Other Sites

From the time I started writing for Applelinks back in late 90s, I've been well aware of the abundance of writing talent on the Mac web. Applelinks alone has a staff of writers I'd probably enjoy reading even if they were covering alpaca farming or yet another attempt from Madonna at reinventing herself (yawn, stretch, scratch butt). I say probably, because most readers of the Mac web cry "bloody murder!" when a columnist tries to venture slightly off the Macintosh path, even if to make a point that's ultimately Macintosh relevant.

John Farr knows this. When he was writing for Applelinks, he took us so far off the beaten path that some are probably still lost in the woods...or, more accurately, in the mountains of New Mexico. John isn't a Mac writer, he's a writer who happens to use (and love) the Macintosh. He's an adventurer. An observer. More importantly, he's a voice. Never content to just regurgitate a press release or new product announcement, John ran it all through a unique set of filters (which included the taboo subjects of politics and religion) and made it relevant to our lives, not just to our workstations.

John's book, Buffalo Lights: Maryland to New Mexico, which is now available in paperback and ebook formats, comprises a series of articles covering his move from a settled life on the eastern shore to...well, as John puts it, a life of "...shamans, sacred clowns, belly dancers, Buddhist monks, knife-toting tough guys, a guru mechanic, Jesus himself, and the devil's own dogs."

What does this have to do with the Macintosh? Pretty much nothing. But it has everything to do with the life of a Macintosh user.

Applelinks: It's been a while since your final article for Applelinks. What's your system set-up now? Have you embraced Mac OS X yet?

Farr: My setup is simple, if archaic, but everything works. I'm running a B&W G3, 400MHz, with tons of RAM and three hard drives. I have the matching monitor, too, which I think looks really cool, but then I'm kinda retro. Attached to all of this is a 180GB external hard drive and a CD burner that I almost never use. My other machine is 500Hz TiBook with a busted optical drive. Basically, all of this is really from hunger, but it gets the job done, except when I click on something in the Finder and nothing happens.

OS X? Oh sure, 10.3 on these computers. I rarely install OS updates because my dial-up connection is so slow, and and every time Apple releases one, MacSurfer is filled with workaround tales from people who didn't know they were unofficial beta testers. Besides, I'd rather wait for the real deal, the "next great thing," pay through the nose and then install it. Haven't ridden the Tiger yet, though.

Applelinks: Do you think there's also a sense of romance to using an older system? Like holding on to an beat-up pick-up truck? Or, is it more just about the money?

Farr: Not exactly romance, but a sense of style. I have one of those hot rod flame covers for the B&W G3, and the original Apple monitor (B&W) looks really cool combined with that. Much warmer (no pun intended), more rounded and colorful than new gear. But obviously, all this would be in the closet if a.) I had a closet, and b.) room on the credit card for a current PowerMac.

I live in a 100-year-old adobe house with 18-inch thick walls. There really is no closet, just a rod across one wall of the bathroom to hang clothes from. Most of these older New Mexico homes only had two pegs on the bedroom door: one for the everyday pants and shirt, and the other for what you wore to church. For more than that, people used trasteros, or wardrobe cabinets. So, whenever I can get a newer Mac setup, this baby has to go in the storage unit with the old 8600 or be given away.

Anybody want an 8600, BTW?

Applelinks: I'll trade you my old LCII for it. Despite the older system, you've been getting quite a bit of work done. GRACK!, other web and print columns, FarrSound, FotoFeed, FarrFeed at Salon.com and web design, not to mention the book. All technology driven, but all somehow tied in to the basic "nature as teacher" philosophy. Surely that irony isn't lost on you.

Farr: I had an LC II once: the pizza box computer! Hard to believe that a little extra RAM on that, eight megabytes I think, cost something like $800 at the time! Sure did, though. As for getting a lot of work done on an older system, it's a Mac! And it runs all the latest software, despite being what, almost five years old? That can't be right, but I think it is. Wow!

You raise a good point, but I don't think there's all that much irony here. Technology in this case is how I communicate my thoughts to the world, so it's like an extension of my voice and personality. I couldn't have produced the book without this computer, either. As for "nature as teacher," that's an imperative for the whole human race, whether you blog or beat a drum to let people know you're there. So many people are disconnected from the reality of the sacredness of the natural world, which is why we're killing it. Humans always destroy what they can't understand. It's so sad. The number one reason I wanted to move to northern New Mexico was so I could live where nature dominates man and not the other way around. There's great joy and danger in the terrible beauty of this place. That concentrates my awareness in a way that's very important to me, somehow.

Applelinks: Let's talk about that move. When you packed up to move from Maryland to New Mexico, did you already have the adobe? What else did you take aside from the Macintosh?

Farr: Nah. We moved five times in two years after we got here. I'm just renting now, but I landed a classic antique Taos adobe: no overhead light fixtures, a real mud floor. That's right, just dried mud, laid right down on the ground, with carpeting, of course. I'm walking on the earth in here. It's like a cave with windows. Quiet, too. You could shoot off cannons outside and I wouldn't hear a thing.

As for the move, my wife and I left Maryland on a leap of faith, which only works if you don't look down. There's a lot of that in the book: BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico, folks. Also a lot of laughs and some really tense "adventures," along with personal stuff that will have you blubbering in your bandanna. We moved everything we could pack, which means I left or gave away an awful lot of stuff. I had every kind of tool known to man, but no more. Gave away enough books to fill the back of a pickup truck. We totally blew up our lives, which is an interesting thing to do at 55. Sold the house before the prices shot up, haha, money all gone now. Geez. Two years ago, my wife moved to Iowa to take care of her mother and make some dough, but her mother passed away and Dubuque didn't pan out, so she moved in here with me at the end of October. We called it The Return, and it's the biggest thing that's ever happened to me.

Applelinks: Sounds like the start of a new chapter to me. Regarding Buffalo Lights, how did that come together? At what point did you realize the articles you were writing were leaning towards something bigger?

Farr: I first self-published an ebook version of the book for sale from my JHFarr.com site, then later came out with an illustrated version. [Note: the text-only ebook edition is for sale at Booklocker.com.] What actually got me going was needing the dough and wondering, "Gee, what do I have to sell?" It was at that point that I realized how many things I'd written about moving to New Mexico and that it could be a book. I pulled things from Web columns and pieces I'd written for Horse Fly, a monthly Taos newspaper, and there it was. So it was more of a gathering than realizing I had an undiscovered opus. But especially after putting out the paperback version, I'm very pleased to see how well it still holds together as a single work.

And now I have to put out another book. I have well over a hundred accumulated GRACK! columns and almost four dozen columns published in Horse Fly. All I lack is the extra six hours a day to get this rolling.

Applelinks: Compare the paperback to the ebook edition. What are the positives and negatives of each. Which direction do you suggest other authors go?

Farr: That's simple. With an ebook that you produce yourself, you can always edit and tinker with it. And if you're so inclined (as I was), you can include nice high-resolution color photos in your ebook. That kind of thing just doesn't make it into print editions without great expense. Another advantage of an ebook is that if your site gets enough traffic, you may actually sell a bunch without trying any other marketing. The overhead is virtually nil, too.

That said, the downsides are rather huge, because ebooks on non-technical subjects don't sell well. People will pay for a PDF containing valuable information that they need, but for pleasure reading, almost everyone still prefers an actual printed book. Self-publishing through Booklocker.com, iUniverse or any of the other such companies is the best way to get yourself in print quickly, with an ISBN number, the whole nine yards. It costs at least a few hundred, however, and the marketing is a mystery I haven't solved yet. For other authors, I would say to go for that, although if you have an ebook version in hand, you can e-mail that to people for feedback or offer sample chapters to help sell the print version. That's what Booklocker does.

Applelinks: How much of the work on each of the versions was done by you on your Mac versus what, say, Booklocker handled on their end?

Farr: The ebooks are all my work. Basically, I laid everything out in MS Word (sorry! and converted it to PDF, using Acrobat to add active links and such. As for Booklocker, they do very little production work, which probably accounts for the low fee, about $200 to get your book ready for sale. That price takes into account my designing my own cover, too, so I didn't have to pay for that. I'm a big fan of Booklocker. My book is in the Ingram catalog, you can find it at Amazon, and so on. Purchases made directly from the Booklocker site bring me 35 percent of list price for royalties, and Angela Hoy was very helpful throughout. I had to lay out the book myself, in every respect, but where I did make mistakes, she corrected them at no charge.

The short answer to your question, though, is that I did everything except actually print the paperback!

Applelinks: You mentioned marketing earlier. With print-on-demand, you're mainly left with handling the marketing yourself. Have you found more success tackling this on or offline?

Farr: Not much success either way so far, but I'm learning. I just ran an ad at AMERICAblog for a whole week. The site usually has over 3,000 viewers at any time of day or night, up to 90,000 visitors every day, but the ad didn't bring in any immediate sales. Yes, that's a political blog, but with something like over half a million pairs of eyes running over the ad, I figured I'd give it a shot. I've run other ads as well in newsletters and so forth, but I'm not about to carry armloads of books to bookstores—that's not my style. So, right now, you might say my marketing efforts are a mystery I haven't been able to crack yet.

And by the way, unless you're already a well-known author, even a conventional publishing contract leaves 99 percent of the marketing up to you. The big publishers take a couple of unknowns on each year, toss their books out there, and if they catch fire, fine. If not, you take your $2,000 advance and go home. People think publishing a book means instant riches, and in some cases it does, but most authors end up in the hole. Not that this deters me, you understand: I was made for this. This is my life. And sooner or later, I'll put the ingredients together and make a big bang.

John's book, Buffalo Lights: Maryland to New Mexico is available now in paperback and ebook form from Booklocker.com. John also writes a weekly (or so) column, GRACK!, which can be found at his website along with blogs, audio, photos, newsletters, designs and other items that may not be relevant to the average Mac user, but will be relevant to anyone looking for a little something more.