#john logsdon

The Penguin Book of Outer Space Exploration: NASA and the Incredible Story of Human Spaceflight

The Penguin Book of Outer Space Exploration: NASA and the Incredible Story of Human Spaceflight, edited by John Logsdon 

Synopsis: The fascinating story of how NASA sent humans to explore outer space, told through a treasure trove of historical documents–publishing in celebration of NASA’s 60th anniversary and with a foreword by Bill Nye Among all the technological accomplishments of the last…

Should humans devote most of our resources to the development of a colony on the Moon, Mars or towards the utilization of Asteroid resources?  Space advocates debated which location in space should be our primary focus at this week’s “New Space Age” conference at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

Geekwire.com reportedon the debate and included a video and many of the space advocates arguments.   Space…

Take Mark Dawson’s New Course ‘Ads for Authors’ And Get ReaderLinks FREE For One Year

Click to go to Mark’s course

Everyone knows Mark Dawson, who runs the most successful author marketing courses around. You may also remember John Logsdon from my recent post, Introducing ReaderLinks and The Author Helper. 

Well, Mark Dawson’s shiny, new course for authors is almost here! Advertising for Authorspromises to be his best yet, with the latest tips on how to maximize your advertising…

Introducing ReaderLinks and Author Helper

ReaderLinks

I have mentioned my author friend John Logsdon a number of times in this blog. Not only is he a book marketing guru who has helped me a lot with my own books, he has also been developing ReaderLinks; a website to help Indies in their everyday struggle to sell more books.

As John is a hugely successful Indie author himself, he has developed ReaderLinks to cover all of our needs: It…

Amazon Is Changing Its KDP Reports Tool

Some of you will have noticed KDP’s switch to a new interface:

The new dashboard offers several advantages over the old one. The tabbed browsing allows you to access historical data. It also breaks down royalties and sales by marketplace, author, title, and format.

The Real Change

Image: dailyfinance.com

The real change, however, lies behind the scenes — and it’s not a good one: Amazon has now…

Contra Costa Man Arrested After Allegations of Sexual Abuse of 9-Year-Old

The Suisun City Police Department announced Friday they received information alleging a nine year old had been sexually abused in Suisun City.   Due to the age of the victim, their School Resource Officer (SRO) conducted the investigation. The investigation included a child forensic interview, which was conducted in cooperation with the Solano County Family Justice Center and the Solano County…

Amazon blurb preview

Author Central’s formatting toolbar

I’ve often shared on this blog my support of Amazon. Despite its occasional missteps, the company has leveled the playing field for Indie authors and is busy changing the publishing industry on a daily basis. It is consistently client-centric in its approach and has invested heavily in making the shopping experience as pleasant and flawless as possible.

Which is why I can’t fathom why it’s so hard for it to build a proper, user-friendly blurb builder.

In effect, there are two separate ways of posting your blurb: the first is to do it through your book details on KDP. This has the benefit of allowing you to use some basic html tags; namely: <b><br><em><font><h1><h2><h3><h4><h5><h6><hr><i><li><ol><p><pre><s><strike><strong><sub><sup><u> and <ul>. However, it lacks any sort of preview.

Then, there is Author Central. Posting a blurb through this is a breeze, especially since you can edit both print and Kindle editions with a single click. Also, it doesn’t require you to re-publish your entire book. However, and despite the presence of a formatting toolbar and previewer, it only allows you to add 3 kinds of formatting: bold, italics and lists. As <h2> is the tag that formats a text into the nice orange title font, this renders it useless for me.

John Logsdon alerted me to the Amazon blurb preview, which allows authors to format their blurb using the tags acceptable on KDP. Basically, you type the text, format it using the available tags and copy/paste it into KDP. If the idea of using tags freaks you out, you could format your text in a WordPress post, go to Text (instead of Visual) and copy the code you find there. Paste it into the Amazon blurb previewer and presto-you’re done.

Yasiv

When you check out a book on Amazon, you will see under the book details several sections, among which Also Bought and Customers who viewed this item also viewed…

I have often wondered if there might be a tool that would allow me to see which books Amazon connects to mine. Author MMJaye alerted me to a tool that does just that: Yasiv. If you don’t know it, it’s pretty cool. You just paste your book’s ASIN and it visually shows you all the Amazon books it’s connected with. Specifically, it shows which books it points at (meaning which books people navigated to and bought after visiting your book’s page) and which books point to your books.

For obvious reasons, the older the publication (and the more promos you’ve run on it), the more the books which will point back and forth. Predictably enough, the busiest map results were for my first book to be published, Pearseus: Rise of the Prince, although it turns out that only 3 books point to it.

You can use this tool to target books on Amazon Marketing Services (see tutorial): Yasiv orders linked books by popularity, so you should make sure to include the top ones in the list of books that you target.

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Amazon’s “Also Bought” section

Yasiv allows you to enter an ASIN or product ID, or to narrow down your search through a menu

Yasiv results for Pearseus: Rise of the Prince

If you have any other favorite tools of yours that you’d like me to feature, just let me know and I’ll post about them!

[tweetthis]Authors Tools: Blurb Preview & Yasiv[/tweetthis]

New Post has been published on http://www.brianbrown.net/2014/11/02/virgin-galactic-whats-known-so-far-about-spaceshiptwo-disaster/

Virgin Galactic: What's known so far about SpaceShipTwo disaster

It could take a year before investigators know what happened to the rocket-propelled vehicle designed to take wealthy amateur astronauts to the edge of space for a few minutes of weightlessness and spectacular views.British billionaire Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, whose SpaceShipTwo blew apart after being released from a carrier aircraft Friday, says, “We are not going to push on blindly.”John Logsdon, retired space policy director at George Washington University, puts it more bluntly. “It’s a real setback to the idea that lots of people are going to be taking joyrides into the fringes of outer space any time soon,” he told Fox News.Recommended: Five groups making private space flight a realityInvestigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are on the scene in California’s Mojave Desert, examining scattered wreckage and waiting to talk with surviving pilot Peter Siebold, who is hospitalized with serious injuries but reportedly able to communicate. Michael Tyner Alsbury, the other test pilot, died in the accident.Acting NTSB chairman Christopher Hart told a press conference Saturday that this is the agency’s first time leading the investigation of a space launch involving people onboard. The brief flight and accident likely were well-documented by cameras on SpaceShipTwo, carrier aircraft WhiteKnightTwo, and chase aircraft.Among other things, the accident will focus on SpaceShipTwo’s rocket fuel. Scaled Composites, the vehicle’s designer and builder, had recently switched solid fuel types from one based on rubber to one that uses plastic pellets.Within two minutes of its release from the carrier aircraft, it became obvious that something was wrong with SpaceShipTwo, which experienced an explosion, breaking up in flight and scattering parts over several miles of desert floor. Mr. Siebold apparently survived by parachute, but Mr. Alsbury’s body was found inside part of the aircraft.Travel to the edge of space and beyond has never been without risk.In the early days of the US program, rockets blew up on the launch pad or shortly after launch. Astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire aboard the Apollo 1 capsule on the ground at Cape Canaveral in 1967. Two Space Shuttles and their crews were lost during the most dangerous part of flight – Challenger during launch in 1986  and Columbia during reentry in 2003.The potential for danger to civilian space passengers became real with the death of high school teacher Christa McAuliffe in the Challenger disaster.Space tourism has been a dream of Mr. Branson and other entrepreneurs viewed as visionary by their investors as well as those wealthy enough to spend the $250,000 being charged to get on the waiting list of those Branson’s company called “future astronauts.”Some 700 people have signed up, including cosmologist Stephen Hawking as well as such Hollywood figures as Justin Bieber, Ashton Kutcher, and Russell Brand. The company reports receiving $90 million from about 700 prospective passengers. So far, Branson said Saturday, no one has asked for a refund.Branson’s space tourism effort is not without critics. Writes aviation specialist Clive Irving in the Daily Beast:“There are many consequences to this failure. Not the least is what it implies for the financing of the project. After years of delays the costs have gone beyond a billion dollars. More than a third of that money has come from Abar, an investment fund based in Abu Dhabi. (This was made available in return for an undertaking by Virgin to build a space tourism base in the Gulf.) By any measure, this accident will have set back the development program by years. Will backers want to pour ever more money into this black hole?“From the beginning in 2004 there has always been a credibility gap between the fairground hyperbole of Branson’s formidable publicity machine and the scientific reality of the enterprise. Somehow, probably because he is such a consummate showman, Branson has been able, year after year, to override the story of continual delays, flagrant over-promises and a voracious, seemingly open-ended budget. This time it’s different.” “We’ve always known that commercial space travel is an incredibly hard project,” Branson acknowledges. “We’re going to learn from what went wrong.”Related stories Five groups making private space flight a reality Virgin Galactic and Antares crashes: What now for commercial space efforts? (+video) Investigators, Branson head to Virgin Galactic crash site Read this story at csmonitor.com Become a part of the Monitor community Become a Facebook fan! Follow us on Twitter! Follow us on Google+ Link up with us! Subscribe to our RSS feeds! ScienceSpace AstronomyVirgin GalacticSpaceShipTwo

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