Tag: KDP

Book Progress – Part 1

Posted on by kc2519

This week marked the real start of putting some effort into the structure of my upcoming Career Arcs book; the onset of cold weather and the passing of the Thanksgiving holiday have afforded me a bit of writing time, even as multiple December holiday gatherings approach. So I have started with some necessary components including an introduction, resources and tools pages, and an about the author page.

I’ve also been looking at which versions to publish; I love the idea of print books, especially for such a visually dense volume filled with color charts and graphs. However, there is a considerable production cost associated with full color books which might push the price beyond many buyers comfort level. My likely solution is to produce both e-book and softcover versions and perhaps a hardcover volume as well. This option will allow buyers to make their own choice based on their preferred format and price point. At the moment I’m leaning toward Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform due to its ability to easily produce all three versions.

Another current exploration involves the book cover and layout. While I’m good with visual information display, I am certainly not a graphic designer, so those tasks will likely be covered by a freelancer with book design experience.

The next step will be determining the specific content of the book and the order of sections and chapters. I have some idea of the flow, but need to define it more precisely. Of course the written and visual content will follow closely behind once I’ve made the content selections. There is a lot of work to come but I’m optimistic about the process and my ability to produce the content of the book. December time may be at a premium, but January through March has proven to be a productive period for me in years past. Stay tuned as I provide updates on my progress!

My New Book – The Work Begins

Posted on by kc2519

I’ve had a baseball visualization book in my head for the better part of a decade but kept setting it aside. Finally, things have come together, and the work has begun. My working title is “Career Arcs: A Visual Analysis of MLB Player Performance”, as the focus will be on the value players have achieved across their playing career.

The initial stage, as is so often the case, is centered on data wrangling, the art of procuring, loading, creating (formulas), analyzing, and finally, visualizing the base data. My process starts with the source data, available under the MIT license, which gives me the ability to use the data however I choose. I will always acknowledge Neil Paine for his great dataset focused on multiple interpretations of WAR (Wins Above Replacement), a widely used metric for baseball statheads. Without this data, creating the book would prove far more challenging.

Exploratoryis one again my primary data wrangling tool; it makes the powerful capabilities of R accessible to a non-coder like myself. In Exploratory, I can load the data, create filters and formulas, and do some pretty cool visualizations. My use is twofold (at least); I can analyze the data on the back end while simultaneously building charts and dashboards for potential use within the book. Here’s an example dashboard I’ve created (in process) where I can see career WAR numbers for any MLB player through the 2024 season:

Dwight Evans WAR Scorecard

These dashboards allow for data discovery on my end while painting a nice visual picture that may wind up in an appendix section of the book. I love creating charts and dashboards that can be used for more than one purpose!

In addition to working in Exploratory, I am learning the ins and outs of Adobe InDesign, which will be used for page layout, titling, fonts, styles, colors, and any other elements used for book publishing. I have yet to decide how I’ll publish the various versions of the book, other than being fairly certain there will be both e-book and printed versions. Full color printed books can become very expensive to print, so I’m wrestling with a variety of approaches at this stage to maximize readership while also having a print version available at a potentially high price point.

I’ll provide updates as my work progresses, including potential section and chapter content, release dates, and so on. In the meantime, thanks for reading, and let me know your thoughts through my Substack site at Visual Excursions. See you soon!