Scenes of Writing in Paperback!

I'm going to toot my own horn again in this post because I'm excited again. I'm very happy to say that our textbook Scenes of Writing: Strategies for Composing with Genres is once again available in paperback as well as in eBook format!

My co-authors, Mary Jo Reiff and Anis Bawarshi, and I have republished the original book independently. It's available on Amazon for the low low price of $24.99!

For some reason I haven't figured out, when you search on Amazon for just the title, our republished new version doesn't show up (used ones show up instead). You have to search the whole title and subtitle to find our independently published version, and even then it's hard to distinguish from the others. It's also not linked to our ebook version yet, but I'm settling for good enough right now.

To make it easier in case you want to check it out, I've added a link to our version here. (Disclosure: I get a "bonus" when you buy after clicking on my link instead of going to Amazon yourself, though the price to you is the same. I think it's $1.00)

I was surprised at how difficult it turned out to be to get our book into a form that could be published in paper rather than just digitally. Some of you may have published your own works independently and already know the struggles it takes. But thanks to the help of a great friend and designer, the book is well-formatted and all the kinks worked out.

Because of all these struggles, I've been thinking again about the difference the format makes (platform?). Why some people prefer paper to digital, or digital to paper. How the same text has different meaning for each of us--that is, how we give meaning to its format. I have no answers at the moment, and I know lots of people have researched reading styles and preferences and there are lots of stats about changes in reading practices. Researchers have discovered different reading habits and patterns and processing of information in different formats or on different platforms. I don't claim to know any of that (though I read all the articles I run across on the topic). Perhaps when my brain's summer slump passes, I'll be able to tackle the topic more thoughtfully.

But I do know that many people care about whether the book they read is digital or paper, so I'm glad we were able to figure out how to supply both.

Happy  reading to you, whatever you choose to read and whatever your format!

Hermitage - "Old Woman Reading a Book", by Gerrit Dou. Photo by oriana.italy flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)