My newest book spans 300 million years, with tales of chemical warfare and sex changes.  Due to its epic scope, I guess I should be pleased that it only took me fifteen years to research and eighteen months to write and polish.

Sugar Hill: A Microcosm of Central Appalachian Ecology is one part trail guide and two parts stories about our local ecology, flora, and fauna.  The book is now available for $7 in ebook format...or you can just read the whole thing for free on its website.  Even if you never plan to visit southwest Virginia, I suspect the book will explain at least one mystery relevant to your own ecosystem.  Enjoy!

Remember my post about why you shouldn't bother patenting your invention?  In case you need a non-fiscal reason, you should check out Flash of Genius.  The movie represents the true story of Robert Kearns' struggle to protect his windshield wiper invention from being stolen by the Ford Motor Company.  I won't ruin the movie for you, but suffice it to say that Kearns loses pretty much everything during the process, although he does eventually win a wad of cash a decade or more later.

Microbusiness Independence leads you in a journey in the entirely opposite direction.  The goal of our ebook is to help folks start a business that will supplement their lives, not take it over.  Shouldn't you work to live instead of live to work?

The biggest factor that separates Microbusiness Independence from the hundreds of get rich quick ebooks out there is that we advocate simple living.  We firmly believe that every entrepreneur should make a budget and stick to it.  Then, once you've made as much money as you want to make that year, step back and enjoy it!  Go backpacking abroad, lie in your hammock, or write a novel --- remember that you work to live instead of live to work.

What is simple living?  Also known as voluntary simplicity, simple living is the opposite of traditional American consumerism.  Author Duane Elgin wrote "we can describe voluntary simplicity as a manner of living that is outwardly more simple and inwardly more rich."  Basically, if you drop your belief that you need to buy a new car, a big house, and so forth, you'll end up with huge amounts of time to spend on things (and people) you really care about.  Plus, by consuming less, you're helping the environment.

Mark and I put in only a few hours a week on paid work, which leaves us days to build our homestead from scratch and to build our own relationship.  I'm never surprised to hear about the high divorce rates in modern America --- after all, if both spouses go off to work for eight plus hours a day, what time is left to laugh and share and grow together?

One great thing about ebooks is that you can sell them in a lot of different ways.  We currently sell our microbusiness ebook on our own website and have listed it on Google books for more free exposure.  Time to see whether it's worth our while to sell our ebook to an even wider audience through Amazon's Kindle Store.

Uploading our ebook to Google was quite painless, but I can't same the same for uploading the same ebook to Amazon.  At the moment, Amazon recommends that you upload your ebook in MS Word, HTML, or PRC format.  When I converted my OpenOffice file to a Word file then uploaded it, the result was wonky.  Next, I decided to give PDF a shot since Amazon allows ebooks to be uploaded in PDF format (though they warn of low conversion quality.)  My conclusion?  Amazon was right --- their conversion of PDF files is even worse.

While fighting with file formats, I decided to poke around and see what the finances of listing an ebook on Amazon look like.  Google makes their money by putting a bit of advertising on the side of your book page, but Amazon's business model involves getting money directly from the sale of your book.  And Amazon's commission is quite steep --- they take 65% of the retail price as their own profit before giving you a 35% royalty.

For the moment, I've decided to give up on listing our ebook on Amazon.  It looks like I'd need to manually reformat an html file to make our book look pretty again, which just sounds like too much work if they're taking such a big commission.  I'd be curious to hear if other folks have decided that selling ebooks through Amazon is worth their while.

When we submitted Microbusiness Independence to Google Books, I was ready to wait a month or two to see my information live.  Imagine my surprise to check back a week later and see our book in place!

At the moment, our book's title is misspelled, but I have high hopes that will be fixed with a little patience.  Otherwise, I have to say that the uploading process was astonishingly easy and quick.

Of course, I'll have to wait and see whether listing our book on Google sends us more customers.  As usual, I'll keep you informed!

Meanwhile, feel free to check out our ebook for information about creating your own job.

If you've read our ebook about starting a small business and quitting your job, you'll remember that one of my top pieces of advice is to keep your costs low.  We're just starting to apply the lessons we learned with our last microbusiness to our new ebook and are discovering that ebooks are even easier than physical products to market on the cheap, especially if you leverage Google Books.

What is Google Books?  This facet of the big search engine company allows publishers and authors to send their books to Google so that the entire book can be searchable over the internet.  You can set options so that visitors can view anywhere from 20% to 100% of your book for free online, including or excluding pictures.  I've often been searching for a bit of info, ended up in the middle of a book listed on Google Books, and become so enthralled by the book that I headed straight to the library to read the 80% that isn't freely listed online.  I assume that most folks aren't quite as cheap as I am, and instead plunk down some cash to buy books like this, especially since Google Books will link directly to the page on your website where visitors can buy your book.

Google Books amounts to free advertising, and the website is set up to make it easy for ebook publishers to list their writings.  If you don't already have a Google account, you'll need to sign up for one.  Then add in a bit of contact information and upload a pdf file of your book (or mail in a paper copy, but this will take much, much longer.)  Since you probably won't have an ISBN number, you'll have to skip over "1. Tell us about your books" and go straight to "2. Send us your books."  If the file you're uploading contains the cover and the content of the book all together, rename the file to match the title of your book and upload it as is.  Otherwise, you'll need to read Google's simple instructions about naming the cover files and content files.

Then be patient and wait for your book to show up.  This is the stage I'm at --- I'll be sure to update you on how the next steps go once I get to them.

I woke up this morning to our first piece of fan mail for our microbusiness ebook.  Stephen from the Invention Addict blog says:

Thanks so much, Stephen!  It's emails like this that remind me our ebook isn't disappearing into the void!

There are several ways to sell an ebook, some easier and cheaper than others.  Unfortunately, the cheap ways tend to require a bit more effort.  Since I'm a firm believer in keeping costs extremely low so that we can sell our ebooks for just a few dollars apiece, I'm working out the kinks in our ebook delivery system.

The cheapest way to sell an ebook online is to add Paypal "buy it now" buttons to your website, the way we have with our work from home ebook page.  Paypal takes payment information from your customers, then deposits them on a page where they can download your ebook.  Of course, Paypal does take their typical cut of the action, but you don't have to pay an additional service to send the ebook to your customers, and your customers also don't have to wait on you to email them a copy of the book.

Unfortunately, the link back to the download page after customers make their payment on Paypal is not as obvious as it could be.  I've added the screenshot shown here to our store page in hopes it'll help our customers figure out where to click.  If this doesn't do the trick, I may have to come up with a more complicated solution --- customers (very rightly) get cranky when they can't download their ebooks immediately.

The exhilerating launch of our home business ebook is now in progress.  I was a little bit worried that no one would be interested in our ebook, but have been thrilled at the response.  Thanks to everyone who took the plunge and bought the book just from seeing it linked on our homestead blog!  I guess now we can start sharing it with the world.

As the gardening season winds down to an end, we finally found time to take our Microbusiness Independence ebook off the back burner and share it with the world.  We hope it inspires you to simplify your life and focus on what's really important --- and gives you the tools to make those dreams a reality.

Meanwhile, we've dusted off a couple of old favorites --- the chicken ebooks that we include in every automatic chicken waterer order.  For the first time, people who don't want chicken waterers can order the books alone.

What's next on the horizon?  I've spent the last year working on a book that explores central Appalachian ecology while also serving as a trail guide to a local park.  I hope to have that ready both as an ebook and a website by the end of the year.  Stay tuned!