I had told myself along about June that if the book did not have a traditional publisher by the end of the year, I would consider going with an ebook. My concern was, would it be respectable?
Then, in early fall, one of my advisors, a highly experienced book editor and retired university professor, himself an author many times over, returned from a summer of lecturing in Europe and told me that his books are doing well there as ebooks. It’s the way to go, he said.
Hearing that from someone of his stature was all it took. Dancing Past the Dark: Distressing Near-Death Experiences will make its appearance as an ebook. What this means for you, as readers, is, first, that you will get it a good two years earlier than if it were coming out in paper. You will get it at half the cost. What it means to IANDS is that a portion of the purchase price will go to help support the Association. What this means for the book is that it will have to find its way to readers not by a publisher’s efforts but by word of mouth, blogs, and social media.
As I write this, it’s not quite four hours short of the New Year, and the project is right on schedule: I have just put the last touches on the PDF file that will go to the indexer the first business day of the New Year. Bruce Greyson is writing the foreword. By the end of January, the book will be ready for conversion to ebook language. By March or April, it should go public. So, fire up your Nook, your new Kindle, your iPad and other e-readers, or the app on your laptop, and start telling people. It’s coming!
If you know of a blog, an organization, or an online group that might want to know about the book or be interested in a guest blog post, please add a comment to let me know about them, or send them the blog URL (soon to be a website, also–www.dancingpastthedark.com). Who knew we would ever want to go viral!
I am so appreciative of your interest, your comments, your emails. You’ve made 2011 a good year, and my best wishes go to all of us for the year ahead. Just think what’s possible in 2012, whatever the Mayan calendar may mean!
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