To Do or Not to Do

That is the question. I have received another in a line of requests for access to my book on the Language of TV Advertising, published in 1982. As time passes, it must be harder and harder for some to get access to it. So, I have started checking into on-line publishing, some sort of scan, OCR, and PDF page creation process or some other method. I could actually just scan the pages at home, though I would take awhile and figure out some way to get paid enough to pay for my web site and perhaps my other expenses. I checked into Google's books program and I couldn't figure out how in hell I would get paid. Would it be clicks on my order page or books sold or clicks on the advertising on the page with my buy the book link? Nowhere on their page did the word "royalty" appear so I guess their method would be the same as in the adsense stuff I don't put on my blog. Anyway, no royalties, no book.

I inquired with a real publisher and their representative had the interesting idea of coming out with a new edition. Given that the other one is a quarter century old a redo would make more sense. But am I up to it? The gear I would need is a problem. For screen shots, I would want to take them off my HighDef TV. I haven't actually tried that but I think the results would be great. The problem is that Tivo offers no easy one button recording feature that a tape or DVD recorder offers. So, whole shows would have to be Tivoed. But they fill up the hard drive fast. As a result, I would have to make a video of the TV commercial with a video camera I don't own, do the screen shots with a digital camera, and then delete the file. The question is whether or not I am too damn old to do another book. I am doing two blogs and it probably would be no more work than that. But I like blogging. I also like book writing. What's a person to do?

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Tags: book writing, tv advertising, language