Tag: books

This month’s Replatforming book is timely, in light of the global pandemic taking place just as spring approaches. It is, of course, GROW OR DIE: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening by David the Good. Now you can acquire it for as little as $1 and join the Replatforming in one fell swoop.

What if everything collapsed tomorrow? What if the shelves on the supermarket were empty? What if you couldn’t get gas for your tiller? What if you didn’t stockpile fertilizer… or water? What if you’ve never even planted a garden in your life… and your life depended on growing your own food?

Don’t panic!

GROW OR DIE: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening has the answers. From hand tools that will till the ground better than a tractor to plans for growing all the calories you need in a crisis to easy-to-follow crop rotations that will beat the pests, this book is the cheapest insurance you can own against the crash we all know is coming sooner or later.

You’ll discover how to scrounge for seeds in unlikely places. How to till without a tiller. How to preserve your harvest. How to beat pests without poison. How to convert a lawn into a food factory. How to garden to survive in emergencies and crises.

Join the Replatforming here. Ebook, audio, and paperback. If you’re already a Replatformer, please note that today is the last day you can redeem your coupons and download WARDOGS INC. #1. The February paperbacks will go out next week.

Unless you are a Wardog. Then violence is the first, only, and final answer. Join the Replatforming and get a) an ebook, b) an ebook and an audiobook, or c) an ebook, and audiobook and a paperback every single month.

And if you are a Replatformer, don’t forget to use your coupons and download your books before the end of the month.

Joshua Young, one of the Superversive stalwarts, announces the closing of Superversive Press:

It is with great sadness that I bring you the announcement that the owner of Superversive Press has made the decision to shutter the press. His reasons are his own and personal, and I understand that running even a small company is a large amount of work.

It’s much harder to run a small independent press than most people, even most writers, understand. And doing so since the advent of Kindle Unlimited, which reduced the ebook market by about 80 percent, has made it next to impossible.

That doesn’t apply to Castalia House, however. We intentionally set it up as a zero-risk structure that will keep running, more or less automatically, regardless of what just about anyone, including us, does in the future. And, of course, we have been aggressively exploring other markets, which has tended to strengthen our core business. But our biggest strength is our modestly-sized, but fiercely loyal base of our regular readers.

So don’t worry about Castalia. I can’t say for certain that things have never been better, as we did have a really good moment there in 2017 before the bottom dropped out of the ebook market, but things have definitely never looked more promising.

The ebook version of CITY BEYOND TIME by John C. Wright is now available for Resistance Warriors and the audiobook+, narrated by Jeremy Daw, is now available for Resistance Leaders on the Replatforming.

Since we were a week late getting this out, we’ve added a week to the coupon expiration date. Please be sure to download your digital files before February 7th, as we will NOT send anyone the files after the time expires.

The paperbacks will be sent out starting the first week of February. It is still possible to sign up for any level, or upgrade to Hero of the Resistance, if you would like to obtain one of the editions.

There are only three days left to help Zammy, the giant sheepadoodle, to cross the finish line. He’s at 80 percent right now.

MEET ZAMMY’S NEW FRIENDS

This book, MEET ZAMMY’S NEW FRIENDS, has already been written and illustrated. This 3-week campaign commencing on Thanksgiving Day is to secure the $5,000 in support needed to fund the print production for a paperback, hard cover and an eBook for the 2019 holidays. This campaign is for backers passionate about Zammy, the joy he spreads and the positive daily impact he makes worldwide.

Castalia House has agreed to publish the family-friendly children’s books written and illustrated about the adventures of Zammy the Giant Sheepadoodle. And you can get an ebook, a paperback, or a hardcover by supporting Zammy’s Indiegogo campaign.

Zammy is already one-third of half two-thirds of the way there. Let’s push him over the line!

What started out as a tactical move in response to a deplatforming has unexpectedly transformed into something akin to the much-requested Castalia House subscription. The November book was Corporate Cancer, the December book is Quantum Mortis: A Man Disrupted.

Supporting Castalia on Patreon is one of the very best book deals around, as $1 gets you the ebook, $3 gets you the ebook and the audiobook, and $20 gets you the ebook, the audiobook, and the paperback. We’re committed to ensuring that at least one of the three editions every month will be a brand new one; in this case, although the ebook has been out for years and Marcher Lord published a hardcover, both the audiobook and the paperback are new.

We’re announcing this now because the paperback will be available Monday, but if you’re interested in a) supporting the replatforming and/or b) the monthly book subscription, it is available this way so you will not need to buy it separately. Keep in mind that while the ebooks and audiobooks will be downloadable starting around the middle of the month, the paperbacks will be shipped the first week of the following month.

The much-anticipated monthly subscription to join the Castalia Deluxe Book Club and receive a deluxe leather-bound book published by Castalia House every other month is now available.

• Genuine leather bindings
• Gilded cover and spine titling
• Gilded page edges
• Archival-quality paper
• First-rate fiction
• Timeless classics of history, science, and philosophy

The first Deluxe Book Club book is the Deluxe edition of The Missionaries by Owen Stanley. And for the seriously hard-core book collector who has all the Franklin Signed First Editions, it’s also possible to sign up for the limited-edition Library subscription.

Just to be clear, Castalia Deluxe is the main product and the Deluxe editions are the focus of this project. The Library editions are an ancillary experiment we’re doing at the request of some very serious book collectors, and which the Deluxe editions make possible. In quality terms, we are targeting the late ’80s Franklin Library editions for our Deluxe editions, albeit with better cover designs.

Your last chance to back the Junior Classics 2020 edition campaign is rapidly approaching. Whether your budget supports digital or leather, this is the time to do it.

UPDATE: 1600 percent and 18 hours left.

UPDATE: 1700 percent and 12 hours left.

A backer writes: Thank you for keeping Western literature alive at such a crucial time.  My backing involves a small story you may find pleasure in.  I met a good man, and his family, through a church I started attending in San Francisco.  He is a genuine scholar with a doctorate in philosophy/theology, and bright, who at the time was employed at a Catholic high school.  He was unable to be open with his faith at this ostensibly Catholic school, and was struggling to find employment in a school where he could be.  I prayed regularly for such a position to be made available for him and my prayers, as usual, were over-fulfilled.  He was offered, and accepted, a the position of director for a new college.  I was sad to see him move from our parish, and our direct personal lives, but more than overjoyed to know a good man of faith was to be the head of a learning institution.  I backed the Junior Classics today for his lovely daughters, who will certainly grow to become faithful, and now to your credit, more learned, ladies.  Thank you. 

UPDATE: 1800 percent and 8 hours left.

A generous and thoughtful backer wants to support a family in need and writes: To help boost the campaign to 500,000, I purchased an extra hard cover set. If you know of a homeschooling family that was not able to afford a set, I would enjoy donating this to them in Mazi’s honor.

UPDATE: 2055 percent of goal in the end.  Thanks to everyone who supported the campaign and made it what can only be described as a crushing success. Still. Not. Tired.

It appears the right people are reading Corporate Cancer.

Corporate Cancer: How to Work Miracles and Save Millions by Curing Your Company
5.0 out of 5 stars    1 rating
#1 New Release in Business Management

A selection from chapter three of the newly released business bestseller:

We are reliably informed by a human resources expert that “the data shows a huge disparity between well run and poorly run HR teams” and that HR teams can be divided into four kinds: Level 1 (compliance driven), Level 2 (fundamental), Level 3 (Strategic), and Level 4 (Business-Integrated). Level 4 is deemed to be the most effective, as per the Human Resources Maturity Model:

• Level 1: Compliance-Driven HR Services. No HR strategy. “Personnel” function mostly separate from the business and talent needs. Line managers perform HR activities as they see best.
• Level 2: Fundamental HR Services. HR strategy partially or fully defined. Siloed HR functions. Some standardized processes and policies and core services managed well. Some automated talent systems but little integration of data.
• Level 3: Strategic HR Department. HR strategy aligned with business strategy. HR business supports business needs. Initiatives split between HR process improvements and talent needs. Some system integration.
• Level 4: Business-Integrated HR. HR strategy part of the business strategy. HR helps to drive business decisions through people, data and insights. Business and HR systems integrated and advanced.

Level 4 companies spend almost twice per employee on HR than Level 1 companies ($4,434 vs. $2,112 per employee) and they are getting much better business outcomes. Their voluntary turnover rates, for example, are 30{14dfe15c2a021e508b535731deef7d62295838972ddd6685cdb730a7cdfcca9c} lower than those at Level 1 (8{14dfe15c2a021e508b535731deef7d62295838972ddd6685cdb730a7cdfcca9c} vs. 11{14dfe15c2a021e508b535731deef7d62295838972ddd6685cdb730a7cdfcca9c}). This is a striking difference: these Level 4 companies are investing much more heavily in management training, employee development, coaching, productivity programs, and programs to promote wellness and work-life balance. The result is happier employees, lower turnover, and a much stronger employment brand.
—Josh Bersin, founder and principal at Bersin by Deloitte, leading provider of research-based membership programs in human resources (HR), talent and learning

Keeping in mind that $4,434 per employee represents 14 percent of the net profit for the most successful corporations in the world, and may exceed the total profit per employee of a typical small or medium-sized business, is that really worth a three-point reduction in annual employee turnover? In fact, wouldn’t simply paying an additional $4,434 to each employee as an annual bonus likely reduce your company’s voluntary turnover rate even more? It wouldn’t surprise me if even a $3k bonus would reduce turnover by an astonishing 50 percent!

Of course, there are other benefits provided by these expensive Business-Integrated HR departments. Such as, we are told, integrating the HR strategy with the business strategy and helping to drive business decisions through people, data, and insights.

But what does that actually mean?

Translating from the corporate consultant-speak, Business-Integrated Human Resources means letting HR run the business according to its objectives and values rather than those of the rest of the corporation, including the executives and shareholders. As you can see, this is a model that can be effectively used to sell structured convergence to any executive foolish enough to buy into the concept and pay for it.