Liu Miao

Self publishing a book

Liu Miao — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 09:36:28 +0000

I self published my novel “Pilgrimage to the dust” finally,with the experience from the first day,I was feeling like a rock star,in a writers way.

I love the advantages of self publishing: You know who is reading your book,you grab the money right after the readers paid,you bypass the censorship in some country,and so on.

I should do this much earlier,there are online payment methods for years,I haven’t used it at all,sorry for keep you waiting,paypal.

First I used tinypay.me to collect the payments,but seems it couldn’t give customers download link in a straightforward way,so I did that manually,which was exhausting. I was doing a promotion the first day,under a price at $0.99 per item,while the normal price is $2.99.

Later I tried boxrockit.com,which didn’t work,so I switched to pulleyapp.com,which charges $6 per month. Under this plan,I can sell 25 items in the mean time,but now I only have one.

Then I tried a few other services,like Gumroad.com,which mistook my account with some Japnese’s,and Oronjo.com,which wasn’t so friendly to Chinese.

Finally,I settled down at Boxrockit.com,it works when I stopped using a Chinese title,under a free plan,I can sell up to three items and there’s no monthly fee.

However,the experience makes me thinking of the possibility of self publishing,which becomes so easy. No ISBN needed,no censorship anymore,without hustle and bustle,the digital content can be sold all over the world,as long as the quality is good.

The link to buy my novel is this: http://www.boxrockit.com/p/liumiao/Pilgrimage_to_the_dust . It contains three file format: PDF,mobi and epub. If you want to buy,keep in mind it’s all in Chinese.

©本文链接： http://liumiao.com/blog/2200.html|+|+|RSS|

已删除Tinyletter帐号

Liu Miao — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:35:58 +0000

之前订阅过我Tinyletter的读者，已经被我导入到Mailchimp里，三番五次地折腾您，实在不好意思。

上个月我满怀期待Mailchimp把Tinyletter改造得更好用些，没想到越改越糟，不仅原先简洁易用的优点没有了，还多了许多缺点。这种感觉就像好不容易赶走了国民党，还没来得及高兴，共产党来了。

经过几次三番写博客发推特抱怨，Mailchimp终于给改版后的Tinyletter加上了导出邮件列表的功能，我也就忙不迭地导出，并导入了Mailchimp里，以后就用这个给大家发邮件了。

按照阴谋论一点的想法，说不定Mailchimp故意要把Tinyletter毁掉，因为后者相当于一个完全免费版的Mailchimp，会与它的收费服务竞争。这只是我阴谋惯了思维的产物，不大可能是真的。

之前在这个博客上留下了大量的Tinyletter链接，为了不给大家造成困扰，我已经将我的Tinyletter删除，从此开始使用Mailchimp。假如最终Tinyletter能够改邪归正，回到正道上来，说不定我再用回去，但那起码是我的订阅数超过2000以后的事了，目前才139，还早。

©本文链接： http://liumiao.com/blog/2193.html|+|+|RSS|

@tinyletter ‘s dillema

Liu Miao — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 07:21:21 +0000

It is unreasonable that killing people is crime but suicide is not. I really want to kill the Mailchimp guys for what they did to tinyletter,or kill myself after I tried a thousand times but still cannot log in tinyletter’s dashboard.

These days,I was so frustrated using the Mailchimp version of Tinyletter,which they called V2. I wanted to love it,but it really sucks.

After the update,all the Chinese characters became mess codes,that was not bad enough. The system is forever in a “timeout” status and makes it impossible changing any setting.

I emailed them and they later declared some mail requesting support lost,which was like a call center saying they cannot be reached by phone.

Luckily there is twitter. It not only helped Iranians to protest but also made tinyletter’s support team reachable. After tweeting my own issue and retweeted some other guys’ complaining,I got replied finally,which said the timeout issue is caused by my big background image,so if I can change that,this “timeout” problem will be solved.

Wait,did I make it clear that,because of this “timeout” issue,I could do nothing but blaming you guys for throttling me in you login page? If I could login this clumsy system,the first thing I do would be copying all the email addresses item by item out(since they don’t allow users to export),suppose I’m lucky enough to not be hindered by “timeout” again.

Now all I can do is trying another thousands of time logging in to the system,and keep myself from slapping their [inter]face.

©本文链接： http://liumiao.com/blog/2185.html|+|+|RSS|

“街头暗号”摄影展/Street Signs

Liu Miao — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:53:45 +0000

图片来自：冯晖

“街头暗号”摄影展将于3月24日——4月28日之间在莫干山路50号的朗图画廊举办。这是国内首次以街头摄影为主题的摄影展，由在街头摄影网站举办。

此次展览将集中展示在街头网站成员的街头摄影作品，参展人员既有崭露头角的当代艺术家和青年摄影师，也有众多热衷街头摄影的摄影爱好者，也有来自国外的摄影艺术家。在本次摄影展中，各个摄影师通过不同的视角展现出多样化的街头风貌，在快速消费的时代，摄影行为与影像内容一样，变得日益复杂。

成立两年以来，在街头已成为颇具影响力的街头摄影社区，集合大量优秀的摄影师和摄影作品。此次展览亦是国内首次专注于街头摄影概念的摄影展，呈现快速变革时代的街头影像。

参展摄影师：
Coca（戴建勇）、范石三、蜕、妖怪、拉黑、BBgundams、一人一、T、吴皓、周子涵、冯晖、李成、刘淼、张渊、石昕航、Ingo Wilhelm、Alan Grillo、Witold Riedel等

展出时间：
2012年3月24日——4月28日
地点：
莫干山路50号朗图画廊（罐子书店旁边）

–

Our first exhibition will be opening between March 24th and April 28th,2012. During this period,new user registration is closed,please come back later,thank you.

About this exhibition:

Street Signs – an exhibition about street photography will be opening on March 24th,this is the first exhibition themed Street Photography in China,hosted by Zaijietou.com.

This exhibition will showcase street photographs taken by Zaijietou members around the world,among them,there are well known contemporary artists,as well as aspiring young photographers. In an age of fast consumption,the behavior of photography as well as the photo itself,are becoming more and more complicated,the exhibition will show the streetscape in a diversified perspective.

After founding for about two years,Zaijietou is becoming more and more influential as a street photography community,attracts lots of excellent photographers. This is the debut exhibition fromzaijietou.com,which brings out photo works in a fast changing age.

Photographers:

Coca,Fan Shisan,tui,Yaoguai,Lahem,BBgundams,yirenyi,T,Wu Hao,Zhou Zihan,Feng Hui,Li Cheng,Liu Miao,Zhang Yuan,Shi Xinhang,Ingo Wilhelm,Alan Grillo,Witold Riedel.

Exhibition time:

March 24th – April 28th,2012

Place:
Rito Gallery in M50(beside CANS bookstore)

©本文链接： http://liumiao.com/blog/2175.html|+|+|RSS|

I’m not the only @Tinyletter victim(warning inside)

Liu Miao — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:14:43 +0000

Seems I’m doomed to be tortured by tinyletter.Last week I reported some problems the new version was causing,but didn’t get replied. Later,they explained:

We’re going to have to ask that you re-send any correspondence you wrote directly via email to[support at tinyletter dot com]. We simply didn’t receive what you sent, and unfortunately don’t have a way to retrieve what was lost.

Wow,a company focusing on email business and built by “someone really love email”,CAN’T receive correspondence by email. Mailchimp must hire some comedian to write this out.

However,I’m not so pathetic,while comparing with Alex Brie,who just wanted to try tinyletter,and imported his gmail contacts,then,

It imported the contacts, that’s for sure. But it also, without asking me first, without asking confirmation, without even warning me, sent out an “Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter” email to all the people I had ever contacted on Gmail: ex-boses, ex-girlfriends, business partners, teachers, friends, unknown others.

And this isn’t bad enough,

That it doesn’t even have a “select all” and delete option. Not even a “check this, this, this and this and then delete” one. Nope. For every single one of the hundreds of contacts it has imported, I have to click on an Ajax “x” button, then wait until a custom made alert popup appears, then move my mouse over to the confirm “Delete” button and click again, then move my mouse back to the “x” button of the next contact, and so on and so forth.

I’ve mentioned a lot about tinyletter recently,so I feel obligated that,I must warn my friends,don’t make the same mistake as above. Stay away from tinyletter as far as you can before they solved all the problems.

But when can they get it fixed? Nobody knows. However,they replied me finally,said:

@liumiao List exports will be added asap. Sorry, it just didn’t quite make the launch. Looking into the charset issue too.

— TinyLetter (@tinyletter) 3月 11, 2012

I will see how long will the “asap” take.

声明：最近Mailchimp把tinyletter搞得一团糟，如果您注册了它，千万不要从gmail导入联系人，因为它会自动给所有人发一封“欢迎”邮件，此外，还没有一键删除所有联系人的选项，必须要一个一个点，操作难度非常大。

©本文链接： http://liumiao.com/blog/2172.html|+|+|RSS|

The new @Tinyletter really upsets me

Liu Miao — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 08:30:10 +0000

Though not a big fan of Mailchimp,I really like it. They offer a free plan includes 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month,which is kinda generous copring with other email service providers. And, the interface full of monkeys is unique,with funny quotes around every corner.

So when they announced they’ll launch a Version 2 for Tinyletter on 2/22/2012,I felt relieved. The original Tinyletter’s deliverability wasn’t good,newsletters were always mistaken for spams.

The launch of the new version was postponed to March 7th,then. I thought it was OK,during this,I manually added a lot of contacts to my list who did’t get the confirmation mail. Finally,the new version came,and I was really disappointed.

It seems to be a tradition that,big companies buy startups to ruin them. We heard stories about Yahoo and Delicious,Google and Slide,and now Mailchimp is likely to join this team. Tinyletter used to be a simple and sleek service,but after Mailchimp’s efforts:

All the simpleness tinyletter used to have are gone,you need to try a thousand times to log in,or to open some link in it.
It impossible to see all the subscribers in one page if there are more than 100,and you never know who was the latest one,the list was sorted alphabetically and there’s no way to change it.
It even lost the goodness,the new version hasn’t provided an Export function yet,which makes user hard to leave it,but it’s evil,really.

I haven’t mentioned the poor support for Chinese yet,these days,I kept getting emails from people complaining about the MIME email they got after subscribed to my list.

I understand it’s not easy to make such a transition,but Mailchimp,please do not act like Yahoo,thank you.

©本文链接： http://liumiao.com/blog/2168.html|+|+|RSS|

上海作家陈村是个什么样的瘪三

Liu Miao — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:13:01 +0000

在上海作协副主席陈村（杨遗华）的微博上看到这么一条：

“ 给方舟子一个机会，自己打一下脸。两会期间，先将微博首页的诗撤下。你是新华社员工家属，应自律，应不去害你妻子。更不去无良设陷阱去害给你做采访的传媒。我在说什么你很明白。”

一首诗，居然能把妻子给害了和给方舟子“做采访的传媒”给害了。像这样的诗，我也想看看，于是去方舟子微博首页，找到了这首“深夜无人的街道”，仍然不明白陈村在说什么。

而陈村先生竟说“日前已将新语丝的方舟子诗文集全部存盘”，可见他深信用“诗文集”可以对方舟子造成威胁。

可是陈村这样的怂包，始终连话都说不清楚，唯一能懂的大概是方舟子，因为陈村对他说“我在说什么你很明白”。

按照“明白人”方舟子的理解，陈村是要拿着他写的有关六四的诗向“组织上”告密来威胁他。

我想起2009年圣诞节，刘晓波因言获罪，被判十一年，学者崔卫平访谈国内众多学者，也问到陈村，回应如下：

陈村在电话里说：知道这件事情。没有看法。

作为一个作家，不愿意对因言获罪者表达看法，是陈村个人的权利，我虽看不起这样的所谓“作家”，仍然理解他的做法。

可这次威胁拿着方舟子的“诗文集”告密，让我知道了，陈村绝不会对因言获罪这种事情“没有看法”，在对付方舟子的时候，他表达了看法：别说是“零八宪章”，就是“诗文集”都可以作为胁迫一个人的理由。陈村也表达出，对于告密这种行为，一点不用感到羞耻。

可就是这样一个上海话所说的垃圾瘪三，居然他起高楼，居然他宴宾客，居然他就端坐在上海作协副主席的位子上，让人真不知该说些什么。

成都冉云飞，据说在写一部《中国告密史》，已经编写多年，但因国人告密之事太过平常，因而至今未能完工。确实，如果告密者像瘪三陈村这样层出不穷的话，冉先生的书怕是编不完了。

好事多磨

Liu Miao — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 08:29:13 +0000

一直期待的Tinyletter改版终于完成，改完才发现毛病多多，还不如不改。之前的问题无非是邮件被归类到垃圾箱，而现在，投递成功率是否有所提高尚不得知，中文邮件内容却统统被转换成了MIME格式，像这个样子：

我已写信给客服，希望他们能尽快解决这个问题。如果解决不了，为了对得起一百三十多个读者和已经写好的几篇文章，我会转移到Mailchimp去写，那里只要订户不超过2000人就一直免费。如果有一天，订阅我电子邮件的人超过了两千个，那就相当于办了一份颇有影响力的杂志，据说发行量已经大过市面上多数时尚杂志，付点发行费用我也心甘情愿。

所以，还得请您再等等，真够不好意思的。

好用的邮件列表管理工具fiesta.cc

Liu Miao — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 09:24:19 +0000

前几天我在博客上说：

后来我发现一个非常好用的工具，通过它，在往邮件列表发送邮件时只需在抄送栏添加一个地址，这个地址就会从此也被添加到邮件列表里，非常方便，极其适合开放式饭局的概念。可惜不久前网站发来邮件，说他们受不了不胜垃圾邮件之烦，决定停止服务。

因为它已经停止服务，所以当时我没有给出链接。前几天突然收到创始人的邮件，说他有朋友愿意接管这家网站，以使其能够继续运营下去，这家网站的名字叫fiesta.cc。

另外，今天下午我用Tinyletter发了第一封信，并且已经收到了不少回复，现在唯一不确定的是，我对回复的回复不知是否能够准确送达，还是又被塞进了垃圾箱。

我把第一封信设定为我Tinyletter的欢迎信，每个新订阅的读者都能看到。另外tinyletter还有个很实用的功能，可以很方便地给新订阅者发送之前的“旧信”，所以不必担心你会错过什么。我则会尽可能地写不会短时间内过时的东西。

如何充分发挥Kindle功能

Liu Miao — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 10:05:09 +0000

尽管昨天才刚刚拿到Kindle Touch，在此之前我就研究好了怎么发挥它的最大功用。

1、通过Instapaper或是Readability将网页内容发送到Kindle

Instapaper和Readability都是优化网页改善阅读体验的服务，并且可以将文章保存下来留待以后阅读。平日里浏览网页时，只需要简单的操作，即可把文章通过Instapaper或是Readability发送到自己的Kindle上。譬如，点击下列按钮，可以体验一下经过Readability优化过的网页是什么模样：

Instapaper和Readability都是免费的，不同之处在于，Instapaper将每天的文章一次性发到Kindle上，Readability则将每篇文章一一发来（3月2日更正：经Scomper提示得知，Readability亦支持文章列表发送）。

使用这两个网站往Kindle发文章非常简单，这儿有篇文章详尽地说明了如何用Instapaper，Readability也是大同小异。

2、订阅各网站提供的“长文发送至Kindle”服务

Send Me A Story 和 Deliver Reads都免费提供这样的服务，只要提供你的Kindle Email地址，它们就会每周把精选的长文发到你的Kindle上。如果你没有Kindle，前者也可以把每周的文章发到你的电子信箱。

说到点，我有些感叹，因为中文世界似乎还没有类似的服务，所以我打算在我的Tinyletter里每周发送一篇由我挑选出的值得一读的中文长文章。如果你想在Kindle上读这篇长文，只需要直接把它转载到Instapaper提供给你的Email地址即可，它收到后会转发到你的Kindle。

3、在Amazon上购买图书Sample

这个功能对我来说太有用了，因为之前我买过很多书，看过几页之后就丢在一边，最后书越堆越多，难以为继，只好忍痛送人，腾出空间来好买新的书。而亚马逊居然免费提供每本电子书的免费Sample，实在是像我这样买书爱好者的福音，一样只看前几页，省下了买书钱。

–

关于Tinyletter，因为在它改版完成之前邮件往往会进垃圾箱，我只能耐心等待，此前订阅的无论收到确认信与否，我基本都已在后台手动确认，可能是我确认得太多，Tinyletter索性暂停了这种操作方式。

改版顺利的话，我会从3月7号开始使用，如果改版不顺利，也只好发邮件向他们投诉，希望不会直接被过滤成垃圾邮件。