Come up with an idea. EBooks are no different from any other type of book except in their medium of publication, so the most important first step to writing one is to decide on, and develop, an idea for one. The basic way to do this is to sit down and write a brief phrase or sentence that encapsulates the information you'd like to put in your book. Once you have that, you can build on it to create a finished product. ![]() ![]() ![]() • Writers who plan to create a book of fiction will have to spend considerably more time coming up with ideas and plot points. Read for more relevant advice. • The eBook format has the advantage of being not only open to self-publishers, but essentially free for them, which means that “books” too short to really be worth printing on paper can make perfectly valid eBooks. Therefore, feel free to use a simple idea. Expand your idea. Start with the basic idea you wrote down, and think about different aspects of it. It may be helpful for you to draw a web of concepts to do this. ![]() For example, let's say you wanted to write a book about how to sell real estate for beginners. You could write down things like “licenses and fees,” “selling techniques,” and “cost vs. Expected returns.” Connect specifics that are related to each of them, and so on, until you have enough detail to see the structure of the words in your head. • Different books call for different approaches. How To Make A PDF eBook. Prev Article Next Article. Read: How to Create and Sell PROFITABLE EBooks. How To Make An eBook –. How to make money selling ebooks online. Discover the best ways to find ebook ideas, write your ebook, and how to market your ebook online. Creating an e-book and putting it up for sale is easier than you think. Learn this proven process that will get your ebook in the hands of your audience. Memoirs and self-help books might do better with a vertical outline; a book of fixes for common household problems will probably come together faster using a web of ideas. Organize your details. After unpacking and expanding your core idea, you should have a lot of information about your basic topic written down. Rearrange and organize it in a vertical outline until it makes sense to you and matches the way you'd like your book to flow. ![]() Think in terms of what your audience will need to know first, and put basics at the beginning. Once those have been covered, more advanced concepts can follow without losing the reader. • Each step along your line will end up being a chapter in your book. If you can break the chapters into groups as well (for instance, if your book on home repairs has chapters that can be divided by room or type of problem), feel free to turn those into larger sections that contain a few related chapters each. Write the book. Don't worry about a title, table of contents, or any of the other stylistic elements of the book yet. Just sit down and start writing it. You may find it's easier to “start in the middle” by writing a chapter of your choice first; you may prefer to start at the very beginning and write straight through. Just remember that you don't have to pick one method and stick with it. Use whatever techniques you need to complete the book. • Writing a book – even a short book – takes time. The important thing is to persevere. Set aside time each day to write, or write until you hit a certain word count. Don't stand up from your desk until you meet your goal. Even if you feel stuck, the act of writing something down will help loosen up your mind, and before you know it your words will be flowing again. Keep at it for as long as it takes. Review and rewrite. Once your book is finished, let it sit for a week or so, and then come back to it with a critical eye. Look at the order of the chapters and sections first. Do they make sense to you? Often, you'll find that some pieces seem to make more sense in a different spot than where you'd originally placed them. After you're satisfied with the order of the book, read each chapter in order and edit and revise it. • Like writing, editing takes time – not as much time, but still a significant amount. Pace yourself by editing a certain number of words or chapters each day. • You will often find that words, like chapters, simply need to be rearranged. Do your best to keep related ideas together, and don't forget to alter connecting sentences so that the new order still fits the text. • It has often been said that “deletion is the soul of editing.” If you find that a chapter is going down the proverbial rabbit-hole on a particular point, bring it back in line with the overall flow of that chapter by deleting the extra detail. • If such information is absolutely vital, consider setting it aside in a sidebar instead, or try to more smoothly incorporate it into the text so that it continues to flow smoothly when you read it. Add the details. Once the body of your book looks solid, it's time to add a title, and any front or end material (such as an introduction or a bibliography) you'd like to add. Titles usually reveal themselves during the writing of the book; when in doubt, a plainspoken title (such as “How to Sell Real Estate”) is usually a safe choice. • If you pick a very simple title, have a couple of alternates on hand in case it's already been used. Adding adjectives or even your own name (as in “wikiHow's Guide to Selling Real Estate”) are simple ways to do this. • If you used information from elsewhere, always be sure to properly cite it in a bibliography. If your sources were friends, at least add in a page of acknowledgments so you can thank them by name. Like physical books, a major marketing tool for any eBook is its cover. Even though it's only a virtual cover, it's what potential buyers notice first. Consider springing for a professionally-designed cover, or go it alone if you think you can make something that looks good and will attract sales. Just be sure to get permission before you use any copyrighted images. • Even sections and pieces of copyrighted images are off-limits. When in doubt, get explicit permission from the copyright holder first. Last Update October 5th, 2016 So you want to learn how to make an eBook? I can help you with that. The trusty eBook is still an extremely powerful online format that is only going to get stronger as more people switch to smartphones and reading devices like Kindles. Today I’m going to show you how I do everything when I make an eBook – from brainstorming ideas to defining concepts, designing the layout and cover to finally uploading it to your blog or website. This article will focus on how to create an eBook to give away on a blog, but it will also have most of the information that you’ll need if you want to create one to sell on online marketplaces. Let’s do this! Quick steps for creating an eBook Let’s start by taking a look at the quick steps that are involved in creating an eBook and then we’ll go into some huge details below: • Research your target audience and topic • Ensure you have the right editing program • Write, edit and proofread your eBook • Add images, graphics and create cover art • Upload it to your blog or hosting platform for automatic delivery • Promote it everywhere Of course I am going to miss out on something so if you get stuck please and let me know what I’ve forgotten and I’ll do my best to help you out. For some (but not all!) of these tips it helps to have in order to get the best results and take advantage of certain programs and software. Disclosure –This post contains some affiliate links. I’ll let you know which ones they are below. If you purchase a product through one of those links I will earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend services I’ve used and love. Thank you for the support! Why make an eBook? If you are reading this post it is likely that you already know the benefits of making an eBook so I won’t go in to too much detail. Some of the reasons all internet marketers and bloggers should make an eBook are: • Get pre-loyal subscribers If you want to make money you need loyal subscribers. And one of the best ways to in order to introduce them to your material is to give them a free eBook as a “bribe”. • Increase your exposure Those little PDF files are super easy to share and you will often find that people send them on to their friends who then get introduced to your stuff. Also, they tend to sit on people’s desktop for longer than a post or a web article and as such you have multiple chances to get them to read it. • Add a new revenue stream Many people think that the big bloggers just make money on their blogs. A lot of their income often comes from a combination of having tied to a successful eBook. Oh, did I mention you can sell the darn things? All these things are possible if you know what you are doing. Remember, the eBook market is extremely saturated so you need to do something extremely good. The good news is that as the tablet and smart phone market grows, so does the demand for PDF file eBooks. Step 1: Research your target market The first step on the how to make an eBook journey is to take a careful look at who you are pitching it to. Knowing this information is like knowing which person in a crowd is Waldo. You have to know what he looks like, what he’s wearing and why he might be looking for you. Unless you know your target market well you are essentially shooting blind. NOTE: This is the first step if you have an existing blog. If you want to make an eBook first and then build up promotional material around it you would do step two first. A) Get Market Samurai One of the best things you will ever buy as an internet marketer or blogger is. It will cost you $90 or so but it will make you thousands and save you just as much in wasted time. However, if you don’t want to make a purchase some of the following research can be done with. B) Look for popular keywords in Google/Clicky Analytics, and competitors The next thing you want to do is log in to and look at the popular keywords and search phrases that people are using to find your blog. Which posts are most popular? You can then take some time to look at your competitors on Google and see what posts are most popular for them. This gives us a good idea about useful keywords. C) Use Market Samurai to analyze traffic levels The next thing you want to do is input those keywords in to Market Samurai and find out if any other related keywords could perform better. For example, when I was researching the title of this article I found out that “make an eBook” gets slightly more searches than “create an eBook” and so I decided to target that instead. Over time these little bits of information can make or cost you a lot of money. D) Find out who they are Now you want to take that information and think about who these people are. Research this information wherever you can. Think about their age, sex and location. Think about their income levels and career paths. Most importantly, think about how you can write an eBook that will help them. Step 2: Come up with a killer topic and title Once you have narrowed down your target market you want to come up with a topic and a title that will absolutely blow people away and solve their problems. To do this it needs to have an original edge on a very relevant topic. E) It’s about you as much as them One important thing to realize is that making a good eBook is as much about you as it is your target audience. Because you are the one that is writing it, promoting it, selling it and believing in it. Unless you have a passionate and knowledgeable interest in the thing you are going to fail before you start. Don’t make an eBook about puppy training unless you know enough to help people and then love it enough to push it for the next five years. F) Personalize it The best eBooks are the ones that share a personal experience about a very common topic. Because it adds authority. Authority is very important when it comes to books and articles because you need to show potential readers and customers that you are experienced enough to know what you are talking about. Let’s take the example of making money online. Let’s say you write an eBook called How to Make a Million Dollars Per Year. Now, if you make a million dollars per year and think you can teach others how to do the same then that is a very good book to write. If, however, you have never made that money yourself then you really have no authority on the topic. And people will smell it a mile off. So, whatever topic you choose to write on, make sure you have a personalized angle attached to it. This is very important. G) Make the title specific Specific titles work best. It doesn’t matter whether it is a book or a blog post. For example, I wrote a post called that hit the front of Delicious and went on to even get picked up by some newspapers. If I had called it How to Sell a Blog I don’t think it would have done nearly as well. Make your title specific. Step 3: Write the eBook and make it pretty So now you have to write your eBook and format it so that it is all pretty. This is where the magic happens and, unless you know what you are doing, the obstacles. H) Use Open Office to write it Now, this will probably be contested by a lot of you but I have found to be the best program to write eBooks. Because it is totally free and has an excellent selection of features. For example, it allows you to instantly convert your regular.doc file to a.pdf and it also has a massive range of really nice fonts to choose from. If you have a new version of Microsoft you can probably do all of this stuff but please do not go out and buy anything for the purpose of eBook writing. I) Start with an end result and work backwards People are downloading your eBook because they want to figure out how to do something. For this reason you should start with the end result that they are looking for and work your way backwards. Sometimes I will write the contents page first because it gives me a good plan. Other times I will just write like crazy and worry about the format later. It doesn’t matter as long as you are systematically getting people closer to achieving their goals. J) Use two types of headers and lots of paragraphs, lists and breaks Have a look at all of my posts here on Blog Tyrant. They have two types of headers (main and sub) and they have lots of lists and paragraphs. The reason for this is because people hate digesting large lumps of content. While is getting more popular, it needs to be formatted in a scan-able way. K) Get some really good images Over the years I have tried so many different and the two best solutions I have found are and taking/making my own. Remember, when using photos you need to make sure you purchase the correct license and get permission. You also want to avoid stock photography that has been used thousands of times before. If you are really specific about what you want photos of or if you need your own product in there somewhere then you are going to have to hire your own photographer. And this is expensive. You’re usually looking at between $500 and $3000 for a full day’s shoot. Taking the photos yourself on the family camera is never a good idea because they generally look really amateurish. L) Use a safe, well-proven font and simple colors Sometimes I download eBooks and wonder whether the author/designer was blind. You really only need to use a simple font like Arial, Verdana or Georgia at size 14 or 16 and then a simple color scheme like black with one other. Don’t go overboard when it comes to this stuff! Less is always more in the design field. You should also avoid bright reds for text as it looks spammy. M) Get it proofread, and not by your mom The next step is to get your eBook proofread by someone who is not afraid to give you harsh feedback. Think professional writers or other people in your industry. The point is not so much to find spelling mistakes (although that is important) but to figure out whether it is solving problems, coherent, etc. You really need someone to be able to give you the hard truths about your writing style and execution of ideas. N) Make an eBook cover to use on your site A really important part of the process here is to have to promote your PDF file. Here’s my latest updated one: These things are great because they increase the perceived value of the product by making it seem like something solid. Of course, its just a PDF file and not a real book, but by giving it a graphical representation people will feel like it is worth more. I highly recommend getting a designer on to make you something professional. Remember, this is going to represent your whole brand. Step 4: Convert to a PDF file and give it away This final step is the part where the eBook baby is born. Now, I am not going to talk about how to sell an eBook because I really believe it giving them away for free. But if you want to learn about landing pages and sales have a look. O) Convert to a PDF file All eBooks are in PDF format. Because they are universally recognized by Macs and PCs alike and work on all eBook readers. They also provide a consistent output. This is important. When you save a DOC file and send it to your friends chances are everyone will see something different. Not with a PDF. They all look the same. This means your design and formatting work won’t go to waste. If you are using Open Office you just need to go FILE > EXPORT AS PDF and then select your settings. P) Choosing the right settings Now, you want to make sure you select the right zoom levels because sometimes it will save blurry. I saved my Blog Tyrant eBook at 120% because this was smoothest. It will all depend on your graphics and logos and how well you have created and saved them in Illustrator or Photoshop. Sometimes it is a good idea to get advice on this issue. You also want to save it at a high quality level as long as this doesn’t mean the file size gets too big. Try to keep it below 1MB if you can. Q) Give it away in exchange for email subscriptions The next step is to set up a system where people get delivered the eBook for free when they enter their email address in to your subscription form. I have done an instruction video on so I won’t go through all the steps again other than to say that it’s easy to do with. R) Promote your eBook Promoting your eBook is actually the bulk of the work. I highly recommend you follow to help you understand the relationship between your website, mailing list and a successful eBook. Simply put, the idea is to create quality content on your site and other sites that drives relevant traffic back to your eBook’s landing page. It’s called a sales funnel and works extremely well. What have I missed? If you have made an eBook before and have some tips to share please leave a comment below and let me know. I would really like to make this post a nice little resource for people starting out on the eBook creation road. Similarly, if you have any questions for me drop a comment and I will do my best to answer them. Hi, First of all, well done. You’ve given people the main stuff they need to know as promised. One particularly good point is the one about editing. Not too long ago, many info-marketers seemed to have the idea that digital wasn’t expected to be the same as print as far as quality and there were some really poor products/ebooks out there. That simply isn’t the case. No matter what the format, print or digital, your work reflects you and your business, so unless you want to be perceived as sloppy, make sure it is edited well. As far as what could be added to your list, I may get some disagreement here, but I say do not to try to call something of 10-20 pages an ebook as has also been done repeatedly over the years in internet marketing. With the advent of Kindle etc. And the explosion of novels and other “traditional” books going digital, more and more people are familiar with the term ebook. With that come the general perceptions of document length. Generally, 35+ pages gets into short book territory (think kids’ books), something shorter than that is a report (think of offline biz documents). There’s a lot of confusion in the realm of books and publishing these days and in what a book’s value is. My belief is why add to all that noise if it’s possible to avoid it? Ebooks are definitely a great tool in the marketing toolbox, let’s all work to make sure they hold their value. I agree that results are key, however, identifying appropriately I think ties into the trust factor and that’s important too. Even if I love the results of a 10 page document, I’d still wonder why it was called a book if I envision a book to be something longer. Along the same line, if a book was promised and I didn’t get it (got what I feel is a report instead), I’d have questions as to why not. For example, if that promise wasn’t fulfilled, what else won’t be if I continue to do business with this person? If the request for an ebook is after an initial visit to a site/to entice for a sign up, I think we need to be very careful with that first impression. Something as simple as knowing what people expect and then delivering or over delivering, goes a long way in making it a good one. I kind of thought you dropped off the earth for a bit. Long time no update! I have to share my own experience. My ebook is VERY simple. It’s intentionally simple and bare bones because I want my readers to be able to print the document as a how to guide. So I made my ebook and just kind of let it sit there. It was working for me, but not making magic. Then when I was going through the process of my re-design, my designer mentioned that we needed to make my ebook pop more and make it more of a selling point. I don’t know, I guess it took HER believing in it for me to believe in it? So we created a little sidebar graphic and sign up form and OMGin less then a month I increased my subscribers by several thousand. Now I can’t credit that ALL to my ebook, because I have been running weekly subscription giveaways. But I do credit a lot of it to my ebook. Making it pretty and prominent made a huge difference. The feedback on the book itself (mine is just a PDF in Google Doc format that I made in Open Office) has been amazing. People email me almost daily telling me how much money I’ve saved them. So yeah, I am a HUGE fan of prettying up your ebooks and marketing them. Thanks for sharing this article BT! Parley Well, aside from my online dreams of money blogging, I’m also a CPA with a lot of QuickBooks experience. My thought for the blog was to scour the internet (google, bing, yahoo) for unanswered QuickBooks questions. Then, create a series of 5 min video tutorials with accompanying step by step text instructions. If I take your suggestion, then a micro-niche could be: Getting your QuickBooks Mobile for the book. I don’t have a lot of experience in that specific arena, but I can certainly handle the research. The money portion would probably be easiest as either remote QuickBooks support or leveraging the blog along with my QuickBooks affiliate account. I’m kind of thinking out loud here, so if it seems like I’m rambling, I really am. So here’s my only hesitation in giving away a free ebook or any other type of thing like that in exchange for an email subscriber. I really want an email list of people who are totally all about my topic (photography business tips). I worry that people will sign up for the free cookie and then not ever open anything ever again. While I’m sure you’ll retain some of them, especially since the blog topic will be related to the cookie (or that’s how I’d do it), I would think that’d you’d get a lot more less-loyal followers. I guess I’d rather have 200 followers who are loyal and LOVE everything we put out vs. 1000 followers who are marginally interested and might mark us as spam in the future (or something like that). At least one blog I’ve signed up for later sent me an inactivity notice when so long had gone by without my opening any of her posts. It gave me the option to let myself become unsubscribed or to click a link to keep my subscription active. Haven’t looked much into it yet, but my guess is that it’s an option through Aweber. You might try creating a series of autoresponders designed to engage new subscribers within the first few weeks/months of their subscription so they’re more likely to open content as it lands in their inbox. Maybe something to gently transition them from the subject of the ebook to the regular blog posts they receive. I see your logic and there are many ways of looking at it. Here’s my experience, though (and no not all my ebooks are free giveaways). The time when someone is most likely to really want to hear from you is immediately after they give you their email address. So look at it like this They might find your site through Google. Then perhaps a headline of yours catches their attention so they check out your blog. If your blog gets them to move from that “attention” point to “I want more” point (aka interest), then hopefully they will give you their email address in exchange for the extra juice offer you have on the side. This is the point where you have their MOST attention and can ask them to do something. They will be looking for that email coming to them. Now it’s your job as a blogger, internet marketer, web publisher, or whatever you call yourself, to blow their minds. You see, what you’re talking about here is that you’d rather have a small list of avid followers rather than a big list of so-so’s. You have to give yourself the chance to convert them from so-so’s to avid followers and the best time to do that is immediately after you did something to cause them to take action Like giving you their email address. And then if they drop off your list because it turns out they aren’t interested in you, then so be it, they probably wouldn’t have bought from you then anyway. But again, this doesn’t mean you have to give away every ebook, it’s just something some people do. There are other methods to get that optin as well. Thought I’d expand step 3: Create the ebook. Type up an outline: 1. Intro (your but about your background and the reason you wrote the ebook on the particular topic. Describe the problem you are solving (why it’s a problem, why it’s hard to solve, why solving it is possible). Break down the solution into several sections. (How to do A, how to do B, how to do C.) 4. Show how the sections A/B/C work together to solve problem. Summarize the problem and the solution and give links to added resources. This is a very brief outline. The idea is thisbreak down the ebook into sections that you’d expect to see if you were reading it. Then write those sections. Summarize and give added resources. In most digital mediums, color is tricky. Even if you proof a book digitally, the color on paper will often be slightly different. You basically need to know what device your reader will be using. If it’s PDF for example, I would think there will be variation in color from monitor to monitor. If you want to sell it for other devices, NookColor is one option, many others are B/W only. I know the discussion here is ebooks, but if you are showing a process, maybe a better option for you would be video. Creating video is no longer difficult and creating DVDs can be reasonable as well. I just had a thought. I’ve spent the last several months trying to think of what kind of ebook I could give away on my paranormal/conspiracy theory site and I think I might finally have it. One of my most popular posts is a list of 101 paranormal/metaphysical/conspiracy terms that I’ve defined in a sentence or two. What if I took those same 101 terms and instead wrote a couple of paragraphs about each – still enough to fill out an ebook, but not so complete that it would compete with a full-fledged book on the paranormal when I try to sell it later on. What do you think? Would it work? The idea of taking something you’ve already written, especially if it’s popular, and then building a product around it is solid. I had two posts on my blog which were SO popular I went ahead and designed an entire website around them. It was great because I highlighted those two articles on my site and set up a redirect so that people who found the articles in Google were redirected to that new site I built Can you say instant traffic! But here’s the problem it seems you’re having. It sounds like you have two niches going on and you’re writing to two similar but different groups. You might want to try a test and do something like I did. Then you can create products (or promote affiliate offers) to those highly targeted readers on each site. It does present some challenges though if you decide to take that route. For example, are you going to keep one or two twitter accounts? Facebook accounts? Always evaluate what you’ve got. Maybe you could do something like Tyrant said but put a spin on it for both your readers. “Warning: 10 Paranormal Conspiracy Theories That Will Change the Way You Travel”. Just some food for thought. I agree with John, if you have two distinct topics of interest, even if they are generally related, separating them is probably better. There are many marketers, experts etc. Who work in more than one niche. Yes, it requires multiple sites, but in order to attract a particular customer, you need to speak their language so they relate to you/the product. If you try to mix, you don’t really appeal to anyone enough to make them want to have a relationship with your site/purchase your product. I’ve seen people manage this kind of thing in two ways. If the topics are closely related, a central site like yourname.com is the hub and products etc. Live on separate landing pages. If the topics are unrelated, you can pick the most dominant one, use that identity on major social media, and then promote the other topic in more niche based ways. Then the goal is to make enough at it to hire a VA to keep everything straight:-). Thanks for the feedback y’all, but splitting out my topics to different sites isn’t an option I’m willing to explore. The two topics I mentioned – whether people are willing to admit it or not – are inextricably linked togetheras are the others I talk about on the site. There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to maintain a separate site on everything I talk about under the umbrella of dark/weird and I can’t say I have the interest to maintain that many sites even if there were. It’s not a primary website for me, just the one I’ve run the longest. I don’t think I ever expected to make a dime off it, but it doesn’t seem right to leave it there without a free giveaway. One of the best online ebook cover generators I’ve found is. Really easy to use. Also, as far as getting images into your ebook, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using images from Flickr, so long as you give photo credits. Simple and cheap. About marketing the ebook (okay a little off topic from creating one) I like the guest posting idea and it certainly works really well. For my last ebook launch I tried a different method. I flipped the funnel and instead of doing a ton of guest posting and article marketing to drive loads of traffic to my site (just speaking about the launch here), I gave away free copies of my ebook to key individuals who had a following already and asked them to sign up for the affiliate program and write up a quick post or email blast about it. The idea was that instead of “John Hoff” writing a guest post about what my ebook covered, why not have the person who’s blog I was targeting for traffic write up a quick review or note on my book. The reason was that this person has a list of followers who trust them already, not me. For example, I too did a and my optins spiked like crazy. But just imagine if I was able to get Brian to personally mention my book. I bet my optins would have been doubled. I’ve even asked people on my list, “What made you end up getting the ebook?” The most common response was, “Person X said I should check it out.” I guess what I’m saying is a good question to ask yourself before you do that guest post is to ask if it would be better to do the guest post so you can show everyone how you write and that you’re knowledgeable or ask the person instead to write up a post themselves about your product. Both ways have their advantages. Thanks for a great article. This is a great blogpost, and some great comments, there’s just one thing I want to add, as someone who writes these on a regular basis. Chris provided a good outline to use; it’s important to establish your credibility and say why people should listen to you and believe the information your’re giving, but the first section should really be a wiiftr – what’s in it for the reader. You can mix this with information about credentials, say what the information did for you – and then the important part is to say ‘therefore THIS is what the information in this ebook can do for YOU’. I’ve written e-books with and without this, and always found that putting the reason to read right up at the beginning makes a big difference.
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But Harry's life is suddenly changed forever when someone close to him is heinously murdered right before his eyes.With Dumbledore's guidance, he seeks out the full, complex story of the boy who became Lord Voldemort, and thereby attempts to find what may be his only vulnerability. ![]() Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth book in J.K. Rowling’s bestselling series, picks up shortly after we left Harry at the end of The Order of the Phoenix. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Year Three at Hogwarts. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Year Four at Hogwarts. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Year Five at Hogwarts. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Year Six at Hogwarts. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Year Seven at Hogwarts. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The war against Voldemort is not going well: even Muggle governments are. Harry Potter And The Half-blood Prince is the sixth successive novel in the Harry Potter novel series. This is the semi-final of the series. ![]() ![]() One summer night, when Dumbledore arrives at Privet Drive to collect Harry Potter, his wand hand is blackened and shrivelled, but he will not reveal why. Rumours and suspicion spread through the wizarding world – it feels as if even Hogwarts itself might be under threat. ![]() Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - PDF Download [Download] by Christianity Today International. Harry is convinced that Malfoy bears the Dark Mark: could there be a Death Eater amongst them? He will need powerful magic and true friends as, with the help of Dumbledore, he investigates Voldemort’s darkest secrets. Publishers: UK Print – US Print – Ebook –. Haunted is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter. The stories are told by people who have all answered an ad headlined ' Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months'. ![]() ![]() Read Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk with Rakuten Kobo. Haunted is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of 'real life' that are kee Haunted is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter. The stories are told by people who have all answered an ad headlined ' Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months'. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of 'real life' that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. ![]() But 'here' turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theater where they are utterly isolated from the outside world - and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell - and the more devious their machinations to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/non-fiction blockbuster that will certainly be made from their plight. I don't know if you've already finished it, and if you have, ignore this. For me, Haunted was one of the most provocative novels I have ever read, but I don't know if you've already finished it, and if you have, ignore this. For me, Haunted was one of the most provocative novels I have ever read, but you have to get past the squeamishness. Admitted, it only goes downhill from 'Exodus', but my advice is to never leave a book right in the middle. If you really feel like you can go no further, read the last story, 'Obsolete'. It was the most thought-provoking, in addition to 'Speaking Bitterness' (that one's pretty graphic), and it really ties up the whole novel. Hope this helps! I'm only on p 75 of this thing and I'm about to hurl it at the wall. What is it supposed to be? Does this guy really think these lame parodies are funny? ![]() Haunted is a novel made up of twenty-three horrifying, hilarious, and stomach-churning stories. They’re told by people who have answered an ad for a writer’s. Haunted is one of Palahniuk’s darkest funniest novels. It houses his most infamous story, Guts, which is known to make audience members at book readings pass out. About Haunted. Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel made up of stories: Twenty-three of them, to be precise. The eBooks you want at the lowest prices. Buy, download and read Haunted ebook online in EPUB format for iPhone, iPad, Android, Computer and Mobile readers. Author: Chuck Palahniuk. This is from the section called 'Slumming', which is about rich people, a couple of whom are pretending to be poor: 'Inky always said being absent is the new being present.' (p 69) 'Poverty, Inky says, is the new wealth.' (p71) 'Social divers, Inky says, are the new social climbers.' (p71) 'Nobodies are the new celebrity.' (p72) 'Public is the new I'm only on p 75 of this thing and I'm about to hurl it at the wall. What is it supposed to be? Does this guy really think these lame parodies are funny? This is from the section called 'Slumming', which is about rich people, a couple of whom are pretending to be poor: 'Inky always said being absent is the new being present.' (p 69) 'Poverty, Inky says, is the new wealth.' (p71) 'Social divers, Inky says, are the new social climbers.' (p71) 'Nobodies are the new celebrity.' (p72) 'Public is the new private' (p 72) You get the picture - how could you not - it's the same joke repeated over and over again, a joke which Tom Wolfe was cracking in 1975 (black is the new black, with variations). So: is this supposed to be amusing? Because if so, it really isn't. Is it supposed to be stupid? Because if so, it really is. Prior to this chapter you get a spoof all about television and advertising. I find myself bleeding profusely from the extreme cutting edge qualities of this book every time I pick it up. Only in the world of Chuck, this would be ROTFLMPO - that's right, Roll On The Floor Laughing My Penis Off! Because it's gross, and it isn't that funny! ** Update: the hurl has now been performed, and Chuck Palahnik's Haunted sailed in a graceful arc then smashed against the wall, its guts spilled out and several rodents started gnawing them.oh shut up. Apparently working in a vet clinic for the better part of 5 years is precisely the recipe required to inure one to the effects of Palahniuk's writing. You'll see tons of 'OMG SO GWOSS!!' Reviews here, but this ain't one of 'em. I was entertained. All the blood-and-guts and bodily fluids in the world don't really gross me out. What really sickens me is people. And that's what Palahniuk does best: he writes about the dark sides of people and how precious little it takes to make those sides surface. Apparently working in a vet clinic for the better part of 5 years is precisely the recipe required to inure one to the effects of Palahniuk's writing. You'll see tons of 'OMG SO GWOSS!!' Reviews here, but this ain't one of 'em. I was entertained. All the blood-and-guts and bodily fluids in the world don't really gross me out. What really sickens me is people. And that's what Palahniuk does best: he writes about the dark sides of people and how precious little it takes to make those sides surface. I enjoyed turning the pages as each character tells his or her tale of how they had sunk so low. Even more fascinating was how each character manages to keep upping the suffering ante when they perceive they've not endured enough. And don't take Palahniuk's pretentious tale of Saint Gut-Free's story making people pass out at face value. I even read it three times through trying to see how that could make someone's knees buckle. Because I didn't feel it. Perhaps I truly did gain something from those years of shoveling shit from kennels and picking teeth out of the tub drain and plucking bits of unidentifiable flesh from surgery floors: I gained the ability not be grossed out on a dare. This book is vile. It is disgusting. No matter how much you can take, you will squirm and say 'Oh My GOD!' Out loud on the bus or plane or couch or wherever it is you read. It is a nasty book. But Haunted is so much more than that and so worth reading. Haunted is set in a drab old theater, past it's prime, boarded up, invisible, and impenetrable to the outside world. Inside the theater are 23 characters. 23 people with names like the Earl of Slander and Agent Tattletale. Each character is introd This book is vile. It is disgusting. No matter how much you can take, you will squirm and say 'Oh My GOD!' Out loud on the bus or plane or couch or wherever it is you read. It is a nasty book. But Haunted is so much more than that and so worth reading. Haunted is set in a drab old theater, past it's prime, boarded up, invisible, and impenetrable to the outside world. Inside the theater are 23 characters. 23 people with names like the Earl of Slander and Agent Tattletale. Each character is introduced with a poem and a story. Usually gruesome or grotesque, the stories eventually create the world each person inhabits, explain why they agreed to drop off the face of the earth for a while, and how they relate to the other characters in the book. Narratives in between the character stories relate what's happening within the hotel. How the characters are coping with no modern amenities or food, who has died and what the remaining characters will do to themselves and others to obtain fame and sympathy once they're rescued. While the stories in the book are (as everyone has said) sometimes depraved, they all aren't like that and the book ends on a beautifully optimistic note - though not everyone is going to think that way. Really, I can only think of two that made me want to stop reading, but I didn't - I pushed through. And I encourage anyone who is thinking of reading Haunted to do the same thing. You might just love it to death. This is honestly the worst book I have ever read. I finished it, only because of my amazement at how bad it was and how it never deviated from that. I was intrigued by the premise: a group of writers volunteer to go on a retreat to write their masterpiece. The book has a chapter of plot, followed by either a poem or short story from one of the participants. The book falls apart immediately. All of the stories/poems are obviously written by the same person. They share themes, style, an This is honestly the worst book I have ever read. I finished it, only because of my amazement at how bad it was and how it never deviated from that. I was intrigued by the premise: a group of writers volunteer to go on a retreat to write their masterpiece. The book has a chapter of plot, followed by either a poem or short story from one of the participants. The book falls apart immediately. All of the stories/poems are obviously written by the same person. They share themes, style, and emotion. Plus, they all suck, not to mention some are gross, just for the sake of being gross. Furthermore, all of the losers on this retreat so desperately want fame, they start sacrificing themselves to make a more heroic tale of their seclusion. My only hope was that it would turn out to be ONE GUY with multiple personalities fighting writer's block. THAT would have been cool, but no, it wasn't. Don't read this book! WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. Instead of reviewing the entire novel, I will just be focusing on my personal favourite chapter 'Guts'. To date, there have been 53 known occurrences of audience members fainting during readings of “Guts”. This doesn’t surprise me at all, knowing the repulsive content of the story. 'Guts' is your mother, father, preacher and teacher shaking that disapproving finger at self pleasure. Needless to say, this short story will have you thinking twice about creeping that wondering WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. Instead of reviewing the entire novel, I will just be focusing on my personal favourite chapter 'Guts'. To date, there have been 53 known occurrences of audience members fainting during readings of “Guts”. This doesn’t surprise me at all, knowing the repulsive content of the story. 'Guts' is your mother, father, preacher and teacher shaking that disapproving finger at self pleasure. Needless to say, this short story will have you thinking twice about creeping that wondering hand down your pants at night. The narrator Saint Gut-Free (who’s alias is explained at the end of the chapter) a specifically terrifying masturbation escapade. While finding satisfaction in his family pool by sticking his rear end in the water intake at the bottom of the pool, Gut-Free finds his small intestines -in Layman’s terms- being sucked out of his asshole. All the while submerged under water. In a desperate attempt to reach the surface for air, he gnaws through the innards with his own teeth. We have all studied anatomy and know that human waste passes through the small intestine before happily plopping down in your toilet. Let’s just assume that Gut-Free wasn’t enjoying a delicious five-star meal. However, the tale doesn’t end here. The Saint’s original motive in the pool was achieved, and the left over sperm later impregnated his younger sister while she was enjoying an evening swim. It’s not shocking that the family had the child aborted before it could be conceived by the preteen girl. Now, when asked why he is oh so heroinly chic thin, Saint Gut -Free can only smile. His six inches of remained small intestines don't allow much room for weight gain. Thus he is 'Gut-Free'. Not only did this tale send shivers down my spine, but a suppressed chuckle in my throat as well. I found Palahniuk's writing style to be unique and innovative. What captured me the most was the straight-forward, bare-all tone that was conveyed through the narrator. He, a self diagnosed compulsive masturbator and sex addict explains his experience all too vividly. It makes the reader feel as if they too are chowing down on feces infested intestines in a swimming pool. And of course I mean that in the best way possible. This book is incredibly uneven, that's its downfall. There are some really good moments, some really bad moments, and one or two truly brillant ones. Looking at it as what it essentially is; a collection of short stories, it's really no better or worse than any other short story collection, and actually should get extra points for its brazen audacity. The unifying material that links all of the stories together is terribly weak, and is what ultimately sinks the book. The first story 'Guts' is the This book is incredibly uneven, that's its downfall. There are some really good moments, some really bad moments, and one or two truly brillant ones. Looking at it as what it essentially is; a collection of short stories, it's really no better or worse than any other short story collection, and actually should get extra points for its brazen audacity. The unifying material that links all of the stories together is terribly weak, and is what ultimately sinks the book. The first story 'Guts' is the best. Not because it's so incredibly gross (and it truly is) but because it is unblinking in its logic. It creates an outrageous yet believable scenerio and follows inexorably to its horrifying conclusion. It's the one story that really stuck with me on a visceral (ha ha) level. The rest of the book reads like it's trying to keep up with the pace of the first story, but it can't. No story that follows is a strongly written or as moving as the first one, but more just shock value for shock's sake. For every story that almost hits the right stride (Exodus) there are those that just plain don't make sense (Punch Drunk, Something's Got to Give) This is the second Palanhuik book that I've read, and I think there really is something there. I appreciate his outrage at society, but I think he needs to dial back his delivery just a hair in order to create truly effective satire. He goes from 0-60 so quickly that the social commentary gets lost in the absurdity of the scenerio. If you can't believe it's possible, it doesn't hit home. Writers like Vonnegut push right to the boundary, then siddle a toe past. Palanhuik sprints to the boundary, then vaults as far as he can go. Vonnegut is a razor, Palanhuik is a blunt instrument. I'm not done with him yet, he's at least shown me enough to give him another try. Warning: The cover of this edition glows in the dark. Do not place on your bed stand unless you want to have a heart attack. I speak from experience. There are 21 short stories in Haunted. Some of them are amazing such as the notorious 'Guts'. Others are so-so. A couple of them are just boring. All of them are written to shock yet the brevity of the tales keeps both writer and reader focused. If this was a short story collection, I would rate it a strong three stars. Unfortunately it is not. Palah Warning: The cover of this edition glows in the dark. Do not place on your bed stand unless you want to have a heart attack. I speak from experience. There are 21 short stories in Haunted. Some of them are amazing such as the notorious 'Guts'. Others are so-so. A couple of them are just boring. All of them are written to shock yet the brevity of the tales keeps both writer and reader focused. If this was a short story collection, I would rate it a strong three stars. Unfortunately it is not. Palahniuk has fashioned this book into a novel. One clearly modeled after The Tales of The Decameron except as written by a 21th century Marquis De Sade. The 19 protagonists are revealed from the beginning as vicious and stupid and we are never given a reason to care about them. Page after page they make insane and idiotic decisions that have no basis in any logic or reality and no purpose but to shock. Some may say that is the point, the author has created a bizarre and surreal horror setting as an analogy. That's fine but what is the author saying? My conclusion is absolutely nothing. Palahnuik's cynicism is so over the top it destroys any attempt at meaning. Perhaps I don't get 'it'. Yet anyone who perused my book list knows I'm not easily offended. This is the third book by this author I've read. The only reason I read three is because Pahalnuik is one hell of a writer at least technically. And from the short stories in this book I know he can pack a punch when he wants to. But this will probably the last Palahnuik book I will subject myself to. This book fucked me up! King was the first writer to scare the shit out of me. Robert Heinlein was the first to make me gaze at the stars. Terry Goodkind and JRR Tolkien were the first to make me love fantasy. Dan Millman was the first to make me want to be a better person. JK Rowling was the first to make me actually pay attention to YA fiction.and now Palahniuk. He's the first writer that made me dizzy, lightheaded and sweaty to a near faint.just with 9 pages (Guts). Holy Damn.this book. This book fucked me up! King was the first writer to scare the shit out of me. Robert Heinlein was the first to make me gaze at the stars. Terry Goodkind and JRR Tolkien were the first to make me love fantasy. Dan Millman was the first to make me want to be a better person. JK Rowling was the first to make me actually pay attention to YA fiction.and now Palahniuk. He's the first writer that made me dizzy, lightheaded and sweaty to a near faint.just with 9 pages (Guts). Holy Damn.this book. 5 stars for being another 'first' in my world of reading!! Update: after having a week to reflect on this book.it's like Palahniuk decided to take Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None (Ten Little Indians)' and make his own horrific version. And Then There Were None is one of my all time favorite Christie novels. This is chuck's worst work. It pains me to say that, but its just true. A group of would-be writers on a writer's retreat each is given the chance to tell a story. The stories are all basically gross for the sake of being gross with little to no redeeming value. One infamous story involving a pool was so hard to get through I had to take 3 breaks. Its so descriptive and disgusting I had to take a breather for fear of vomiting (i am not alone in this, he read this particular story at signings and This is chuck's worst work. It pains me to say that, but its just true. A group of would-be writers on a writer's retreat each is given the chance to tell a story. The stories are all basically gross for the sake of being gross with little to no redeeming value. One infamous story involving a pool was so hard to get through I had to take 3 breaks. Its so descriptive and disgusting I had to take a breather for fear of vomiting (i am not alone in this, he read this particular story at signings and people would have to leave the room, some even threw up right there) I guess if you judge a story's value by how much of a physical response it can incite, then this is Grade A material. Otherwise I would say to avoid this one until you have read a good amount of his earlier work so as not to taint your judgement. People who are just trying to be gross can't help but be entertaining, no matter how see-thru their intent. You can't ignore the little boy who's trying to wipe his boogers on you, and when his parents have finally collared him, with anger and gag relex fully suppressed you have to admit the whole thing was actually pretty funny. Chuck Paloonyhoonyhookiak is just trying to wipe his boogers on you. When he's done with that, he'll gladly exhaust whatever other bodily fluids happen to be available People who are just trying to be gross can't help but be entertaining, no matter how see-thru their intent. You can't ignore the little boy who's trying to wipe his boogers on you, and when his parents have finally collared him, with anger and gag relex fully suppressed you have to admit the whole thing was actually pretty funny. Chuck Paloonyhoonyhookiak is just trying to wipe his boogers on you. When he's done with that, he'll gladly exhaust whatever other bodily fluids happen to be available to him. His novels seem to have been steadily leading up to this: a good old-fashioned gross-out fest, a chance for him to pull out all the stops and just have fun. I settled into 'Haunted', prepared for the worst/best, and got it with the first story, 'Guts'. This is the one that's apparently been making people faint at readings (though how anyone can actually lose consciousness simply listening to someone read something fictional, no matter how shocking, is beyond me), and it really is genuinely disgusting. Yet fun to read, a vomitrous tale well told. Unfortunately, the rest of the stories simply don't latch onto this gory glee, and, apart from a surprising and amusing tale of a hospice patient who is and isn't what he seems to be, the book becomes more and more of a slog, with a wraparound narrative peopled with irritatingly-named victims (I can't hope to adequately express how thankful I am that I'm unlikely to ever again encounter a character in literature named 'Comrade Snarky') meeting their inevitably vile ends. It's ultimately a letdown, but do check out 'Guts', if you're into this sort of thing. First off, this is not the short story collection I was expecting. It is actually a single-author antho-novel hybrid fulla leprechaun jism and other awesome rainbow flavors. No, I mean to say, never write reviews while on Norco, Soma, and about 2 hours' worth of sleep outta 36. I've been trying to catch some Zs since I got home from my latest hospital stay and it's not going so well. So what's better than fighting sleep? Drug-addled reviews. Raise the roof and down the proof! Standou First off, this is not the short story collection I was expecting. It is actually a single-author antho-novel hybrid fulla leprechaun jism and other awesome rainbow flavors. No, I mean to say, never write reviews while on Norco, Soma, and about 2 hours' worth of sleep outta 36. I've been trying to catch some Zs since I got home from my latest hospital stay and it's not going so well. So what's better than fighting sleep? Drug-addled reviews. Raise the roof and down the proof! Standout favorites herein have to be 'Guts', 'Hot Potting', 'Swan Song', and the uber-disturbing gender-role swapping of 'Speaking Bitterness'. The latter actually made me physically uncomfortable while reading it. One powerful goddamn story, friends and neighbors. In fact, if it wasn't for the poetry (the poetry might be awesome and perfect in its poetry goodness, but I haven't a fuck to find for fancy verse) this would have been a five-star read for me. All the poems felt repetitive, the exact same in style and structure. I stopped reading them halfway through, and then went back and read all the ones I skipped. Didn't feel like I missed anything. Then again, I'm not into. Well, you get the idea. Overall, I think they were filler. Not sure why they were needed because this book is almost twice as long as Palahniuk's most popular novels. In summation: You have to enjoy high-class low-brow humor to dig this one. I'm all for anal carrots and cream-filled CPR dummies. Bring on Make Something Up! Final Judgment: Glow-in-the-dark covers are rad. *waves at Nettie and Jess*. 'My goal was just to write some new form of horror story, something based on the ordinary world. Without supernatural monsters or magic. This would be a book you wouldn't want to keep next to your bed. A book that would be a trapdoor down into some dark place. A place only you could go, alone, when you opened the cover. Because only books have that power.' Chuck is right; you don't want to keep this book by your bed. You don't want to get up in the middle of the night and see is covet glowing at y 'My goal was just to write some new form of horror story, something based on the ordinary world. Without supernatural monsters or magic. This would be a book you wouldn't want to keep next to your bed. A book that would be a trapdoor down into some dark place. A place only you could go, alone, when you opened the cover. Because only books have that power.' Chuck is right; you don't want to keep this book by your bed. You don't want to get up in the middle of the night and see is covet glowing at you. Reminding you instantly of the horrors you read before bed, making your stomach churn. This is a book you can't read while eating, or when your wanting to relax. This isn't a book that will take you away from the real world. This book is a bitch slap in the face reminder that some of these horrors that you will read happen in the world around you, and will make you nauseous and shift around in your seat from discomfort. This book will make you glance up nervously, wondering if the others in the room with you can sense that your reading something so horrifically sick. You will feel like you need to shower after reading some of these stories, that your brain needs deep cleaning. But it won't help. These stories are going to stick in your brain. You're going to feel guilty for enjoying this book. This sick, sick horrific book. This book is more of a 3.5 star read. A group of people agree to participate in a 'Writer's Retreat'. Three months, food and lodging included, while you complete your masterpiece. The stories begin with probably one of the best, most shocking short stories I've ever read-called Guts. You just have to see for yourself on that one. Some of the stories the people share are more interesting than others. That's why the 3.5 stars instead of higher. The thing that amazed me about this book was the way This book is more of a 3.5 star read. A group of people agree to participate in a 'Writer's Retreat'. Three months, food and lodging included, while you complete your masterpiece. The stories begin with probably one of the best, most shocking short stories I've ever read-called Guts. You just have to see for yourself on that one. Some of the stories the people share are more interesting than others. That's why the 3.5 stars instead of higher. The thing that amazed me about this book was the way people act. The chapters that told what was going on in the house had me like this. Don't go into this book expecting an easy read though. Humanity at it's basest is what you will see. There are some queasy moments and I have a very stong stomach. I think someone said about this book that the stories didn't scare me.the way people act did. I was really excited about this one after being disappointed with 'Lullaby' and 'Diary.' Basically, it's a book of short stories each by a fictional author, each introduced by a poem about the writer, and linked together by mini-chapters about the writers' retreat they are all on. Trapped in a house and running out of food, they write, record, and videotape their experience, certain that when they are finally rescued, they will all become media darlings destined for reality tv fame, if any of th I was really excited about this one after being disappointed with 'Lullaby' and 'Diary.' Basically, it's a book of short stories each by a fictional author, each introduced by a poem about the writer, and linked together by mini-chapters about the writers' retreat they are all on. Trapped in a house and running out of food, they write, record, and videotape their experience, certain that when they are finally rescued, they will all become media darlings destined for reality tv fame, if any of them survive, that is. The first story, 'Guts,' had a reputation for making listeners pass out when Pahlaniuk read it aloud at book signings. My friend Jim and I also took great pleasure in reading that story aloud to oblivious victims. I think he even read it to his mom. My other favorite story is the one about the life-like dolls at the police station, just totally unbelievable. One critic complained that this book was 'too over the top,' and it's like, dude, what the fuck do you think the point was? Find all of my reviews at: 4.5 Stars WRITER’S RETREAT: ABANDON YOUR LIFE FOR THREE MONTHS. Just disappear. Leave behind everything that keeps you from creating your masterpiece. Your job and family and home, all those obligations and distractions – put them on hold for three months. Live with like-minded people in a setting that supports total immersion in your work. Food and lodging included free for those who qualify. Gamble a small fraction of your life on the Find all of my reviews at: 4.5 Stars WRITER’S RETREAT: ABANDON YOUR LIFE FOR THREE MONTHS. Just disappear. Leave behind everything that keeps you from creating your masterpiece. Your job and family and home, all those obligations and distractions – put them on hold for three months. Live with like-minded people in a setting that supports total immersion in your work. Food and lodging included free for those who qualify. Gamble a small fraction of your life on the chance to create a new future as a professional poet, novelist, screenwriter. Before it’s too late, live the life you dream about. Spaces very limited. A group of strangers responds to this advertisement and find themselves locked away – literally. With no way out and a cast of characters who aim to make their own personal experience worse than anyone else’s, the group soon finds themselves with no heat, little electricity and, let’s say, only unconventional food sources. A novel woven together with short stories and “poems” – a reader like me who generally doesn’t appreciate the short story gets the best of both worlds. This is Palahniuk at his best. I don’t even fucking know anymore. God he’s twisted. And barf-inducing. Whoops, wrong Barf. Palahniuk immediately goes off the rails with the story “Guts”. If you can make it through that tale, you’ll be able make it through the rest of the book – but not without asking yourself the question If you’re extra lucky, you’ll find yourself being asked by your family members “why do you have that horrified look on your face?” and get a chance to share your experiences with the whole gang... Family bonding at its best. Oh Chuck, you sick bastard. When you’re on – you are ON, and I am left speechless. Recommended to????? If I want a clear conscience the answer should be ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, but in reality???? Stopped on page 25 I can't finish this. This book is weird and disgusting and gut wrenching. I decided to read this book because I read in a group comment that it was the weirdest thing they've ever read. So I decided to give it a try. Just fucking no. Stories about some kid sodomising himself with a fucking carrot and some Vaseline; a teenager jacking off with some candle wax -- THROUGH HIS PISS HOLE. The storyteller jacking off in a pool hovering over th I. Stopped on page 25 I can't finish this. This book is weird and disgusting and gut wrenching. I decided to read this book because I read in a group comment that it was the weirdest thing they've ever read. So I decided to give it a try. Just fucking no. Stories about some kid sodomising himself with a fucking carrot and some Vaseline; a teenager jacking off with some candle wax -- THROUGH HIS PISS HOLE. The storyteller jacking off in a pool hovering over the pool's suction shit so it's basically eating his ass whilst he jacks off and next thing you know it's sucking up his guts and he has to eat his asshole out to save himself. Occasional sentences about doing what the French do or some weird shit. What the fuck. 'My goal was just to write some new form of horror story, something based on the ordinary world. Without supernatural monsters or magic. This would be a book you wouldn't keep next to your bed.' -- Chuck Palahniuk Mr Palahniuk, this isn't horror, this is some vile shit, sir. Vile, vile, shit. I get you wanted horror without supernatural monsters or magic, but these stories are not it! Read some of Stephen King's works for some real ordinary world horror -- Misery, for example. That's some nerve-racking stuff. That's horror. (shakes my head). My eyes felt as though they were about to pop out my head whilst I was reading. Excuse me, going to brush my eyeballs and brain to remove the images and thoughts I've just read. The author was right about one thing: This is a book I will not be keeping next to my bed. My God, what to say about this one? Probably this: Haunted was messed up and engaging to the fullest. I'm always floored when an author serves up something genuinely different. In a book market where so many offerings are so goddamn painfully similar (right down to the titles. Can we get another book with the word 'Girl' or 'Dark' in the title please?) it's a real treat when you read something that stands out and rises above the rest for not being like the others. It's even more rewarding when My God, what to say about this one? Probably this: Haunted was messed up and engaging to the fullest. I'm always floored when an author serves up something genuinely different. In a book market where so many offerings are so goddamn painfully similar (right down to the titles. Can we get another book with the word 'Girl' or 'Dark' in the title please?) it's a real treat when you read something that stands out and rises above the rest for not being like the others. It's even more rewarding when such a different drummer has the chops to blow your mind. Haunted is a collection of stories and characters that will absolutely make your skin crawl, and it's mind-boggling how much territory it covers, almost all of it located in left field. It's doubtful that you've ever read anything quite comparable (that goes for most of Palahniuk's other work too). The way Chuck can expand an idea or create a plot from the most unexpected places, then making it compelling and riveting and. Well, let's just say you've never read anything like it. Like the tale of man who literally lost his guts, or the sociopath with a bowling ball, or the cross-dressing terrorist, or the DIY porn couple gone wrong, or the foot masseur turned assassin. These are crazy, fascinating, disturbing tales you won't soon forget. Haunted is gross. It's sick, twisted, funny, sad, shocking; hell it's practically a trigger for every intense feeling humans are capable of having. It's well-written and engaging and beyond all else it is different. And today's storytelling landscape definitely needs a lot more 'different'. The book was a difficult read. Even more difficult to review. I struggled with how many stars to give it to the point where I've waited a few weeks to even write a review. It wasn't my favorite book by any means but I didn't hate it either. What it did do was stir so much visceral emotion that I haven't been able to pick up another book since. A reaction that intense warrants recognition so I reluctantly opted for 4 stars purely on its dark influence over my joy of reading (or lack there of now) The book was a difficult read. Even more difficult to review. I struggled with how many stars to give it to the point where I've waited a few weeks to even write a review. It wasn't my favorite book by any means but I didn't hate it either. What it did do was stir so much visceral emotion that I haven't been able to pick up another book since. A reaction that intense warrants recognition so I reluctantly opted for 4 stars purely on its dark influence over my joy of reading (or lack there of now). Any book that could turn me off from all other books for a while is a book that I'll be talking about for a long time. This novel is not a book I would recommend lightly. It is not a book that I would recommend to many people at all in fact. The reader is going to require a specific taste in entertainment to be able to, first of all, finish the book and, second, do it and still consider me a friend afterwards. The overall disturbing and disjointed nature of the novel takes an attention span and an iron stomach. The twisted black humor will be lost on most but the few able to see it will enjoy the social commentary on a society obsessed with fame at any cost and the overwhelming selfishness that can drive seemingly ordinary people to climb over one another's lifeless corpses to achieve it. Do not pick this book up if you're a light reader. Do not pick this book up if you are not prepared. Do not pick this book up if you have a weak stomach. Do not pick this book up if you are easily offended. Do not pick this book up if you do not enjoy exploring the darker side of human nature. Do not pick this book up if you don't stifle a smile at the misfortune of your enemies. Do not pick this book up. I'd just go ahead and skip it. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, Sometimes in the humor section of the bookstore you can find a spoof of a popular book or writer. That's not what Haunted is, but it's the first thing that comes to mind. While the cover promises that Haunted is 'A Novel,' the innards tell a different story: 24 short short stories and 24 prose poems tied together by a thin framing device. This frame is supposed to evoke storytelling parties of the past, such as the Canterbury Tales or the Decameron, in which the participants each tell a story. He Sometimes in the humor section of the bookstore you can find a spoof of a popular book or writer. That's not what Haunted is, but it's the first thing that comes to mind. While the cover promises that Haunted is 'A Novel,' the innards tell a different story: 24 short short stories and 24 prose poems tied together by a thin framing device. This frame is supposed to evoke storytelling parties of the past, such as the Canterbury Tales or the Decameron, in which the participants each tell a story. Henry James' 'Turn of the Screw' was structured similarly. In Haunted, each of the semi-anonymous characters from the frame 'novel' tell a story and have a poem told about them. The problem with this approach is that every character tells their story as if they were Chuck Palahniuk, and about halfway through bits of the framing device start slipping into the stories. The novel itself is narrated in first-person although the narrator never participates in any of the activities of the others. And oh, the activities! The basic hook for the novel here is that a group of aspiring writers have gone off on a weird 'Writer's Retreat' in which they hole up in an abandoned movie theater somewhere for 90 days. The dust jacket tells us this is 'a satire of reality television' -- and sure, the group of strangers locked in a house together is a common reality TV trope. But if this were a satire of Chuck Palahniuk, what would happen? What would happen is that the writers would all have horrible personal problems, would begin worshiping at the First Church of Self-Destruction, they would start talking like coroners and doctors with jargon littering their dialogue, they would repeat themselves with a chorus, and they'd throw up a bunch of plot twists. And that's just what happens. For no reason at all, except that the participants of this 'Writer's Retreat' think they can cash in someday if they suffer enough, start chopping off fingers, starving themselves, sabotaging the environmental controls, and consuming human flesh. Palahniuk is best when he's right at the edge of absurd. Fight Club was there. Survivor and Choke were at the precipice. Those novels worked. Even with its flaws, Rant toed the long drop. But Haunted hurls itself into the abyss, and I understand how Chuck writes and I understand how Chuck wants you to feel when you're reading his books, and this isn't it. This book makes you exclaim aloud 'This is fucking ridiculous.' These complaints are all about the framing device, the Canterbury participants with stupid nicknames like 'Earl of Slander' and 'Lady Baglady.' The morons like 'The Matchmaker' or 'Agent Tattletale' who chop off all but two of their fingers but are still described as holding objects. If this were a Chuck Palahniuk satire, would one character chop off their penis and another choke to death on it? Would a story involving dressing in drag and getting your ass kicked lead to fundraising for crashing planes? You bet it would. Haunted is an obnoxious mess that fails to get any reader buy-in to the things the characters are doing, and Chuck's signature style is turned up to eleven -- to the point that you're constantly reminded that you're reading a book by an author with an identifiable style. Would a Chuck Palahniuk satire be written that way? So Haunted is, at best, a self-satire by a writer who maybe recognizes his own tropes and wants to poke a little bit of fun. At worst, it's an unsuccessful experiment at creating a compelling anthology novel. The stories themselves are mostly really good, but as presented it feels like Chuck cleaned out a file named 'Novel Ideas' and threw them into this stew instead of developing them individually. Of stand-out note are 'Guts,' which Chuck read aloud on his 'Diary' tour and was previously published in Playboy. It's plotless but has a decent 1-2-3 punch to it. 'The Nightmare Box' is a great little scary story. 'Dissertation' feels like it could get some legs under it. 'Obsolete' is a fun piece of speculative fiction. 'Evil Spirits' is good enough it should go somewhere, but it doesn't. Many of the others are simply average, and a few are completely forgettable ('Ritual', 'Green Room', 'Speaking Bitterness'). My advice: if you're going to read this book, skip the 'Chapters' and the poems, and just read the stories. The attempt to add context to them with the weak writer's-retreat frame doesn't work. Don't be fooled, I may have chosen 5 stars for this novel, but not because I loved it. This book is dynamic. This novel looks so innocent and harmless, sitting there with it's ghostly lavender and white cover and 'Fight Club' was great, I'll give it a read. This novel will stretch you to breaking point and beyond what you have ever read before. To give an example, when Chuck Palahniuk gives a public reading of the short story 'Guts', the ambulance shows up before the end of it. People have fainted Don't be fooled, I may have chosen 5 stars for this novel, but not because I loved it. This book is dynamic. This novel looks so innocent and harmless, sitting there with it's ghostly lavender and white cover and 'Fight Club' was great, I'll give it a read. This novel will stretch you to breaking point and beyond what you have ever read before. To give an example, when Chuck Palahniuk gives a public reading of the short story 'Guts', the ambulance shows up before the end of it. People have fainted, vomited and moaned in disgust over this story. I was not able to read through the whole chapter, I felt very dizzy. And I think this is only chapter two. Things go awry when these strangers gather for a writing retreat and the rest seems like an experiment in how horrible people can possibly be to each other. The format is an overarching story about the downward spiral of the retreat and peppered with the short stories of the attendees. The end short story is the best, if you can make it that far. There is no 'Love-hate' icon for this story. This book is horrifying in the experience; not unlike an STD it stays with you and you have to learn to live with the experience you had with it. I want to recommend it, but I'm afraid it's like going to bed with someone and not telling them you have AIDS. The reason you don't want to tell them is that you want to share the misery. You'll feel blindsided even if you are prepared for it. I suppose this would be extreme reading; but is somewhat of an underground cult-classic. Bring it up with the artistic circles or geeks alike and you will have found at least one or more persons who's read 'Guts' at least. All in all Palahnuik has realized and exercised the right to be as explicit as possible, because books don't come with a Parental Advisory or MPAA rating. I gave my copy away, but I downloaded the audio. I had a hard time finishing Haunted, if you wanna know the truth. But it's just the way I like it, the way it is. There’s really no easy way to read a Chuck book. Some stories were a waste of time. Some were just too excellent: Guts, Exodus, Box-shit, and that scene or whatever it was when Comrade Snarky said, 'I fainted.and you ate my ass?” “You fed me my own ass?” Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! As a whole, the book has a disoriented flow. If we talk about music, it'll be like a beautiful so I had a hard time finishing Haunted, if you wanna know the truth. But it's just the way I like it, the way it is. There’s really no easy way to read a Chuck book. Some stories were a waste of time. Some were just too excellent: Guts, Exodus, Box-shit, and that scene or whatever it was when Comrade Snarky said, 'I fainted.and you ate my ass?” “You fed me my own ass?” Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! As a whole, the book has a disoriented flow. If we talk about music, it'll be like a beautiful sound of discordant notes fitting together into the music sheet played by the orchestra to your ears. But hey, this book, in its truest nature, causes both psychological and physiological disorientation. Fucking gory and gross. Especially that part wherein someone was rotting in the forest. The writing there was beyond excellent. Some stories and scenes just stand alone. Live all by itself. They can survive without the other or without being in the book. The way this book was written was really eccentric. You can get lost easily if you're not used to the way Chucky writes. This book requires a high dose of patience—if you don't have it, then don't read it. It's not reader-friendly. At some parts of the book, you'll tell yourself, 'Why the fuck am I still reading this?' Or 'This is a waste of fucking time.' I told myself that—lots of times. That’s a normal experience though when you’re reading a Chuck book. Writers' Retreat, being away from the world of three months to create their own masterpiece—Disasterpieces; this made me think of the Fucking Show titled Big Brother. Inside this book exists really fucked-up characters. Disgusting, I must say. The idea was really an innovation. And as usual, the sick twisted mind of the author didn't fail to make me applause using one hand. In the first place, I didn't know I can do it. This is the new taste of horror, as Chuck said; it’s like humor and horror inside a bottle of beer. Really funny. The world is meant for suffering—for you to suffer. If you understand that, you might chase suffering—and suffering might run away from you. You might even need to feel you're suffering just to feel you're alive and life is worth living. Quoting from Mr. Whittier (a creature from this book), 'Think of a rock polisher, one of those drums, goes round and round, rolls twenty-four/seven, full of water and rocks and gravel. Grinding it all up. Round and round. Polishing those ugly rocks into gemstones. That’s the earth. Why it goes around. We’re the rocks. And what happens to us—the drama and pain and joy and war and sickness and victory and abuse—why, that’s just the water and sand to erode us. Grind us down. To polish us up, nice and bright.' On the characters’ attempt to metamorphose their sufferings into something they can sell, they craft it into stories. They distort it. Make it worse. Make it better. Make it unreal.The story behind the story behind the story. The truth behind the truth. The reality behind the reality. Perhaps, that is what's happening in this world. The world being turned into fiction. Isn't that at least scary? The narrative style of Chuck in Haunted is really incomparable. And this book of his, hits a lot of things. Obviously, you might know what those things are. The book is definitely Haunted. The cover of the book should be given beyond five stars. Now, let me clap with one hand. Easily the most disgusting book i've ever read. There's an afterword at the end where he talks about how books are the only medium where you have free range to tell the story however you want to tell it, to say whatever you want to say. Whereas in movies, you're trying to hit a certain audience and your work is censored and edited to a certain extent. Books alow you to travel to this deep, dark secret private place inside yourself. That's why he writes. A very compelling explanation. I think one easily the most disgusting book i've ever read. There's an afterword at the end where he talks about how books are the only medium where you have free range to tell the story however you want to tell it, to say whatever you want to say. Whereas in movies, you're trying to hit a certain audience and your work is censored and edited to a certain extent. Books alow you to travel to this deep, dark secret private place inside yourself. That's why he writes. A very compelling explanation. I think one of the major themes of the books is that we are all haunted. We all have our own demons and that the truth is much more terrifying than fiction. Perhaps the scariest thing about Haunted is this: Late one night while i read i noticed i was starting to nod off. I placed the book on my bedside table and turned out the light. As i laid my head down on the bed i noticed a large blurry glow out of the corner of my eye. Sitting up, I took my glasses from the table and as i slid them up my nose i let out a little scream. A big, bug eyed ghost like face was staring back at me. None other than the face on the cover of Haunted. Word of advice: keep the book in a drawer at night. Ok this was a mammoth read- not because of it's 400+ pages or that the author decided to use words which would have scored double points in a Scrabble game - now simply because there is SO much going on. Which is great for a book to read but terrible to comment about when you have a self imposed rule of no spoilers. Well here goes but I promise nothing (apart from a headache) The book follows a group of less than conventional and stereotypical struggling authors desperate to finish/tell their var Ok this was a mammoth read- not because of it's 400+ pages or that the author decided to use words which would have scored double points in a Scrabble game - now simply because there is SO much going on. Which is great for a book to read but terrible to comment about when you have a self imposed rule of no spoilers. Well here goes but I promise nothing (apart from a headache) The book follows a group of less than conventional and stereotypical struggling authors desperate to finish/tell their various tales. And this is where things start getting tricky - you see there are stories within stories like an onion skin but rather than them being simple distractions or allegories for a different tale you quickly realise they are in fact something else. They are part of over all narrative giving both colour and depth to the authors in the group along with filling in some of the blanks the first part of the story has. They you have connecting pieces these are in effect a bridge between the two parts of the story. These give a different perspective and act as an interlude as you shift from one story to the next but without leaving sight of the first (if that makes sense) Which you quickly realise something different again. After all considering the circumstances of writers group how can you have story told by a 3rd person unless someone in the group takes up the role of narrator but then it throws the aspects of the story up in the air once again. In short there is a lot going on and I will admit that were several times when i had to stop and re-read something for my brain to add in the dotting line and light bulb finally is able to go on. I know that Chuck Palahniuk is a highly accomplished author who has many famous accolades to his name which to me can be a knife that cuts both ways. Yes he may be worthy of the praise and his works are joys to hold and read but it also sets the bar so high that disappointment is an almost accepted conclusion. Well I can tell you this is not the case - yes there are cases when you want to shout at the characters, want to slap them or just turn away in disgust but to see it through is more compelling and I must admit I am glad that I did but like I say this is not an easy book to read. True to form, Palahniuk pens some of the most twisted F'd up characterizations in the business. Bizarre and disturbing, for sure. Prolapsed pearl diving, back alley foot jobs, Breather Betty dolls full of love, Punch a mime for $5, the bowling ball bans. What more do you want? Thumectomys, nightmare boxes, crab lice and Sasquatch cyclesyep. It’s in there. Palahniuk’s style is undeniable. Cutting dialog, over the top eccentric characters, demented plotting, all sprinkled with a generous amounts o True to form, Palahniuk pens some of the most twisted F'd up characterizations in the business. Bizarre and disturbing, for sure. Prolapsed pearl diving, back alley foot jobs, Breather Betty dolls full of love, Punch a mime for $5, the bowling ball bans. What more do you want? Thumectomys, nightmare boxes, crab lice and Sasquatch cyclesyep. It’s in there. Palahniuk’s style is undeniable. Cutting dialog, over the top eccentric characters, demented plotting, all sprinkled with a generous amounts of humor and satire. I would expect nothing less. 3.5 Stars and recommended for all Palahniukians. Onstage, instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment I had no expectations when I started to read this book, well yeah I did I expected not to like it and most of all I expected not to 'get' it. It's been on my to read list for an age now and I've always put it off expecting it to be one of those cool books that all your friends read and you feel dumb because it just goes right over your head. And before I started I did scroll through a few reviews here on Goodreads and saw that it had a lot of very Onstage, instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment I had no expectations when I started to read this book, well yeah I did I expected not to like it and most of all I expected not to 'get' it. It's been on my to read list for an age now and I've always put it off expecting it to be one of those cool books that all your friends read and you feel dumb because it just goes right over your head. And before I started I did scroll through a few reviews here on Goodreads and saw that it had a lot of very good reviews and alot of very bad. This leads me to feel that this book is like Marmite, you either love it or you hate it. I loved it and feel I may have read far to much into it rather than have it go over my head. This book reminds me of a warped version of 1984 by George Orwell with the friendly ghost being the big brother that watches these people he's locked up until they share their stories. The stories themselves (most off the time) are so far fetched and gore infested that you feel yourself feeling sick or spontaneously laughing out loud, carrot cake in the butt to people who have everything yet choose to live with nothing. Although this book is a gore feast and a complete mindfuck I could not help relating some of the parts and references to a representation of real life and I feel Chuck Palahniuk based it on the song Hotel California You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave where the controllers in the book represent some of the worlds current events, war, supposed government control etc (this is were I may have read to much into it) Instead, Miss America asks, Is this how it will go? Her voice shrill and shaky, a bird's song. Will this be just one horrible event after another after another after another—until we're all dead? Either way this book makes you think, laugh and cringe and the only way to find out if you'd like it is to read it. But hurry the members of the writers retreat are waiting for you to rescue them (don't rush) so they'll be famous;-p And someday soon, any day now, the world will come open that door and rescue us. The world will listen. Starting on that sun-glorious day, the whole world is going to love us. ★★★★★ = Best book Ever! Hmmm, this is a toughy. I made the mistake of reading a couple of reviews on Haunted while I was halfway through the novel. Needless to say, it didn;t change the way I felt. I can't help but notice that readers of Haunted go to two different extremes in their reviews. Let's face it - you're either a Palahniuk fan or you're not. Anyone that has read a Palahniuk novel before knows what they are getting themselves into. You are going to feel gritty, you're going to feel dirty and you're going to ha Hmmm, this is a toughy. I made the mistake of reading a couple of reviews on Haunted while I was halfway through the novel. Needless to say, it didn;t change the way I felt. I can't help but notice that readers of Haunted go to two different extremes in their reviews. Let's face it - you're either a Palahniuk fan or you're not. Anyone that has read a Palahniuk novel before knows what they are getting themselves into. You are going to feel gritty, you're going to feel dirty and you're going to hate and love each of his characters within the same sentence. Here's the beauty. (Yes, there's beauty in this book.) Anyone can write about gore, dismemberment, 'Guts', and a whole slew of unappetizing subjects, BUT no one can put you in the moment like good ol' Chuck. No one can make you put down a book and stare into space, recounting the horrific moment you just read over and over again, trying to put yourself in this situation and actually liking it. That's the beauty of a Palahniuk novel- you might need to take a break from him from time to time, but you'll always find yourself coming back. I adore scary. I love being scared by movies and books. I'm a little less brave by real-life situations - as a kid I loved the idea of haunted houses at Halloween, but each year, without fail, I wouldn't even make it through a haunted house without my dad having to carry me out an emergency exit because it was all just too much. It became sort of a family joke. I wanted to make it through, I wanted to enjoy being scared, but it was too close to me, I didn't have control over it, and therefore, I I adore scary. I love being scared by movies and books. I'm a little less brave by real-life situations - as a kid I loved the idea of haunted houses at Halloween, but each year, without fail, I wouldn't even make it through a haunted house without my dad having to carry me out an emergency exit because it was all just too much. It became sort of a family joke. I wanted to make it through, I wanted to enjoy being scared, but it was too close to me, I didn't have control over it, and therefore, I couldn't have fun with it. (I have since been able to handle Halloween haunted houses, by the way, in case you were wondering. I've learned how to have fun with it. Sort of.) The sorts of movies and books I like are the ones that involve ghosts, even demons, exorcisms are fine, some alien-horror stuff, stuff that you can't see, my imagination is the scariest place I know, so movies or books that only touch on the problem without showing me anything, or just shadows, or noises, or swelling music - that's the sort of stuff I like. Movies and books that are more for the gore (I think they call it 'torture porn', right?) doesn't work for me. It's dumb, it's silly, it's not enjoyable. Look, more blood, more guts, more sexually-based attacks and killings, more in-your-face gore. What is that? That's not enjoyable to me, that's shock value, that's someone who can't tell a story so makes up for it with stuff that shocks the viewer and reader. It's why this wasn't that good. It's why Palahniuk (and the public) give so much attention to the fact that (at the time of this writing) 73 people passed out at Palahniuk's readings of the story included here, 'Guts'. It's not a good story, because Palahniuk doesn't appear to be a particularly good writer, but there's a story behind the story, and that's what people are fascinated with. Drama, it's just like Palahniuk stated throughout this book (paraphrasing here), that people love drama, they'll create the drama if it doesn't already exist, life is boring without it. I don't disagree. But I also try not to associate with the people who take it too far. They might not be bad people, but their interests don't always interest me. This is the sort of book I would have enjoyed in high school when I was reading and and thought cutting-edge literature meant that it was good literature. Mostly because I didn't know better, mostly because I thought I was making a statement, mostly because I was impressionable. And now I'm not. I'm older, I know better, I've read more, I've lived more, and I know what kind of things impress me. These stories didn't impress me. I haven't read anything else by Palahniuk before, and I wouldn't have read this on my own either, but did so now because it was the next choice at my real-life book club and I will read all teh books because that's how I roll. I gave it a chance and it let me down. I'm a pretty strong person, I have a somewhat iron stomach, I work in the medical field and I see pictures of really gross things sometimes. I hear stories of even grosser things, sometimes while I'm eating my lunch. I'm actually interested in it. But there's a reason for those stories, they are learning experiences for the people telling them, for the people listening to them, and for me who genuinely finds so much interesting in the world around me. It seems to me that Palahniuk wants to make a statement about the world around him but chooses to do so in a shock-value manner, as if his stories might not stand well on their own unless there was this stuff propping it up. 'Hey, come see me read, read my book, see if you're strong enough not to puke or pass out, I dare you.' I don't need to be dared, thankyouverymuch. Just write a solid book that stands on its own, stop trying to impress your public, stop trying to be cutting-edge and cool because it doesn't work. I give this two stars because I could actually finish it and I understood what Palahniuk was trying to say. But it's not as smart as he wants to pretend it is. And two stars because I'm fucking happy to be done reading it. And also, two stars because the cover glows in the dark and almost gave my boyfriend a heart attack. This is a bad book barely held together by fleeting and brief moments of fantastic insight. Just when I felt like I was wasting my time and the novel couldn't get any more disgusting, stupid, boring, or any other negative sentiment, it would then turn for just a brief second and capture my interest fully and completely. At these dispersed points the book would almost redeem itself. Then, within no time at all, the nice respite from the garbage prose would come to an end and the author would then This is a bad book barely held together by fleeting and brief moments of fantastic insight. Just when I felt like I was wasting my time and the novel couldn't get any more disgusting, stupid, boring, or any other negative sentiment, it would then turn for just a brief second and capture my interest fully and completely. At these dispersed points the book would almost redeem itself. Then, within no time at all, the nice respite from the garbage prose would come to an end and the author would then resume his contrived and gimmicky (and also badly written) prose found throughout Haunted. I couldn't help but think about the movie Fight Club when I read this novel, which is a glaring indication that Palahniuk is a one trick pony. The dialogue, the plot, the outlandish events—it was like Palahniuk was just trying to redo and at the same time outdo what he has already written. What else can I say? This books sucks. It'll make a reader's skin crawl and feel there is no hope for humanity—if humanity has ever existed at all anyway. However, simultaneously, these reactions are also true feelings, guttural, visceral, real—human. And therein lies that quirky and depressing insight. Written in stolen moments under truck chassis and on park benches to a soundtrack of The Downward Spiral and Pablo Honey, Fight Club came into existence. The adaptation of Fight Club was a flop at the box office, but achieved cult status on DVD. The film’s popularity drove sales of the novel. Chuck put out two novels in 1999, Survivor and Invisible Monsters. Choke, published in 2001, became Chuck’ Written in stolen moments under truck chassis and on park benches to a soundtrack of The Downward Spiral and Pablo Honey, Fight Club came into existence. The adaptation of Fight Club was a flop at the box office, but achieved cult status on DVD. The film’s popularity drove sales of the novel. Chuck put out two novels in 1999, Survivor and Invisible Monsters. Choke, published in 2001, became Chuck’s first New York Times bestseller. Chuck’s work has always been infused with personal experience, and his next novel, Lullaby, was no exception. Chuck credits writing Lullaby with helping him cope with the tragic death of his father. Diary and the non-fiction guide to Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, were released in 2003. While on the road in support of Diary, Chuck began reading a short story entitled 'Guts,' which would eventually become part of the novel Haunted. In the years that followed, he continued to write, publishing the bestselling Rant, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, a 'remix' of Invisible Monsters, Damned, and most recently, Doomed. Chuck also enjoys giving back to his fans, and teaching the art of storytelling has been an important part of that. In 2004, Chuck began submitting essays to ChuckPalahniuk.net on the craft of writing. These were 'How To' pieces, straight out of Chuck's personal bag of tricks, based on the tenants of minimalism he learned from Tom Spanbauer. Every month, a “Homework Assignment” would accompany the lesson, so Workshop members could apply what they had learned. (all 36 of these essays can currently be found on The Cult's sister-site, LitReactor.com). Then, in 2009, Chuck increased his involvement by committing to read and review a selection of fan-written stories each month. The best stories are currently set to be published in Burnt Tongues, a forthcoming anthology, with an introduction written by Chuck himself. His next novel, Beautiful You, is due out in October 2014. The troubled-teen industry, with its scaremongering and claims of miraculous changes in behavior through harsh discipline, has existed in one form or another for decades, despite a dearth of evidence supporting its methods. And the growing number of programs that make up this industry are today finding more customers than ever. Maia Szalavitz's Help at Any Cost is the first in-depth investigation of this industry and its practices, starting with its roots in the cultlike sixties rehabilitation program Synanon and Large Group Awareness Training organizations likeest in the seventies; continuing with Straight, Inc., which received Nancy Reagan's seal of approval in the eighties; and culminating with a look at the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs-the leading force in the industry today-which has begun setting up shop in foreign countries to avoid regulation. Szalavitz uncovers disturbing findings about these programs' methods, including allegation of physical and verbal abuse, and presents us with moving, often horrifying, first-person accounts of kids who made it through-as well as stories of those who didn't survive. The book also contains a thoughtfully compiled guide for parents, which details effective treatment alternatives. Weaving careful reporting with astute analysis, Maia Szalavitz has written an important and timely survey that will change the way we look at rebellious teens-and the people to whom we entrust them. Help at Any Cost is a vital resource with an urgent message that will draw attention to a compelling issue long overlooked. ![]() Read information about the author Maia Szalavitz is an award-winning author and journalist who covers addiction and neuroscience. Her next book, Unbroken Brain (St. Martins, April, 2016), uses her own story of recovery from heroin and cocaine addiction to explore how reframing addiction as a developmental disorder could revolutionize prevention, treatment and policy. She's the author or co-author of six previous books, including the bestselling The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog (Basic, 2007) and Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential-- and Endangered (Morrow, 2010), both with leading child psychiatrist and trauma expert Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD. Her book, Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids, is the first history of systemic abuse in 'tough love' programs and rehabs and helped spur Congressional hearings, GAO investigations and proposed legislation to regulate these groups. She also co-wrote the first evidence-based consumer guide to addiction treatment, Recovery Options: The Complete Guide, with Joe Volpicelli, MD, PhD. (Wiley, 2000). Currently, she writes a bi-weekly column for VICE on drugs and addiction. From 2010 to 2013, she wrote daily for TIME.com and she continues to freelance there and for other publications including the New York Times, Scientific American Mind, Nature, New York Magazine online, Pacific Standard, Matter, Nautilus, and The Verge. Szalavitz has won major awards from organizations like the American Psychological Association, the Drug Policy Alliance and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in recognition of her work in these areas. She lives in New York with her husband and a Siamese shelter cat. Reviews of the Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids. Help at Any Cost provides a much-needed and, at times. Parents desperate for help and frustrated by conventional treatments such as family therapy. She can't tell if he's playing her.or if he's playing for keeps. THE GAMING THE SYSTEM SERIES: 0- Girl Geek ~ prequel 1- At Any Price ~ Adam & Mia pt. 1 2- At Any Turn ~ Adam & Mia pt. 2 3- At Any Moment ~ Adam & Mia pt. 3 4- For The Win ~ Jordan & April 5- For The One ~ William & Jenna 6- Worth Any Cost ~ Adam. Note: Our Kindle self-publishing feature has been fully updated. This article was first published in February 2012. ![]() They say that everyone has a book in them, but few of us ever take the time to actually write and then publish that book. In the past there have always been major barriers to getting your words into print. Large publishing houses reigned supreme and acted as gatekeepers. It was almost impossible to get an agent, and the distribution network for books was expensive. Today, all that has changed with the arrival of self-publishing, which offers low-cost tools to start your own publishing empire. More than any other influence, Amazon and the have transformed how we buy and read books. For budding self-publishers, the Kindle and the publishing platform it links to, is a relatively straightforward method to get your words into the hands of readers. With millions of Kindle reader devices and perhaps hundreds of millions of Kindle app users on smartphones and tablets, you can be sure that using the Kindle format for your eBooks will ensure they can be read by the widest possible audience. The KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) system has been available since 2007. The eBook format it uses is proprietary to Amazon. What this means in practice is that if you use KDP, your readership must have a Kindle or the Kindle reading app. Other eBook formats are also available such as ePub, which is the universal standard, and of course you could publish your work using the PDF format, which has been around for decades (or even just use plain Microsoft Word documents). But we are going to focus on how you publish your eBook with KDP. Publishing tools Before looking at the tools you can use with KDP, it's a good idea to take a minute and consider the different eBook formats that are in use, and how they relate to KDP. The eBooks you publish for the Kindle will use the MOBI format, which Amazon adopted for its Kindle readers. You may have read that the format the Kindle uses is AZW or AZW3. All you need to worry about is that you can produce your eBook in MOBI, as this is the preferred format all Amazon Kindle devices and smartphone apps can read and display. The Kindle offers anyone the chance to publish their books on their own terms In addition, ePub has become the universal eBook standard that every other eBook publisher uses. Amazon's KDP can take ePub files and use them to create MOBI, but you are not limited to this. If all you have is an aging copy of Microsoft's Word, or even just a plain text editor, you will be able to input this into KDP and create an eBook that Amazon can put onto its catalogue. One of the key reasons the writing tool has become so popular is because it can directly output your eBook in Amazon's MOBI format. Amazon has made the whole process of publishing with KDP as easy as possible. The key is to spend your time preparing your manuscript so it can be digested by KDP and published with all the formatting you want. In essence you can publish your eBook in three steps: 1. Prepare your manuscript There are a number of word processors to choose from, with Microsoft's Word being the leader. You can save your work in DOC format or the newer DOCX. You also have the option to use ePub, which Scrivener supports. If you were thinking of using HTML or PDFs as your source files, think again, as the eBook you get after KDP processing may need a lot of work to correct any errors with layout. KDP also supports comics and illustrated books. There is a special and the which will give you specific advice about publishing these special eBook formats. It's a good idea to read up on how the whole KDP system works, as you will need to ensure the pages of your book are formatted correctly. Amazon has a handy that explains all this in detail. One of the most important aspects of book publishing is getting the design of you new eBook's cover right. KDP has its own. There are a number of approaches you could take – if you have the flair, you can of course design your own. Some of the leading applications to help you include: • • • • • • It is also possible to test your eBook cover and design with and listen to a with book designer Joel Friedlander for some expert advice. Publish You will need to have set up an account on Amazon to start using KDP. Once this is complete you will see your account page. The basic information about your book including title, author and category then need to be added. This is the basic information that Amazon will use to include your new eBook on its website. Next, you'll be asked to create a cover for your eBook or upload your own. You also need to set rights and territories details and whether you are distributing your eBook as a public domain title, or under your copyright. And lastly, you will be asked for the price of your book. Masses of information exist on Kindle eBook pricing. Take a look at, and advice from author. There does come, however, seem to be a sweet spot of £2.99/$2.99, which readers are prepared to risk on a self-published author. However, stories abound about the power of the 99p eBook, with some authors selling tens if not hundreds of thousands of copies of their eBooks at this price. Promotion of your eBook is a key aspect 3. Promote One of the most daunting aspects of self-publishing is without a doubt the marketing you have to do. With thousands of new eBooks appearing on Amazon daily, how are you going to make your eBook stand out from the crowd? Amazon offers its own promotional tools with and but you can't just rely on these tools to reach your readers. What you need to do is build your own author platform. This is an umbrella term for your website, Twitter feed, Facebook page and any other communications channel you can use to shout about your eBook. Start with your own on Amazon and then expand with other channels you can create. There is a huge amount of excellent advice on website about how to market your eBook. And for further advice from us, click through to the next page. ![]() ![]() ![]() By turns heartbreaking, hilarious, and utterly human, The House of God is a mesmerizing and provocative novel about Roy Basch and five of his fellow interns at the most renowned teaching hospital in the country. Struggling with grueling hours and sudden life-and-death responsibilities, Basch and his colleagues, under the leadership of their rule-breaking senior resident known only as the Fat Man, must learn not only how to be fine doctors but, eventually, good human beings. A phenomenon ever since it was published, The House of God was the first unvarnished, unglorified, and uncensored portrait of what training to become a doctor is truly like, in all its terror, exhaustion and black comedy. With more than two million copies sold worldwide, it has been hailed as one of the most important medical novels ever written. With an introduction by John Updike. Feb 01, 2017 PDF The House of God Samuel Shem Download OnlineDONWLOAD NOW http://ist.softebook.xyz/?book=. Samuel Shem is a novelist, playwright, and, for three decades, a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty. His novels include The House of God, Mount Misery, and Fine. By day I am a software developer, installer, trainer and all around computer guy. In the evening, wee hours of the morning, or any time I can grab a few minutes I work on my novel, and when I need a break from that I fiddle with one of my game projects. My novel,, was released in 2013. The sequel, was released in 2014 My interests include • Writing and Self Publishing • Table top RPGs (playing and creating) • Text based gaming (MUDS) • Software Development (Linux, Open Source) • Martial Arts (Shotokan & Kenpo) • SciFi and Fantasy Stuff. ![]() ![]() Aug 27, 2009 Using Gimp to Create Ebook Cover. Have some ebook templates which work great in Gimp but I am pretty new to graphics so it's been a hair-tearing learning curve to. How to Make a Book Cover in GIMP. Posted by Joleene Naylor on March 8, 2010 March 29, 2010. Yesterday I showed you how to use Paint Brush to make an eBook cover. ![]() 9 minutes Everywhere I look it seems people are releasing eBooks and trying to cash in on their audience. There are quite a few success stories out there, but for the most part, people just aren’t making the sales they want. ![]() As I have had a lot of success with my own eBook, Cloud Living (no longer for sale, follow instead, I thought it would be helpful to a lot of people if I wrote a guide about the whole process. For those of you who don’t know, Cloud Living is my eBook which teaches people how I make a living online. That being said, I want to make it clear that I don’t make a living by teaching people how to make a living online. My biggest successes are in personal services which offer an affiliate program and various sites I run in the health niche. My Own Example When I had the idea to create Cloud Living, I had just finished giving away a free eBook on blogging. It was 90 pages long and included most of what I know when it comes to growing a blog. As I don’t just make money through blogging, I wanted to make an expanded guide which offered tips on affiliate marketing. In addition to that, I wanted to make the guide a resource for people who want to make cloud living (making money from the internet) a reality. Therefore, I included a number of interviews with people succeeding online and my own tips for getting things done, even if you have a full-time job. The product ended up being around 176 pages and I couldn’t be happier with the end result. Something you may find interesting is that I genuinely just wanted to make $1,000 from releasing the guide. That way I knew I would have helped a lot of people and the months of work it took to put the guide together will have been somewhat worth it. • On launch day, the eBook brought in over $4,000. • Almost 700 copies of the guide have been purchased • Approximately 80% of the $30,000 is purely from sales. The rest is through affiliate links inside the book • January, 6 months after launch, is on track to be the second best month ever in terms of sales Before I share how I made all of this possible, let’s look at some of the reasons for writing an eBook in the first place, apart from the obvious financial benefits. Why Write an eBook? The obvious answer to most people, is money. If that is your sole motivation though, then you’re missing out. There are actually quite a few reasons to write an eBook that you may not have initially thought of: • Position Yourself as An Expert – Since launching Cloud Living, I have been absolutely overloaded with interview requests. The guide makes it clear that I know what I’m doing online, so people come to me for advice. If you write a rubbish guide, then nobody is going to think very highly of you. Yet, if you make the product the best you can make it, people will start to notice you. I now regularly see people refer to making money online as “Cloud Living’ and a number of “make money” blogs now exist with Cloud in the title. This alone shows me the big influence that some people can have. • Having Your Own Product is Massive – Have you ever tried to promote a product someone else created on your own blog? I have in the personal development space and the conversions are, quite frankly, awful. Once, with 5,000 subscribers, I only pushed about 15 sales after writing a whole post on a product. Yet, when I release my own work, it sells really well. Remember that people read your site for you, so they’re more likely to buy a product if it has your name on. • Help People – The eBooks that sell the best are the ones that fill a genuine need. Therefore, one good reason to write an eBook is to share knowledge on a topic you know a lot about, and truly help your buyers. A few days ago I received an email from someone telling me that they were now making over $10,000 a month thanks to my guide. There is no way I can describe in words how good reading that email made me feel — and it’s one of many. • Constant Income – Having a $4,000 day was awesome, but it’s the constant income from selling eBook’s that I enjoy. ![]() I now have two products (, 2 (no longer available) that I actively promote and earn a good passive income. Through nothing but a sidebar ad and regular website traffic, Cloud Living is on track to make around $3,000 this month. You don’t have to be an experienced writer with a string of publications in your name in order to publish an eBook and make money from it. Traditionally, a writer. Publishing your own ebook has never been easier! You could make money by writing your own & letting Kindle & iPad users buy your ebook on the online stores! ![]() I think that’s pretty amazing considering the product was launched 6 months ago. And, of course: to make money. Picking Your Topic Many of you might be tempted to write an eBook now, but have absolutely no idea what you’re going to write it on. If that’s you, this section will help. For those of you who think you have an idea and are ready to roll with it, I still think you should continue reading. There are a lot of eBooks that sell well, and a lot more that sell poorly. Often, the topic of the eBook makes a massive difference to whether or not it will succeed in making money. As a way to help you narrow down the ideas buzzing around your head right now, here are some of my suggestions to help you think of what topic you could write an eBook on: • What You Know About – The easiest way to create a great product, of course, is to write on a topic you know inside out. I have been building websites for four years and making a living with them for almost two, so I knew my subject well. If you know about something, there’s also a good chance you’ll be passionate about it. This will make it far easier to keep working on the guide and also allows you to give the best advice possible. • What Your Readers Want – As I have mentioned, it’s far easier to promote your own products (especially on a blog) than it is to promote things as an affiliate. ![]() If you have an audience already, why not find out what they want? You could do this by creating a poll and asking people specifically, or you could look at your most popular site pages / blog posts and see what your audience reacts to most. • How Can You Offer the Most Value – Believe it or not, we don’t always know what we want. Therefore, asking your readers what they want in a guide may not really be what they want to purchase. As an extra ‘test’ to ensure you are going to write an eBook on the right topic, ask yourself what you could write about that would help people the most. It may not be something you have the most knowledge on, but you might know enough to honestly help people. • Look Around Your Niche – Sites like StumbleUpon, Facebook and Twitter can be an absolute goldmine for product ideas. If you see what topics your industry really cares about, you can create a product that gives them exactly that. Additionally, you could check out the top blogs in your industry and see what they are promoting. It never hurts to ask someone if their product is selling well. While I don’t recommend you copy what other people are putting out there, this can give you some good ideas. Hopefully these tips have given you topic ideas for your eBook. If you’re still looking for suggestions, leave a comment at the bottom of the post and I’m sure other readers here can help you brainstorm. The Creation Process Once you’ve decided you want to write an eBook and know what topic it’s going to be about, it’s time to get started. There are a number of eBook creation tools and software packages out there, but I keep the process fairly simple. First of all, I write everything in. This is a free office suite that works on all popular operating systems. A lot of tools that can turn documents into PDF format do not allow custom security settings and most of them cannot export hyperlinks properly. Thankfully, Open Office does not have this problem. In terms of structure, I like to map out exactly what I’m going to talk about in the guide and get all of my content sections down first. From there, I can slowly work towards completing the guide by filling out a few each day. After writing your guide, you probably want to work on the design. I use some nice covers on my eBooks so that they look like real physical products. Of course, I do not pretend they are more than eBooks; it simply looks better. As well as giving the design an external look, you can also work on the internals. I like to start the first page of an eBook with another picture of the cover and copyright information. From there, I design a nice footer that will display on every page so keep a general ‘theme’ running throughout the guide. And, finally, I replace all headings with an actual image file so that they look much better. A lot of people design their eBooks differently so you should look around before just following my own outline. To create the graphics I personally learned how to use Photoshop but you could also hire someone for cheap from. Once you have your eBook written and it’s looking pretty, you should then set-up a payment processor. This will allow you to receive money for your guide and have it automatically delivered to a buyer, instantly. I personally use to handle this process as it works perfectly and handles everything behind the scenes for just $5 per month. I noticed many other sites like Problogger and Copyblogger also use them. Getting started with is quick and totally free (7 day trial). You can upload your eBook PDF file into their admin area, set your price, and then you will receive a ‘Buy now’ link code. This allows you to send people straight to PayPal to buy your guide. Once the payment is approved, e-junkie will automatically send the buyer the eBook, without you having to do anything. Now that everything is in order and the payment processor is sorted, you’re going to want to look at promoting your eBook. Marketing Your eBook The sole task of writing an eBook is sadly not enough to bring you the benefits that we discussed earlier — you actually have to promote your work. The tactics involved in marketing an eBook are very similar to the tactics involved in marketing anything online, but I’ll still share my tips here: • Your Audience – My aim is to always be totally honest with you guys so the first thing I must say is that it is much easier to sell and promote an eBook if you already have an established audience. Ask yourself whether it would be wise to build up your audience a bit first before launching your first product. Darren Rowse at Problogger didn’t launch an eBook until his 5th year of writing for the site, but managed to pull in an estimated $450,000 (based on my calculations using his public sales figures) from a $19 product. It’s never too late to launch a product, but it might be too early. If you have an established audience, that’s a great place to start to get your guide out there. • Networking – A few months ago I attended a workshop in London which taught people how to quit their day jobs. I didn’t go to learn about that though (I already have quit my job), but to learn about how to teach people how to quit their job. This is because I write about personal development and find it fascinating. Although I didn’t go to this workshop to make money, I certainly met a few people who have since purchased eBooks from me. • Affiliates – Out of the $4,500 or so that the eBook made on the day of launch, around $500 of this money was in affiliate commissions. I allow people to promote the product and if they refer a sale, I will give them 51% of $37, which is $18.87. I can do this because it is free for me to duplicate my PDF file, and I get my products in front of people who would not have otherwise known about them. To get affiliates, I like to focus on bloggers and gain their attention by regularly commenting or their site or maybe writing a few articles before pitching anything. Give and you will receive. You could also use a service like Clickbank, which I’m going to be testing shortly. • Offline Press – The reason this month is going to be the second best month ever for Cloud Living is because I received some great offline press recently. I was featured in an article () in the UK’s second biggest newspaper about people making a living online. This brought thousands of people to my website and resulted in a lot more sales than usual. If you can get featured in relevant, offline press, then that can do wonders for your online sales. • Search Engine Traffic – I know some people who create eBooks solely for the sake of making money from the search engine traffic they are currently receiving. I also know people who purposefully build eBooks and websites in a niche because they can make money, not because they know about the subject. If you can find what problems people are searching for online, and rank in the top results of Google with a solution to that problem (your guide), then there’s a lot of money to be made. I have personally spoken to people making over $300,000 per year with this method. If I had to estimate how many Cloud Living sales were based on these as a percentage, I would say: • Original Audience: 75% • Affiliates: 15% • Offline Press: 5% • Search Engines: 4% • Networking: 1% If you can pull off any of these methods well, you’re going to have a good chance at making sales and enjoying the other benefits that owning your own product has to offer. If you’re going to focus on just one or two, then definitely work to build up your own audience and gain a list of affiliates who would like to promote your product. The Final Details That I Couldn’t Miss I know this has been an absolutely monster post (although I’m sure you are used to them by now), but there are a few more points I want to talk about in order to make this guide as useful as possible. There a few things that didn’t really fit into the other sections here but definitely deserve to be discussed. Handling Refunds When I launched Cloud Living, I never mentioned any form of money-back guarantee. Maybe it would have increased sales, but there have literally only been 3 refunds in over 600 purchases. I actually meant to launch the product with a 30-day money-back guarantee but since it was selling well with that, I never made the change. If someone is clearly being scammy by purchasing the book and requesting a refund in the same day or something of that nature, then I will try not to give a refund as that only encourages scammers to con more people. If someone seems even slightly legitimate though then I will happily give a refund as quickly as possible. It’s not worth the possible reputation management nightmare for the price of one guide. Pricing I personally like to price my products around the $27 – $37 range when working with eBooks. I know in the future, when I create bigger products with more features, that price will rise quite a lot. The price of your eBook should really be whatever you think it is worth. After all, you made it and if it doesn’t sell, you’re the one who has to deal with that. Of course, ideally you will want to pick a price point that is going to get you sales from the start. Price too low and you run the risk of your product looking low-value and miss-worthy. Price it too high and you may alienate your audience with an out-of-reach price point. My advice for pricing is simple: see how other people in the niche are pricing their guides, for what, and start with something similar. I personally think it’s better to price a product too low than too high. If you price it too low then at least you will get sales and can know to increase that. If you price your product too high and then have to bring that down, it will be clear to your audience that sales are low and you lose any social proof you may have had. My Own Success This guide is just my thoughts on creating a profitable eBook online. There may be better ways to do everything I have suggested, but these are the steps I take. $30,000 is nothing compared to some of the launches out there, but the result is something I’m proud of and also something I think many of you here would like to reach. If you’ve made it this far, I have to try and tempt you to subscribe to the (or get ). Articles like this one are posted at least once per week. And yes, they really are this long. As always, I would appreciate your feedback in the comments and support on Twitter if you like this article! It’s a very nice product indeed that you brought out there. As far as I can tell it’s the only in it’s sort on cloud living/ free living / financial independence. Of course there are places like project mojave but those cost tons of money and for those of us who want to do things at our own pace this is great. Making an eBook of my own is on my list to do in the near future, I just hope it will be remotely as successful as your creation. Creating your own product is a huge challenge but once you’ve got one that is selling nicely your name will be out there more and more. If you’ve done things right chances are future products by yourself will be bought by the same people who bought the first one. A very exciting prospect and a great resource to tap in to. On a sidenote, it seems easy money but don’t be fooled by the hard work it takes to come this far. Countless hours of writing, editing, marketing and actively selling. But at least you can do it form the comforts of your own home (or wherever you have wifi support.) Thanks for the great post and the inspiration. Hi Glen, Fantastic article on a topic that I always viewed as “pipe dream” type stuff but having read your post I think anyone with a good writing style and sound level of topic knowledge can have a good crack at writing & selling an ebook. The idea of creating your very own product and having full control over what gets published and so on is an extremely liberating concept and appears to fit in perfectly with a more independent style of living. You’ve given me some serious food for thought now as I’m leaving full time employment to begin a freelance online marketing service (mostly travel related) so I can already visualise a few niche ebooks that could genuinely help people. Thanks a million! I gotta say Glen, really impressive. I could read these kind of articles all day. Congratulations with the success of Cloud Living. I was actually very curious how much you made with it:-). The book actually helped me a lot! Since I’ve bought that book, I created 4 affiliate websites. One is already making some money. I now I’m building a blog that I will launch very soon. For the people that consider buying the book: just do it. It’s worth a lot more than Glen asks for it. Besides that, Glen also helps you out when you have questions. I recently emailed him about my new blog and he really helped me with that. Cloud Living will be one of the product that I will be offering on my blog because it’s really top notch. Keep up the good work Glen! I found this post through a tweet from Jonathan Fields (the master of valuable content) and found the wealth of info to be completely relevant. I am currently (you guessed it!) writing an eBook on Branding and Marketing for Artists. While the writing and design won’t be a problem for me, it was great to get some further insight on pricing, delivery (e-Junkie), affiliate info and promo percentages. Plus, my confidence vacillates weekly and this post put me back in the “Hells yeah, I can do this!” mindset. So, thanx a mil for that. Once you’ve built up a relationship with a blogger by writing articles for them or regularly contributing comments, just send them an email about what you’re working on. Just be totally normal, don’t worry about sounding professional because I’ve found that makes things very impersonal. Give them a link to your affiliate area and let them know when the product will launch (give a week in advance, at least). Remind them of who you are (“I regularly write comments,” “I wrote X article”) and see what happens. I hope that is better for you! This is good stuff here Glenn. I myself have written an eBook before which also made a good number of sales, although not as big as yours. I have couple of problems though. First one is that I have never launched the affiliate programs and even though if I launched it, Im really not sure how will it work back then. The other one is offline press. Im not popular here in my country and this is something that Im working out this year. Both questions are answered in this lengthy article! Thanks again man! Great Post, Glen (as always!) This will be invaluable information when I do my own eBook eventuallyI’m still in the build up the reputation on the blogging scene phase! My mission.share what I know to help people to help themselves. As I’m a natural health practitioner doing a modality I know works (my clients keep sending their friends to me!) I know I need to spread the word more widely.a huge project! Your work here, on PluginID and HQHow has been a great inspiration! Thank you SOOOO much! One question.as a South African, I have a HUGE problem with PayPal.they don’t allow payments INTO accounts from our country!!!! Any suggestions on how to solve this problem, because some sites (like Squidoo) that I want to make use of, only use PayPal!? Keep up the good work! Table Mountain’s waiting to spread its table cloth for you! What a great article. I have a product that have been trying to find ways of producing, but my full time caregiver salary of $0 makes it pretty difficult. Although I have sold a little over 100 of my 911 PREP Kits, I have not been able to help people in the way I dreamed. After reading some of your blogs, I managed to put together every piece of my kit in a template format, add a lot of really good content about the lesons I’ve learned through the 50+ medical emergencies I’ve gone through with both parents and put it into a PDF. Proofreading should be done tomorrow. After that, I will relaunch the new e-version on several web sites with strong domain names and follow you’re great advice. Your passion for helping people really shines through. I think Eckert Tolle would be proud. I love writing ebooks. I have written about 10 in the last decade. Some were great some not so great. I still make money to this day from an ebook I wrote 6 years ago (with revisions). All I do is try to come up with the next greatest ebook. Some people try to come up with the next best phone app, I do that with ebooks. Just finished my latest one February 2010: “No Building Codes” and it can be found. It is a book about where you can still find places with no building codes in the United States. Why did I write it? Because there was no book like it in existence–which was the impetus to write it. That’s called finding a niche–your key to success! Best of luck to you aspiring authors! I am going to launch an e-book in a week. I have two important questions I would love to know the answer to. One on the value of social media followers the other is about the value of AdWords advertising: 1- I dont have many followers on my blog. I have over a thousand on Twitter, and 60 on Facebook. Are these followers a decent replacement for my blog followers? 2- I had a promo from AdWords so have $100 of free advertising that I am ready to use. Is this any good for selling the e-book in your experience? Hope you can answer this, I would be thrilled if you can! Glen, first, always a pleasure to learn from your posts! I’m not sure if I have the passion to create an e-book at this point, I need to stay focused on maintaining what I do have, which are several affiliate websites. I’m adding more content to each one at this time versus setting up more that I feel overwhelmed with since I have a full time job. Could any of this be applied to affiliate mini sites (4-5 pages)? Secondly, would you use your check list in cloud for maintainence of affiliate sites, or would that only apply to blogging? Sorry so long. I really enjoyed your information as it is hard to find legit advice online. I’ve been searching about writing an ebook and launching it and find nothing but fake payment proof and testimonials. I am a single mom and my current situation has inspired me to want to help others. I don’t have alot of cash to assisst in creating and marketing my ebook so if anyone has any suggestions I would be grateful to try. What are some good resources for proofreading and ecovers without spending alot of money and someone stealing an idea? Hi TJ Have you considered self publishing? I did a kindle book on Amazon, (Kindle Books sell at rate of 147 to every 100 ordinary books) and then found out about Smashwordsa better free publishing platform. They distribute yr book everywhere!even to Kindle, Amazon, Barnes & Noble or whatever all the big book stores are! Then you could go to Create Space (in Amazon) & publish yr own paperback for free. Buy a few copies yr self, (about $4 or less) & hold a library reading, book tour etc etc. Now you are a published author & the Local newspapers like that, so do TV stations. 10% interviews on TV & radio are authors! Now you have positioning power, credibility & can put that in yr email signature etc etc Just some ideas. Happy Christmas & a prosperous new year. Hi Glen, I couldn’t believe I’ve read all this long but useful article. I have recently downloaded OpenOffice since I researched online and came to similar conclusion as you that it is the best PDF link conversion tool out there in the market. Also, I hope to signup for ClickBank and see how things goes with my near future eBook projects. My niche is somewhat complex. A bit of personal development, a bit of theology, a bit of technology etc. I am enjoying riding in your train so far. Thanks again. I’m am currently “on the fence” about writing an EBook – my friend’s son did it and it has really done well (although he’s had to slash the price a couple of times), but for his first book, I’d say he has done great. I wanted to start out with a “blog or vlog” but my friends have all encouraged me to to go straight for something I could ultimately get paid for. They said “why would you want to impart all your knowledge into doing a blog/vlog and not get any money for it? My problem is, I’m not that familiar with computers to start doing an EBook, I can barely figure out how to do a bolglol. Also.why is it sooooo important to have a “Facebook Account?” Any help or advice you could throw my way would be greatly appreciated AND noted!! Sincerely Gracelynn A. I have a natural health “product” idea, if thats what it should be called. I have reversed a disease over time that has never been done by mankind to my knowledge. As far as Google is concerned, there has never been a recorded case. I have given my time free for years as a Holistic Health Practitioner for those that need help and could not afford it. Today, I would like to share my miracle of faith and individual hard work for hope when all else fails. Is there a market for that without having a current blog or following? How do I start? The first bunch of replies to this article are obviously written by the author. Jan 19th at 12:41 12:43 12:45 they all say the same thing AMAZING POST! Then the author replies two min later to all of them. So everybody just HAPPENED to finish reading the article within minutes of each other, the author ALSO just happened to be monitoring it and replied to them all a minuteaapart? Looks like copy paste reaponses, because really there was nothing AMAZING in the article at all, it was just common sense. I learned nothing, and since he is faking his audience, it shows his over inflated sense of self importance. “i just noticed how the word cloud is poppibg up in the title of everything showing me just how influential SOME PEOPLE are” lol are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that YOU started the “cloud” jargon being thrown around? Its like you even know how full of bs you are so you said SOME PEOPLE instead of how influential “I AM”. Lol NOBODY has ever heard of you, you didn’t invent the word cloud and you had absolutely ZERO to do with its widespread use. And i HIGHLY DOUBT youre getting “interview requests ALL THE TIME”. Random people emailing you general questions is not an “interview”. Lol you’re so full of isht man, nice try. A lot of just great advice in this post, but weirdly enough, what stood out the most for me in this post is that I need to build my audience. I need to start promoting and working on S.E.O. A little more (and by a little more I mean being up at 1:00 AM on a Sunday with a half consumed cup of old coffee from the fridge posting to like ladders on Facebook and commenting on posts on feature blog posts). Well anyway, I guess it will all add up, and thus, I should get right to it! Note: Two cool things • To help you take action I’ve created a downloadable tool called The Beginner’s Guide to Rapidly Self-Publishing Kindle eBooks — scroll down and you’ll see a form, pop in your best email and I’ll send it to you for free. • There’s an awesome infographic at the bottom of this post, helpful for you visual learners. Feel free to share that or embed on your own site. Total Reading Time: 8 minutes. Before the Dark Ages, the industrial revolution, the birth of technology, and even the internet — we had books. Books are one of the few constants that distinctly identify human culture. But with the birth of digital products and the internet, one thing has changed, and that is the explosion of eBooks. With Amazon, Kindle eBooks have become a booming business, and writers of all types are creating a name for themselves, and making a nice income. Self-publishing has flipped the script on the traditional publishing model. With the internet as our platform, anyone can create a new stream of income for themselves, of course with a little work. That’s where Saeed Rajan of Escape Your Desk Job comes in. Saeed has been making around $2,700 a month by publishing eBooks on Amazon, and he hasn’t written a word himself. When Saeed wrote to me about this, I knew it was my duty to share his story and create this case study interview on his first book, so you could learn more about this opportunity. Use Saeed’s experience as a model, and you could be well on your way to a brand new stream of passive income. In my opinion, this is a fantastic way to get started as a solopreneur and get your feet wet. I even mention self-publishing as one of my top 15 solopreneur businesses in. Below is my case study with Saeed Why did you decide to get into Kindle eBook publishing? I didn’t have a lot of time to start a business from scratch, so I was looking for a passive income (spend money to make money) type of venture. I had a couple friends who were making a killing from selling apps on the App Store, but I didn’t have enough courage to put that sort of money into a project that I wasn’t familiar with. After a bit of research, I learned that self-publishing eBooks was a very similar model to producing apps, but it was a lot cheaper and a lot easier to get done. [ Arman’s note: If you do want to create an app, use this ] The costs weren’t too high, so I didn’t have to even think twice about it. After posting a couple job descriptions for my first eBooks, I realized how much more simple it would be to find an author as opposed to an app developer. How much did it cost? My first eBooks cost me a total of $375. I paid $350 to get the book written, and I paid $25 to have a professional looking book cover made for the book. How long did it take to make your first sale? From the time I decided to publish an eBook, to the day I got my first sale was exactly 2 weeks. My first eBook was published on February 8, 2013, and my first sale(s) came on February 10, 2013. I remember it like it was yesterday – I made a whopping $9 in profit in that one day. What’s the name of the book?. How much money has the book made you since you published it? As of September 30, 2014, this eBook has totaled $2,401.66 in total profit. This figure does not include sales made outside of America. The figure is actually much higher, but it would’ve taken a while to gather all the profits from every region the book is sold in. The eBook is still consistently making money, and although sales have decreased dramatically since it was published, the current return on investment is 740% (and counting) and the average profit 2014 has been $47.11 per month (not including any sales outside of America). Keep in mind that this money is coming in from doing zero work, and I’ve used the proceeds from the first eBook to scale and produce more books that pay just like this one. How did you decide on the topic of the eBook? I browsed through the Kindle Bestseller’s list and took note of what was already working. I noticed a few books on the Paleo diet in the bestsellers lists so I dug a little deeper into the subject. Reading customer reviews was a huge help. I learned a lot about the market, and learned what they did (and didn’t) like about the bestselling Paleo books. I noticed a lot of people complaining about not being able to eat the foods they crave, and how the recipes in the books were good, but too complicated. I also learned that baking had it’s own category on bestsellers lists, so I decided to come out with an eBook of simple, Paleo baking recipes. [ Arman’s note: this is a key learning that he applied from his research — awesome!] Any resources/tools you found helpful to get started? I used Elance (now ) [ Arman’s note: I use Upwork a lot and highly recommend it] to find a ghostwriter and I used to hire a designer who created my book covers. [ also recommended] was an awesome tool that made formatting the eBooks really easy for me. It’s a word processor that effortlessly compiles text into a Kindle-ready format (among others). I would only recommend using if you and your ghostwriters are both using a Mac. Microsoft Word is sufficient enough to get the job done otherwise. Is an awesome free tool you can use to make sure you’re not uploading any plagiarized work. What were the biggest mistakes/wastes of time/money? I made an update to the eBook – letting readers know about other books I’d come out with, and the updated eBook version I uploaded to the Kindle store was missing some chapters. Previewing your eBook thoroughly before it goes out to the public is key. It wasn’t until I got a couple bad reviews that mentioned the missing chapters that I fixed my mistake. I emailed Amazon’s help center and they graciously emailed all of the buyers with a new update. Another mistake I made came when I hired the same ghostwriter on for more eBooks in the same series. I think he got a little too comfortable with the job and he started skipping steps. I trusted him to do as good of a job with the new books as he did with the original, so I didn’t bother getting them proof-read by family members, and friends. I received a couple bad reviews on the eBooks and quickly realized that I should’ve been more thorough. Now, I ask my ghostwriters to send me segments of the book as they are completed. This way I can send some short reads to family and friends during the creation process and get their feedback on the content before it goes out to the public. How did you market the eBook? Any key PR/media wins? How did they happen? First I built up a bit of social proof, by purchasing copies of the eBook for friends and family to read on their Kindle devices in exchange for an honest review. I asked them to post the Review on the Amazon.com website so that people would be able to get their feedback. Next, I used Amazon’s KDP Promotions so my eBook would be available for free for just one day. I posted to Facebook, and a few websites that promoted free eBooks. Using this strategy, I was able to get more than 1200 downloads and I cracked the top 100 free eBooks right away. I later found out that a lot of the traffic had come from a popular ‘Real Food’ Facebook page that posted my free book to their followers. Amazon also rewards author’s who give away a lot of free eBooks by promoting them within the Amazon website. That was all the marketing I ever needed to get these results. If you did it all over again, what would you do differently? Knowing what I know now, I’d have paid a lot less for my first few eBooks. I paid somewhere around $0.04/word for the first set of books I came out with. After learning about the market, I know the competitive rate for most freelance writers is about $0.02/word (and keep in mind this rate increases for more rare niches). I’d have also scaled a little more quickly than I initially had. The investment for this eBook was small and I had the capacity to come out with another 3 eBooks for 3 separate niches at the time I started. This would’ve provided me a lot more capital from the proceeds, a lot more opportunity for scaling, and a much better understanding of the different markets on the Kindle stores. Not all markets are big payers, and some markets get saturated quickly. It’s really easy now to waste your money if you don’t perform the right research at the beginning. I’ve written on my blog describing in more detail how I go about doing this. I recommend anybody getting started to check it out and follow the steps closely to avoid the same mistakes I’ve encountered. [ Arman’s note: We all make mistakes, but we should learn from each other’s. Here are some of my ] What’s the 80/20 of successful publishing? What would any of our readers need in order to get their first eBook up and start makings some passive income? I’d say the 80/20 is giving the readers what they want. Like I mentioned, reading through the reviews of popular books will give a really good insight to what the audience is looking for. You already know the audience is there, so just give them what they want – and make sure it’s high quality – Amazon will do the rest. You really don’t need a lot to publish an eBook onto Amazon. Great write up. The book mentioned, Piece of Cake Paleo, looks like it only generates around $10 to $20 / mo at this point not sure if that’s correct, but if so, I’m Curious if like other folks publishing on Kindle his experience is that many books do limited sales and a few are bigger hits? Or if it’s that they do well initially than decline significantly? • Pingback: () • Pingback: How To Make Money Online 465 Different Ways – Linda's Blog() • Pingback: () • Pingback: Create an Amazing Blog and Make Money While You’re At It!() • Pingback: () • Pingback: () • Pingback: () • Pingback: 52 Legitimate Ways to Make Extra Money in Your Free Time() •. That's me — perched atop a little brick wall in Cinque Terre, Italy. My name is Arman Assadi and I'm based in San Francisco, CA. I'm a writer, solopreneur, consultant, wonder junkie, obsessive world traveler, soccer player, and former Googler. In 2012 I left my job at Google and began directing my own life and career. It hasn't always been easy, but over the years I've learned a lot about what it takes to be fulfilled and 'successful' in this new era of work. This website has evolved into a popular blog that helps people identify their life's craft and create a self-directed life. I invest most of my time in sharing these lessons with people like you. I also partner and consult with other digital companies, NYT bestselling authors, and entrepreneurs to help them grow, and write for global authority sites like Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, Business Insider and more. The Pirate of Panther Bay by S.R. Staley The series chronicles the exploits of Isabella, an escaped slave who leads a band of pirates against Spanish colonists in the Caribbean Sea in 1780. In the first book — The Pirate of Panther Bay — readers are introduced to Isabella, the lead character and captain of the pirate ship the Red Tide in 1780. They also meet Juan Carlos, a Spanish army captain dispatched as an advisor to the Spanish colonial governor in the Caribbean. They start out as enemies but soon realize their have more common interests as Isabella fights the corruption of the Spanish colonists on the Caribbean Sea. Click on the link below to start downloading this free ebook:- – 210 pages, 576KB (PDF) Items posted here are free at the time of posting. If you find they are no longer free, kindly notify us immediately through our contact form. ![]() ![]() ![]() Feb 25, 2011 Advanced Sex: Explicit Positions For Explosive Lovemaking 1000 Photoshop Tips And Tricks The Pirate Bay Top Pirated Ebooks Pirated Ebooks Subscribe to The Morning Email. Wake up to the day's most important news. Learn How to Blog Online Blogging Seminars, Workshops, Courses FREE BLOGGING TIPS Are you tired of information overload when it comes to blogs and blogging? No idea where to begin and whether, in the first place, you need a blog? Oct 19, 2012 Ali Luke is the author of Publishing Ebooks for Dummies with Wiley as. Like Copyblogger and Problogger. If you are ready to find out how to write and publish an eBook in 24 hours grab my new audiobook to churn out eBook content, pronto. 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In just four short weeks, Denise Wakeman and Dr. Rachna Jain will teach you how to bridge the gap and make your social media efforts more profitable. ![]() ![]() Strength of materials is that branch of engineering concerned with the deformation and disruption of solids when forces other than changes in position or equilibrium are acting upon them. History of strength of materials dover civil and mechanical engineering subject history of strength of materials dover civil and mechanical engineering keywords history of strength of materials dover civil and mechanical engineering created date 3524 0000. History of strength of materials dover civil and mechanical jetzt kaufen kundrezensionen und 00 sterne. Title history of strength of materials dover civil and mechanical engineering download author south end press keywords download books history of. Ebook pdf history of strength of materials dover civil and mechanical engineering verified book library ebook pdf history of strength of materials dover. Author by: Stephen Timoshenko Language: en Publisher by: Courier Corporation Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 44 Total Download: 815 File Size: 46,6 Mb Description: Strength of materials is that branch of engineering concerned with the deformation and disruption of solids when forces other than changes in position or equilibrium are acting upon them. The development of our understanding of the strength of materials has enabled engineers to establish the forces which can safely be imposed on structure or components, or to choose materials appropriate to the necessary dimensions of structures and components which have to withstand given loads without suffering effects deleterious to their proper functioning. This excellent historical survey of the strength of materials with many references to the theories of elasticity and structures is based on an extensive series of lectures delivered by the author at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. Timoshenko explores the early roots of the discipline from the great monuments and pyramids of ancient Egypt through the temples, roads, and fortifications of ancient Greece and Rome. The author fixes the formal beginning of the modern science of the strength of materials with the publications of Galileo's book, 'Two Sciences,' and traces the rise and development as well as industrial and commercial applications of the fledgling science from the seventeenth century through the twentieth century. Timoshenko fleshes out the bare bones of mathematical theory with lucid demonstrations of important equations and brief biographies of highly influential mathematicians, including: Euler, Lagrange, Navier, Thomas Young, Saint-Venant, Franz Neumann, Maxwell, Kelvin, Rayleigh, Klein, Prandtl, and many others. These theories, equations, and biographies are further enhanced by clear discussions of the development of engineering and engineering education in Italy, France, Germany, England, and elsewhere. Author by: Danilo Capecchi Language: en Publisher by: Springer Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 52 Total Download: 472 File Size: 50,9 Mb Description: This book examines the theoretical foundations underpinning the field of strength of materials/theory of elasticity, beginning from the origins of the modern theory of elasticity. While the focus is on the advances made within Italy during the nineteenth century, these achievements are framed within the overall European context. The vital contributions of Italian mathematicians, mathematical physicists and engineers in respect of the theory of elasticity, continuum mechanics, structural mechanics, the principle of least work and graphical methods in engineering are carefully explained and discussed. The book represents a work of historical research that primarily comprises original contributions and summaries of work published in journals. It is directed at those graduates in engineering, but also in architecture, who wish to achieve a more global and critical view of the discipline and will also be invaluable for all scholars of the history of mechanics. Author by: Isaac Todhunter Language: en Publisher by: Cambridge University Press Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 47 Total Download: 506 File Size: 49,7 Mb Description: A distinguished mathematician and notable university teacher, Isaac Todhunter (1820-84) became known for the successful textbooks he produced as well as for a work ethic that was extraordinary, even by Victorian standards. A scholar who read all the major European languages, Todhunter was an open-minded man who admired George Boole and helped introduce the moral science examination at Cambridge. His many gifts enabled him to produce the histories of mathematical subjects which form his lasting memorial. First published between 1886 and 1893, the present work was the last of these. Edited and completed after Todhunter's death by Karl Pearson (1857-1936), another extraordinary man who pioneered modern statistics, these volumes trace the mathematical understanding of elasticity from the seventeenth to the late nineteenth century. Volume 1 (1886) begins with Galileo Galilei and extends to the researches of Saint-Venant up to 1850. Author by: Antonio Becchi Language: en Publisher by: Springer Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 43 Total Download: 105 File Size: 46,5 Mb Description: The history of mechanics, and more particularly, the history of mechanics applied to constructions, constitutes a field of research that is relatively recent. This volume, together with the recent publication 'Towards a History of Construction', is intended as an homage to the two eminent scholars who made a determinant contribution to the history of mechanics: Edoardo Benvenuto and Clifford Truesdell. Author by: I. Todhunter Language: en Publisher by: Nabu Press Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 69 Total Download: 836 File Size: 47,8 Mb Description: This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. ![]() This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. That were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. Author by: Karl-Eugen Kurrer Language: en Publisher by: John Wiley & Sons Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 50 Total Download: 225 File Size: 55,9 Mb Description: This book traces the evolution of theory of structures and strength of materials - the development of the geometrical thinking of the Renaissance to become the fundamental engineering science discipline rooted in classical mechanics. Starting with the strength experiments of Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo, the author examines the emergence of individual structural analysis methods and their formation into theory of structures in the 19th century. For the first time, a book of this kind outlines the development from classical theory of structures to the structural mechanics and computational mechanics of the 20th century. ![]() In doing so, the author has managed to bring alive the differences between the players with respect to their engineering and scientific profiles and personalities, and to create an understanding for the social context. Brief insights into common methods of analysis, backed up by historical details, help the reader gain an understanding of the history of structural mechanics from the standpoint of modern engineering practice. A total of 175 brief biographies of important personalities in civil and structural engineering as well as structural mechanics plus an extensive bibliography round off this work. History of strength of materials Download history of strength of materials or read online here in PDF or EPUB. Please click button to get history of strength of. Strength of materials is a basic engineering subject that, along with statics, must be understood by anyone concerned with the strength and physical performance of structures, whether those structures are man-made or natural. At the college level, mechanics of materials is usually taught during the. ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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