I believe my book of linked stories called "Unfit Valour" will be one WWII book that attracts far more women than male readers --- a rare Good News Story from that bad news war.
Martin Henry Dawson selflessly gave up his own life to save the lives of strangers : a textbook definition of "agape love" if there ever was one --- though such acts rarely have such world-changing impact as Dawson's did.
I believe that my selfishly trying to personally profit from recounting Dawson's epic struggle in print will negate all that his agape act stood for.
So all the "Unfittin" books will be totally free - released into the Public Domain* - and made available for reading without charge.
I am aware that most book reviewers agree with Samuel Johnson - and with organizations like the Canadian Writers Union - that anyone who does not write for money is a Blockhead and can not be a professional author but is only a to-be-ignored amateur.
So be it.
An amateur , by definition , do what they do for love . Dr Dawson was thus an amateur and proudly so shall I be - even if it means no 'real' book reviewer will review Dawson's biography.
The books will be available as conventional (e-pub) e-books as well as web-hosted e-books and downloadable printable books.
Those latter two concepts may need a little explaining.
A web-hosted ebook is a book that is created on a mobile-phone friendly website.
Yes, you must be online to read it but it is designed to be easily viewed by any browser - whether on a computer, tablet or phone.
It requires no ebook reader to buy and offers no concerns about being incompatible with any computer or software.
After all , Epub, the most common ebook format, is really just a Zipped-compressed website --- but even they can't be read directly by the most common (Amazon Kindle) ebook readers .
My web-hosted e-books, with a much bigger sandbox to play in than a conventional e-pub, will be more academic or scholarly oriented - with end notes, bibliographies and appendixes.
In addition ,the art can be bigger and higher in resolution.
Now downloadable printable books have been around for a while in the internet world of poetry chapbooks.
They begin as a special sort of PDF file : on a single sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper turned on its side , there are eight book pages : such that at the top, on one side pages 64 on the left and page 1 on the right. Turn it over and again at the top page 2 is on the left and page 63 on the right - and so on.
How does that sheet of paper get that way - and why ?
Take apart any magazine and you will quickly realize that the pages must be ordered in that odd way to fit together as a right-reading magazine.
For speed and ease in printing, most magazines and all books are printed 16, 32 r 64 pages a side on huge sheets of paper (technically called signatures) and cut up afterwards into smaller folded sheets.
I use a great and economic piece of software called CHEAP IMPOSTER to automatically rearrange the pages of an ordinary PDF into a new PDF already pre-set up in the correct running order, for easy printing on any home computer printer.
This, after all , is how every newspaper and magazine has ever been created - each sheet looks oddly numbered and arranged all by itself , but once folded onto each other , the ensemble now reads correctly from page 1 as the front cover to page 64 as the back cover.
Staple it ? Give it a separate harder and thicker cover ?
I don't bother usually. With home equipment it is very hard to make a successful stapled book with a thick cover with anymore than about 48 printed pages.
By contrast , 'self-covered' (book cover is of same paper weight as text pages inside) books made at home and bound together simply by friction can be made up to 128 printed pages in length (and of 70,000 words in two column type) and still work.
Provided , of course, each page number is very boldly indicated in a prominent place (even on left top edge, odd on right top edge- as with my books ) it is not a problem if this unbound book disassembles, as it can be easily put back in right reading order again.
Remember by far the greatest source of print material always has been - and still is - your daily newspaper and it have never bothered with staples or hard covers.
If this casual seeming method works for the New York Times's four and a half pound super-whopper Sunday edition, it can certainly work for our books !
In the 19th century such cheap and democratic printing and binding methods produced the 'story paper' - an extremely cheaply priced book in the form of a newspaper.
I know the tale of the 19th century story paper well - for it was profits from this cheap book method that allowed George Munro to save my alma mater Dalhousie University back when it almost failed from lack of revenue.
Consider my books as a sort of homage to Dalhousie's "Great Benefactor" as it prepares to celebrate its two hundredth anniversary in 2018 as one of the world's great research universities.
Since Dr Dawson also was a graduate from Dalhousie, I don't doubt he will also appreciate my idea.
So good old fashioned paper will be what I offer you , if you want to read 'offline'.
Don't get me wrong - I love the internet but I will not be surprised if someday some wicked governments or corporations will try to restrict the right of certain ideas to be spread about.
This is where a low tech , time-tested , method of producing small (easily made and easily hid) books will still come in handy.
The PDF files can be carried about on a thumb drive and printed on anyone of our ever omnipresent computer printers and once again censored ideas have been freed.
If you are old enough to recall the famous series of "Little Blue Books" - 3.5 x 5 books of 64 pages in a clean clear 8pt font offering 15,000 uncensored words for only a 1930s nickel - you may sense my books' kinship.
For my printable books will also be 64 pages long with 15,000 plus or minus words - albeit on a larger 5.8 x 4.13 (aka A6 size) page and they too will allow unfashionable ideas (like agape love) to have their day in the court of public opinion.
The bricks and mortar book publishing triad of publishers, bookstores and libraries will complain you can't say much in 15,000 words.
Sometimes they are right - which is why my longish biography of Dr Dawson will be broken up into self-contained but linked 15,000 word chunks.
Again this part publication or serial publication is hardly new - it was how Dickens and Dostoyevsky and many other famous authors published most of their works.
It is how today's TV serials get their majestic strength , compared to the superficially brief movie.
Just because it is unpopular with multinational book firms does not mean it is unpopular with authors or readers.
For a reason no longer important for e-books , books of about two hundred fifty plus pages with a squared spine are the most effective self advertisers on the shelves of bookstores or libraries when displayed thin edge out.
Publishers had gone along with this demand for thick books , dragging reader and writer with them.
My part issue books are even a greater threat to conventional book publishers because it allows everyone not just to write a book and have someone else print it - now everyone can print up their own books at home on an ordinary computer print.
It is rarely realized that until the 1990s, self publishing of books with strong local appeal was extremely common --based on the fact that any small town job printer could print a folded and stapled book of 100 pages in length - a book with effectively no spine area to display title and author.
But when a "perfect bound" book with a broad squared spine became the minimum expected standard even among uneducated book buyers , this trade died away and specialized book printers and publishers using very expensive equipment had an effective monopoly on the business.
My downloadable book idea threatens their business model - I expect their withering and fierce resistance.
So be it - I like a good fight !
_________________
* Public Domain :
Both British and American drug companies failed to produce therapeutic penicillin during most of WWII because they and their governments were too intent on being the first to create a synthetic analogue of natural penicillin so that their nation could have a patent monopoly upon penicillin and thus charge high prices for it .
Dawson's natural penicillin G was in the Public Domain - every firm and nation on earth could and did produce it patent royalty free - and by doing so , their competition amongst themselves has kept the price of it down to this day.
Cheap penicillin means even the world's poorest countries can afford it .
And when they are free of the pools of endemic bacterial diseases that have plagued them for centuries, so too , by a sort of Herd Immunity , are we in the richer states.
So my Public Domain books honour this blessing to all humanity thrown up by the selfless nature of Dawson's public domain penicillin undertaking.
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