Before I
continue with my Biological basics series I want to announce an idea that I
have been thinking about for some weeks now. A couple of people told me that I gathered
so much material on the Breeding-back blog in the form of literature
references, information on projects, trips, reports, photos, artworks and own
theories that it would be worth to publish all that as a book. I like that idea
pretty much and I am confident that I can accumulate enough material to fill a
comprehensive book with it, so I have been working on a preliminary table of
contents for now.
What is
important is that this book would not be a mere copy+paste collection of
articles of the BBB, not at all. It will be a well-structured work that
collects all the material of the blog topic by topic, goes more in-depth and
will be precisely researched and referenced. Of course it will give a precise
overview over the history and present of the major breeding-back projects,
breeds involved and results. And it will also cover a couple of animals other than
horses, cattle and the quagga. I will extend articles with new data and more
profound research and I am also going to cover aspects that have not been
addressed much on the BBB before. I would also present new artworks and photos
that I am currently working on or have not published yet so far. Therefore,
even if you have been a rigorous reader of the blog from the first moment on,
you would find a lot of new material in it and also find it a clear and
structured reference work which is way handier than hundreds of loose single
articles published in the web.
The book
would probably be written and published as an ebook. This would make it easier
for me than looking for a print publisher, because the topic of the BBB is
rather special. Now, the question for my readership is: what do you think about
my idea, would you be interested in having a comprehensive, in-depth and
well-structured ebook version of the BBB that also contains a lot of new
information and picture material?
I am highly
motivated and looking forward to start with the work for the book. I will keep
you up to date and present information on title and the new material that will
be found in it during the next weeks or months.
I am interested and would be willing to purchase a copy. It will be a lot of work and I will miss your blog posts if writting for the book takes too much of your time, but I'm sure the book will be great. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteYes Daniel, go for it! It's a great idea and the topic desirves to be on the market. Me personaly (since I am a kind of dinosaur I prefer the paper book), but do what is possible for you now and search latter for a fundation or a publisher that will help you with the paper version. I cheer this idea! Good luck
ReplyDeleteHi Daniel,
ReplyDeletewhy do you want to write a book? Is it to have a more serious looking medium than a blog? Is it so it can be cited properly in research papers?
Because for me the blog is great. I would rather have more blogposts than a book, which will anyway be outdated soon (everything moves so fast in this topic).
Thanks anyway for your blog, I hope I will read new articles soon.
The outdating is indeed a bit of a problem, as the breeding projects sometimes progress quite fast. But most of it is information that is independent of the running projects, so it will be by no means obsolete after a couple of years. By the way, no worries, I will of course continue to write blog articles ;) The next one is about to come.
DeleteHi Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI think it is a good idea too and like Joao, I too am a bit of a dinosaur and would prefer a paper book. I would purchase an ebook though. Would be great to have Mauricio Antón collaborate on illustrations! ;).
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ReplyDeleteHello, great news, do you already have a table of content in mind (just a writting structure), if need to translate in French please Ask. Paulo
ReplyDeleteAllow me to add another "Yes" vote for the book project. I look forward to the greater depth of information you mention above, as well as coverage of additional species. And as others have mentioned, I too would be interested in a "dead tree" edition, if you can find a publisher.
ReplyDeleteHi Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI personally would love to read that book. And I generally prefer to read "real" books, especially when it comes to specialist literature. But of course it is a lot more work and I guess the comments are unfortunately not necessarily representative for a broader audience. So it's absolutely understandable if you decide to publish it as digital book.
Best Regards
Ursus Major
Hi Daniel, I would definitely buy the book. Especially if it has a lot of illustrations. Do not worry about printing. Actually it is less expensive than you would think. When you are ready to have it printed, you agree with an on demand printer, who will ask you to but an X number of copies yourself. But those you can sell by preorder. A digital book will be as nice. Because it is not just the tekst that is interesting, but also the pictures. I've published a book like this, and it was even profitable. Regards,
ReplyDeleteTieme
There are a few errors in my post. The worse one is that I meant to say that an E-book is not as nice as a printed book. This because of all you photo material. A printed book is nicer to show to others. best, Tieme
ReplyDeleteI'd prefer to publish it in print as well, it is way nicer, but I don't know how to find a publisher and to avoid risks involved with print-publishing. But thanks anyway!
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ReplyDeleteHi Daniel,
ReplyDeleteThat's a great idea. Best to keep your news reports for the blog and your expanded research pieces for the book. This would be a really useful permanent resource. I would prefer a printed paper version. But whatever it is I would buy it. Good luck, Peter
Go for it. If you publish as a MOBI (i.e Kindle file) for sale on Amazon, you can also publish a print-on-demand version via Kindle Direct Publishing Print (so, when someone orders a print version, it's done on demand and sent straight to them, with the costs deducted from cover price). You get 70% royalties via Amazon (compared to, say, 8 - 10% from a trad publisher). For a full account of how to do this get Let's Get Digital by David Gaughran (search on Amazon)
ReplyDeleteHello friend, as my English is very bad I am using the Google translator, there may be grammatical failures. It bothers me especially that when one does not know how to speak or write well in a language, it seems silly and the limitation is great. I hope it is readable.
ReplyDeleteOur Iberian cattle are divided into 3 groups, the brown (includes terreña, sayaguesa, avileña and several more black) Atlantic (betizu and others) and of course podolico (Asturian, Tudanca) that are related to the maremmana and were brought by the barbarian peoples after the fall of the Roman Empire.
I would like the Spanish government or private initiative to work on recovering the Iberian uro that was smaller than the European center, and I think a cross that would be interesting is tudanca x betizu, because betizu includes the red factor and tudanca the black factor , the f1 hybrids would be similar to the uro (albeit with a small horn) because both animals are rustic, athletic and have a great sexual dimorphism. In retro crosses you could discard the f2, f3 etc that are gray or reddish. I have also been watching bulls of some very good breeding bulls (bull miura, bull vitorino) that I think should be used. I'm surprised that in central Europe they talk about the bad character of the fighting bull. My experience is that in their habitat they tend to avoid confrontation, they ram more when they are scared or cornered, I do not believe that the uro was peaceful as a holstein or an angus, if not with a character similar to the fight. In some areas they coincide with the wolves. I think it would be very interesting to cross limia / pajuna x sayaguesa / bull of fight miura x alistanosanabresa / maronesa x betizu / tudanca.
I think that later, you can add specimens, participate in the exchange with other projects, to increase genetic diversity, but the animals that I mention have a similar phenotype and a correct selection can get results more quickly, I think the color and The animal's shape would be appropriate very quickly. You can even improve the horns with specimens of barr0sa, although it has a short head and not very long legs. The use of chianina in other parts, or Boskarin cattle, is fine, but I wonder if it is necessary for an iberico uro, when those from here were smaller. I do not think it was a very different animal because the aurochs were quartered in the glaciations in the Iberian Peninsula and then recolonized Europe, but by Bergmann's Rule surely the size would be smaller and this is confirmed by the fossils. A very large animal will be a greater requirement of food that the environment can not provide, and problems in summer to dissipate the heat.
I would honestly like very much if someone participated in such a project, I do not understand why the government does not want to turn to it, in the summer period there are very serious incidents, that a herbivore doing a brushcutter could fix.
I am sure that even in the current projects for the Central European uro, the betizu race should be taken into account, it is small, it is fine, chianina is big, boskarin and maremmana are not small, they can cross with betizu and surely they get very striking specimens, Much more than what the higland cattle can give you in my opinion. There is betizu that looks much better than heck cattle from Oostvaardersplassen even though these have long been selected by nature, hopefully they have betizu in mind.
That would be great if you did. I have enjoyed your blog for several years now.
ReplyDeleteI have started my own breeding program in Texas. I am using a wild colored Texas Longhorn bull on Corriente cows, and Chianina cows. I only have 1st generation.
I would like to send you some pictures, but I don’t know how.
Do you have an email address that we could use for communication? Your project sounds really interesting!
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