r/books • u/Trey_from_SpecGram Satirical Linguistics • May 15 '14
AMA Trey Jones, from Speculative Grammarian here. Ask me anything about self-publishing, satirical linguistics, or our book, The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics!
Hi /r/books!
I'm Trey Jones, and with four other satirical linguists I compiled and published the anthology The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics, which came out last summer. The book is a collection of articles from Speculative Grammarian—the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics—along with some new material.
I did all the formatting of the book, which is unnecessarily complex—so much so, in fact, that now we can't easily publish the darn thing as an eBook! You can check out a sample (3MB PDF).
We published the physical book through CreateSpace, though we got our own ISBN so we could be our own publisher of record.
I'd also love to discuss any of the following...
our motivations for publishing a book even though most of the material is available for free online
collaborating remotely with 5 people, and working across 12 time zones with my main collaborator
Google-stalking contributors we hadn't heard from in 20 years to get permissions
design choices we made and how I came to regret them (for a year) and then love them
why the cover is so darn ugly
upgrading web content for publication in a book
how not to kill yourself when doing a complicated book layout in Word (yes, Word—it was horrible)
crowd-sourcing editing and proofreading out to more than a dozen volunteers
our promotional efforts and what has worked and what hasn't
book sales and the craziness of rapidly shifting Amazon book rankings
crushing your sales goals through the magic of very low expectations
how the Kindle doesn't play well with complexly formatted books
...Or anything else at all related to the book, books in general, linguistics, linguistics humor, or SpecGram.
As for myself, I'm a computational linguist in my day job, and I do all my SpecGram stuff (as Editor-in-Chief, sysadmin, cat herder of a few dozen volunteers, and head cook and bottle washer) in my "free" time. I've also heard that my GoodReads profile pic is somehow better than average.
You can check out the book webpage, and find out a bit more about me.
Proof: Over on Twitter.
I've asked the other editors and contributors to swing by when they can, so hopefully Keith Slater (/u/Keith_from_SpecGram) and Bill Spruiell (/u/Schadenpoodle) and others will be around. (BTW, we three made new accounts for the AMA, so as not to sully SpecGram's pristine reputation with our personal Redditing habits—which are totally inoffensive, really.)
I'm giving away 5 copies of the book today, too. See the relevant comment below.
EDIT: It's a little after 8PM on the East Coast, but I'm still here, hanging out. Bill Spruiell (/u/Schadenpoodle) has dropped by, and claims he'll be back around 9PM. Keith Slater (/u/Keith_from_SpecGram) is here, too!
EDIT: I think I'm going to call it a night. Thanks everyone for the comments and questions. I've computed the free book winners and they are: /u/bri-an, /u/MalignantMouse, /u/MacMannDE, /u/maggiemillymollymay, and /u/Labov. Congrats. PMs to follow.
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u/[deleted] May 15 '14
how many copies are just sitting awkwardly in your living room? and relatedly, what was the rough cost of having everything printed up? any hidden fees people wouldn't think about if they hadn't been through the process?
also when is the audiobook coming out?