New Book Launched

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Today I received my shipment of books, the soft cover edition of the "The Theory and Practice of Guppy Breeding."

What is new about this book goes beyond the fact it is the first guppy book I have published that is NOT printed by me and bound. It was printed and bound by First Choice books in Victoria BC. 

What is new is that it is the first guppy book I have written that has an ISBN number. That means I can distribute it via Amazon and other online stores. (However it will be sold for at a $5 discount on this site.)  It has been 15 years since I last wrote a book published with an ISBN number. So I am officially a published author again. 

This also means the book will take on a life in the used book market in future years. So it has a lot more permanence to it.

The fact that I had a large quantity of the book printed means that I will not be publishing one at at time.  That also means I believe the information in the book is not going to change significantly anytime soon. That in itself is a major watershed for me, because the biggest reason I have not printed books in mass quantity is because the information has been changing rapidly. 

Mass producing the book means that I can offer it at a substantial discount to the hard cover edition. The book sells for about 25% of the cost of the hardcover edition and it costs less then half to ship it. I am going to sell it for $24.95 instead of $90. With shipping to Europe that brings the cost down to $35 from $119. Big drop!

I am hoping that the new price point for the book will get it into the hands of a lot more readers. That's really good for the hobby of guppy genetics.

There are a few reasons why the book was so inexpensive to produce. Number one is that it was mass produced instead of made by hand. Secondly it was reduced in size, from 8.5X11 to 6X9 and the page count was reduced to 200 pages. And thirdly the book is in black and white and not color. 

I thought it was going to be a big deal to lose color. But it turned out that I was able to work around it because of its single-minded focus on genetics theory and practice. It is full of illustrations that I converted from color to black and white. I was going to print it with color plates in the back but found out I did not need to do this. The other thing I did was remove the scientific papers chapters and the mutations chapters. I moved the "Notes" section from  the Color Bank book into this book, revising them to become a new chapter on guppy mutations. I rewrote and expanded the chapter on the guppy color system and added a new chapter on "Breeding the Show Guppy." So although a chunk of the original hardcover was lost, I think the book is simpler and more focused. Plus I rewrote and simplified the genetics theory and analysis chapters and added new illustrations. I believe this has made the book more readable.

The book is shipping now. The first ones have already gone out. Curiously the first person to grab a copy was my wife. I was perplexed by her request to purchase it. She told me that she wanted me to autograph it and felt it would be really hers if she bought it. Strange and lovely woman my wife. And a good sign for the book.

Read more about the book and buy it on the sales page: http://guppydesigner.com/sales/genetics.html

 

New Blond See-Thru Guppies

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Blond See-thru female

They are only two months old, but the new line of blond See-thru guppies are already "not" showing their colors. The yellow you see in this guppy are her first batch of fry. The red color is the color of her blood. And the white color is the light scattering off her tissues. She has black eyes because she has the blond mutation, which does not affect the eyes.

Blond See-thru male

This male is heterozygous for the Asian Blau gene, so he is showing lots of yellow color and also reflective iridophores. He also has the Pink gene. So he is a blond Pingu See-thru. I have noticed in the Pingu brothers to this guppy a blue iridescence in the half-body area seems to be characteristic. That is probably from the Metallic Gold (Mg) gene. What a combination of genes! I really like the subtle coloring on this guppy. I hope lots of people acquire the strain, because I think many interesting combinations will result.

The Future of Guppy Designer Publishing

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I am a micro publisher, a publisher of information so small that you would need a microscope to find me. I have preferred to publish on paper because it is a more permanent storage medium than digital information and people treat information they have paid for with more respect than information they get for free. Why do people pay for a subscription to the Wall Street Journal when they can get business information for free? Why is the Wall Street Journal site subscription based? Because people value the quality of information and see value in paying for it. That has been the basis for my own very modest success as a publisher of guppy genetics and care information.

I have chosen a POD (publish on demand) format for publishing because my ongoing research is constantly producing new information and leading to wholesale changes in the way I organize the Guppy Color Bank of strains or the genetic theories in the Theory and Practice  book. But obviously this is an expensive medium for both me to produce and ship and for people to buy, especially when the book they produce is substantially revised every year or so.

So here it is a day before the new Apple tablet is announced. I have been anticipating this launch for over a year as I see it as the future of Guppy Designer publishing. There is an article that was published that is a rather excellent summary of the situation publishers of print information find themselves stuck in...even a micro publisher of extremely niche information like me. What struck me right away is that newspaper and magazine publishers face the same problems as I do publishing information about guppy genetics. And the background to that problem is a web that has provided information free...up until recently that is...

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/187623/what_an_apple_tablet_would_mean_for_publishing.html

If you are reading this blog in the future and the link does not work, I can summarize it by saying that the model of free information on the Internet does not work because people who generate the information must be paid. The magazines and newspapers currently on the Internet are moving to a subscription basis to cover the costs of producing the news. While basic news facts will continue to be free, the in-depth analysis and commentary of professional journalists will soon no longer be free. The new Apple Tablet is possibly a new model of low cost delivery of high value information. People will purchase magazines, articles, books and newspapers from the iTunes store and download it over Wi-Fi directly to their Apple tablet.

Recently my printer started choking, which means it has printed too many books. It was an expensive machine. I am loathe to put out the money to replace it. I have to sell over 150 books just to amortize its cost down to about $10 a book. That is not counting the consumables, inks, papers or my time in printing, binding and shipping the book. So I have decided to put fewer books out and try to squeeze a bit more life out of the printer. Since zero of my potential readers own an Apple Tablet, and probably a very, very small percentage will buy it when it comes out, I don't expect the tablet to be a viable publishing format in the next couple of years. So some of the information will be published in PDF format, despite the fact it is way too easy to copy and distribute PDFs. But eventually the Apple tablet  will be viable...or a similar device. Then it will be possible to publish high quality, timely information at a much more reasonable cost. I have no doubt the Apple tablet will succeed and do for publishing what the iPhone is doing for cellular communications. It is going to be the future of Guppy Designer publishing. It has to be. I don't want to buy another printer for book publishing...

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