Thoughts on Interaction Design

I received a dichotomy of reactions to my writing today: four good reviews of the work, and a rejection from the publisher who had requested the reviews. That's fine; I'm resolved to publish this myself. The text is a particular view of a particular topic, and the book isn't going to have the level of mainstream acceptance that can warrent a large publisher making money off it (in fact, I'm not sure a small publisher would make any money off it either).

So, on to self-publishing.

I've determined that I'm going to publish this myself, but I haven't the first idea of how to do that, so I've assembled a list of what I need to do. This list includes the creation of an LLC in the state of Georgia, securing all of the necessary rights and permissions, and then designing and printing the sucker.

1. Reserve the LLC Name ($25)
2. Create and file the Articles of Organization, or F.231, with the state of Georgia ($100)
3. Secure an EIN number from the IRS ($free?!)
4. Open a business bank account
5. Obtain ISBN numbers from the monopoly known as Bowker ($240)
6. Register copyright with the US Copyright Office ($45)
7. Obtain permissions for all quotes and imagery
8. Final edit with editor
9. Create barcode.
10. Hire a designer to layout the text
11. Create the online web presence for the text
12. Print the sucker
13. List the text in Books In Print, which seems to be the way to get listed as a stub entry in Amazon
14. Sell. Kevin Kelly writes in a bit of detail on selling DIY publications.
15. Decide if I ever want to do it again; rinse, repeat?

Yikes.

Brown Bear LLC formally exists.

I own ten ISBN numbers now :)

Since I was as young a writing student as I can remember, I have been taught to cite my sources; I was instructed that you could use any material you wanted to strengthen your argument - in fact, the more material you had to substantiate whatever you were saying, the better - but citations were critical to staying legitimate, and that without citations, you were breaking the rules. The rules eventually became the law, and I was always under the impression that one could face penalties if they didn't cite their sources in professional work.

Now that I'm working on publishing my own material, I've found that I have been led astray. Citing your sources is nice - it's kind of like tipping the waitress after a good meal. But you can't use other work in your text - cited or otherwise - without explicit permission from the author or copyright holder. Fair use doesn't extend to commercial work, and while it is vague enough to seem like it would cover academic-style writing that is written for profit, I'm certainly not going to put my bank account on the line and get sued over a few quotes.

So I spent the day identifying the source of over a hundred quotes in my small book, finding the publisher and respective address for the permissions department, and writing letters to each one asking for permission to use their words. It was tedious, but now it's done. I suppose if they don't grant me permission, I'll need to find another way to say what I want to say, but doing something as menial as that sort of made the book seem all the more "real".

It also made me truly respect the creative commons style of ownership; I'm considering actually publishing my own work under that style of "copyright", allowing others to quote liberally.

I owe a mean spirited letter to my high school English teachers. Citing your sources. Sheesh.