In the world I grew up in (grad. high school 52, college 57), communication was by phone and letter. I was comfortable with that. It never occurred to me it would change. When the fax machine came along, I was stunned. How could text and even drawings be sent over a phone line? Well, look where we’re at now. I don’t remember when I last wrote a (non e-mail) letter.

And in publishing books, we used to prepare “mechanicals” (text and graphics) — large paper sheets and take them into the printers to be photographed for film, which was used to prepare aluminum plates for the press. Then the Macintosh came along, and all that changed. We adapted. In fact, the film for our 1973 book Shelter is now being scanned and converted to digital files, since printing plants are ceasing film-based printing.

Now, we’re apparently headed for a sea of change in the publishing industry. I haven’t studied it extensively, since I barely have enough time to work on book projects as is, but I’m keenly interested in what’s now going on out in the publishosphere..

For some reason, I feel a bit like the South Pacific natives in the last scene of Mondo Cane (1962 documentary) who thought that cargo planes were gods (I refer to the clueless, not reverential aspect of this scenario).

Our books are distributed by Publishers Group West, who in turn are owned by Perseus Books Group. Perseus has just set up a facility called Constellation to assist their client/publishers in navigating the digital world (“towards a digital strategy”). I went to a Constellation seminar in Berkeley a few days ago, and here are a few random facts I picked up:

-If you believe the media, the publishing world is in a state of turmoil. “Desperate,” “losing control,” “downward trend,” “bleak future…” Yeah, well maybe — maybe — things aren’t quite so desperate. Our bookstore sales have actually gone up this year. Books ain’t dead. “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” -Mark Twain

-There were 140,000 self published titles in 2009. This is incredible. Power to the individual.

-There are way more e-book devices than I realized. At Book Expo America in New York in May, Perseus will have 18 devices on display. Different features, different formats, different requirements. It’s dizzying. The iPad has got competition.

-We have some out-of-print books that we are now resuscitating with Print-on-demand and short run printing. Like Mrs. Restino’s Country Kitchen, our 1996 book about cooking from your garden, which was ahead of its time, or our 1983 book Aerobic Tennis, about using tennis to get in shape. Some of our old books are seeing the light of day once again.

-Right now, e-book sales are handled by Amazon, Sony, eBrary, Overdrive, e-books.com, Follet, Ingram e-books, BN e-books, and Kobo (Shortliners). Phew!

-I’ve been reading the New York Times on the web about every day. The other day when I went to Berkeley, I picked up a copy of the paper, and boy, what a difference!

We’ll keep publishing “hard copy” books forever. We’re also starting work on converting some of our books to e-books.

It’s an exciting time for communicators.

I got the idea to do a book on tiny houses about a year ago. After all, the main theme of our 1973 book Shelter was the small house. Instead of borrowing money from a bank to buy an existing house, you’d do it yourself. We showed designs, with drawings by Bob Easton, of five small houses, each with a different roof shape.

This idea has really taken off in the last few years. There’s a ton of material out there on tiny houses. So I began exploring the web and copying down URLs of websites with good material. I did this on and off for about a year, while we finished up other projects.

In December, 2009, I started a review of all these websites and all this material. Which I’ve just finished. I have about 100 folders assembled here: tiny houses on land, on wheels, on the water; cabins, shacks, sheds; saunas, studios, greenhouses, chicken coops;. Small living — urban or country. A ton of wonderful material.

Next week I’ll start contacting these people. I’ll be seeking permission to use photos and stories. We can’t pay much, if anything for photos, since our books have 1000-1200 photos each. And, as is usual, I have no idea what the book will be like. My method is to start assembling pages and let the book take on its own form. So here goes, our first major building book since Builders of the Pacific Coast.

Above: my photo of cabin by Vin Gorman (one of the featured builders in the above book).

From Mark Coker on his Smashwords blog March 20, 2010:

“According to the AAP (Association of American Publishers), in 2009 ebooks accounted for 3.31% of all trade book sales, up from only 1.19% in 2008. Even if sales stay flat from January onward in 2010, we’re looking at ebooks accounting for 6-8% of U.S. book sales in 2010. If sales accelerate further, a 10% monthly run rate is certainly likely by the end of this year. These numbers are dramatically higher than most reasonably-minded industry watchers predicted even a few months ago.…”

“In January, during Amazon’s quarterly earnings conference call, Jeff Bezos announced that for books it sells in both Kindle and print formats, ebooks were then accounting for 60% of unit sales.…”

“…the latest Book Industry Study Group survey.…BISG found that 47% of all ebook reading is happening not on these new-fangled devices, but on ordinary computer screens.”

https://blog.smashwords.com/2010/03/ebook-market-exploding-says-new-idpf.html

The Power of boingboing: we got over 6000 hits on our website for our septic systems book from this mention on boingboing by By Mark Frauenfelder on Feb. 23, 2010:

“The late Peter Aschwanden was best known for his extremely detailed and humorous illustrations for John Muir’s 1969 book, How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot. His cover illustration for The Septic System Owner’s Manual almost makes me wish I had a septic tank.”

At Peter’s website, you can order books, posters, and T-shirts. His “Exploded Bug” poster (above) is amazing! https://www.peteraschwanden.com

For the last year I’ve been saving URLs of websites, blogs, anything on the internet on the subject of tiny houses. I ended up with over 100 URLs and about a month ago I started going through them and printing out photos and text, which I then file in folders in a filing cabinet. I have maybe 70 file folders now. I have 2-3 weeks more of checking out the blogs and websites. Each reference I go to usually leads me to find other things on the web.

I have no idea right now what the book will look like. After I have all the files assembled, I’ll go through them and make notes and start figuring out the categories, and the flow of the book. Then I have to contact all the bloggers and photographers. I’ll then do non-electronic layouts, sizing photos on my 10-year-old HP color copy machine ($250 new). I’ll get Lew to look stuff over. It will then go to David for artistic tune-up, then to Rick for book construction.

I’ve got some wonderful material. There might just be a movement out there of people simplifying their lives, taking care of their own shelter needs with their own hands. Sort of looks like that to me. This is gonna be a great book! We’ll try to keep up our standards of 1000 photos per book. The vast amount of material we have in our books means that we can only pay a few major contributors. But we do offer blog and website publicity for all participants.

-Above photo from: https://www.betterbarns.com/. These guys are an example of what’s out there.