The collection contains Kathrin Passig’s columns published in the weekend magazine of the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau in 2019. It is available in several versions, each of which is associated with different earning potential, as Passig explains on her website: “Available as Kindle e-book or paperback at Amazon, as e-book at Google Play (I get money). As EPUB at Library Genesis or here on my website (I don’t get money)” (Kathrin Passig, “Bücher”). The advantage of print-on-demand service providers like Amazon is mainly that the author doesn’t have to worry about distribution, shipping, and invoices herself.

For the blurb, the author launched a call on Twitter: “For the printed edition of Strom und Vorurteil I can for the first time (because it’s printon- demand) put random nonsense on the back cover. This is your chance! Only statements from uninformed people please; those familiar with the content of the book may not take part” (@kathrinpassig, February 9, 2020). The cover design is by Gregor Weichbrodt, who also contributed to the blurb: “I was very badly paid for the cover design” (back cover).

When the author discovered errors in the first printed copies, she still promoted the book on Twitter: “Anyone who buys it straightaway will get a rare collector’s edition with a hyphenation error on the very first page! For a limited time only!” (@kathrinpassig, February 29, 2020) It took half a day for the new version to be reviewed and approved by Amazon again.

Passig’s multi-award winning blog Techniktagebuch features an entry with a detailed, witty self-experience report on print-on-demand production with Amazon: it proved to be a special adventure, since, for example, the paperback cover template provided by Amazon turned out to be flawed (Kathrin Passig, “Yes, today it’s boring. But in 20 years!,” 522–526).

A year later, in 2021, Passig published a second book on demand on Amazon: Je Türenknall, desto wiederkomm. Again, she collected suggestions for blurbs on Twitter (with a great response) and described her new adventures in self-publishing and print-on-demand in her blog Techniktagebuch (Kathrin Passig, “Yes, today it’s boring. But in 20 years!,” 527–530).