Behind the scenes of The Tourist Trail

I came across a live video stream today of a pair of bald eagles and their three chicks living in a tree in Decorah, Iowa.

You can check it out here. Warning: It’s highly addictive.

And here is a screen grab…

• Vegan shoes are going mainstream
• The penguins of Punta Tombo, 28 years later
• Pay Attention to Penguins
• When will a self-published book win the National Book Award? (When it’s not self-published)
• About the cover: Yes, those are penguins

Despite the success of the Kindle and the iPad, many people still prefer the old-fashioned print book.

Like me. I have a Kindle and yet I still buy print books. Partly out of habit. Partly because many of the books I buy are reference and tutorial books. I have a book on programming (don’t ask) and I’m constantly paging through it as I sit at the computer, yanking out what’s left of my hair. Kindles just aren’t conducive to scanning large chunks of code.

But I digress.

I published The Tourist Trail in print not just because I knew readers wanted a print version, but because reviewers wanted a print version.

And whatever reviewers want reviewers will get.

So I wanted to briefly share a little about the printer I selected. It wasn’t an easy decision because it’s easy to find fellow authors who love or hate whichever printer you ultimately select.

Out of more than a dozen printers, I narrowed my list down the following:

• Lightning Source
• CreateSpace
• Lulu

I selected Lightning Source. It was a good decision. The quality of the book is quite good (and Lightning Source just announced support for matte covers, which I am now testing out — a topic for a later post).

I primarily selected Lightning Source was because it is owned by Ingram, the world’s largest book distributor. So by going with Lightning Source I was confident that bookstores would have no trouble getting my book. And, of course, Lightning Source also works with Amazon and other online vendors. Lightning Source also does printing work for

Some people have said that Lightning Source is more expensive than CreateSpace, but I didn’t find this to be the case. I found Lightning Source to be the best overall value of the three. Lightning Source does charge more in set-up costs but the per-unit printing costs were better.

But there is a huge caveat with Lightning Source — you need to know a lot about book production. There is not much in the way of hand holding. Lightning Source expects you to provide a print-ready PDF, preferably output from Adobe InDesign. If all this sounds like a foreign language to you, then you might want to use Lulu or CreateSpace — or hire a book designer who can do this for you.

I recommend working with a professional designer. My feeling here is that a self-published book shouldn’t look self-published. I can tell when a book has been more or less just exported out of Word. The fonts sometimes look blurry, the page alignments are off, the columns are too wide (or too narrow). I could go on.

My best advice is not to rush into it. Spend some time on user forums such as this one on Lulu. Ask questions. Ask other self-published authors what they’ve learned along the way. And be prepared to do a bit of learning yourself.

• To self-publish is to self-doubt
• Why I won’t be getting a review from Publishers Weekly
• If you want to sell lots of books, you’ve got to give away lots of books
• When will a self-published book win the National Book Award? (When it’s not self-published)
• The Tourist Trail: Six Months On

So now the questions begin: What caused the death of the celebrity polar bear Knut?

Early indications point to some form of brain disease.

Environmentalists say Knut was overly stressed.

Zoo officials deny this, of course.

But when I look at the photo of the polar bear above, I think the question should be: Why don’t more polar bears die in captivity each year?

In the Arctic, polar bears roam hundreds of miles as virtual loners. This is in their DNA, this life of freedom and solitude. So when one is raised in a confined cell and subjected to hundreds of thousands of people taking pictures and shouting, how does any polar bear survive this? Just the smells must be overwhelming. A polar bear can pick up the scent of food a dozen miles away; how does it cope in an environment in which it is surrounded by smells, overstimulated to such a degree?

When I was a child I was always bothered by watching the large animals at the zoo. The way they paced back and forth. Even then I suspected something wasn’t right. Now I know something isn’t right.

Zoos shouldn’t be in the business of keeping large animals in small containers. From lions to whales to polar bears, zoos don’t give them the room they need. Perhaps no container is large enough.

Perhaps we don’t need zoos any longer. I wouldn’t miss them.

The major argument I hear in support of zoos is the educational value they offer to young children. If Billy doesn’t get to see a polar bear up close, the argument goes, how will he come to appreciate nature? And yet this argument fails to account for the fact that Billy isn’t witnessing nature, just some watered down version of it. A video of a polar bear in its element is of far more educational value, as it shows the polar bear doing what it does naturally. And it shows the importance of seals and ice and ecosystem, lessons that are going to be critical to ensuring we protect this planet for generations to come.

There is another argument in support of zoos that points to all the good things they do for animals — for helping species bounce back from near extinction. For breeding animals that had failed to breed successfully in the wild. These are far stronger arguments in support of zoological programs, but not necessarily zoos.

I’ve been reading Fear of the Animal Planet — a book that details countless abuses of animals by zoos and circuses alike, so maybe I’m too jaded.

But today I read that Berlin zoo officials plan to have Knut stuffed, adding insult to injury. Even in death he is not given a moment of peace.

• If everyone just stopped going to SeaWorld…
• Penguins don’t need Google Maps
• Whales granted a reprieve, but penguins not so fortunate
• Sometimes the only evidence of an oil spill are its victims
• Penguins may waddle over ground but they fly through the water

Five years ago, I could not have imagined a life without the almighty hamburger. Or chicken. Or steak. I was raised a meat-and-potatoes guy, and that’s how I viewed myself. I also believed that to be a successful athlete you had no choice but to be a carnivore.

I was wrong.

Today, in honor of Meatout, I want to share how I ended up living this very different life.

My road to veganism began with a flight to Patagonia.

My wife and I visited a penguin colony down in Patagonia. We were volunteers as part of a penguin census and it was here that I began to see firsthand the dangers of overfishing. Just off the coast were fishing trawlers and miles of nets, and these penguins were running the gantlet every time they left shore. Much worse, the fishing trawlers were now going after the same food that the penguins needed to survive, in some cases using large vacuums to suck up hundreds of tons of krill.

When I returned home I gave up seafood. This was no major sacrifice as I never much liked seafood. It was something I ate only because it was supposed to be good for me (another misconception). It was actually freeing in a way. When I was a kid I remember the time my parents splurged and brought home live lobsters. And I remember the horrible guilt I felt when I saw them dropped into the boiling water. I didn’t want to eat them, but I did. That’s what you did as a child who was just figuring out how the world worked. Well, I now know how the world works and I know that too many people live their lives out of habit. I know now you have to listen to your gut. Giving up seafood was easy because I never liked killing creatures from the sea.

But here’s the rub. The minute you eliminate one species from your diet you may find yourself staring down a slippery slope.

I traveled to the FARM Animal Rights conference in 2007 because I had begun writing a novel about the oceans and animal activism (The Tourist Trail) and it was at this conference that I saw how farm animals were treated. After just a few hours there I realized I would never eat meat again. It was a scary feeling. I’m not all that good at change. And I never viewed myself as an animal activist, as one of “those people.”

And yet I couldn’t continue going through life with blinders on. I could no longer compartmentalize how some animals deserve to live healthy lives (as pets) while other deserve lives of confinement and death (as food). Once you empathize with animals it is impossible to rationalize away their destruction.

Today, I can say that a life without animal products is not as difficult as I thought it would be. I’ve run a half-marathon since then, and there are many wildly successful vegan athletes out there. I still get the protein I need. The lifestyle is getting easier all the time thanks to all the new vegan products out there and restaurants that are listening to their customers.

And I’ve even found great vegan junk food options. I used to snack on nachos. Now, I eat Triscuits with WayFare “cheese.” It’s not only vegan, but it actually tastes better than nachos. I now make vegan chocolate chip cookies that taste far better than the old-fashioned kind; instead of butter I use coconut oil.

Being vegan is not about being perfect. I’m not perfect. And I worry sometimes that people are easily dissuaded from this way of life because they view it as an all-or-nothing way of life.

That’s why we have Meatout Mondays. FARM promotes Meatout Mondays as way of changing your diet one day a week. If everyone cuts back a bit on meat, we collectively save millions of lives. We also have a positive impact on the environment. And we generally end up being a lot healthier.

Getting from there to here was not always easy. I had to rethink my diet. I had to break old habits. And I now have to live with the stigma of being one of “those people.” But I would have it no other way. And if you’re considering a similar journey, I can tell you now that it’s worth the effort.

We all have our journeys. Sometimes we choose our journeys and sometimes they choose us.

• Raising awareness, one book at a time
• Whales granted a reprieve, but penguins not so fortunate
• Penguins may waddle over ground but they fly through the water
• Vegan shoes are going mainstream
• About the cover: Yes, those are penguins

In The Tourist Trail, I briefly touched on the cape seals of Namibia and how they are slaughtered each year.

While much of the world’s attention has been focused on the Canadian seal cull — and for good reason — attention must also be paid to the beaches of Namibia.

If you want to learn more, I recommend reading the blog of Seal Alert, an organization founded by Francois Hugo.

Francois has devoted his life to rescuing the seals that escape the cull — and fighting to end the cull altogether. The seal cull occurs annually and the quota is set at 85,000 seal pups and 6,000 bulls. There are videos of the cull on the web site and they are hard to stomach.

What troubles me most about Namibia is that it is squandering a natural resource rather than investing in tourists who would come to view the colonies (and bring in far greater money over the long run). Just as the whale watching industry has ensured protection of whales in many parts of the world, I cannot fathom why the Ministry of Tourism in Namibia can’t put a little more pressure on its Ministry of Fisheries to follow a similar, sustainable path. Francois has done his best to pressure them.

I’ve sent emails to both ministries and I’ve received polite (though ambiguous replies). But it can’t hurt if more people from around the world start making some noise.  If you have a few free minutes to shoot out a few emails, here are the two web sites:

• Namibia Ministry of Fisheries
• Namibia Ministory of Environment and Tourism (an ironic name, I realize)

Fortunately, a number of celebrities in South Africa are now mobilizing to raise awareness as well, boycott Namibian products, and disrupt tourism. To learn more, visit Seals of Nam on Facebook.

• The book is published. Now the hard work begins…
• The Cove is the tip of the iceberg
• Signs of hope for the African penguins
• The Tourist Trail: Six Months On
• Must-read blogs for the indie author