• Re: coloring book...

    From John@21:1/5 to chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com on Sat May 11 19:13:48 2024
    On Fri, 10 May 2024 23:11:29 -0700, "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wrote:

    Hello everybody. Well, I just managed to publish my first book called >“Fractal Life 247 Coloring Book”. A coloring book of all things! Lol.
    :^) Well, it's 99 pages of some of my algorithms that I managed to
    render in a way that are able to be colored by others. Mostly vector
    fields, escape time fractals, some triangle and circle work, ect... I >actually coded up a C++ program that generates the book. So, its rather >interesting. It was a pain in the you know where to get the margins,
    trim and full bleed factors right, but it finally passed verification. I
    set the price at 7.42$. I was thinking about 11.42$ but chose the
    previous prime from 11 at 7. Then, after I submitted it, I noticed that
    7.42$ is 247 in “Fractal Life 247” in reverse! Strange. 742 is a fun >number! Well, is the price okay? Too expensive? This is my first book
    and setting the price is harder for me than creating a new algorithm.
    Very strange indeed. Oh well.

    Any thoughts?

    Thanks everybody. :^)

    Here is a link, it just went live. Can you get to it on your end?

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3WHP7RZ?ref_=pe_93986420_774957520

    Oh, good advert! Well crafted.

    Okay, so I went there, mostly because I like you. :)

    First, Amazon presented me with a CAPTCHA. That bugged the fuck out
    of me. It is yet another reason for me to avoid the company.

    Next, you say "7.42, they say "9.99". Inflation? Greed? Amazon's cut
    of the profits? Whichever way, it's false advertising.

    Last, no sample pages? There's a "read a sample" clicky but it
    doesn't respond.

    Oh, and it's "$11.42" not "11.42$". Even us UKlanders know this. Not
    that I'm thinking of buying it, not when shipping to merry, old UKland
    is $7.77 for the slow path.

    See, *I* can get the currency symbol in the right place and I've
    never even *been* to USAlia. :)

    Hmm, is this a book for children? Or 50-year-olds who are still sort
    of like children? "Colouring Book" is going to get it put into the
    Children's section of many bookstores. Lots of till-girls don't read news-groups and don't do Maths. :)



    J.

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  • From John@21:1/5 to chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com on Sat May 11 19:19:25 2024
    On Sat, 11 May 2024 01:52:50 -0700, "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wrote:

    On 5/10/2024 11:11 PM, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:
    Hello everybody. Well, I just managed to publish my first book called
    “Fractal Life 247 Coloring Book”. A coloring book of all things!
    [...]

    I updated the price to 9.99$ because too many people told me that 7.42$
    for a 99 page coloring book was too cheap for my work. I can take up to
    72 hours to reflect the change.

    Oh. Right. Sorry. I should read the whole thread *FIRST*. :)

    J.



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  • From John@21:1/5 to chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com on Sat May 11 19:18:16 2024
    On Sat, 11 May 2024 01:55:25 -0700, "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wrote:

    On 5/11/2024 1:18 AM, jak wrote:
    Chris M. Thomasson ha scritto:
    Some of the pages are much harder to color than others.


    yes, the strumpy ones :^D

    ;^D Here is part of a page:

    https://i.ibb.co/NFNxJCr/image.png

    Okay, so that one says "$742" but ...

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3WHP7RZ?ref_=pe_93986420_774957520

    does not. Does Amazon just not like me?


    This is one of the harder ones...

    Nah, just use a red crayon and colour the whole page with it. :)

    Though I wouldn't. I'd never spoil a good book.

    J.

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  • From John@21:1/5 to chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com on Sun May 12 14:49:16 2024
    On Sat, 11 May 2024 13:21:07 -0700, "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wrote:

    On 5/11/2024 11:13 AM, John wrote:
    On Fri, 10 May 2024 23:11:29 -0700, "Chris M. Thomasson"
    <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wrote:

    Hello everybody. Well, I just managed to publish my first book called
    “Fractal Life 247 Coloring Book”. A coloring book of all things! Lol. >>> :^) Well, it's 99 pages of some of my algorithms that I managed to
    render in a way that are able to be colored by others. Mostly vector
    fields, escape time fractals, some triangle and circle work, ect... I
    actually coded up a C++ program that generates the book. So, its rather
    interesting. It was a pain in the you know where to get the margins,
    trim and full bleed factors right, but it finally passed verification. I >>> set the price at 7.42$. I was thinking about 11.42$ but chose the
    previous prime from 11 at 7. Then, after I submitted it, I noticed that
    7.42$ is 247 in “Fractal Life 247” in reverse! Strange. 742 is a fun >>> number! Well, is the price okay? Too expensive? This is my first book
    and setting the price is harder for me than creating a new algorithm.
    Very strange indeed. Oh well.

    Any thoughts?

    Thanks everybody. :^)

    Here is a link, it just went live. Can you get to it on your end?

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3WHP7RZ?ref_=pe_93986420_774957520

    Oh, good advert! Well crafted.

    Okay, so I went there, mostly because I like you. :)

    First, Amazon presented me with a CAPTCHA. That bugged the fuck out
    of me. It is yet another reason for me to avoid the company.

    Next, you say "7.42, they say "9.99". Inflation? Greed? Amazon's cut
    of the profits? Whichever way, it's false advertising.

    Last, no sample pages? There's a "read a sample" clicky but it
    doesn't respond.

    Oh, and it's "$11.42" not "11.42$". Even us UKlanders know this. Not
    that I'm thinking of buying it, not when shipping to merry, old UKland
    is $7.77 for the slow path.

    See, *I* can get the currency symbol in the right place and I've
    never even *been* to USAlia. :)

    Hmm, is this a book for children? Or 50-year-olds who are still sort
    of like children? "Colouring Book" is going to get it put into the
    Children's section of many bookstores. Lots of till-girls don't read
    news-groups and don't do Maths. :)

    Some of them might be too complex for children, too many places to
    color. Although some pages are easier than others. Perhaps a way to get >children involved with math through interesting means?

    It wouldn't have worked with me. I was reading maths books at an
    early age and I hated "kiddy books". But I am, apparently, rare. This
    is a good thing.

    About the price.
    Shit. I was advised to increase the price to 9.99$ by many people as
    soon as possible. Inflation was actually a little part of it... They
    said 7.42$ is too cheap for my work.

    Honey, *you* paying *me* $9.99 to read the book is *not* "too
    cheap". There is no such animal as "to cheap".

    You paying me is, however, neither a sound business plan nor wise.

    I wasn't *complaining* about the price so much as snarking that
    online adverts don't tell us everything and are subject to change
    without warning. Sorry, no offence meant.


    Fwiw, I am starting a companion book that shows some of my algorithms
    and how to implement them in C++.

    Now *that* ain't for children. Well, apart from me. I used to read
    such things before I went to my first school. I was a weird little
    bugger.

    Now, I'm a weirder, fatter bugger.


    https://i.ibb.co/GMy2h0j/image.png

    The horrible thing is that I can just about follow that code. Given a
    few minutes, I'd probably be able to.




    My whole book is in a program called ct_color_book.

    You, friend, are *odd*.

    That is not bad thing.


    At $9.99 I make $3.15 per book. At $7.42 I make $1.61 per book. So
    Amazon KDP takes a nice chunk...

    Oh.

    By all means charge $11.42 as you originally intended. You did all of
    the hard work, you definitely deserve a reward.

    Have you ever considered archiving all of your sci.math and sci.crypt
    posts into books? They wouldn't sell in the millions but at a dollar
    per copy it might just buy you a keyboard or sandwich or something. :)

    They say the first one's the hardest. Once you know how to do it, you
    should find it easier to do some more.

    You could always ask Archimedes Plutonium for advice. He's published
    thousands of "books". He used to be in sci.physics I think.

    Anyway, good luck with the new authoring career, may you sell many,
    many copies and help to educate the world.

    J.

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  • From John@21:1/5 to chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com on Sun May 12 14:56:08 2024
    On Sat, 11 May 2024 13:25:23 -0700, "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wrote:

    On 5/11/2024 11:19 AM, John wrote:
    On Sat, 11 May 2024 01:52:50 -0700, "Chris M. Thomasson"
    <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wrote:

    On 5/10/2024 11:11 PM, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:
    Hello everybody. Well, I just managed to publish my first book called
    “Fractal Life 247 Coloring Book”. A coloring book of all things!
    [...]

    I updated the price to 9.99$ because too many people told me that 7.42$
    for a 99 page coloring book was too cheap for my work. I can take up to
    72 hours to reflect the change.

    Oh. Right. Sorry. I should read the whole thread *FIRST*. :)

    No problem. Actually, this coloring book is a first step. I am outlining
    a companion book that shows some of my algorithms and how to implement
    them in pure C++.

    C++ is pure?

    Since when?




    https://i.ibb.co/GMy2h0j/image.png

    It looks neat. Nice. The sort of thing I would like. Are you going to
    sell it in civilised countries such as UKland so we don't pay a
    thousand bux in postage?

    Have you any plans to translate it into Chinese, Hindi, Japanese and
    Russian? Those guys like maths. You probably don't need to translate
    the code, though that might need transliterating into their local
    symbologies to fit with local keyboards.

    I don't know, I've never done that. :)

    You could ask Adacrypt for advice?

    J.

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  • From John@21:1/5 to chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com on Sun May 12 15:12:45 2024
    On Sat, 11 May 2024 13:37:46 -0700, "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wrote:

    On 5/11/2024 11:18 AM, John wrote:
    On Sat, 11 May 2024 01:55:25 -0700, "Chris M. Thomasson"
    <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> wrote:

    On 5/11/2024 1:18 AM, jak wrote:
    Chris M. Thomasson ha scritto:
    Some of the pages are much harder to color than others.


    yes, the strumpy ones :^D

    ;^D Here is part of a page:

    https://i.ibb.co/NFNxJCr/image.png

    Okay, so that one says "$742" but ...

    ;^D If I fill in my outline with say, 20 pages each heading, it will be >hundreds of pages... The companion book is the way to generate the
    coloring book. Algorithms, C++ code examples, example renders using
    different coloring techniques, ect...

    So, the colouring book is the toy,Music CD or game and the new one is
    the instruction booklet?

    That's cool.



    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3WHP7RZ?ref_=pe_93986420_774957520

    does not. Does Amazon just not like me?


    This is one of the harder ones...

    Nah, just use a red crayon and colour the whole page with it. :)

    :^) Actually, a family member, a little kid, well she colored one of my
    pages like this:

    https://i.ibb.co/tmTFX3B/image.png

    She has talent but she also knows her limitations. She stopped when
    all of her streets ran into massive roundabouts. Clever lady.


    Strange! I feel like making my code try to match this wrt auto coloring
    for me. :^)

    Notice that the backs of pages have a little memo on them. I did not
    want to print a single page with two different images on its front and
    back sides. So, the back of each render has a little memo thing. If you
    look at the linked image on the right you can almost see the next render >through the memo. I did this to try to prevent pens from bleeding... Is
    that okay?

    It's a cool notion, yes. I *hate* disfiguring books but it would
    allow littler minds to carve out the pages to use them singly so Mummy
    can magnet them to the fridge.

    Have you thought of perforated pages or a "ring-binder" or "spiral
    binder" format for companion runs? Also, large pages to give more room
    for little hands? And perhaps a box for them to put their names into?
    Names, date and ages, maybe?

    And perhaps an e-book format that can be drawn into using
    MSPaint-like tools? That might keep them happy on long car journeys.

    Some of us may be wary of micro-gremlins but I'm told that Mummies
    like to display their efforts to visitors.



    Though I wouldn't. I'd never spoil a good book.

    I hope some people actually like it.

    As do I. It's an interesting idea. I hope it sells.

    Especially when I can show how its
    created in algorithms realized through a C++ implementation... :^)

    I'm sure most of the crayon-wielding users won't care about that. Not
    for years.

    Have you thought of affiliating with producers of packs of crayons or coloured-ink ballpoints? Those won't net you much per click-through
    but every micro-penny helps.


    [...]

    Yeah, it's hot here, too.

    Take care,

    J

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