Stephen C. Rose

Yah.

I had a call from Amazon yesterday. They needed me to update my Kindle data so they could send me a payment. Oh, how wonderful that sounded to me.

You see, last summer I had this notion. It parses this way:

1. Kindle will be the book of the future. Millions of them, wirelessly available. Plus blogs and magazines and almost anything else that has text.

2. I have tons of stuff that no one ever sees or knows about and with Kindle I can make it available any way I want to.

3. I also have some interest in monetization — that is to say, getting paid for what I do online. I am not Ezra Klein paid by someone. Or Andrew Sullivan paid by someone. I need to find a way to do it my way. Always has been the case.

4. With Kindle you can be your own show. Not only that. You can find and use public domain texts as you wish and create new versions or configurations of anything that interests you.

Here is my Kindle page and you will see that Amazon takes care of us pretty darn well. This what I put up for a starter.

MY KINDLE PAGE

5. I just let it lie, no promotion, no expectations. And the result was not SUCCESS!!!!! [I am emulating the promotional style that you find out there.] The result was that phone call and a small stream of income from a generous royalty for a number of the Kindle Books I have placed there. To recall a phrase from my web business days, it is PASSIVE INCOME.

6. With open eyes, one can surmise a Kindle future. If it works passively, you can expand the number of offerings to any number you wish. And with an aid such as Twitter, you can gently and helpfully share what you are doing.

7. If you are like me, and can never do the “one thing” that Kierkegaard said was the mark of a pure heart, but always gravitates to multiple concerns and interests, you have in Kindle a very good way to build a catalog that places no limit on subject matter, mode or anything else. Poet, coach, modeler of patterns, artist, whatever.

Twitter is preferable to me than any of the other social network operations save the Obama site which is the main basis for most of what is on this blog. The reason is very simple. Apart from the technology, which is smart and evolving, Twitter makes helpfulness pay. If you go on Twitter with the idea of making a million by directly getting people to buy you or your brand, you will be instantly viewed as a spammer of some sort.

If you confine your Twitter activity to things that are genuinely aimed at helping or informing others, you are in Real Twitterland. You need not hide your light under a bushel, but you can bring it out only when doing so makes some sense other than lining your pockets.

Instead of testimonials to your prowess or product, something that shows how the category of service you represent is important or helpful or in crisis or whatever.

Instead of always links to YOUR site links to others, to direct sources and so forth. I handle this by having a feed to my own blog of all my Tweets including replies to other Twitter folk who have replied directly to me.

Under the influence of the Tao, I am saying that online success may, for some, be more in serving than earning. But that earning is hardly to be ignored.

The best way to earn is to serve. And not to even think about earning a thing.

Kindle seems to me to be a way to create a monetary value on your work. Twitter seems to me to be a way to share your work if it helps, genuinely helps, open the same door to others who have interest.

In that spirit, I do want to close this by indicating how anyone can get started on doing Kindle as a content supplier.

DIGITAL TEXT PLATFORM — THE KINDLE STARTING POINT

If you are interested in working with public domain texts you should explore Gutenberg with the clear understanding that the texts they offer can be used without credit, as free, public domain works, only if you confine yourself to the text and eliminate any or all references to Gutenberg in your offering. There are other options for finding and creating your own version of public domain works.

THE GUTENBERG CATALOG OF PUBLIC DOMAIN WORKS

I would recommend that anyone undertaking this consider using what I regard as the best text processor I have found, from the Swiss company Fookes Software.

NOTETAB LITE FREE VERSION

Face it, even a published author like your truly, someone who has sold multiple copies but who never had a monster best seller, needs to find ways to achieve some income online. The time will come, I hope, when we will all get paid by users who dig our stuff and whose ISP payments include a percentage for online content. But until that happens, I think I have found at least one way — becoming a Kindle Publisher and hoping that Kindle remains one of the, if not THE, primary e-book reader out there.