Hacking the Earth

Today my collection of essays about geoengineering, Hacking the Earth, goes on sale. It gathers together the major pieces I've written about geoengineering, here and at Worldchanging; I've edited most of them to bring the content up to date, eliminate the bloggier aspects ("such and such just appeared at this link"), and give it a bit more flow.
This is my "have to have a book in print" stake in the ground, at least for now. It's sometimes surprising how important a print publication still is in many knowledge and analysis fields. It doesn't matter if it's widely read, it just needs to exist.
This is also an experiment in publish-on-demand. Rather than go through a traditional publisher, I'm trying out Lulu.com. This gives me a bit more control over the content, and allows me to put something about on a subject that probably won't be generating a lot of mainstream attention for another couple of years.
If you decide to buy a copy, thank you. If not, thank you, too. I'm really curious about how well this model of book publishing works, in terms of both success and failure.
I don't think I have any more geoengineering items lined up right now. Therefore, I declare Terraformingstock over for now.









Comments
Have you considered putting out a Kindle edition as well? I know I can download from Lulu, but it'd be easier for me to grab from Amazon. And it'd be nice to have someone self-publish something worth reading on the device.
Posted by: Thomas | February 11, 2009 7:45 AM
Thomas beat me to my intended comment. I'd also like to be able to grab it from Amazon for my Kindle.
Posted by: Gary K. | March 5, 2009 10:01 AM
It looks like a Kindle version will take some serious formatting work. I tried doing a straight conversion of PDF to Kindle -- using Amazon's own conversion service -- and the results aren't pretty.
I'll see what I can do, though. Now that I have a Kindle myself, I can make sure it works before making anything public.
Posted by: Jamais Cascio
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March 5, 2009 10:33 AM
Jamais,
Drop the MS into Word, then upload the .doc file: the Kindle formatter plays with that more nicely, but you'll have to modify your TOC to be simple, and small.
Off to buy a copy of your book!
Posted by: RJ | March 20, 2009 11:58 AM