An Inmate over on ADVrider.com and UKGSer.com (I think?) - sums-up maintaining an on-line blog, which goes something like this:

'My blog is my personal journal and is a gift from Me, at the contemporaneous time of writing it .. to The Future Me.

When I'm sitting alone in my condominium retirement flat, with most of my neighbouring flat-owners typically staring out of their windows, waiting for God and wishfully thinking [alas, too late] 'if only' - I'll be re-reading my journals and remembering that maybe, just maybe, I did something a little special and 'off piste' when I had the chance.

Plus the old-biddy chicks in-and-around the condo .. simply won't be able to keep their hands off me! .. '

Now there's forward thinking, eh?!

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Right Way Round ...

That is your choice. The books in the highstreet have passed the professional editor's USP test. A self-publisher or blog writer doesn't need to pass this hurdle.

It is very straight forward to download any online blog: either save the webpage (still in html format) to your device's harddisk for later offline reading in a browser, or "print" it to pdf format, so you can read it on your device later (offline in any pdf viewing software, including a browser) on a plane/train/automobile. Or actually print it onto paper.


A word-limited magazine article is clearly very different to a "proper" book. However, there's really IMO no difference to someone writing a very detailed blog/ride report to a book, other than one might still (today, but not for much longer imho) be on paper. There are some blogs on the HUBB, but especially at Ride Reports - Epic Rides | Adventure Rider where there have been hundreds of thousands or even millions of clicks = "reads".

Those million-plus authors don't reach that popularity by just skimming the surface of their tale. They also don't have all the stress that someone who wants to be "published" will face, as described by the OP. And maybe in a more satisfying way, they can interact with their audience while writing their story.

PS. Having written (and am currently writing...) a Ride Report, it may be dirty, but it ain't quick in any way, shape or form. It take a long time, but as with some "proper" writers, it is a labour of love. As suggested by Keith, I can read it back to myself later, while fending off the other wrinklies in the care home who think I'm a card carrying hero, or as the son of a Colombian mate of mine described me on Facebook: "The f***ing dad of the warriors"

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TBS.com

Yes it is, and I was never disputing the value of choice so I don't understand the relevance of that statement. What I was commenting on was the stupidity of the remark that no one buys books anymore. Clearly they do, with the UK book market alone reaching in excess of £2billion. Of that around £200million is ebooks, so the majority of the market, by a long way, still belongs to traditionally printed books but the ebook market is still not insignificant.

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1990 Landcruiser H60. Full rebuild completed 2014

Yeah, I had that plan too! I'm still a bit short of the retirement flat but back in the day we did take notes and pictures with one eye on (our) posterity. The books fell by the wayside but I eventually found enough of the notes to make a start on a website:

Pisquick Tours

Sadly it's failed miserably to attract hordes of "old-biddy chicks" but I live in hope

Wow! Respect.

I can see from Pisquick Tours that you were covering quite serious 2-up moto distances across Europe back in the late 1960s and early '70s.

That was 20 years ahead of me and 'er indoors. And there was us thinking [.. duh?!] back in the day - with obvious self-delusion - that we were trail-blazing pioneers.

You should revive and elaborate upon Pisquick Tours (a fab title btw) and I reckon that throughout your golden years you'll be combing a wrinkly ol' biddy out of your long & bushy white beard every morning - bloody guaranteed!

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Right Way Round ...

An interesting take on publication challenges. Though like anything there are many ways to skin a cat. My wife, Autumn Birt (look her up) has 13 books now to her name. I have three. All have been self published. All cover art, marketing, and sweat done by us. The only outsourcing has been some stock art for the covers and a freelance editor to do the final edit after several rereads. All of our books are available via e-book and also print on demand that allows a person to "buy" hard copy and it shows up like a standard book.

In our opinion, bookstores are quaint and not really applicable to future sales which is a shame but a sign of the times. I now tend to to buy all my book on my kindle for the mobility.

Total cost from start to finish on a book is about $500 at the most and that is pushing it. That being said....it is a lot of work to learn but once the process is learned it becomes easier. The final hurdle however is marketing we would love to push a bit further into the market.]

On a side note: She did have a traditional publisher early on...but told them to take a walk. Too many games and too much $ taken out for the work put in.

Glad to hear from other self-publishers!!!

One question please: what this $500 includes?

Thanks a lot ;-)

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The Pin Project | Overland Greece

I will never tire of praising amazon for the number of authors who got a chance to publish themselves. I will certainly appreciate at least one of her books.

Very interesting thread!

From the sight of actual and future book sales I totally disagree that there is only place for an ebook sales market.

There are and there will be in future still 2 reasons why you want to buy offline: You want it right know in the moment and you want or need to feel the haptic experience. In terms of books that means you want to take in your hands (and yes, you want to smell it - I have seen this behavior a lot in bookstores!), you want to browse the pages and to snack a little read before you buy.

Equal where I have been in the world I recognized that every country has its own travel season and that book stores are bringing this season to the front windows and presentation desks. And in another seasonal event like the weeks before X-mas book stores are fully filled with books to everything which could be attractive as a present.

This kind of marketing - the presentation of the book itself and its promoting by the book store staff you will never create online as an unknown author. Thats why still a lot of famous and of course unknown authors go out for a reading event to local book stores everywhere.

You think you can substitute this through social media campaigns? Nope, you cannot because you won`t get recognize at all in the sum of uncountless influences which drop down to peoples social media accounts.

I think self publishing is an exiting and a relative cheap way to bring a book into a market. But especially in todays and future times you will need a clear strategy to be successsful. You will defintely need an online and an offline sales strategy to get noticed for creating your sales numbers.

This because why only having a printed or a digital book you are competing with the social video market known as youtube & co. Video is the new book! You don`t belive it? Believe it and check at youtube: "new books 2022" or "travel books 2022". Even the biggest publishing companies have to use video campaigns to promote and to sell!

I think there has never been a better chance in the book market than now for you as an unknown author to launch your product. The mass of consumers aren`t in buying and reading ebooks so far. In the age of 18-29 40% buy and read ebook. In the age 30-49 just 30% of north americans do. From 40yrs on people are buying much more paper books than ebooks!

It makes sense to combine offline with online: means you to have to have a paper book and an ebook and you need campains or a strategy to link both with eachother.
And for this you have to clearly know what you want to sell: informations or adventures or both together!

If you look to the well known travel video channels on youtube e.g. where travellers sell both in form of a vlog you will recognized that they start cooperations with the industry and with equal travellers, that they sell clothing with logos and that they offer informations to their audience. Sometimes its free, sometimes its costs because its behind a paywall in form of a pseudo academy or you have to be a paying patreon.

The marketing concepts these travellers use are often uniform but some of them are very clever how they do it. But the last thing they do to make money from the travel project is offering a book to their followers. Before they do this they have sold a nice amount of calendar showing their travel photos.

If you plan to sell a book equal made of trees or of electrons it will help you if you had fed social media accounts before to get noticed and to create followers as multipliers.

If you lost that opportunity than its an argument more to tackle the paper book consumer with your strategy the same way as you do it to the ebook reader. Because paper book buyers are and they will still in the near future the majority of your potential buyers.

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