New Things And Old Problems

Not Books Or Not Not Books? That is
the rather confusing question.

In the spirit of blogging more often but with less verbiage here's a quick one just to set down what's going off in the world of everyone's favourite monkey-themed indie author with the initials LS.

I have been messing about with video content. This has lead to me delaying the release of a review because I wanted to put up a video segment to go with it. I'm beginning to reconsider. Vloggers of all stripes put a lot of effort into their craft and, until I have time, I still can't legitimately partake in this hobby, I just feel I can't produce content of the requisite quality.

I'm considering going back into podcasting again. The No Dice podcast was fun for a couple of years, the Tarot podcast I did with Mrs Monkey worked out great and was really a sort of defined set of content that we were happy to donate to the world. Podfade is always a fear but I have some ideas on that front.

I'd like to do a little more software development, not sure what though, a game? I never wanted to develop a game but I am thinking about it now. A web site? I have some ideas but I do believe a website should support an existing social movement or function, not try to create its own. Manuscript V2? Well, further development on Manuscript is needed. Something will happen. That I'm pretty sure of.

The concerns I have are two fold. One, too much to do, too little time. The other surrounds the assignment of an ISBN to my Smashwords published version of TSM. Although I have done the reading and am satisfied that Smashwords are donating the ISBN in a "non-evil" manner as a service I still have a political issue with ISBNs themselves.

I like the idea that a book type object (electronic or paper) with no ISBN is, according to this ludicrous bureaucracy, not a book. This even has tax implications. I like the fact that the earnings from a book with no ISBN are "product revenue" not "royalties". I am amused by the notion that such a ridiculous technical distinction even exists. I revel in the fact that I publish under the moniker "notbooks".

If I take Smashwords up on the offer of a free ISBN then my Notbook will become a Book. I'm not super bothered about whether certain bookshops won't sell my stuff because it has no ISBN. I would love to frustrate the bureaucracy by producing stuff people want to read that they refuse to buy because of a technical discrepancy in record-keeping.

But still... maybe I'm just being stupid. I genuinely don't know. I would have to come up with a new name for my "publishing house" because the whole point of "Not Books" is that they're well... not books.

Hmmm...