Terry, It is like being struck by lightning, procuring an agent to quiry publishers. I've written five books, two published and available on Barnes and Noble and Amazon. I formatted my books through BookNook.biz. in paperback, and digital copies. ($1500) You want a barcode, Library of Congress patent, and download it for printing on Amazon, supply On Demand which was free.. if you have any questions, ask me. I had a talented guy at Book ook, I recommend , Zvonamir.
The publishing market is insanely competitive, Terry, and I appreciate your difficulties. Regardless of how well you think you can write and edit yourself, I would still recommend getting the book professionally edited and possibly also doing a writing class in non-fiction or creative non-fiction, for example, with Masterclass.
i think that this is important work that could have great impact.
i think you will need to hone it razor sharp, and reflect on who the voice is and what the tone is - so it speaks personally as well as factually. imagine if david sedaris wrote every fifth line! kidding, but yeah, forceful, funny, unapologetic, tight, read in 1-2 nights.
i’d love to help honestly! i need to make my own cheat sheet of it anyway to really internalize the rationale - i will share that once i have something.
You are correct, of course, that the book goes into way too much detail (and repeats certain points many times), since I put out ALL the material I had written, because I didn't want to pre-judge what was most important or engaging. I had hoped to get an editor from a publisher to hone a shorter version. The "voice" is a challenge, because if I avoid all my "academic" language ("the bulk of the evidence suggests"), there is a risk of sounding arrogant and overly certain about my views (exactly the thing I complain about politicians exhibiting). I'm uncertain about whether it is worth spending a lot of time honing it BEFORE I get an editor... I am assuming editors are happier cutting out stuff than begging an author to explain something more thoroughly. I imagined that significant chunks of the book might be relegated to appendices, rather than fully eliminated. I also had a plan to write brief fictional diary entries inserted between each chapter... by imagined ordinary people selected for a mini-public in some future sortition democracy... revealing how personal relationships between dissimilar people might form, etc. etc. But I haven't tackled that... it would be a mini-short-story to help people imagine how it might look. I am definitely open to getting help.
love the interstitial idea, lots of potential there - i will email you, i’m in the DWE group, saw you on the call sunday, i’ll ask on the discord how to reach you, or you can reach me corbinsupak at icloud dot com
I also like the between-chapter story idea. Right now I would be amazed if you got a publisher because the book is very academic (ie perfect for people like us who pore over the details, but bad for neophytes who have a thousand things to worry about and citizens assemblies not being one of them).
If you’re looking for inspiration, the best book I’ve seen do this type of interstitial story form is Gödel Escher Bach. Each chapter begins with a short story/vignette between a couple of recurring characters, and the story is a metaphor for what the following, non-fiction part of the chapter will talk about.
If you want some easy inspiration, go use one of the frontier AI models (Claude 3.5 sonnet or ChatGPT’s 4-o models), copy + paste one of your chapters in, and then suffix the prompt with:
“write a short story that will precede this chapter that is a metaphor for the topics discussed in chapter, and do it in the style of Douglas Hofstadter’s “Gödel, Escher, Bach” book where his non-fiction chapters are preceded with short vignettes with the characters Achilles, the Hare, and the Crab”
If this seems bothersome to you DM me and I’ll do it for you!
I don't think the in between chapter bits should necessarily have anything to do with the particular chapters on either side (there are chunks of history, cognitive bias science, etc.)... They would just be a series of diary entries from two or three participants who interact in a sortition process that humanize the experience of what democracy could be like. I imagine (for example) revealing how very different people interacting discover new knowledge that benefits the group process, if that can be managed in an entertaining way, etc. So your prompt idea is not quite on the mark, but I am not averse to your fiddling with it using some LLM and sharing that with me. .. To get the creative juices flowing... It isn't the WORDS I need help with... it is a plot outline... a story.
yeah, i think it works tightly attached to the subject matter pretty naturally. I think sortition concepts are best learned immersively, so it’d be great if as a reader, i experience it as i learn of it. Because, I don’t think learning it is much of an issue as trusting it, which experience helps grow. The book could provide that experience, the first step in your recommended path anyway. Then maybe there’s a ‘call to action’, a way for readers to now participate online, and, having seen the tutorial (jk!), do it themselves.
It’s your book so I don’t want to tell you what to do, but I think your idea of the interstitial story and my suggestion are perfectly compatible.
I think all I’m suggesting to tweak is that each in-between-chapter-bit have themes that are recognizable in the following chapter. So if the chapter is going to be about cognitive bias science, the in-between-chapter-bit could have part where one member of the hypothetical assembly displays some cognitive bias, the other citizens point out and mitigate that bias in a way that makes clear how politicians continually suffer from such biases and rarely have them called out. These stories ground the discursive chapter bits in relatable characters that the reader roots for, and thus wants to learn more about.
My memory is hazy, but I bet you could find real life examples of such stories from Gastil and Knobloch’s “Hope for Democracy” book which follows the format of story followed by discursive writing. Hey that’s a good source of inspiration as well!
and re: not wanting to sound like ‘those people’ with too loose a tongue, forget it, go deep that direction, raw terry, which might attract distributors, and, due to its content, is unique.
Recently Bryan Caplan has been coming out with some informational but entertaining graphic novels with this structure. See this one about housing regulation (omg so boring!) for example:
Terry, It is like being struck by lightning, procuring an agent to quiry publishers. I've written five books, two published and available on Barnes and Noble and Amazon. I formatted my books through BookNook.biz. in paperback, and digital copies. ($1500) You want a barcode, Library of Congress patent, and download it for printing on Amazon, supply On Demand which was free.. if you have any questions, ask me. I had a talented guy at Book ook, I recommend , Zvonamir.
Good luck Holly
Really great work Terry, and I’ll be an early customer for the publication.
The publishing market is insanely competitive, Terry, and I appreciate your difficulties. Regardless of how well you think you can write and edit yourself, I would still recommend getting the book professionally edited and possibly also doing a writing class in non-fiction or creative non-fiction, for example, with Masterclass.
My personal experience with self-publishing: you're a drop within the big, blue sea. Without a publishing house and its publicity, you're inexistent.
i think that this is important work that could have great impact.
i think you will need to hone it razor sharp, and reflect on who the voice is and what the tone is - so it speaks personally as well as factually. imagine if david sedaris wrote every fifth line! kidding, but yeah, forceful, funny, unapologetic, tight, read in 1-2 nights.
i’d love to help honestly! i need to make my own cheat sheet of it anyway to really internalize the rationale - i will share that once i have something.
really value this work!
You are correct, of course, that the book goes into way too much detail (and repeats certain points many times), since I put out ALL the material I had written, because I didn't want to pre-judge what was most important or engaging. I had hoped to get an editor from a publisher to hone a shorter version. The "voice" is a challenge, because if I avoid all my "academic" language ("the bulk of the evidence suggests"), there is a risk of sounding arrogant and overly certain about my views (exactly the thing I complain about politicians exhibiting). I'm uncertain about whether it is worth spending a lot of time honing it BEFORE I get an editor... I am assuming editors are happier cutting out stuff than begging an author to explain something more thoroughly. I imagined that significant chunks of the book might be relegated to appendices, rather than fully eliminated. I also had a plan to write brief fictional diary entries inserted between each chapter... by imagined ordinary people selected for a mini-public in some future sortition democracy... revealing how personal relationships between dissimilar people might form, etc. etc. But I haven't tackled that... it would be a mini-short-story to help people imagine how it might look. I am definitely open to getting help.
love the interstitial idea, lots of potential there - i will email you, i’m in the DWE group, saw you on the call sunday, i’ll ask on the discord how to reach you, or you can reach me corbinsupak at icloud dot com
I also like the between-chapter story idea. Right now I would be amazed if you got a publisher because the book is very academic (ie perfect for people like us who pore over the details, but bad for neophytes who have a thousand things to worry about and citizens assemblies not being one of them).
If you’re looking for inspiration, the best book I’ve seen do this type of interstitial story form is Gödel Escher Bach. Each chapter begins with a short story/vignette between a couple of recurring characters, and the story is a metaphor for what the following, non-fiction part of the chapter will talk about.
If you want some easy inspiration, go use one of the frontier AI models (Claude 3.5 sonnet or ChatGPT’s 4-o models), copy + paste one of your chapters in, and then suffix the prompt with:
“write a short story that will precede this chapter that is a metaphor for the topics discussed in chapter, and do it in the style of Douglas Hofstadter’s “Gödel, Escher, Bach” book where his non-fiction chapters are preceded with short vignettes with the characters Achilles, the Hare, and the Crab”
If this seems bothersome to you DM me and I’ll do it for you!
Alex,
moving to email... contact me at terrybour@gmail.com
I don't think the in between chapter bits should necessarily have anything to do with the particular chapters on either side (there are chunks of history, cognitive bias science, etc.)... They would just be a series of diary entries from two or three participants who interact in a sortition process that humanize the experience of what democracy could be like. I imagine (for example) revealing how very different people interacting discover new knowledge that benefits the group process, if that can be managed in an entertaining way, etc. So your prompt idea is not quite on the mark, but I am not averse to your fiddling with it using some LLM and sharing that with me. .. To get the creative juices flowing... It isn't the WORDS I need help with... it is a plot outline... a story.
yeah, i think it works tightly attached to the subject matter pretty naturally. I think sortition concepts are best learned immersively, so it’d be great if as a reader, i experience it as i learn of it. Because, I don’t think learning it is much of an issue as trusting it, which experience helps grow. The book could provide that experience, the first step in your recommended path anyway. Then maybe there’s a ‘call to action’, a way for readers to now participate online, and, having seen the tutorial (jk!), do it themselves.
It’s your book so I don’t want to tell you what to do, but I think your idea of the interstitial story and my suggestion are perfectly compatible.
I think all I’m suggesting to tweak is that each in-between-chapter-bit have themes that are recognizable in the following chapter. So if the chapter is going to be about cognitive bias science, the in-between-chapter-bit could have part where one member of the hypothetical assembly displays some cognitive bias, the other citizens point out and mitigate that bias in a way that makes clear how politicians continually suffer from such biases and rarely have them called out. These stories ground the discursive chapter bits in relatable characters that the reader roots for, and thus wants to learn more about.
My memory is hazy, but I bet you could find real life examples of such stories from Gastil and Knobloch’s “Hope for Democracy” book which follows the format of story followed by discursive writing. Hey that’s a good source of inspiration as well!
please loop me in on that result!
yes, agree with that form,
and re: not wanting to sound like ‘those people’ with too loose a tongue, forget it, go deep that direction, raw terry, which might attract distributors, and, due to its content, is unique.
maybe it’s a graphic novel and You’re the interstitial, or narrator.
Oooh interesting I like this too.
Recently Bryan Caplan has been coming out with some informational but entertaining graphic novels with this structure. See this one about housing regulation (omg so boring!) for example:
https://www.amazon.com/Build-Baby-Science-Housing-Regulation/dp/1952223415/