Dear list members, It's been a bit of a struggle (see below) but I'm happy to announce that my ethnography of a role-playing MOO was recently published and is now also available overseas: Title: The Words That Took Us There. Ethnography in a Virtual Reality. Author: Frank Schaap ISBN: 90-5589-199-1 Publisher: Aksant Academic Publishers More information, table of contents and sample chapter available on my website: http://fragment.nl/thewords/ Two review copies are on their way to the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies (http://www.com.washington.edu/rccs/), so if you feel like getting a free copy in exchange for a review, contact David Silver: dsilver@u.washington.edu Murphy had a ball! When you're told that getting a book published is not easy, you expect a lot of hard work, but be advised that a lot more can and, inevitably it seems, will go wrong. You'd hardly expect that the first shipment of your books actually goes up in flames, but in this case it did. It wasn't because of inflammatory content or fiery argument as a friend joked today, but because the freight container that was sitting in the Liverpool docks and held, amongst other things, my books, was broken into and set on fire. Less dramatic, but adding to the constant delays are the database problems the international distributor is having, preventing the book from getting listed in their online system. Possibly as a result all online bookstores insist on listing the book with a wrong subtitle. Never mind that both I and my publisher have mailed them about the problem numerous times. Well, I'll spare you further details... but if you plan to leave the safety of the digital domain to see your writing printed on dead trees, don't say I didn't warn you ;-) Frank. -- Fragments Blog: http://fragment.nl/ Cyberculture Resources: http://fragment.nl/resources/