Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours:

You can buy Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours for $17.83 (Canadian) via PayPal.

Why $17.83? That’s the year the largest influx of United Empire Loyalists began to enter Canada. (Approximately – it was actually about 1782 to 1785.) There were 50,000 of them, and they gave us our language.

Don’t want to use PayPal? Would you prefer to hand me cash on an ill-lit streetcorner at midnight? Ask.

Details

Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours is a short E-book – an electronic book. While you can print it out if you like, it’s meant to be read on a computer.

Remember: This thing is short. I went out of my way to encapsulate and condense in the electronic book. If you need even greater detail, you can download my original data.

What you get

1. HTML files that you can read in any Web browser (or any device that can handle Web pages – everything from Microsoft Word to Acrobat to the Kindle to the Wii can do that)
2. One tagged PDF with all the same text. It’s custom-designed for easy reading on the bus (subway, metro, streetcar, LRT, etc.) or at a coffee shop
   
   • It prints out in landscape (wide) format in two columns so it sits nicely in your lap or on a table.
   • It uses a typeface, Freight Micro by Joshua Darden, designed for low-resolution printing (as by an inkjet printer).
   • There’s a wide gutter (too wide for Robert Bringhurst and other book-design traditionalists). You can fold the pages without affecting the printed area, and there’s room for your thumb.
3. A quick cheatsheet of Canadian spelling rules, again in HTML and PDF.

The whole thing comes as a zip archive. You need an unzipping application to open the archive. Those utilities are standard on Macs and on most Windows systems. Do you need a different archive format, or just individual files? Ask.

Here’s something else you get: Free updates through 2008. If I make any changes or corrections, you get the updated version for free.

What you don’t get

A printed book. It’s an electronic book. You can print it out, though.

Partial money-back offer

If you buy the book and don’t like it, you can’t get your money back. (Just like life in general!) But if you find a mistake in the book, I’ll refund part of your purchase price – 10% for tiny typing errors (like “hte” or “adn”) and 50% for serious errors of sense. This isn’t a guarantee and I might not agree that what you’re calling a mistake really is, but I intend to reward people for catching errors that I should have caught myself.

Copyright

The entire book (and this site) are copyright © Joe Clark 2008. All rights reserved. This is not a public-domain or Creative Commons–licensed book. Nor does copyright fail to apply because it’s electronic.

Reading at home?

You have a generous use licence:

• You the purchaser can buy one copy and everyone in your residential household can read it. Don’t try to buy one copy for your entire 100-unit apartment building, please; I mean one single domicile. Do you (and your roommates or family) have to pass through a locked door to get to your own respective bedroom or to the bathroom? Then that’s your domicile and everyone who lives there can read the same copy of the book. You can duplicate the files for those people (one copy each).
• You the purchaser can put the files on one mobile device so you can read the book when you’re out of the house. (No sharing, please; only the purchaser gets mobile-use rights.) Your laptop computer isn’t a mobile device; something like a Kindle, a BlackBerry, an iPhone, or a Nintendo DS is a mobile device.
• You the purchaser can make a backup copy of the files, and you are encouraged to do so, as long as you don’t make them available to anyone who isn’t covered by the licence.

Reading at the office?

If you’re buying the book for business use, every reader has to have a separately-purchased copy. Each of those readers can back up the files and install them on one mobile device each.

Want to buy lots of copies? Discounts are available. Ask.

Reading at the library?

If you work at a library system and would like to licence the book for your customers, contact me and let’s work out a deal. Be advised that you won’t be allowed to convert the files to other formats or use digital rights management.

Want a printout?

You have to make one yourself. Anyone authorized to read the book can print out the files – once each.

You can print out copies of the Canadian Spelling Cheatsheet and hand them out to up to four people. Don’t give them the electronic file, please. It’s a word-of-mouth thing.

Want to do a translation?

Ask first. I retain those rights. (A sign-language translation may not need preauthorization in Canada.)

Translating the book into another dialect of English is still a translation and you have to ask first.

Need large print?

Do you need a large-print version? First, try just enlarging the fonts in the HTML files (through the standard methods in your browser). If that doesn’t work, contact me. The copyright holder (that would be me) has the exclusive right to produce a large-print edition, and I retain and will exercise that right.

Need an iPhone or other custom version?

The HTML files and the PDF should both work on an iPhone and on many other systems. But if it would be easier to receive individual chapters as individual mail messages so you can view them as individual attachments, ask.

Do you need a completely different presentation for your device? Ask. It won’t be free.

Want to produce an alternate format?

In Canada and in many other countries, if you are a person who cannot read or handle a (printed) book, you may produce an alternate format you can use, or have one produced for you. Braille and talking books are two common alternate formats. Usually you don’t need the copyright holder’s permission to make that alternate format. If that is the case where you live, it is still the case for Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours.

However, if you are creating an alternate format in Canada, you have to show me the finished alternate format before you distribute it. The Copyright Act does not prohibit the copyright holder from insisting on approval of the finished product. Remember, when producing an alternate format, you cannot materially change the original, because then you’re making a derivative work, and that’s permissible only with the consent of the copyright owner. I want to check your alternate format to ensure it is true to the original.

Want a review copy?

Are you considering writing a review of Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours? Drop me a line, tell me who you write for (blogs are OK, of course), and I can probably provide you with a copy. Probably – I make individual decisions in this category, but I don’t intend to be stingy about it. Review copies are PDFs only and they are all watermarked with the recipient’s name.