Tag Archives: Post-Gutenberg Age

Earthrise Press Free Shipping in the USA, UK, AU

Earthrise Press The Globe

Earthrise Press
The Globe

Earthrise Press Free Shipping in the USA, UK, AU

Now free shipping in the USA, UK, and Australia, processed within 24 hours. That amounts to more than 911 million potential readers of English of the world’s approximately 1.8+ billion speakers of English. Printers also in Milton Keynes, UK, and Scoresby, Australia. In Europe and the UK, the VAT is added at checkout. DRM-free eBooks, hardcover, and softcover.

I think I’ve reached a new threshold with my more than a decade and a half of struggling with the Post-Gutenberg Revolution in what is now a major technical improvement for EarthrisePress.Net — I’ve long thought that there must be a way in the Digital Age for artists and writers to make a living from their art in some way by going around all the traditional middle men and the newer mega-portals of online sellers that are attempting to create their own monopolies. In fact, I wrote a more than twenty-page essay, “The Post-Gutenberg Revolution: A Manifesto,” to this effect, in my book The Myth of the Enlightenment, which expands on all of what I think is involved in this major shift in civilization. Previously, I had to sell hardcover and softcover books through one credit card payment system and ebooks through another, which was cumbersome and discouraging for people buying more than one book. But Gumroad, a very creative venture in San Francisco, has recently put the two features together which also allows me to plug into the major worldwide printing network of Ingram Book Company’s Lightning Source for the fulfillment and printing of hardcover and softcover books. I’m rather astonished that I can now do this… all from one website… whether someone orders an ebook, a hardcover, or a softcover on EarthrisePress.Net – Gumroad’s SSL servers handle the financial transaction, adds the correct VAT for the UK, Euro Zone, and Australia. If it is a printed book, Gumroad processes the order, forwarding the shipping address to Earthrise Press and then I or my staff can order and have the book printed and shipped in any of the already mentioned regions with *free shipping* since the numbers work for everyone concerned with this configuration. Many people have become accustomed to buying music and books from the mega-portals, but why? I would say there was no real alternative. Now there is, precisely what some musicians have done with their own websites, and J. K. Rowling with at least her ebook website. The exact same printed or digital book goes out into the hands of the reader, in several possible formats, mobi/Kindle, ePub, PDF, Android / iOS, etc., hardcover, softcover, whatever. Given all the animosity around the world against some of the major venues, I believe this might very well be a way of providing an alternative for artists and writers, and, not to forget, readers, who don’t want to support a monopoly… I have long believed what’s needed is the *example* of a writer who figures all this out and puts it together in the actual world on a *global* level, setting the *example* of what is indeed now possible… by actually doing it. I wrote my epic poem with a global audience in mind, and now I believe it is possible to sell it to the entire world through the revolutionary developments of the Post-Gutenberg Age.

I’m encouraged that, as someone who has spent most of his adult life sitting in rooms alone reading books, my epic has found its way to as many readers as it has around the world… with more than 36 blurb/reviews since late November 2012. I know it often took in the past a long time for a book that presented a truly new way of looking at life to *reach humanity* and realize I shouldn’t entirely expect anything else, all the more given that I’m addressing not merely Western Civilization but all of the major regional civilizations around the planet. We human beings are inured to our nationalistic isolation. The Unity of humanity? What could be more absurd!!

Frederick Glaysher

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During November, The Parliament of Poets

The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem

The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem

The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem.

The first global, universal epic, and the first epic poem in the English language in 345 years.

In the spirit of the Post-Gutenberg Revolution, during the month of November, free worldwide. The entire book, now online.

https://books.fglaysher.com/The-Parliament-of-Poets-An-Epic-Poem-9780982677865.htm

 

The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem, by Frederick Glaysher, takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility.

Apollo, the Greek god of poetry, calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity. The Parliament of Poets sends the Persona on a Journey to the seven continents to learn from all of the spiritual and wisdom traditions of humankind. On Earth and on the moon, the poets teach him a new global, universal vision of life.

All the great shades appear at the Apollo 11 landing site in the Sea of Tranquility: Homer and Virgil from the Greek and Roman civilizations; Dante, Spenser, and Milton hail from the Judeo-Christian West; Rumi, Attar, and Hafez step forward from Islam; Du Fu and Li Po, Basho and Zeami, step forth from China and Japan; the poets of the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana meet on that plain; griots from Africa; shamans from Indonesia and Australia; Murasaki Shikibu, Emily Dickinson, and Jane Austen, poets and seers of all Ages, bards, rhapsodes, troubadours, and minstrels, major and minor, hail across the halls of time and space. One of the major themes is the power of women and the female spirit across cultures. Another is the nature of science and religion, as well as the “two cultures,” science and the humanities.

That transcendent rose symbol of our age the Earth itself viewed from the heavens, one world with no visible boundaries, metaphor of the oneness of the human race, reflects its blue-green light into the darkness of the starry universe.

Frederick Glaysher

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All Is Not Vanity

Google's Nexus 7 Tablet

Google’s Nexus 7 Tablet

All Is Not Vanity: The rise of literary self-publishing.

This article makes some interesting observations on various Post-Gutenberg publishing issues… despite still being too tied to the old model in some ways, with many assumptions based on it.

I would argue that the Post-Gutenberg Revolution places the responsibility, if not duty or test, of discernment and taste, upon the reader… As the author of the article rightly points out, all the leading, traditional, review publications are corrupted by the advertising dollars of the mega-publishers, just as much as an author who would pay someone to review their book on Amazon or elsewhere, which was recently in the news.

It seems to me the Internet and social networking provide the potential reader with the opportunity of knowledge of a writer’s work, and therefore the possibility of exploring it further. As has been observed, a great book judges its reader as much as the reverse–all the more true in the current Post-Gutenberg world, tired of the “taste” of the corporate gatekeepers, but still too often in limbo waiting for the new world to be born, not actively enough bringing it into being. For a long time I’ve thought of this as the reader not realizing how much power they actually have.

Self-publishing is at a stage analogous to the early days of Wikipedia, when users were
reluctant to trust information contained in a communally written encyclopedia…. Whether
the increasingly virtual world of selfpublishing will eventually learn to regulate itself is an
open question.

It’s not a matter of regulation, which would mistakenly re-install an hegemony, but a further extension and development of democratic space and openness, wherein perceptive voices can identify, nurture, and cultivate taste, persuading through merit and argument. What is the literary tradition in all national literatures if not that? Convention and revolt with newly digitized tools…

All Is Not Vanity: The rise of literary self-publishing.
https://reviewcanada.ca/essays/2012/09/01/all-is-not-vanity/

Frederick Glaysher

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BOOK IV Summer Serialization

Final Touches to Book III, June 21, 2012

Final Touches to Book III, June 21, 2012

Book IV of The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem is now available:

BOOK IV, THE ARGUMENT

“Beyond in medias res, Tagore guides the Persona to India, to the ashram of the sage and epic poet Vyasa in the Himalayan foothills; to the field of Kurukshetra; and, in sight of Mt Kailash, Shiva Nataraja. Kabir. The epic struggles of the Ramayana. Hanuman carries the Persona to Angkor Wat in Cambodia.”

https://books.fglaysher.com/The-Parliament-of-Poets-An-Epic-Poem-Book-IV-Book-IV.htm

The summer serialization has essentially become the eighth draft. I know Milton published a revised second edition several years after the first, as many writers do and have. For me, the words keep coming, though on a noticeably more focused level of precision of word choice and detail, mostly small touches, some more lines here and there, a sharper characterization, nuance. The flood of ideas for incidents and scenes, foreshadowing and expansion, development, has seemed to wane, or, rather, I’ve moved beyond it, having that down on paper. I believe it’s done, though, and this serialization fits what Dickens and other writers used the method for, to give readers who are interested the opportunity to be the first to read a book and to participate to some extent in its final evolution and development, contribute to it, a sense of the author’s own involvement in and excitement at a new creation.

Perhaps I’ve found a way to revive serialization in the Post-Gutenberg Age. I don’t know of anyone else who has tried this. It simply occurred to me suddenly in late May. I remember thinking about The New York Times making first chapters available during the last decade or so, and Amazon’s Kindle Singles program, which is largely popular schlock and talking-head non-fiction. Charles Dickens and all the grand old magazines of the 19th Century came to mind with a flash of insight. I’m quite encouraged by the results and reaction and intend to carry through on my pledge to my readers to serialize the entire epic poem. There’s a Web 2.0 quality about the way the serialization is unfolding.

Frederick Glaysher

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