So this is it. I'm tired of waiting. With helicopters low overhead, the slight tinge of smoke on the air here in London, and more than the usual number of sirens howling past, I feel some kind of purpose. That in pushing this, the work of over thirty individuals over three years, perhaps I have unwittingly found the most appropriate timing. I'm not going to suggest that anybody is furious about not being able to find this in stores, but maybe they should be. It is very, very good.
Yes, sketches, the anthology book of all the little paper issues, I declare thee 'For Sale'. I feel that the pricing is not offensive, and even shipping costs aren't too bad, not if you consider that they'll ship to pretty much anywhere in the world (as far as I know). And how the things are actually being printed and bound between you clicking the 'Buy' button and it falling onto your doorstep.
I am quite new to all this, so things will have to move slowly, but surely. I know what needs to be done. The plans are in place for an exciting subdomain, here, dedicated to sketches, and removed from my insane rantings. I've contacts in certain positions. I'm making the underground movement. Everybody just needs to tell everybody else.
- Only slightly smaller than the standard Penguin size.
About the book itself. What can I say. I'm including a picture of it on my bookshelf for all to see its scale. It isn't a large scale, and not terribly lizard-like. It is quite small, but I wanted it to be as close as possible to Penguin's regular print size, which seems to be the usual size for pretty much all cheaper paperbacks. Ones with slightly thicker covers tend to be at the same size as the current Penguin Classics collection.
So the only book I have that is comparable is an American printing of The Island of Doctor Moreau, what does this imply for sketches? It isn't full of things about vivisection, I swear. But perhaps it is an example of modern literary vivisection, accommodating as it does so many different voices and feelings.
What I will say now is that I want to compile an all new issue as soon as possible, and I'm opening it up to the world. And don't think you can sit on your hands, some people are already clamouring to be included, and I've already got one or two items in the editorial phase. So yes, unsolicited submissions, please. I promise to be understanding.
Hopefully this will all be made more professional within the month...
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/sketches-anthology/16445994
The proof copy of the sketches anthology arrived yesterday. This one is from lulu, and it really is so good to finally have something tangible, even with the irony of immediately uploading an intangible post here about the blasted thing. I must admit to have sent an email with the same hastily taken blackberry picture above about 15 minutes after tearing it from its wrappings, with all the time in between spent pouring over every page. It is a proof after all.
I couldn't find any major faults of my own, and lulu's printing is absolutely top grade. That said, I did have some hassle actually getting the proof. And the time I could have spent idly twiddling my thumbs waiting for their technical support to get back to me I instead employed myself with more research into the whole vanity press issue and alternative options should lulu fall through. So I now have another reformatted version for amazon.com's CreateSpace service.
I have to say both look to be good companies. Certainly more suited to my goals as a writer of very limited means for this project than many of the other vanity press guys out there. lulu.com is very easy to use, but they fall down on a few technical issues. My main problem was with their rendering of my cover on their website and the subsequent download. I spent a good amount of time making a fully vectored tree for the cover, and embedding all the fonts correctly so that everything would appear to be smooth and clean; but when I looked at the preview they offered it all became terribly pixellated and quite ugly. I looked around their support forums and it seemed to be a common problem, with some threads on the same issue having been started way back. I think 2006 was the earliest I saw). But there wasn't really any adequate solution given, apart from wait for the proof and see, and I suppose they haven't redone their infrastructure at any point in the last five years to produce a preview that is up to the author's overwhelmingly high standards. The second problem was found with a voucher code for a free proof copy for myself. Now this was my fault though related to the cover issue, but after pressing the publish button, or whatever it was, I went back to upload a newly saved cover pdf, thinking that I hadn't embedded the fonts correctly on the previous one that had been so mutilated by their preview. So the voucher code was rejected, and I had to wait almost two weeks for their awfully slow technical support to get back to me. They did fix the code and get me my complimentary copy, but not before I had been lured into CreateSpace.
The biggest appeal with CreateSpace is the vast number of zero money options. There's a free ISBN on offer, and I think they automatically put the book on amazon.com, both of which are things that I really want for sketches. That said, they seem to be a touch more expensive, which is to say that they take more of a cut from each book. Which I don't really mind, especially since I don't have to fork out from amazon access or an ISBN. I mean I'm not in this for the profit, otherwise I'd have been a hell of a lot more motivated, and a thousand times more disappointed with the tiny margins employed by the publishing industry. All this is a bit by-the-by for the moment though, since I want to be impressed by their print quality first. Not impressed to the extent of, entering St Peter's in Rome, or viewing the Great Wall of China, impressed, but they have to at least equal lulu's printing.
Watch this space...
Post Script.
I should probably and will probably make a separate post when a decision is actually made (and when I'm less tired, but for now I clicked the little button on lulu to give the Anthology a publicly accessible page. So feel free one and all (all being only one), to make a minor donation with the end result of a beautiful little book shaped package at the end. Shipping in the UK is something like £3, the actual cost is £5. http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/sketches-anthology/10880077
What in your view is the relationship between the critical theories we have studied over the year and the study of religions? What do you think the future might hold for the field?
For the most part, I feel that the critical theories we have studied have only the most tenuous link to the Study of Religions. Yet as revolutionary aspects of the modern academic world, with all of their thoughts geared towards changing the way in which we think, if any field were to ignore such developments it would run the risk of being left behind. An evolutionary dinosaur in the contemporary world.
I am cynical enough to believe whole-heartedly, that the field of Study of Religions, as all other fields of discourse will basically continue, manufacturing new topics of discussion if necessary and looking back and revising old ones, purely to keep the wheels of debate and of educational institutions turning. But I hope that at some stage, those studying religion will get around to finally resolving the many misconceptions held in the wider world about the field and about religions in particular (as in different traditions) and in general (as in general). I am fed up of continuously reading piss-poor and ignorant descriptions in newspapers.
And finally, how has this course affected your own understanding of religion/ religions? How has it affected your sense of self?
In all honesty the course has not had much effect on my understandings of religion or my sense of self. It have given me multiple new questions to ask, but when it comes to my own accepted sense of being, I remain as ignorant as I have always been. This has been a long and wild ride, and I can't deny that I've enjoyed it, but I am so glad its all over.