Books and Magazines

I spent the better part of this last week up at Elk Lake with my extended family, including my parents, my three sisters (for some reason my two brothers never come), Their husbands, their kids, their kids’ kids and friends. We were missing some this year. One of my nephews is in Peru, serving in the Peace Corps, and one of my nieces is in the middle of planning her wedding (and the rest of her life, for that matter). Even so, it was a great vacation. There’s plenty of time to eat, to play in the water, and read books.

This year, I only took one print book, The ABCs of Software-Defined Radio by Martin Ewing, AA6E. This is the book I purchased with my $10 birthday coupon from the ARRL. To be honest, I didn’t even take it out of my briefcase. I’ll do a full review later, but my initial impression of it isn’t that good. It’s only 50 pages—not counting the glossary—and looks to be very basic. I was even tempted to send it back.

What I did take was my Nook Tablet. I loaded it up with 31 different books, including books on radio, website developement (I’m a freelance website developer by trade), and business development.

I really like the Nook Tablet. It’s not an iPad, but it does have a lot of functionality of the iPad at a fraction of the price. In addition to the books, it has Evernote, a note-taking app; and Get it Done Tasks, a to-do app; and QuickOffice, which can open and edit Word files and Excel spreadsheets. It’s really pretty cool.

One of the books in my Nook was Radio for All by Hugo Gernsback. This book is available for free on the Barnes&Noble website for the Nook.

Gernsback was one of the movers and shakers in the early days of radio. He published several magazines, including Modern Electrics, the world’s first electronics magazine, and founded the Wireless Association of America, one of the ARRL’s early competitors. He was also one of the first publishers of science fiction. The Hugo Award for science fiction achievement are named in his honor.

In Radio for All, published in 1922, Gernsback describes the marvels of radio. It’s about this time that radio technology was switching over from spark-gap transmitters to transmitters and receivers using vacuum tubes. He writes:

Today, by means of our super-sensitive vacuum tubes, it is possible to hear a one-inch spark coil perhaps a hundred miles and over. As a matter of fact, it can be proved theoretically that a one-inch spark coil connected to six dry cells, and providing we have a sufficiently large aerial, may be heard as far as it is possible to go on this globe, which is 12,000 miles.

You might say he was the first QRPer!

Free Science Fiction
Another free book that I had loaded on my Nook was Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. You can download this book for free by going to Doctorow’s science fiction website. Doctorow gives away all of his books, so check those out, too. In addition to penning some very entertaining science fiction, Doctorow is one of the authors of BoingBoing.

The story is about a high-school kid, Marcus, who finds himself being held by the Department of Homeland Security after a terrorist attack on San Francisco, his hometown. After some pretty rough treatment, he uses his hacking skills to take on DHS, which has turned San Francisco into a police state. It’s a real thriller and quite a good read.

It even has some ham radio in it. Zeb, one of the other DHS prisoners, describes how he would communicate with Darryl, one of Marcus’s best friends, “At night, when we were in our cots, we would softly tap out messages to each other in Morse code (I knew my ham radio days would come in useful sometime).”

Back Home
We left Elk Lake Saturday morning, getting home about 12:30 pm. That afternoon, we decided to visit the Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library Book Shop. Normally, books are $2 each, but today, everything was free!

I picked up about a dozen books, including books on cats, glass, retirement, and diet and health. My big—and I do mean big—acquisition, though, is the sixth edition (1958) of Marks’ Mechanical Engineers Handbook. This book is nearly three inches thick and has thousands of pages on various ME topics. Here’s a random sampling: atomic power, bearings, friction, lubricants and lubrication, machine-shop practice, mechanics of fluids, refrigeration, strength of materials, and welding. That should keep me busy for a while.

Like I said, I had a bunch of other books on web-development and business topics, but I won’t bore you by talking about those books. Let’s just say that some were good, while others have now been deleted from the Nook. Overall, though, it was a great reading vacation.

I just received an e-mail from one of my readers commending me on the idea for 21 Things to Do After You Get Your Amateur Radio License. When that’s ready to go, I’ll have published four books—the Tech and General study guides, the compilation Having Fun with Ham Radio: Letting my inner geek out, and 21 Things. Last month, I netted almost $400 from the sales.

Being the tech geek that I am, I do all the production myself. I compose the text in the Mac word-processing program Pages, turn it into an ePub using Calibre,  and then touch up the formatting using Sigil. It’s not hard to do, but it does take a while to get everything just right.

As I was composing the e-mail to my reader—whom I now consider a friend—it occurred to me that I could do the same thing for him, if he was interested in writing a book. And not only him, but for any of you who might be interested in writing a book. Here’s what I propose:

1. I would do all the editing and production of the e-book.
2. I would assign an ISBN number to the book from my stock of numbers.
3. I would handle all the interface with Amazon and B&N, and send you reports and checks monthly or quarterly.
4. I’d pay you 50% of the sales price and get 20% of the sales price on Amazon sales. On B&N sales, I’d get only 15% as they pay only 65%. This assumes that the book is priced at $2.99 or above. It’s probably not a great deal for either of us if your book can’t sell for at least $2.99.

So, f you think you have a book rattling around there, and are interested in this kind of proposition, let’s talk. I think that I’m actually a pretty good editor, and could even help you focus/outline a book. It doesn’t even have to be on ham radio. In fact, it might be a good thing if it’s not a ham radio book since hams are so notoriously cheap. :)

This book is now available! You can purchase it from Amazon (Kindle) or Barnes&Noble (Nook). You can also purchase it here on this website. See the links in the right-hand column for more information. The price is $2.99.

I’ve been getting a lot of free Kindle books after I subscribed to a couple of mailing lists published by Free Kindle Books. One of my recent downloads was 21 Ways to Promote Your Book on Twitter. The book was actually pretty good, and it gave me the idea to write a book titled 21 Things to Do After You Get Your Ham Radio License.

So, I started building a list. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. If the list items below are clickable, it means that I’ve already written that chapter. Click on them and enter your comments about that particular item there.

1. Join a club.
2. Find an Elmer.
3. Buy your first radio.
4. Build a kit.
5. Set up a shack.
6. Join the ARRL.
7. Learn the lingo.
8. Upgrade to General.
9. Go to a hamfest.
10. Build an antenna.
11. Participate in a contest.
12. Go to Field Day.
13. Take a SkyWarn class.
14. Participate in a fox hunt.
15. Learn Morse Code.
16. Buy a DMM.
17. Buy some QSL cards

Each of these would be a small chapter with an explanation why I think this is important and links to some sites and books for more information.

You see that I’m short a couple of items.  That’s where you come in. What would you add to this list? What would you delete?