Count down & Kindle news
Well this is new. The email says I’m a winner. But I have to wait a month to find out how big a winner.
Oh. Don’t get me wrong. There’s no money involved.
Bummer.
No, like most things you win for writing, this is about status.
So… drum roll… I’m a winner of a Reader’s Choice Award. Yeppers, Beyond Fingersticks is continuing its mini-sweep of book award contests, now taking it’s fourth prize. But this one has a twist. Unlike many contests, a month out from the award announcement, a “short list” is announced. From this short list, which has four books in the Health/Medical Category, the Gold, Silver, Bronze, and… well… the one left over… will be chosen.
But I won’t know where the chips fall until September 1st. Maybe I’ll win the gold seal. Or maybe the… you know... the one left over. But I gotta wait a whole frickin’ month to find out.
Sigh.
I don’t know if I ever mentioned it, but waiting is not my strong point.
Oh! Oh! Before I forget to tell you, Fingersticks is now a Kindle. Yep, the fine folks at ShareCare converted it to a Kindle for me. And what a job it turned out to be. There’s art work and graphs, and photos, and all kinds of stuff that eBooks really don’t deal well with. It took them many months, but the Kindle version rocks. There’s something appropriate about having a book on a subject as high-tech as CGM on an eBook. Right?
They did great, except they never could manage to get that whole ink-on-paper smell of real books that I love so much.
Speaking of real books, I recently spent a depressing evening at the remaining Santa Fe Borders Books browsing the final clearance sale. In case you missed the news, Borders/Walden Books ran upon the rocks a few weeks ago. They had attempted reorganization, but ultimately failed. I’m deeply saddened, but I’m part of the problem myself. Nine out of ten books I buy are on my Kindle nowadays. I love, love, love analog books. And I love, love, love book stores. But… you know… the Kindle is a pretty handy device. It’s nice to carry a library in my Go-bag. Plus if I’m stranded, say at the Jeep dealership getting an oil change, I can always buy another book from thin air.
R.I.P. Borders books. But I didn’t buy anything at the sale. For one thing, it was the day Debbie got fired. And for another thing, I was too depressed and overcome by the fear that I someday I’ll be forced to write a book that will only exist as “1”s and “0”s. A book that will never to exist as a real book you can cuddle up with, thumb through the pages of, scribble notes in the margin of with a red pen.
If that day comes, I don’t think I’ll be able to regard myself as a real author anymore.
Oh. Yeah. And speaking of ghosts of the past, one other little thing. Remember The Born-Again Diabetic? The book that started my diabetes book writing addiction waaaaaaaaaay back in 2008 (when dinosaurs ruled the earth)? It’s hard to believe after all these years, but it just won:
Yeah. Award number four for this book.
Total book award count for this author: ten.
Born-Again still sells as well as the newer books. I picked up a copy and thumbed through it last week (I almost never touch a book once I’m done with it). You know what? It’s pretty damn good if I say so myself.
I see an updated Audio Version in your future…
Oh. Don’t get me wrong. There’s no money involved.
Bummer.
No, like most things you win for writing, this is about status.
So… drum roll… I’m a winner of a Reader’s Choice Award. Yeppers, Beyond Fingersticks is continuing its mini-sweep of book award contests, now taking it’s fourth prize. But this one has a twist. Unlike many contests, a month out from the award announcement, a “short list” is announced. From this short list, which has four books in the Health/Medical Category, the Gold, Silver, Bronze, and… well… the one left over… will be chosen.
But I won’t know where the chips fall until September 1st. Maybe I’ll win the gold seal. Or maybe the… you know... the one left over. But I gotta wait a whole frickin’ month to find out.
Sigh.
I don’t know if I ever mentioned it, but waiting is not my strong point.
Oh! Oh! Before I forget to tell you, Fingersticks is now a Kindle. Yep, the fine folks at ShareCare converted it to a Kindle for me. And what a job it turned out to be. There’s art work and graphs, and photos, and all kinds of stuff that eBooks really don’t deal well with. It took them many months, but the Kindle version rocks. There’s something appropriate about having a book on a subject as high-tech as CGM on an eBook. Right?
They did great, except they never could manage to get that whole ink-on-paper smell of real books that I love so much.
Speaking of real books, I recently spent a depressing evening at the remaining Santa Fe Borders Books browsing the final clearance sale. In case you missed the news, Borders/Walden Books ran upon the rocks a few weeks ago. They had attempted reorganization, but ultimately failed. I’m deeply saddened, but I’m part of the problem myself. Nine out of ten books I buy are on my Kindle nowadays. I love, love, love analog books. And I love, love, love book stores. But… you know… the Kindle is a pretty handy device. It’s nice to carry a library in my Go-bag. Plus if I’m stranded, say at the Jeep dealership getting an oil change, I can always buy another book from thin air.
R.I.P. Borders books. But I didn’t buy anything at the sale. For one thing, it was the day Debbie got fired. And for another thing, I was too depressed and overcome by the fear that I someday I’ll be forced to write a book that will only exist as “1”s and “0”s. A book that will never to exist as a real book you can cuddle up with, thumb through the pages of, scribble notes in the margin of with a red pen.
If that day comes, I don’t think I’ll be able to regard myself as a real author anymore.
Oh. Yeah. And speaking of ghosts of the past, one other little thing. Remember The Born-Again Diabetic? The book that started my diabetes book writing addiction waaaaaaaaaay back in 2008 (when dinosaurs ruled the earth)? It’s hard to believe after all these years, but it just won:
Yeah. Award number four for this book.
Total book award count for this author: ten.
Born-Again still sells as well as the newer books. I picked up a copy and thumbed through it last week (I almost never touch a book once I’m done with it). You know what? It’s pretty damn good if I say so myself.
I see an updated Audio Version in your future…
posted by Wil | 6:35 PM
3 Comments:
Congrats on the awards, Wil. Nicely done. Still have to get my latest copies of the books... Oh, and on the Borders note, I thought you might appreciate this Detroit Free Press column a few weeks ago -> http://www.freep.com/article/20110717/COL01/107170485/Mitch-Albom-Borders-fades-does-bookstore-magic
Best your way, my friend.
Congrats on the awards! Better that you worked with Share Care on the Kindle version; more than a few authors believe their work has been hijacked by Amazon converting the work to Kindle (or Amazon uses third-parties to convert the content to eBooks) and the results are usually not what an author would do if they were driving the process. As for Borders, my neighborhood bookstore is (soon to be was) Borders, so I certainly hear you, but I suppose I'm part of the problem too -- when I buy books, I'm much more likely to buy used books at significantly lower prices and search engines like AddAll.com make that incredibly easy to do. Low price usually wins for me, even if the seller is thousands of miles away. Oh well, that's a form of progress, but I still miss actual paper books even though its nice to be able to buy an e-version instantly from home and a lot less to lug around in your carry-on. But battery life is a problem for me and public chargers are in short supply.
Very well deserved my friend. I'm proud of you! :-)
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