At long last! I’ve found all but the six dozen remaining typos, moved the drop caps to the right pages, and pulled out a few extraneous commas. And now all 1.1 megabytes, all 162 pages of The Irascible Gardener are available for your download for the low low LOW price of ten simoleons. If you have it. I’m not gonna whine if you can only spare a buck twenty-five.
To buy your copy, go to this Amazon Honor System pay page and drop some cash in the hat, and you’ll be given the download address at the conclusion of your transaction.
And because I know that 1) some people hate Amazon and b) some people (myself included) like to browse through a book before buying it and 3) I might have neglected to email someone who already gave me the ten bucks, I’ll provide the download link here for your convenience as well. As long as I don’t see like a hundred forty downloads of the book for every nickel people pay, we can use the honor system. E-book scammers should keep in mind, however, that I can at any time replace the book with a picture of Cheney kissing a goat.
thanks, chris! i read some, breezed through some more, and thought of several people who really need this book. the godess paypal should reflect my gifts to old friends.
Who did the cover? It’s nice!
It’s a photo of my front yard.
what are you charging for the Cheney/goat pic?
Thanks, a lot, for that Cheney/goat image. Now I’m going to have to wash my brain out with bleach. Yuck.
From back in September:
“According to the little visit counter at lower left, Creek Running North is going to have its 200,000th visitor sometime this weekend.
If that’s you, let me know by commenting here, and I’ll give you a copy of the Irascible Gardener e-book when it’s ready.”
Well, I collected my prize. I liked the opening essay especially, and will circulate it among fellow wielders of blue and red pencils. Thanks.
Nina gets one, too.
Uh…do you have a picture of Cheney kissing a goat? I mean, a real one, not a PhotoShoppery? And if so, don’t you think you should publish it anyway, you know, for the good of the nation, no matter how painful?
Now about your book, while I love the idea of digital publishing (so environmentally sound), I have to admit that I strongly prefer books in print. Portability is essential for me. If I can’t read it somewhere other than at my computer, I probably never will. So, any plans to put this book in print? (If you already said so somewhere else and I missed it or forgot, please forgive me — and please also point me toward the answer.)
Congratulations on your accomplishment. :)
Sara, I completely understand the need for portability.
And I have no plans to put this in print, primarily due to the overhead of time and/or cash involved in self-publishing and/or negotiating with a real publisher. (Though if any are lurking and interested, leave a note.)
I’m not inclined to read e-books off a monitor either, but in this case, it’s more than worth it. The layout is retina friendly, and I doubt I need to mention the writing quality.
But, about Cheney and the goat — that’s a very mean thing to say. About goats.
On behalf of ungulates everywhere, I protest the kissing of a goat by Cheney. It’s just cruel to the goat.
Congrats!
What’s it about?
I second Roxanne. Is it a book of musings, advice, both, something else?
A little from column A, a little from column B.
Gosh, am I the only one here who’s ever kissed a goat…a playful, chaste kiss, of course, and it was a committed relationship…
But Cheney on goat action…one shudders, for us and the goat.
Chris, I’ll be purchasing my own and some gift copies; never given an ebook before; not sure how it works? Does one send the download, or give the link to the download, after payment, of course?
Either way works for me, Leah, though the second might just be easier on your net connection.
I was thinking about ebooks today. About how to make them freely available to those who really don’t want to pay while still encouraging those who can easily pay to do so. And here’s a good way to do it.
Make two pdf versions of the book. One is the whole thing, and one is a separate file for each 1-2 chapters of the book. You rotate through the chapter links, one a week, so that people can read the current week’s chapter and then wait for next week’s, or go ahead and buy/donate and get a link for the rest. Make an e-mail list that automatically sends them the next link every week so that they don’t forget to come back.
Alternatively, require that they subscribe to the e-mail list in order to get any links at all.
It’s a technically demanding solution, sort of. (It could be done with a database table and a couple dozen lines of php + a cron entry.) And it probably requires you to e-mail links to the book when poeple pay. But it conserves your bandwidth and uses peoples’ impatience as a buying incentive, without leaving those of lesser means or interest out in the cold.
Myself, I might be interested it buying it, but not without reading through it a bit first, as I might in a bookstore. But I don’t want to download it before I pay for it, either, because I know I’ll probably never pay for it then, even if I like it.
So you’re saying that in order to facilitate people being able to read the thing for free — which they can now do by the simple expedient of downloading it — I ought to take on a huge amount of extra work.
Chris — I can’t download the book, even though I paid through the amazon thing.
I am interested in your book but it does not display when I hit the non Amazon link. I’ve tried over a couple of days and the result is the same — the page says Done but is blank.
It almost certainly won’t display in your browser window, unless you have one of those clunky “plug-in” versions of Acrobat.
Look for a file on your hard drive named “irasciblegardener.pdf”. That’s the book. Open it in Acrobat. Viola!
=v= Aww, nuts, I just accidentally downloaded it thanks to a touchy touchpad. (Honest!) I was hoping to actually do the honor system thing when I straightened out my credit card (long story). Can I just hand you a ten-spot or will that cause trouble with the IRS?
I already loved the Poison Oak chapter, but now it’s in the appropriate typeface. But where oh where is the dingbat that goes with it?
I just made a payment via Amazon Honor System, but when I tried to download te book using the link, it said that I don’t have access permission and also that the file is not found. Hmmmm… Wonder if it has it got something to do with the database problem you are experiencing. May be I will try later.
Talk about timing !!!! Just after I made the posting, I tried again to download the book and it worked !! So please ignore my previous comment.