After a 6 month delay, we are extremely pleased to announce the release of our latest book, The Courage to Fall Into Life: The Tao of Purposeful Existence. Through her own story of personal tragedy, Mirella De Civita takes us through a remarkable transformation from being a devoted research psychologist and business consultant to finding her true calling as a successful Executive Coach, helping leaders transform and take flight in their lives and career.

With a keen professional interpretation, she blends academics and the great spiritual teachings to arrive at 5 simple truths that will astound and inspire.

Here is what acclaimed author and teacher John Seita has to say about the book: ““Like the butterfly effect in which the impact of a transformation may affect each of us, I humbly suggest that the reader won’t have to dig too deep to find personal meaning for their own transformation.”

The book may be purchased now on Amazon.ca and Amazon.com as well as other fine on-line booksellers. Get your copy today!

The inaugural CSTD book club was a success, with 20 training and development professionals from the Montreal area coming out to hear Kristina Schneider talk about her research and the process of converting that to her book. I’m sure that many people there are now starting to set up their blogs!

Many thanks for all of your kind words and support, and for taking advantage of our 40% sale. Stay tuned, more exciting developments in the works!

For those who can’t really justify buying our books for personal use, but would like to read or evaluate them for research can always get them at an academic or corporate library.

“But” you say, “Our library doesn’t have a copy of your titles!”

Have you thought of recommending our titles for acquisition? We just made the task a little easier. Simply download our pre-filled in title_recommendation form, and give it to your favorite librarian or information resource person. They can order our titles through their usual supplier or distributor, or contact us directly.

The Canadian Society for Training and Development (CSTD) – Quebec region – has begun an innovative “book club”, where authors are invited to present their book on hot topics relevant to the training and development industry.

To launch this series, Acorda Press is extremely proud to announce that our author, Kristina Schneider has been selected to inaugurate the series with her book, Edublogging: A Qualitative Study of Training and Development Bloggers. The event will take place in Montreal on Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 6 PM.

It would seem that Kristina is very busy racking up “firsts” ! She was the first author signed with Acorda Press, and as many of you know, Edublogging was our very first release.

We are extending a heartfelt CONGRATULATIONS to Kristina, and we are looking forward to what I am sure will be a record turnout for a CSTD event in Montreal.

For more information on the event and to register to attend, go to the CSTD National Web site.

To celebrate, Acorda Press is now offering for a limited time 40% off the cover price for both of our current titles, Edublogging and Think and Learn Rich. *

Go to the order page to order your copies today!

*Canadian and U.S. Orders only. Plus shipping and handling. 5% GST will be added to Canadian orders. Due to limited stock there may be a 4-6 week delay in shipping.

Acorda Press is currently evaluating candidates for Acquisition and Development Agents. See our Jobs page for more details.

Over the past few months, I have received many inquiries and manuscripts from acquaintances and “friends of friends” with the view of getting their baby published.  While I normally do not accept phone or email queries, I am indeed interested in people’s projects and I do like to be a good friend. However, I will invariably ask for a prospectus in a format that is recommended in the Writer’s Market or the Chicago Manual of Style. Alas, knowing me or getting through to me through a friend is not a shortcut to getting published.

The process of creating a prospectus is a great test of an author’s mettle. Books rarely sell on their own, and it requires an author’s participation. This doesn’t mean being a sleazy self-promoter, but rather active participation in the communities in which the writer is addressing. Credibility is a result of what you do, and people buy books based on the ability to communicate ideas and formulas for positive change. Asking for a prospectus demonstrates an ability to communicate clearly in summary form. A market analysis shows that any book or book idea and the author is really part of a larger conversation, and does not exist in a vacuum.

Interestingly, out of the dozen or so “ideas” and unsolicited manuscripts that have been presented to me since March of this year, not a single prospective author has delivered a prospectus. In some cases there was outright indignation in being asked to do so, especially with those who had completed manuscripts, or who had credentials or had already been published, or who thought having an insider’s edge would be their shortcut to fame and fortune (!). This shows me right away that there will be difficulties in developing the manuscript to a point where it is publish-ready, as virtually all manuscripts need extensive development work.

What this says is that vanity still plays a large role in the desire to be published. But the reality is that getting a book published is not the goal, but a component of the on-going development of ideas and practices. And it is incredibly vain to think that a manuscript or idea is too good to withstand the challenges of development.

But for those that do think their baby is complete and the best thing since sliced bread, there is always self- and vanity publishing. I tend to steer people with family projects towards legitimate publishers CreateSpace or Lulu.com, where one can self-publish for free or very little cost. However there are hundreds of “vanity” publishers out there, running scams under different approaches. There are even some that are particularly well-known in academic circles, whose sole modus operandi is to comb the thesis and dissertation abstracts and offer publishing deals for free, complete with complimentary copies. They sell these books on Amazon and back to authors at 3000% markup or more, and this is how they make their money.

My advice to authors and aspiring authors is to beware of publishing scams that sell editorial and design packages and beware of “academic” publishers that do nothing but simply repackage without contributing to development. The value of a publisher is very similar to the value of a film producer: It is all about the expertise of development and packaging to appeal to a particular audience. Never forget that even the greatest writers had editors and publishers and were rarely, if ever, self published. This means that even for Hemingway, his original manuscripts were quite different from the finished books. (And I have yet to see any Hemingways in my pile of manuscripts and writing samples).

Since many people reading this might already have been solicited by a self- or vanity press, or clicked on an ad for “how to get published” or “how to sell your self-published book”, there is a terrific blog called Writer Beware! Sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the Mystery Writers of America, the blog “shines a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls.”

Shoutout to the dedicated work of the blog’s main contributors, Richard White, A.C. Crispin and Victoria Strauss!

Acorda Press does not charge any fees to authors or “reading fees” to prospective authors. Our book discounts to authors are often lower than the wholesale/distribution discount, and our royalty rates are based on cover price, with no holdbacks.

Due to the strength of Canadian and Australian currencies, pricing for our books has been revised downward for these countries. For our Canadian customers, our suggested cover prices are now the same as the US, and approximately 8% lower for Australia. Pricing for US, EU and UK are unchanged. However, we have introduced better incentives for distribution, which should result in greater coverage and perhaps even some discounting!

March sales figures are in, and we sold 38 books in our first 2 weeks of existence. Not bad for a micro-sized startup Canadian publisher, eh? A hearty thank you to all our supporters.

Our total donation to disaster relief in Haiti and Chile (including the launch raffle) raised a total of $166.  To me, this is not enough, so I’ve decided to extend through April our disaster relief fundraiser of $2 for each book sold. So if you haven’t bit the bullet, books are in stock and ready to ship on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Chapters-Indigo, and many other on-line booksellers.

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Our titles are now available on Google Books! These are “limited preview” versions but the entire books have been indexed which means they may show up in search results. Try it! Search for “edublogging” and Kristina’s book will show up under the “books” heading on the search results page.

You can also go directly to the Google Book pages at Edublogging or Think and Learn rich.

On Tuesday March 16, Acorda Press officially launched with the release of its first two books, Edublogging, and Think and Learn Rich.

Over 60 people attended, which not only exceeded our expectations, but represented a rebirth of the community of educational technologists in the Montreal area.

Authors Kristina Schneider (Edublogging)  and George Saridakis  (Think and Learn Rich) sold and autographed over 20 books between them, and combined with the raffle of 2 copies of each book, we raised nearly $150 for charity.

As previously announced, Acorda Press will be donating $2 for every book sold during the month of March, so buy your copy from your favorite on-line bookseller today!

George with Prof. Gary Boyd

Kristina Schneider siging a copy of Edublogging for Leona Patlik, one of our new authors.

George Saridakis still smiling after signing so many books!

Here's Kristina and George checking out each other's books