My first read/edit of The Municipal Machiavelli and its makeover into Machiavelli for Mayors is almost finished. I have to read through a couple of appendices and the bibliography to complete that phase. It’s just shy of 78,000 words at present. I have been contemplating reducing it to around 75,000 by removing a couple of the appendices (they will still be available online).
After that is done, I will do a second read looking for some specific items, and a final spell check. Then I will format it for production – a PDF and an ebook. I’ve used Word for the writing but will use QuarkXpress for the layout and formatting. After that, I have to consider options for releasing it online. I will likely consider both iTunes and Amazon. Any recommendations or suggestions about ebook production and publication will be appreciated.
I have two recently published books about Machiavelli on order (Viroli’s The Quotable Machiavelli and Benner’s Be the Fox) but I don’t expect either to provide any significant changes or updates to my text.
I have also been reading translations of Xenophon’s Cyropedia (The Education of Cyrus) and Herodotus’ The Histories. I have been thinking of adding one or two relevant quotations from them to the text to reinforce a couple of points. But I’m still iffy about that. It’s probably long enough, and with sufficient cross-references as is.
I hope to have it all completed by June.