Striking Viking bumming the world (On the road again)

Glen just finished your new book and I must say it was very enjoyable reading. I liked the way you gave us a look into the way of life of the people from the lands you visited. I would imagine that you actually have enough stories that you didn't tell, that you could write another book. Great job Glen.

Thanks amigo. Unfortunately, publishers, due to cost and fear of customer's short attention spans, insist on keeping word counts to 110,000 to 120,000 words. Include photography? Forget about it. In a trade-off deal to add 34 color glossies, OMDE was painfully trimmed to 139,000. This is an uncomfortable part of writing--ultimately being edited by a stranger unfamiliar with the story, who then suggests/decides what gets chopped out. This does however, make for a better product with less fluff and much easier to read. It is frustrating for authors to be limited and not able to say everything they want to say, but, page-turners sell better than ramblers.

In the US, there are now less than seven million book buyers and according to industry experts, they are not interested in international travel adventure, especially regarding motorcycle journeys. European markets are far different with such material highly popular, especially among Germans. Except for Jim Rodgers, all of the other American moto-authors out there who I know of, had to pay to publish their own books, which of course, without editors or agents to assist, makes it nearly impossible to be taken seriously. This is primarily just ego driven drivel with no real story or message, hence these books seldom sell more than a few hundred copies. This could change though with Amazon.com currently offering self-publishing and purchasing for reasonable rates.

For unknown reasons, some of the finest adventure travel writing can be found here on advrider Ride Reports, even better you can read these astonishing tales in real time. Simply amazing.

Yuppers, so true. I figured I owed it to you to buy the book after taking advantage of the free read and probably owe you for a case of books for fair trade of what I feel I gained from your experiences.

this is so true on many accounts. Think of the days long gone (in fiction) where Tolstoy or Dostoevsky penned 400,000 - 500,000 words. I think Marcel Proust punched out 1.5 million or more on his classic but longwinded book.

Good news. And for e-publishing there are great services that allow cost effective publishing to devices like Amazon's Kindle and other e-readers. I just helped a friend of mine set his novel up and now for sale on Amazon and other sites for e-readers using Smashwords And I understand Apple with its new iBookstore recently Signed a deal to make it easy for authors to make there titles available for reading on the hot-selling iPad.

We have a passionate, creative and talented pool of riders here on ADVrider. And as social technology and media mature combined with ePublishing and e-readers, I think the world of motorcycle adventure writing is going to explode. Because now we are not limited to only 36 pages of color photos (usually a cost and printing concern). Rather we can have interactive photography, video and maps embedded on the virtual page. Now we can take riding vicariously with these riders to another level.

I'm battling the traditional publishing unit slightly but hope my two books will be available in the fall. Stay tuned!

For those of you interested in book publishing and the future of books and the publishing business there was an excellent article in New York Magazine last week. Read it here.

I'm on post 28, can't get the pix, any help greatly appreciated. Good luck on future trips, as I'm sure this one is over by now, considering it's 2010. Great story, if only I could see the pix.

A lot of the pics were removed due to concerns with publishing a book after the trip.

actually, the guy hosting the pictures had his server crash, and didn't have backups. since the pictures had been renamed, piecing it back together would take MONTHS of looking at the broken links in the original postings, and finding a good match out of Glen's bazillions of pics, and either editing the posting, or matching the URL of the link, repeat. ouch.

That too.

Life is good, ain't it Viking?

That probably describes better how they'd feel, what with the mileage them S.O.B.'S get!

So sorry to hear this. I sent a message to the publisher and they should respond quickly as this is the first case anyone has heard about regarding poor photo quality. It's likely a problem in the download process. In the meantime, please send me your purchasing information so we can arrange a refund or whatever we can. locovikingman@yahoo.com

Here is my publishers response:

Dear Glen,

The Kindle version of this book was done by Amazon itself. The source file – what Amazon used in its conversion – is high-resolution. We would be happy to supply a PDF of it to any of your readers that want something with better quality.

To fix it, we would need to either (a) ask Amazon to convert it again, or (b) supply Amazon with a different electronic format (an ePub) to convert into the Kindle. Since we’re in the process of creating an ePub for the book in any event, that would be the fastest solution since we have no idea how quickly Amazon would respond to our request, or whether it would have a better result.

I hope this helps!

David Caron, Co-Publisher, ECW Press

At the risk of sounding like an idiot, I'll confess to not knowing much about Kindle or any of the electronic printing formats. But please be advised that I take personal responsibility for any mishaps and will do whatever it takes to make the customer happy.

In the meantime, Packmule has painstakingly recreated the original thread for which I have begun to slowly add tons of updated pics with brief journal entries. Text-wise it's a super-abbreviated version of the book but with hundreds more photos. View it here.

be pretty hard to put a color picture on a B&W Kindle

I don't believe the 'eInk' display of the kindle can even do grey scale, I think its purely on/off B&W, so pictures at best are newsprint quality.

I love seeing the pics of you and the old KLR650. Something about that. I don't know what. ( I was checking out the other picture thread you have.)

Finally finished the new book...awesome! Great mix of describing the route, the bike, and the people.

This thread needs a bump.
BUMP.

I finished reading "One More Day EVERYWHERE"!! Fantastic! Like another poster said, finishing this book was like a good friend leaving.

I love this from the prologue: "Still the most effective weapon when traveling has been a big, stupid smile and an obvious gratitude merely to be there."

100% agreed.. just finished the One More Day book recently as well. Both books were very interesting and entertaining, and as I plan to do a RTW ride someday myself, very educating and inspiring as well

I'll be riding down from Canada to the Baja and around mainland mexico this October, I'll be sure to keep an eye out for a certain loco viking when I'm passing through Mazatlan :jose

Josh

Glad you folks are enjoying the books. With 100% of the royalties still being donated to Room To Read, collectively, we have been financing the construction of schools in rural Nepal, Cambodia and Viet Nam.