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

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.


