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Received the following email from Kerekes Pál from Hungary:

I would like to recommend the new self-publishing creed, published in Hungary.

To my name can be connected two books about e-book culture. Both are used as textbook in university level.

The titles:

Kerekes Pál: Az elektronikus könyv: e-könyv, e-könyv-kiadás, e-könyv-kereskedelem 

(Digital Book: e-book, e-book-publishing, e-book-business)

Kerekes Pál: eBook kalauz. Az elektronikus könyv kisenciklopédiája

(eBook Guide. The Digital Book Encyclopedia)

The self-publishing  manifesto was published in English and Hungarian.

Enclosed please find the text.

The manifesto can be downloaded free of the Smashwords site. http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/178943

Original published in Hungarian self-publishing leading site: Publio. www.konyvaruhaz.info

Blog: Könyvkonnektor (Book connection)  www.konyvkonnektor.hu

Thanks to the many information of Teleread site.

Best Regards,

Pál Kerekes, PhD

Credo

What does it mean: author’s edition?

How can it be understood: self-publishing? Indie title, indie author? 

After Gutenberg Galaxy the “Google”tenberg universe is coming? Is this self-publishing? Does the author need only skills in information technology?

This is not so. E-book is a not a terminus. Book express is dashing away. Digital book and e-book versions can mainly be interpreted within the system of book culture dating 1000 years back. 

It is worth mentioning for instance that books are not written. Their essential is not that they are typed into the computer. Books are created, everything is else is a question of technique. This is simple, although it is difficult to understand. Not so long time ago texts were schratched onto the paper by a quill, however eternal works were born. If anyone started to write a novel, they lit a candle not switched on a computer. 

Although a book created by quill and ink is expensive and costly. Traditional publishers can only undertake to publish writings from a narrow range that are also successful from business perspectives. This is quite reasonable as publishers have to make money for their existence as well as for the sake of the authors and their readers. Information technology provides independence: important and valuable writings may not disappear. On the online self-publishing bookstore (global or local) after a few clicks planned or complete works can be immediately presented to the public.

It is not necessary to call anyone, wait for some orders from machines or listen to remarks from clumsy or aggressive secretaries. 

Experience and knowledge want to create. 

Writing and publishing is possible: it does not matter what length or topic does the text have. Only one thing is vital: the authors shall know and feel that their message is important. Writings can be addressed to the whole world or a small bunch of interested people, a professional audience, a local group. For a poet fan, detective story fan, bookworm or documentary readers, for some descendants in the family, dear friend, acquaintance. 

Disasters, success and great changes can be eternalized. 

Writings have to be uploaded, so the writing and the idea can start to live its own life. Significant sentences have to be published so that they might be read, might be successful. People might appreciate and quote them from now or within a few years’ time. 

You should come because people are waiting for the fresh and nicely ringing lines that will live on, make the language richer, and provide intellectual and emotional comparisons for people living elsewhere, grown-ups in another period or people struggling in other circumstances. 

Education, learning and culture are the pioneers of writing and reading. But do authors and readers or teacher and students find each other in the spinning and digitalised world? Printing cannot handle the amount of knowledge. The communication of knowledge is based on the tools of information technology; mentor and student get in touch through beautifully formed, book-like, unique essays. This dimension is already a public property while theses on professional development can be and is worth to archive. 

All over the world there have been book collaborations by private publishers similar to Publio Publishing (operating in Hungary). By the joining of new authors’ writings or raw drafts the process is unbelievable. The flood of writings have not washed away good books but the other way around: more and more people are fishing from the many writings. The number of writers and readers has increased. 

A creative personality can break from the customary of weekdays. 

Readers have always been independent, now the writers have become independent as well. They can directly forward their writings to the ones interested. This gave the name to the new book movement: direct publishing or from another side, independent author. 

It might sound strange but direct or independent also means that the public is not opened only to authors of common sense. It is the time for collectors and explorers. Diaries of the first world war from our great-grandfathers, stories of the captivities from our grandfathers, household notes from our woman family members, handwritten prayer books of patiently born diseases are all hiding somewhere among the personal belongings of one of our relatives. 

They were not thrown away. Who would do such a thing anyway? Now they can be assembled, completed, can be piled and famed, and can be published by themselves or with notes. There might be some relatives who have some time tight now, have the mood and occasion. 

Only for the last decades has the author’s publishing received an inconvenient overtone. Our great poets, authors two hundred years ago had to look for subscribers for their book planning. In Hungary, as well as all around in Europe. It is worth remembering: the first printed book was also – today’s terminology describing – a self-publishing copy. Gutenberg did not make it to fulfill an order, did not have a distributor, a publisher; he did not even have an audience. For him the work was important, he had made many years of sacrafice, did not deal with anything else but to finish the book. 

Nowadays, all you need is intention and respect towards word and letter: so writings can be addressed to the public.

Finally here is a quotation. It might be the announcement for author’s publishing, for self- publishing. 

“Authors who are short or tall, keep on going.”

Tóth Árpád, 1922

About the authors: Pál Kerekes, PhD, writer of e-Book Guide (published in Hungary, 2011, title in Hungarian: e-book kalauz).

Web: www.konyvkonnektor.hu, www.konyvaruhaz.info 

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