Critical Issues in Crisis Negotiations now out!

er……actually, it’s been out for a while now but I (ho hum) never got around to updating my blog about it. This book took a lot of rewriting and revisions as it’s intended for a pretty specialized and knowledgeable audience so I wanted to make sure it was as accurate as possible.

Despite proofreading it probably hundreds of times, every time it was given to a fresh pair of eyes to take a quick look, they managed to find something else that needed changing! Once again, it paid off ordering a proof from Amazon as it’s amazing the number of typos you can spot in a real book that you can’t see in the digital version. Even something as minor as a missing full stop can quickly spoil the effect if not caught before printing.

Digital proofing is ok if you just want to double check the layout but I definitely recommend getting a proof copy in your hands (or at least printing out the digital copy) so that the very minor typo errors can be more readily spotted.

As I mentioned in my last post on the Climbing Denali: Journal & Logbook, I was pleasantly surprised how easy it is to include black and white pictures into the book, as it definitely spices up the page a little.

It’s also good that Createspace allows you to buy your own book at the so-called Author’s Price, which is, of course, much cheaper than just buying it through the Amazon webpage. That said, you can’t really buy in bulk because the postage will rise exponentially with the corresponding weight increase, particularly if you’re not based in the US (where the postage actually seems to be pretty reasonable).

There are also a few other downsides to using the Createspace platform for getting your books out there, which I’ll mention below.

1. If you want to send a complimentary or gift copy to anyone, you can’t add any message to the book if you use the Author’s Price to buy the book (you can, of course, add comments if you buy the book normally through the Amazon webpage as they do have various gift options but which don’t seem to be available at the Author’s Price).

2. If you want to buy a bunch of books to either give out or to promote yourself, it’s again very expensive, unless you’re in the US, because of the postage costs and it can take quite a while to receive them, depending on which option you take (the quicker it is, the more expensive it is!). It would be much better if Amazon had printing capabilities spread more generously around the world – they already have one in UK, for example, and it’s easier for my Mum to get a copy of my book than it is for me!!.

So far, I’ve been using the Createspace cover templates for my books, suitably modified to make them appear a little less basic, and I’ve been quite happy with the results. For this book, however, I had the whole cover redesigned using the original Createspace template as I wanted to have the book title on the spine, which the Createspace template doesn’t allow if the book doesn’t have enough pages. It also meant that I was able to format the back page exactly as I wanted as the Createspace template doesn’t leave you many options when it comes to the text formatting.

Initially, I had a more exciting cover on the book but after careful consideration, I decided it might be more useful having a picture of myself on the cover in case I want to promote myself and the book by giving it away to anyone who might interested in crisis negotiations. As it happens, I’ll be giving a talk at the upcoming Public Safety and Internal Security Asia 2014 Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in August on crisis and hostage negotiations, where the book might be the perfect giveaway.

If you’re not attending that conference, the book is now available on Amazon at:

Critical Issues in Crisis Negotiations: Peter R. Morgan: 9781494872519: Amazon.com: Books

At the moment, I haven’t done a Kindle version as I’m still working out how to do it using my Scrivener software, which I bought as much for it being able to do the conversion as for it’s book outlining capabilities. Hopefully, the Kindle version will be available in the not to distant future as it will be easier to promote since it will be much cheaper to buy!

CLIMBING DENALI JOURNAL AND LOGBOOK OUT NOW!

Well, it’s been a very busy few months since I last updated my blog and by way of excuse (I’m good at those!), I’ve been putting the finishing touches to my two latest books, with the first one already up and running on Amazon.

The CLIMBING DENALI: JOURNAL & LOGBOOK is an old project that I started ages ago but put off due to prohibitive printing costs. However, with the arrival of Createspace and an almost completed manuscript, I decided to give it another shot. To my surprise, my original formatting was even better this time round, despite the heavy use of tables and charts, than when I did my last book so I was able to update and finalize it pretty quickly.

One thing that all the commentators caution against is using pictures in your book but I had a bunch of pictures that I really wanted to include and they all came out picture-perfect, to coin a phrase. I did try putting together a colour version as well but this really put up the price for each book so in the end I decided against it.

The latest book is a journal and logbook for anyone wanting to climb Mt. McKinley (otherwise known as Denali) which, at 20,230 ft, is the highest mountain in North America and one of the coveted Seven Summit Peaks (the others are Everest, Aconcagua, Vinson, Carstenz, Elbrus and Kilimanjaro). I climbed it quite a few years ago and wished that I’d had something similar so that I could keep a detailed record of the ordeal (I mean challenge!).

During that trip, our climbing team was also asked to assist a group that had encountered difficulties and while we assisted by offering first aid and food, two very accomplished alpinists, Alex Lowe and Conrad Anker, actually climbed up to 19,000ft to rescue the remaining climbers. Very sadly, Alex Lowe was later killed in an avalanche during one of his many expeditions, which is why I decided to donate 50% of the royalties of the book to the Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation (ALCF), which you can find out more about by visiting their website.

As well as a day-by-day climbing diary, the CLIMBING DENALI JOURNAL & LOGBOOK also comes full of useful information, lists and tips for climbing Mt. McKinley, including a suggested schedule to keep your climb on track, gear and equipment to take with you, great food ideas for your trip, top tips and suggestions to make your climb a success and, of course, much more!

Having done a few other climbs in my time, and depending on how this book does, I may also do a few other Journal & Logbooks for those interested in keep a detailed diary and journal of their trips.

By the way, if you want to see what it was like on Denali, you can see some video I shot of the trip at http://www.petemorganfilms.com and clicking on the preview for Denali Blues!

That’s all for now as I need to get cracking on finalizing my book on crisis negotiations, which I mentioned in my last post!

Pete (in the red jacket) and the Hong Kong Team on the summit of Denali!

BEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT EVER!

It’s been almost three weeks since my first and last blog post but I’ll put it down to seasonable exuberance and excitement, particularly as my first book, What a Piece of Work is Man, is finally up on Amazon; and just in time for Christmas! Between all the chocolates and spare socks that I normally get from Santa, I have to say that this was probably one of the best Christmas presents ever!

I suppose this finally makes me a bona fide published author, although I very much appreciate that having a book on Amazon is a far cry from actually SELLING a book on Amazon. But it’s a start and a very close and kind-hearted school friend from yesteryear actually went ahead and bought a copy, so my royalty page is no longer showing a duck! So, really, thanks for that (you know who you are!).

I’m NOT expecting you all to rush off and buy a copy (although I wont be stopping you, either!), but I suppose I should at least let you have the link, just in case you want to take a look at what managed to cause all my Christmas cheer and excitement.

Amazon.com: What a Piece of Work is Man eBook: Peter Morgan: Kindle Store

The best thing about seeing your first book up there on Amazon is the impetus and motivation it gives you to keep at it. Most people are said to have at least one book in them and I suspect that many people actually have more than one. Once you see how straight forward it is to get your work out there, then it’s really just a question of knuckling down and going for it!

Which is why, before the ink was even dry on my first Createspace book, I got cracking on another book I had been putting together but never got around to finishing. In the spirit of Blue Peter, it’s always easier when you have one you “prepared earlier” so I brushed off the cobwebs and started to tidy it up ready for Amazon.

It’s a good thing I was still on a high from my first book, though, as getting the formatting write (pun intended) drove me insane. What makes it worse is that once you upload your book to Createspace, if you do need to make any changes, you have to do it in the original document, not in the uploaded version, so you have to do the whole upload thing again. Why this drove me nuts is that the formatting seemed to be different every time (ie lost page numbers, skewhiff headers, etc) and I couldn’t work out why.

In the end, I had a cunning plan and stopped uploading Word documents and started uploading PDFs instead, which certainly seemed to help. Still, it’s taken quite a few attempts to get the formatting exactly how I wanted it but, hopefully, I’m now ready to go.

Again, just like my earlier poetry book, this isn’t going to be a best seller any time soon as it’s a rather specialized non-fiction topic on the subject of hostage negotiations but I’m hoping my close and kind-hearted school friend from yesteryear (sic.) will want to update her Pete Morgan Books collection!

No? Oh well.

Anyway, that’s it for this post. I’ll keep you posted on my progress when the muse next comes upon me you.

Welcome to Pete Morgan Books

Welcome to the newly minted, hot off the press Pete Morgan Books Blog! As a newbie writer and author, I have been avidly reading the How To….Books on getting yourself published and one of the key suggestions they all make is to have a web presence, such as a Blog Page, to help promote yourself and your books!

Obviously, I’ve decided to take their advice and here it is! The timing has also worked out nicely as I have just finished prepping my first book with Createspace, which will hopefully be available on Amazon fairly soon.

This first book was more of an experiment to learn the necessary steps required to get from a Word Document to an actual book on Amazon. I’ve just seen the proofs and am pretty happy with the quality of the book (although I would have preferred that the book had a title on the spine – that’s something I’ll look into for next time).

The book, What a Piece of Work is Man, is actually a collection of poetry that I’ve written and was ready to hand for this experiment. I’ll write a bit more about the various steps I took in a future blog in case anyone else is interested in doing the same thing.

I don’t expect that this book will be a best seller anytime soon but it was a great learning experience. There’s still a lot of learning to do, such as getting a properly formatted Kindle version of the book ready (Createspace did do an automatic conversion but I’m not too happy with the formatting when I read it on an iPad, so I need to look into that).

The next step will be to finalise a few other books I’ve been getting ready and once I have the whole process down, I hope I can share how I did it with like-minded writers. I’m also hoping that this will really help to motivate and encourage me in my own writing as its something I’ve been putting off for far too long now. E-publishing has really helped level the playing field for all those hoping to get into print without having to go through a traditional publisher and there’s no longer any excuse for not getting your work out there!

For now, thanks for checking out this new blog and do come back to visit again as I hope to be adding quite a bit of new material over time. Don’t be surprised if the appearance of the blog keeps changing in these early days, though, as I’m not yet sure how I want it to look.

Lastly, I’d like to wish everyone very best wishes for 2014! Happy writing!