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Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Triumph of hope over experience

Tales from the word front


A while ago I published  

Words & Music: a Taster 


with the intention of testing the water – seeing if anyone was interested in such a book and inviting comments/reviews. It was met by great waves of apathy (apart from some welcoming [and welcome] comments in social media).

I persisted mulishly (in an asinine way?) with the idea, and have now completed two chapters (including much of the Taster which may be familiar to some readers).  And this is now making its way through  the swings and roundabouts of Kindle Direct Publishing:

As with the Taster, the "published price" is to all intents and purposes nugatory ...
<aside>
(to use a word recently abused [or at least, used questionably] by Philip Hammond recently with the meaning "unnecessary" – he was talking about preparations for a no-deal Brexit. [The guilty misnomer is about 60 seconds into the clip posted on that page.]

The word means "having a negligible value"
– the value of a nut (think of nougat). I suppose it could be argued in the chancellor's defence that, in planning terms, preparations for that suicidal frenzy might prove to be pointless, but the actual expense of making the requisite preparations would certainly not be nugatory – far from it. Users of the OpenVMS operating system, who resumed business within hours of the Twin Towers being brought down know about the expense of contingency planning and disaster recovery.)
</aside>
... as I will arrange (and publicize) free downloads from time to time.

But I think I've taken the idea as far as makes sense (perhaps further, given the paucity of feedback I've had on the idea). So I'm resuming the cudgels with sonorants, at least for the combination <vowel>+r.

b

PS I wrote this last week, thinking I was about to push the Submit button. But the "final" checks are going on and on. I hope there‘ll be something to show before the weekend

Update: 2017.10.27.14:55 – PPS

The wheels of Kindle Direct Publishinng are grinding away as I write:

(This was a  screengrab at one time, but Blogger has lost it.
There‘s a chance I can recover it.... Leave  it with me.)

I'm not sure why there are two of me, but in due course its pages will hit the ...er... fan.