billpollock

We should have them in the warehouse in about a month for early shipment to people buying direct from us.

That's a beautiful book

:)

That's great to hear!

2020 No Starch Press Foundation grant cycle is now open. Grants must be received by November 22, 2020. The Foundation will award up to $100,000 in grants, max US $10,000 each.

Start with a high level outline. Organize. See what that looks like and let me know if you have any questions.

The thought is a virus or bacterial infection years ago. My understanding is that both can destroy the nerves in the sinuses that allow us to smell.

Monell is one group that studies anosmia. There is as yet no known cure.

I lost most of my sense of smell a few years ago. I've lost much of my ability to differentiate tastes as well.

As a former supertaster, lover of bourbon (I used to be able to tell my bourbons apart by smell), serious cook, and total foodie this has been the most depressing experience in my life.

Think about the experience that you have when you walk from one room to another, or into a field of flowers. I can't smell the differences between rooms, I can't smell the flowers, I can't even smell smoke.

People love to say you're so lucky you can't smell all of those bad smells but life isn't about the bad smells. Smell is memory. We wake up and smell the air around us, the dirt, the trees, the people we love, the people we hate, even exhaust fumes. The smell of ink on paper, spices, lavender, tea, the air after an electrical storm, the subtleties in beer, freshly fallen snow, rain, grass, the aroma of wine, freshly roasted coffee. I can no longer smell any of that.

When I realized that my loss of sense of smell was permanent I was suicidal for many months. I've gotten over that feeling for the most part and now I work to make the best of it because this is just the way that things are.

We all have our challenges. When faced with things that we can't change the best way forward is to work with what we have and make the best of it. Since I can no longer tell when food is ready by the change of smell I have to pay close attention to what it looks like and use a thermometer to carefully monitor its temperature. I can't tell when something is burning.

I've installed gas sensors in my house because I can't smell the gas that comes out of my gas range but I refuse to cook on electric. I have an induction burner but it's not the same. You can't beat fire. And I'm not giving up. I've gotten pretty good at roasting coffee but mostly by eye.

My 1966 Volvo caught fire as I was driving because I couldn't smell the gas coming out of the leaking fuel pump or the smoke coming out of the engine.

Fortunately my neighbor was in the passenger seat and he pointed out that the engine was on fire. He kept telling me that the car was beginning to smell a lot like fuel and he asked me if he could open the windows. (It's an old car so things break easily.) Fortunately the car didn't explode and we got out safely.

Loss of smell is no fun. Try cooking or eating while holding your nose. You'll get the idea. Just keep in mind that it's always like that. You can breathe in as deeply as you like and you still won't get the smells. You won't create the new memories and you'll have a hard time recalling the various smells that you've grown up with. They'll fade with time.

You're probably right.

I've asked our Operations Manager to look into this issue. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We'll get it sorted out. Please email info@nostarch.com so that they can help troubleshoot.

We're getting caught up on our Early Access titles. Our staff is very particular about what they release and they don't like to put chapters in until they feel like they're really final. Given the current world situation I'm making sure that we relax that policy a bit and you'll see more books moving into Early Access in the next 2 or 3 weeks. Just a little hectic around my company at the moment.

I believe that was Roberts choice but I love the cover.

Looks like Monday for a sample chapter.

Use the coupon code PREORDER (posted on the book's page) and you get the print book + all DRM-free ebooks for US $42 (plus shipping costs)

The book is in its final stages. We're just making final corrections.

I'm chatting with Robert about whether there's a chapter that he's comfortable releasing now. If not we should have something Monday or Tuesday and the entire book within a week or so. I need to confirm on Monday.

The 30% off coupon listed on the books page is good on the print purchase, which also includes all the ebooks.

Thank you.

When our authors ask how long their book should be I always say: Long enough to cover the subject, short enough to keep it interesting. My company is called No Starch Press for a reason. Think of the word starch as a nicer way to say "BS", as in No BS Press.

There's a lot of work behind these pages as with all of our books. Unlike any publisher in this field we have several people who read and craft every line of every book as necessary, together with each author, before a book goes off to a copy editor. That's where most books start but not hours.

The real cost in creating a good book is not in the paper. It's in the time it takes to actually craft the words.

When you buy print books from us you get the DRM-free ebooks too.

Amazon may ultimately discount this from the list price as they usually do but they are currently deprioritizing books due to the pandemic.

This book is just about to go to the printer. The book business has been turned upside down by COVID-19. We still offer free ebooks with print books purchased directly from our site but we don't know when we'll be able to ship to our customers directly again.

We'll also be pushing out a promotional offer on this book, likely this coming week so you may want to wait for that. Just trying to keep things on track now that our company is completely remote and physical book stores are closing left and right.

No offense but this is simply not true. Our print sales go up every year.

Our ebooks have always been DRM free. Always will be.

Thank you. We care a lot about the physical form of our books. I appreciate quality and I'm pleased to see that you do, too.

I'm thinking of ways to make our books even a bit nicer. Not sure yet what that will mean but I'm still thinking on it.

That doesn't seem to be the case in the book business. Certainly not the case with us. We're selling more paper books than ever.

We've been around since 1994. :)

Publishers should be taking more risks. The risks make a list interesting.

Think PoC || GTFO bibles. My staff thought it was crazy to publish them. Haha.

Thank you for your comment but with all due respect I'm afraid that this is a unique case.

These are counterfeit copies. They're not coming from legitimate suppliers. Frankly we don't care who resells our books as long as they're selling legitimate copies. These are not.

I've been dealing with this issue with Amazon since 2017. It's not that what you're describing doesn't happen but if this is like previous cases this is something different.

In this and other recent cases as has been shared online, Amazon replaced our legitimate inventory entirely with counterfeit copies that it was sourcing directly from a printer that it works with for print-on-demand. That printer supplies Createspace. We receive absolutely no revenue from the sale of these copies because we're not the ones printing them. They're produced from stolen files.

Once again, Amazon is stealing from authors and leaving it to vendors like us to police them. Why should we have to police Amazon?

In this case the copies that I received appear to be from that same printer. They look just like the other counterfeits that we've seen over the years.

As with other instances we receive NO revenue from these sales and as a consequence neither do our authors.

In this case and in previous cases Amazon stopped ordering directly from authorized resellers. They fulfilled orders only with counterfeit books.

This is not the case of commingling as you describe. This has nothing to do with FBA or other resellers. This is Amazon's supply chain sourcing counterfeit copies directly from a printer that they work with and selling them in place of our legitimate inventory.

No one wants to sue their major unless they're pushed to the wall.

It it has taken us months to get Amazon to respond to a counterfeit claim. I hope that they will respond quickly to this one.

These books are counterfeits. Counterfeiting is illegal and intent doesn't matter.

This is not a matter of some other seller providing Amazon with inventory. These are coming direct from a printer to Amazon and being sold in place of the legitimate inventory.

There is no third party to go after here. There's only one seller in this case. That is Amazon.

Unfortunately this case may be a bit different. When you order this book by pressing just the Buy button, as in shipped and sold by Amazon, you get the counterfeit.

I know because I ordered two copies last week. Both came and both were counterfeit.

We've had a very similar experience. On more than one book our product pages were replaced with images from the counterfeit. In a certain way it was quite funny. Ultimately it was very frustrating