Turning In Big Brother

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I've been working on it for weeks. From advertising, to writing, to researching publishing assistances and then editing the writings over and over again. I am finally after incessant editing absent of grammaticism I am bad with, now finished with the introductory works nearly. There is always room for edifications.

I'd like feedback concerning my project. What do you think? What do you suggest?

It is located at: http://www.nathanyoung.net/turninginbigbrother/

Centered text is hard to read.

No serious book layout designer would use it or let you use it. Books, newspapers and magazines are laid out the way they are because left justified or fully justified columns are the easiest format to read.

I think your cover page should perhaps mention the word "abuse" or "mistreatment" or "neglect" or something that would make me want to be aware and understand why you'd write a book about it.

I like the cover art. It reminds me a little of a the work of an Australian artist Michael Leunig, who has many aspie traits.

I'm not going to continue trying to read it until you fix the formatting. Sorry about that.

http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/typelayo ... fyleft.htm

I changed it once, didnt seem right formated traditionaly. The book format is not the online format, never had planed to be.

I'll change it and see if the page view to I.P statistics improve.

http://www.nathanyoung.net/turninginbig ... erone.html

See if that formating is ok.

Chapter 1 looks ok now. There seem to be a big lot of blank lines between the end of it and the link to Chapter 2.

Chapter 2 formating still looks centred but not quite as scary as before. Still quite hard for me to read. I like the chapter 1 formatting better.

I still think you need some sort of "hook" to get people immediately interested and reading. Like a short paragraph very close to the top / beginning. I'm also not sure about the structure - or maybe you need to write why you are starting by telling us which actors you like. Because I don't understand how some of that detail is relevant. Much of what you write - I'm sitting here thinking why did he write that, what has it got to do with the story. That's how our first miscommunications happened. I thought the detail "meant something" and tried to figure out what.

I expect I will understand later why the biography is the way it is when it gives the rest of the story some context. In normal stories (like novels) - there isn't usually a big biographical description of the lead character for the whole of the first chapter. It is kind of spread throughout the book linked to places where the information is relevant and explains why something happpened. If your biography - all about you, doesn't link directly to the main events leading to your complaint - maybe it would be best to put it last as a "about me" chapter?

I keep thinking of "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" for your hook
http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/kesey.html

I found a "back cover" aka "hook" for "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" the book, on amazon, and it had centred text, but the columns were very narrow and the font very big, so I could read it reasonably easily - but it was annoying.

example of a hook for yours:
"the frightening story of an individual
wrongly forced into psychiatric care
and locked up -
because he asked for help
when his air conditioner broke down
during a heat wave. "

The hook here is: I'm thinking - how on earth could that happen? I want to know, so I'm going to read - so long as the reading gets me closer to knowing how it all went wrong, and then how you got back to normal ie out of the lockup.

Feel free to ignore any of my suggestions. Use them if they make sense and you like them. I have a small amount of basic training in graphic design and creative writing.

"the frightening story of an individual
wrongly forced into psychiatric care
and locked up -
because he asked for help
when his air conditioner broke down
during a heat wave. "

This is interesting, perhaps this:

"the frightening story of an individual with
autism wrongly forced into psychiatric care
and locked up -
because he asked for help
when his air conditioner broke down
during a heat wave. "

You have to reply giving me permission to use this though.

I am not very good at this organization of placements structually of words. Such as indentations. I'd pay someone but someone wanted $300 for that. I am good at writting some things, doing comparisions and think I have a unique style of being balanced yet assertive with what I say to make a point.

I will re-read what you said, but I will warn you, in grammer class I just sat there and did not understand any of it, or well most of it.

http://www.nathanyoung.net/turninginbig ... erone.html

Okiedoke, I tried a new formating layout on the first chapter. Check it out.

edit: I just updated every chapter with the new format. Not sure if it is good, looks better then the last.

It's best to start here, http://www.nathanyoung.net/turninginbigbrother

I just read the first two chapters. Charming. Have you asked Wrong Planet to give you a prominent link? And contacted "60 Minutes"? (You DO still have "60 Minutes" over there, doncha?)

I PM'd Alex a few days ago, I have a budget allocated for this. If he will reply and is reasonable I want to do a mass mailing and a link of some type when the book is released.

I do not believe in the news, I though think that if I am able to make money from selling the book, the re-investment will itself further the awareness of my experiences. So it could do ok.

Hi sc

I thought permission was implied in this line.

"Use them if they make sense and you like them."

Where "them" is my suggestions.

But to get more formal.

You have permission to use my ideas and text freely and vary it as you please.

And you have permission to give credit or not as you please (I don't mind if I don't get any). If you do credit me - the credit would be "wobbegong as known at wrongplanet".

I haven't read the Wrong Planet Terms of Service recently but the Microsoft MSN groups claim all copyright for all posts anyway.

Basically I won't sue if I see something that looks like mine elsewhere. However I'd like the same favour not to be sued if I use my own work wherever I like. Copyright is bizarre.

I think part of the interest in your book is the way you have structured it and the uniqueness of style of it. Apart from making it easy to read, I wouldn't mess with it too much. If you have a good chapter index, people will be able to skip to the bits they find most interesting. There are all sorts of formal rules about how to put a book together, but one of the rules is knowing when to break or ignore the others. These are "guideline rules" or "rules of thumb", they're like my suggestions - you only follow them when they help.

So don't pull the whole book apart on my say so.

Hi Sc

If you can learn about style sheets they will make changing the formatting around much easier.

You put one line in each html file, and all the styling is done for you.

You make one change in the style sheet file and the styling changes on every page.

I think frontpage 6 ought to provide some help with it or at least render style sheets correctly. Then you stop highlighting every paragraph and formatting the font for each one on every page.

It will be worth learning - trust me.

To start you off I have created a css that will do the black text on grey as default, and white text on blue for highlight paragraphs - these you do have to individually tweak - but only one property - the class property.

/* stylesheet created using http://www.bradsoft.com/ */
/* Topstyle 2.5 - they give out free copies of old versions for free with some PC magazines */
/* to use this cut and paste it into a file and call it scTIBB.css */
/* then put an HTML line (using angle brackets not round ones) as follows */
/* (link rel="stylesheet" href="scTIBB.css" type="text/css") */
/* at the top in the (head) part */
/**/
/* to use the class phighlight for your blue paragraphs */
/* the following - swap the round brackets with angle ones*/
/* - leave out the comment markers */
/**/
/* (p class=phighlight)a blue important highlighted message(/p) */
/**/
/* by the way - it did have nice indentations between the curly brackets but the */
/* forum processor eats them. */
/* end of comments */
/* -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
BODY {
color : Black;
background-color : #CCCCCC;
font-family : sans-serif;
}

A {
color : #000099;
text-decoration : none;
}

A:HOVER {
color : #6666FF;
text-decoration : none;
}

p {
background-color : #CCCCCC;
color : Black;
font-family : Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
.pHighlight {
background-color : #000080;
color : White;
font-family : Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size : 90%;
font-weight : bold;
text-align : center;
padding : 5px;
}
A.pHighlight {
color : #6699FF;
text-decoration : none;
}

A.pHighlight:HOVER {
color : Aqua;
text-decoration : none;
}

My skills are more generalized and broad. For instance my skills would enable me to understand most of any commerce project basically in strategy, then enable me enough to work with another person that has homed in skills. So basically I could manage projects, my skill level is not for programming, rather creativity, marketing innovation and some web design but I am picky. I also understand basic graphics manipulations and design. However when it comes to the more advanced, nope, not me, not ever.

My last re-sale ecommerce project I liked the ideas for, just the market is flooded. Lately I thought about doing something even more personalized and discovered new marketing methodologies for it.

I’d help people find an ecommerce company solution they need over the internet and I get a commission. So really it’s marketing with light sales, sales is done by the trained sales persons that I work with.

This is an example of what I do, make up ideas, formulate reasonable methodologies of constructing it to make it possible, market it and just try to be innovative. I’m not an internet specialist in any one area.

A good chapter index page with short descriptors would likely make it look a bit better.

By the way external from paid inclusions being in near 200 differing variations of relevancy, another marketing site has taken page two of the primary keywords and third place on another major keyword variation.

The primary keyed variation will be increased in search rank with a larger page text and now the removal of the free host’s ads when it was being setup.

So consumers (clients) of these places when looking online or anyone else searching for them, they will see the complaint clearly. In some places its in two places on the page search results.

Wonderful net marketing invasion! It’s just destine to get much better for getting the word out about it.

Edited my previous post, because style sheets really don't work properly if you don't put the right file name and location in the link in the HTML header. Sigh. Damn cut and paste...

I like the idea of an index page too.

Internet marketing amazes me. I'm sure Alex knows lots about it since he's got all that ad money stuff all linked up.

My websites tend to be a lot more commercial free - and correspondingly profit free - but theyr'e fun.