physical fitness and diet routine and don’t quite know how to do it.

    I eagerly await your book. If I look through your archives at LITGM, will I find blog posts to help me?

    Thanks,

    – Madhu

  4. Thanks for the info Madhu. Yes there are a lot of posts about physical fitness at LITGM, mostly about running, biking and Muay Thai. The book I will be writing this winter will probably help you more than those, however.

    By the way Lex and Madhu, there will be no “sales” per se, this information will be given for free. I just want to help others.

  6. DFM, at the very least post your book here. How about doing it in PDF? People could always print it themselves and it would be easy to read online as well as to produce.

  7. Yes I planned on putting a link or something here, thanks. I am thinking pdf is the way to go at no charge for anyone, with a POD option that I would sell at cost for those who want a traditional book.

  8. As publishing has been and hopefully will be my field of work, if you plan to give your book away for free in Pdf – I suppose in A4 or Us-Letter format, as comes out of the word processor – you will probably need to put it in a book format for the P-O-D edition. Then, Dan, I’m planning to give away for free some hours of my work, if it’s needed, to properly design it.
    I owe you and all the people here at CB my gratitude for the great gift of teaching me some contemporary Americana everyday.

  9. Sejo, thank you for that kind offer. Did you use a real email address when you entered the comment? If so, I will keep it and contact you later this winter/early Spring when I plan on being done with the project for some help.

  10. My pleasure, Dan. Indeed, that is a real email address, but it’s the one I use for registrations and such. You can use chef instead of reg.

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