Blazing Sapphire Press

[meeno8]

I am still wondering why all those publications have not been made available on Kindle, Dr. Neal Delmonico PhD Nitaidas Mahashoy.  If I am traveling or in the waiting room somewhere, I would not find it convenient to lug around hard copies of books.

It should increase the number of people getting the books.  And besides, don't we need to keep pace with technology?  The paper books are printed on currently (which is not rag paper) starts to disintegrate after several decades anyways.  That has to do with the acid content that gradually eats away the cellulose in the paper.  Hence the reason I had to donate books from my library that had pages cracking off to the University of Chicago South Asia collection for preservation.  I presume that they all are available now in digital format, other than someone physically being at Regenstein Library and allowed to read them in the cage there.

[Nitaidas]

May 29, 2022 9:33:59 GMT -6 meeno8 said:

I am still wondering why all those publications have not been made available on Kindle, Dr. Neal Delmonico PhD Nitaidas Mahashoy.  If I am traveling or in the waiting room somewhere, I would not find it convenient to lug around hard copies of books.

It should increase the number of people getting the books.  And besides, don't we need to keep pace with technology?  The paper books are printed on currently (which is not rag paper) starts to disintegrate after several decades anyways.  That has to do with the acid content that gradually eats away the cellulose in the paper.  Hence the reason I had to donate books from my library that had pages cracking off to the University of Chicago South Asia collection for preservation.  I presume that they all are available now in digital format, other than someone physically being at Regenstein Library and allowed to read them in the cage there.

I would like to have ebooks for all of my publications. but it is harder to make ebooks with foreign scripts (Sanskrit and Bengali) in them. It would take me a while to figure that out and I am busy working on other projects. . Why don't you help out, mister big-brained scientist? A genius like you should be able to crack the code quickly and, while you are sitting on the bench, what better way to get some seva in?

[meeno8]

Ha ha! Good one. Evil genius perhaps. Sitting on the bench? Hardly. I have a book that is well over 400 pages to study for the Azure Architect certification exam. My employer pays for 1 certification per calendar year.

I don't know much about Kindle books, only that Scott Turow of the Authors Guild sent out an email blast to all of us members way back when Amazon just went ahead and put all of our titles on Kindle without any royalty deals in place. I had one in place for the hard cover edition of my book, which still actively sells, although you can pick up a used copy on Amazon these days for only a couple bucks, and I get zero royalties on those.

www.authorsguild.org/who-we-are/board-directors/scott-turow/#:~:text=He%20has%20published%20ten%20bestselling,former%20president%20of%20the%20Guild

[meeno8]

I can say that my book came out in Japan originally, or at least was promoted on Amazon Japan. Whether or not it was ever translated into Japanese, I can only guess. What is the level of difficulty of using scripts other than Roman for eBooks? Someone would need to research that. Perhaps Nityananda Das. He is always looking for ways to contribute to the publication effort. I nominate him.

[meeno8]

Our combined household income, which includes our social security benefits, dividend income from stocks, and my salary + bonus puts us in at least the top 11% economically for annual US household income. However, that does not mean I can just quit my day job. The cost of living in our area is very high compared with the national average, plus we do have a mortgage on the house with monthly payments. And that day job was originally just to support the 2 of us and put a roof over our heads, and my original major was music composition in college.  6 days ago our water heater burst, and the bill to replace it was over $1,880.  That is fairly typical of things to replace.  Several years ago we had the stove and the fridge get fried at the same time and had to replace those and a whole new circuit breaker panel in the basement.  Unless your name is John Williams or James Horner and you make boat loads of money off of movie scores, or your name is Billie Eilish, who wrote and performed the theme song for the latest Bond film, to name just a few examples, that is a winner take all market.  The Chicago Symphony Orchestra always had a composer in residence, and probably all the major symphonies that are also world class orchestras to as well.  But does that composer at CSO even get paid as much as one of the musicians in the orchestra, who do make a lot of money for serious music, and they teach at universities as well.  The guild to get into as a writer is the Screen Writers Guild, but there are barriers to entry. First you have to have several credits to your name for movies and TV shows. And you have to get special software, because Microsoft Word does not cut it. I purchased a copy of that package, and it has a substantial learning curve. So, say you have a viable plot and story line and use that package, you still have to get your first story translated to the big screen or streaming. Probably today the best bet is to use the internet and produce extremely low budget films with the latest and greatest iPhone. If you get one to 'go viral' in some way, then maybe, just maybe, you get a big toe in the door, and then maybe an actual foot in the door. Any traditional route means you are up against some extremely fierce competition to get the attention of any studio or investors in a project. Someone I grew up with sells his fiction novels pretty well, and even had a movie deal 'in the can' until the project was cancelled and never was actually greenlighted. So, you can even get that far and literally fall on your face.

[meeno8]

I did a few Google searches, and this was all that turned up that is maybe pertinent:
ebooks.stackexchange.com/questions/7190/create-an-e-book-with-devanagari-characters

[meeno8]

That's all the bandwidth I have right now to look into this. Maybe Nityananda Das can do a deeper dive, if he is even reading this thread. I will send him a message here.

[Nityānanda dāsa]

Radhe Radhe!

Generally from what I've been able to gather, Sanskrit and Bengali are not supported languages for ebooks. Of course there are some ways around this. One of them being to create an image of the language. So for example, if a book was laid out in such a way where there was an image of the original language on the left page and then the English on the right page, that might work. Of course in an ebook, usually a person is viewing one page at a time. So in that context, it might be better to simply have the Bengali/Sanskrit as an originally flowing language as a whole and then the English as a whole. AND I do know that some of the BSP books that are out do have the Devanagari in them. But again, that is a print book, not the ebook. I did create the ebook edition of Nectar of the Holy Name by Manindranath Guha. Would love to continue making the rest of the BSP books into digital editions.

I do have a little bit of a negotiation to propose though. While I would really like to assist with this, (respectfully) I am frustrated that there are probably around five BSP publications that are within 10% complete that are sitting on the shelf with no prospective print/finish dates. I find this particularly sad.

I would love to help these books come out in print and ebook editions, but I also respect that Nitai Dada has to follow his bliss. It's probably no fun to work on a book under pressure when your heart wants to get into something else. I feel it is some kind of conundrum.

The books I know of that could be published very soon are:

Biography of Siddha Manohar Das Babaji
Sri Krishna Lila Stava by Sanatan Gosvami
Some of OBL Kapoor's books
Mahamantra by Sundarananda (this is a small book an might be only done digitally)
Seems like there are a few others that I'm not remembering right now.

I've also spoken with Nitai about the future of BSP. I hope that once Nitai is finished with BSP and publication work that the BSP will continue on being managed either by a person who has the same hopes and dreams for it --- to continue publishing CV works. Or if not a person that a group of persons, like a non-profit or some kind of corporation/LLC or something can be created to run it.

Another suggestion for Nitai is that in my opinion, his introductions are like an entirely separate/additional book to the book itself. I think in at least one case, the introduction is larger than the book itself. While these introductions are very thorough and informative, if they're preventing the book from being published then it seems to me that maybe they need to be much smaller and concise. Just my two cents. For example, with the book by Sundarananda, I believe it is waiting on the introduction. While it could be a super comprehensive introduction that again, could be a book in and of itself --- and a biography of him would be fantastic as a stand alone book! --- seems to me that a very brief bio, hitting the important points could be completed in just a few short pages.

All this is just my simple personal agenda in relation to all this. I realize that it may not be appreciated and I apologize if it's not. My personal vision is that I would LOVE to see more BSP publications out.

Oh! And one last thing. New York Rathayatra is coming up two Saturdays away and I'm planning to do a table there again this year with the remaining BSP books I have along with all the books of Anantadas Babaji and a few other books. So please wish me luck with that! Maybe I can even develop a quick tri-fold kind of brochure thing about CV that would present a balanced view of things. I don't want to step on IGM toes too much as I have a friendly relationship with the NY ISKCON temple president. But maybe just something I could add to the books when I sell them.

Jai Sri Radhe!

[Nityānanda dāsa]

PS - Just to make it more complicated ...
With images, it would be best to aim for the largest suited screen such as a large ipad, and design the ebook images for that screen. Because the smaller ebooks SHOULD resize the image down to fit their screens. That way the image would maintain it's crisp-ness, rather that designing for the small e-readers and then having the image display as more blurry when it is viewed on a bigger screen.

[meeno8]

Correct - responsive design for any screen size, including smart phones.

The only other thought I have along these lines is to provide Roman transliterations, given the fact that people that will take the trouble to learn Devanagari and Bangla scripts are few and far between. So, perhaps the notion of including the whole nine yards with foreign language and breaking up the sandhi with word for word translations for Sanskrit is just a 'nice to have' rather than something essential. Getting the translations out on ebooks is the main object, is it not?

[Nitaidas]

Thanks, Nityanandadasji, for your reflections on creating and posting ebooks from BSP. I believe using Devanagari and/or Bengali scripts is quite possible these days. Many of the technologically advanced computer programmers are Indian and they are also enthusiastic about seeing Indic texts and translations made available. My problem is that I don't have time, and maybe not the grey matter, at present to learn the process. I would rather keep my attention on the works I am currently engaged in. I also don't want to put any burdens on you since I know you are also busy. Then there is my gurubhai who only complains and never offers to help. He says he is busy, too, but I know, if he wanted to, he could make a little time to figure out how to do it and in far less time than it would take me. One mostly has to know something about html. I think one piece of the puzzle is to list the fonts used for Devanagari and/or Bengali in the CSS file which supplies essential information for the accompanying file containing the actual core text of the ebook. The fonts also have to be embedded in the core text, otherwise if the person reading the ebook does not have the fonts on his computer or tablet, the script will only appear as blank squares. There are several free fonts that have beautiful Devanagari and Bengali fonts like Charis SIL and Gentium and many choices from the Noto (Google) collection. One of my favorite Devanagari fonts is Sanskrit2003 which is a Unicode8 font that is well designed. There are a few others that are good, but sometimes fail to make the proper combination ligatures. There are good tools also like Calibre and Sigil that convert pdfs into epub which is a generic format that can be changed into most other ebook reader formats.

Anyway, as you know, I think a translation should always be accompanied by the original text, either in Devanagari or Bengali or, at the very least, in a transliterated form. This is because translations are always only approximate and only the having the text present offers a pathway to better understanding and translations. As you know the Bhagavata is being done with both Devanagari and transliteration. I have figured out a way to generate both forms from a single source. I don't have to type it twice. As you know from the Siddha Manohar Das Babaji book that can be done in three forms, Devanagari, Bengali and Roman.

You are right about introductions holding up publication and a short and sweet introduction would certainly speed things up. The Nectar of the Holy Name which you edited and produced the ebook for is selling. So we already have a BSP book out thanks to you. जय राधे!

[Nityānanda dāsa]

You're always welcome!

I actually still need to correct the Nectar of the Holyname ebook. There are several errors in the text. Just mainly words that got joined together in the conversion.

[meeno8]

There is a parallel to casting doubt on the veracity of my statement that I am busy.

Right after my father died many years ago, we were taking inventory of the belongings he left behind. One was a violin from the early 19th century, which he always thought was very valuable. My friend the professional string bass player referred me to an appraiser, who looked up the maker. Turns out the guy was just a carpenter, not an actual instrument maker. Bottom line: The cost to restore the instrument to make it playable (and mediocre quality at best), would be about what you could fetch for it if you could even find a buyer. The appraiser suggested turning it into a work of art. I left that up to the common law wife, who was the art major in college.

When I related the results of the appraisal to our corrupt attorney sister (who we ended up in court with when she attempted to take the entire estate for herself - the litigation went on for years eating up a huge chunk of the estate in legal fees), her response was 'so you say'. Fucking evil bitch like a dog with a bone not wanting to let go. Trying to steal the inheritance of the rest of us, including our mentally disabled sister that is in a nursing home. Takes all kinds, I suppose. An underdeveloped amygdala? I assert that bitch is a sociopath, but one of my other sisters says just Narcissistic.

[meeno8]

Since, according to some, I never miss an opportunity to sing my own praises:
www.amazon.com/Technical-Analysis-Tools-Creating-Profitable/dp/1576602486/ref=sr_1_1?crid=26KVDWOA4E130&keywords=Technical+Analysis+Tools+Tinghino&qid=1654446317&s=books&sprefix=technical+analysis+tools+tinghino%2Cstripbooks%2C74&sr=1-1

So, I have a genuine contract with my publisher that pays advances and standard royalties on any title I come out with. Now vanity publishers contact me proposing that I pay them to get books published. Then after I tell them to get lost, they resort to some song and dance about how it is not possible to get book deals anymore unless your name is JK Rowling (among other very famous authors). I am sure a lot of gullible and ignorant people fall for such high pressure sales tactics, because they do not realize how easy it is to self-publish on Amazon these days. A guy I worked with a few years ago published his poems that way. Fun fact re Rowling: When I worked at a supply chain company for books some time ago, whenever there was a new author in the pipeline that had no prior history to forecast sales, the rule of thumb was to take a percentage of the first "Harry Potter". For example, 10% of Harry Potter or 25% of Harry Potter.

The main factor in my book not selling the 10K copies that all titles in the genre sell was that at the time it was released the stock market was in free fall as the housing market was collapsing as well. You see, all books have a 12 week sales cycle, and they age out after 2 years (except for the Bible, which is always the best seller since Gutenberg started his press).

At that supply chain company we had a party thrown by one of the publishers of romance novels at our offices. They told an interesting story of how Valley of the Dolls landed on the NY Times Bestseller list as #1, leading to the movie. It was either the author or his/her agent that went out to all the book stores in Manhattan and placed books on the display at the front of the store and bought all of them up, then replaced them and did the same thing several times. It worked, but was a one off, after the NY Times caught on.

From a Google search:
1 on The New York Times's list of best‐sellers. With more than 17 million copies sold, in hardcover and paperback, “Valley of the Dolls” is recognized by the “Guinness Book of Records” as the best‐selling novel of all time, surpassing “Peyton Place.” Sep 23, 1974

An interesting link on this:
lithub.com/8-notable-attempts-to-hack-the-new-york-times-bestseller-list/