zompist bboard

Out of curiosity, do you make more money off of the kindle version or the paperback one? I was going to buy the paperback copy of the book, but I intend to obtain a kindle shortly. On the other hand I don't think I'd mind owning a physical copy of APAF.

Anyway, I am really looking forward to Babblers. The Cuezi fascinate me

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con quesa- firm believer in the right of Spanish cheese to be female if she so chooses

"There's nothing inherently different between knowing who Venusaur is and knowing who Lady Macbeth is" -Xephyr

It's a bit more with the paperback. (Royalties are much tastier with the Kindle, but the price is lower too.)

All of these words imply that the thing being described can be used as an example of what things in that category generally look like. For me, the biggest difference between these terms is order. A stereotypical thing is a good example of its category because it is unoriginal, formulaic, and hews to a certain prototype or archetype. Prototypes or archetypes are also good examples of what their category generally looks like, but this is probably because they set the standard by which future things were judged or categorized in the first place, and to which stereotypes later clung.

EDIT: the hell? I was responding to a completely different thread. Woah... Did I somehow teleport? Seriously, I hope this is a bug or something, because otherwise I am going crazy.

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[quote="Nortaneous"]Is South Africa better off now than it was a few decades ago?[/quote]

Bump.

Sorry if there was another thread that had this info, or a better place to ask this question, but do you ever get any sort of demographic information gleaned from the sales of the books, like geographic areas where a lot of them are being shipped or the like?

What is this other non-fiction book Zompist mentioned? I hope it's the Skourene historical atlas.

That's not exactly non-fiction...

Maybe we should introduce the terms con-fiction and con-non-fiction?

Yes, I wrote a a blog post on this.

Here's an updated chart. Unfortunately they only show US sales, and print copies only.

on the whole, i'd rather be in philapelphia

Interesting. My city seems close enough to a border that I don't know what region I'm in. Does the 'combined area' mean anything as far as numbers?

"Combined" works out to "not very urban." It's all the diagonally shaded areas together.

Not sure if anyone mentioned this, so here it goes:

I have purchased and read LCK, ALC, PCK and APAF on Kindle (more specifically, Kindle app for iPad). I was a bit worried by the "unicode compatibility" for the linguistic books, but it turns out that almost everything is pretty O.K., even the LCK/ALC. (I say "almost" because a few things didn't show up correctly. I think Ɣ showed up as a box)

On APAF itself: I wish the sales would go up to his promised 200 for him to do a conlang, say, Okurinese. Phonetically it might be just Japanese with some sound changes, but since we don't see a lot of Okurinese anyways, the language could have gone through some interesting typological changes. I love Japanese and I'd love to see it ruined, after all.

I don't have a Kindle myself, so I rely on Amazon's preview app to see if the Unicode worked. If you feel like going through and finding where it didn't, I can change the Kindle files.

On reaching 200 with APAF, I hope it gets there too. It's halfway now.

I recently obtained a Kindle Paperwhite, and went through three kits to see if anything was missing. Ɣ or Ȟ didn't display properly on iPad app, but it showed all right on KPW. Everything's fine.

If I were to ask for an addition to Kindle format, it'd be the real page numbers. As of now, the Kindle files only show the locations in the text, so when you refer to a certain page (in print versions) I can't find where it is. The lack of the real page numbers kinds of bugs me in ebooks; it means I can't make a page reference.

SPOILER WARNING

Ok, I've planned to post this for, I think, at least a year or so, but somehow never got around to it. It's kind of a partial review plus comments on the book.

LAST SPOILER WARNING

First of all congratulations on doing something of which I'm not sure if anyone else has ever done it- that is, creating an interstellar exploration/partly space opera setting that leaves Relativity intact but still has interesting interstellar exploration and politics. Really, has anyone done that before?

Minor criticism: At first, I thought it was implausible that the Morgan got so far without getting caught; then I thought it was strange that s/he didn't suspect that things were going too well.

The Frozener was a nice little anecdote, but it would have been nice if there'd been more to do for/with him.

I think I know what's going on on Maraille, and I guess if I could figure it out, some other readers have, too. Nice to think that we might see more of it in future novels!

The Dzebyet are nice.

Some readers might find the Ogorodé's submissiveness offensive, but I'd say it makes sense if you assume that their main concern is not with individual survival or what we might call dignity, but simply with the survival of their species as a whole. By that standard, their sory would be a spectacular success. And their strict refusal to improve their own situation might be based on a fear hat if they ever rise too much, someone else might take their place at the bottom, leaving them redundant. If so, that would be a plausible fear- after all, something similar arguably happened to parts of the Western working class.

I like Inky.

I like the portrayal of Beloman, too.

I'm still not completely convinced by your take on AIs. I've got the impression that you forget that, if something is possible, it's enough if someone sees a reason to do it, even if you don't. Im pretty sure that, if lifelike androids or other human-level AIs were practically possible, there'd be some of those as toys or status symbols for the rich even if there's no other use for them.

I'm a bit surprised that the stuff from the Incatena pages didn't get included as appendices.

All in all, quite nice, and I'm looking forward to more installments, if not soon, then at least a while later!

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did you send enough shit to guarantee victory?

Glad to hear Babblers is on the way! When you want a reader, Zompist, here's a volunteer!

(Why weird? The plot sounds similar in some ways to I, Claudius (a favourite of mine), only Claudius has even less possibilities for action than Beretos.

I'd be glad to be a test reader as well - that was great news, I've been waiting for Babblers for a while now.

Ars, is that your valid e-mail? If not please send me mail.

(Mornche, I have your e-mail already.)

Done!

I read the book a few days ago and enjoyed it a lot! It made good reading for power outages on my phone.

Any chance we might get etymologies for a few words like "tanaki"?

The sales meter is at 91%. That means only 18 more till I work on an Incatena language.

Also, for those who didn't see it, I started a new Incatena book. (The posting is out of date, in that I have actual words now.)

I love that Morgan is changing sexes, to whatever that happened to be before... LOL

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[bɹ̠ˤʷɪs.təɫ]
Nōn quālibet inīquā cupiditāte illectus hoc agō
Yo te pongo en tu lugar...
Taisc mach Daró

When can we expect an alien conlang?

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If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way. - Mark Twain

In reality, our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, which indeed is a divine gift. - Socrates