Neha: “Do you think people hate the site? I write all these posts and it’s just an odd process in my mind. I have no idea what people think. There’s no feedback, like talking to a person.”
Me: “Yea, they probably do. Except I like your articles. I bet readers do, too. If you write them all and I just keep quiet, things will probably turn out great.”
Neha: “I’ll only keep writing blog posts if you get those book guides up on Amazon.”
Me: ” … ” *sigh*
—
This is the state of affairs. We are clearly not qualified to do Web things. Neha does brilliant work with alternative eye therapies. Against all the odds, I have a fair amount of happy clients as well. Ted likes to keep quiet and just specifically help people with questions. And yet here we are on the Internet, talked into keeping this site alive. You have to know that Alex has a way of making a case that doesn’t allow for argument. Imagine a Germanic accent, a deep voice, questions that are more like irrefutable statements. “You vill make zis a brilliant resource. Yaa. I know you will do a fantaaastic job.”
So here we are. That and I get asked quite a bit about more ways for people to get into and understand their eyes, and the myopia topic. As if the Web wasn’t enough of a project!
Podcasts come up every so often as one way, and it’s something that we might see one of these days. A few friendly optometrists might partake and if we can ever find the time in the day to make it happen … let’s see.
Books, of course, also often requested. Recommend a book for me to read, Jake! There are some decent ones out there, for sure. Often either too long though, veritable tomes of science and studies. Others are just too short, and often too much selling some slightly strange exercise regimens or eye vitamins. If you want short, to the point guides, specific to a topic on the myopia front, it’s hard to find a lot of truly good resources out there.
I have been working on fixing just that. Unfortunately I’m not a great writer. There is also quite a bit to consider on the book front, from formatting to book covers, to marketing and making friends with bloggers to promote. It’s a pretty notable drain on time, and quite a learning curve. For all those reasons this is something I’ve been putting off for years, with the excuse that my writing is fairly atrocious. But despite all that, three short guides (about 12,000 words each) are actually almost ready to go.
The plan is to have them on Amazon, as ebooks as well as print copies you can buy. I will price them as cheap as Amazon allows (it’s something like three dollars I think, if you also want Amazon to deliver print copy as an option). I feel about them the way the kid does who sucks at sports and has to go up in front of the whole class. If it wasn’t for all the current and past clients who are entirely too gracious and supportive, as well as your encouraging e-mails, I’d never even consider releasing them.
I do want you to have more options to answer the basic questions. How do I measure my eyesight? How do I prevent myopia? How do I prevent myopia for my children?
If they do reasonably well, maybe we’ll update and re-edit them with the help of some professional copy writers later. Like trial balloons, we have to keep putting things out there to find out whether you find them helpful. Book covers are a contentious topic, so we’ll go with some non-controversial ones, and some that might be just a bit more divisive as well (like the one pictured above).
Meanwhile Neha and Ted have been holding down the fort on the blog end, the forum, and your e-mail questions. It seems to take three people to maintain what Alex built, and we are still nowhere close in quality and great engaging writing. But we will keep at it, and with your support hopefully things will continue to evolve and improve.
Cheers! I do hope you are able to tolerate the state of the site these days.
– Jake Steiner
