Some of My eBook Successes-and More

[RonPrice]

A SUMMARY OF RON PRICE’S INTERNET PUBLISHING
“HIS CUP OF PUBLISHING TEA”

I have outlined below several categories of my writing, my writing projects of varying sizes, genres and subjects on the internet. You can gradually get into whatever categories of my work you desire, if at any time you do in fact desire, over the next few days, weeks, months, years or decades. Most of the following items went onto the internet in the period 2001-2006. Most of it is free of any cost, although some of the self-publishing material costs anywhere from $3 to $20. There are three general categories of printed matter I have placed on the world wide web. These categories are:

1. Books:

1.1. The Emergence of a Baha’i Consciousness in World Literature: The Poetry of Roger White. This 400 page ebook is available at Juxta Publishing Limited and can be downloaded free of charge.
1.2. A paperback edition of the above book is available at Lulu.com for $11.48 plus shipping costs from the USA. This self-publishing site also has a four volume work, a study in autobiography, entitled Pioneering Over Four Epochs which is 2500 pages long(four 600+ page volumes). I will be making it available as an ebook and in paperback for $10 to $20 per volume very soon after it is reviewed/approved by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Australia, Inc. The cost of these books is set by Lulu.com.

2. Internet Site Postings:

Essays, poems, parts of my autobiography and a wide variety of postings/writings in smaller, more manageable, chunks of a paragraph to a few pages are all free and can be accessed by simply: (a) going to any one of approximately 2000 sites or (b) typing some specific words into the Google search engine as indicated in the following:

2.1 Approximately 2000 Sites:

I post at a wide range of poetry, literature, social science and humanities sites across a diverse mix of subjects, topics and intellectual disciplines in both popular and academic culture. The list of these sites is available to anyone interested by writing to me at: ronprice@ozemail.com.au. But a simpler method for readers to access many of my postings would be to:

2.2 Type Sets of Words At Google:

There are literally hundreds of sets of words now that will access my writing at various sites. If you type, for example, Ron Price, followed by any one of the following words or word sequences: (i) poetry, (ii) literature, (iii) religion, (iv) Baha’i, (v) history, (vi) Shakespeare, (vii) ancient history, (viii) philosophy, (ix) Islam, (x) Australia Bahai and (xi) pioneering over four epochs, et cetera, et cetera, you will get anywhere from a few sites to over 150 sites arranged in blocks of ten internet locations. This last site, “pioneering over four epochs”, is a particularly fertile set of words to type into the google search engine.

The main problem with this latter way of accessing what I have written is that my work is side by side with the items of other writers and posters who have the same name as mine and/or the same topic. I have counted a dozen other Ron Prices and I'm sure there are more. You may find their work more interesting than mine! There are some wife bashers, car salesmen, evangelists, media celebrities, a pornographer or two, indeed, a fascinating array of chaps who have different things to sell and advertise than my offerings.

3. Specific Sites With Much Material:

Some sites have hundreds of pages of my writing and these sites are a sort of middle ground, a different ground, between the two major categories I have outlined above. The Baha’i Academics Resource Library(BARL) for example, has more of my material than at any other site. My writings are listed there under: (a) books, (b) personal letters, (c) poetry, (d) biographies and (e) essays, among other categories/listings. The Roger White book is at BARL under “Secondary Resource Material>Books>Item #114.” I find this site useful personally, but some of the poetry is not arranged in a visually pleasing form. Some readers may find the layout annoying.

There are some sites at which my writing is found in a very pleasing form with photos and pictures and general settings to catch the eye. Some site organizers have their location beautifully arranged. I leave it to readers to read what pleases them and leave out what doesn’t. When one posts as much as I do one often writes too much, says the wrong things or upsets an applecart or two. It's part of the process. In cyberspace, as in the real world, you can't win them all. The pioneering over four epochs word sequence is, as I’ve said, a useful word package to access some 150 sites with my writing and has no competition from other ‘Ron Prices.’

Concluding Comments:

I had no idea when I retired from full-time employment in 1999 to write full-time that the internet would be as useful a system, a resource, a base, for my offerings as it has become. There are literally millions of words now on this international web of words that I have written in the last six years(2001-2006). From the early eighties to the early years of this new millennium I tried to get published in a hard cover, but without any success. My guess is that in the years ahead the world will be awash with books and various genres of printed matter from millions of people like me posting various quantities of their writing.

What I write may not be your cup-of-tea. In that case drink someone else’s tea from someone else’s cup. There is something for everyone these days in both hard and soft cover and on the intertnet. If you don’t like my work or someone else’s go to sources of printed matter you like. One hardly needs to say this, but I do not expect what I write to be everyone’s cup-of-tea.

For those who already do or may come to enjoy my writings, I hope the above is a useful outline/overview. For those who don't find what I write attractive to their taste, as I say, the above will give you a simple handle to avoid as you travel the net. I wish you all well in your own endeavours in the path of writing or whatever path your travel down.

Ron Price
Updated:
21st April 2006
Revised 21st August 2006

[RonPrice]

SETTING MY STAMP

I do not anticipate setting my stamp on the general physiognomy of literature during my lifetime. Given the reorientation of literary interest since I was born in 1944, since the affluent post-war years(1945-1973) through to the explosion on the internet as I entered my fifties in the 1990s; given the change in the nature of the reading market, what one might call the demographics of books and publishing; given the shifts in people’s mental horizon and the far-reaching consequences of those shifts; given the dramatic tempo in the life of my society and my own life and the sharp curves that have characterized my particular literary existence; given my own vital energy, Bergson’s elan vital, which is quite independent of the pessimism and disillusionment of this age, especially in the recent fin de siecle years and beyond; given the dark heart of this age of transition, a dark heart going back to the childhood of my parents, if not another fin de siecle period that Churchill saw as the onset of our age of sturm und drung; given my long literary apprenticeship, first in my family from the 1940s to the 1960s, where reading and writing were part of our everyday life--then my 18 years of formal education and finally my 30 years as a teacher; given the masters of writing which I read extensively: the Central Figures of my Faith, Shoghi Effendi, Edward Gibbon and Arnold Toynbee, among others; given all of this, what you might call my mise en scene, I had some central life-experiences that took place on this stage, this theatre of my life which served as a baptism of fire and served, it seems to me in retrospect, as my literary birthplace and crucible.

These central life-experiences were, briefly: my bi-polar disorder which manifested itself first from the age of 18 to 24 which was like going to war and the second major episode from 1977 to 1980; marital discord kept me busy periodically, episodically, for 35(1967-2002) years taking me to the edge emotionally more often than I care to think; frustrations in the world of employment demanding all that I had intellectually, socially, psychologically—such were some of the formative experiences that set the stage for a life of intense writing which began in the last years of my forties, circa 1992, and took off a decade later with greater intensity when I was at last able to recollect in tranquillity. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, January 7th 2006.

Some dynamic stream,
some introspective, fluid,
concentrated consciousness
that turns inward, back,
around, between, among,
to the future and the past,
to the mysterious dispensations
of a watchful Providence across
the fine meshes of my brain,
flowing almost irresistibly,
following a current, a path,
a creative impulse, a value
inestimable, mysteries revealed
in this world of existence
to my inner being after
decades of drinking deep
of His vivifying waters:
setting, describing, my stamp.

Ron Price
January 8th 2006