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Category: The E-book Industry

Opinions/rumors/news in the world of digital publishing.

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Hey guys, it's been awhile since you've heard from the Angry Old Fat Man Mid-Week Update (AOFM-MWU), so I decided to talk some nerd-talk for y'all. That doesn't mean you should expect more from me, though, got it? I'm not the big-shot writer here with all them thar fancy deegrees and money-makin' books and whatnot, aight?

So the big talk in nerd circles is THE CLOUD. Whoopty-damn-do, THE CLOUD. Microsoft started talking about it first, with their stupid advertisements making it look like THE CLOUD was some kinda Bat Cave that could turn you into a multitasking genius with godlike superpowers.

Yeah, right. This is the same Microsoft that decided the best way to get everybody to buy their crappy Vista operating system was to pay Jerry Seinfeld several dumptrucks full of money to goof around on camera with Bill Gates.

But now some real tech companies (read: Apple) are starting to talk about THE CLOUD, and people of course are taking notice and asking really tough questions, like...

WHAT THE %@$# IS THE CLOUD?

...continue reading "AOFM-MWU – The Cloud Is Nothing New Under The Sun"

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Hey guys, the Irascible Corpulent One here.

I was puttering around on the computer yesterday (as if that's any different than any other day) when the beloved eldest child o' mine - the 20-year-old - came in and started discussing a movie that's coming out soon: The Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

He was bemoaning the fact that originality in movies is practically non-existent, and that every movie in the past ten years or so (with few exceptions) is a remake, a reboot, a sequel, or a prequel. The eldest was flabbergasted that they were now getting ready to release a prequel to a reboot of a movie from the 1960s.

Oh boy, did I have bad news for him. Did I ever.

...continue reading "Movies – The Other Castle"

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The romance world is buzzing over biggie Courtney Milan turning down a contract from Harlequin for her next 2 and self-publishing them.  Why?  She gets better terms on the deal.

There was also recent news about Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath signing deals with the new publisher on the block - Amazon. Previously, both had turned their backs on traditional deals with Barry having most recently walked away from a big un.  Why the change?  Better terms from Amazon that will help promote the titles they are self-pubbing. 

A little while back you'll recall that indie phenom Amanda Hocking inked a multi million dollar deal with a big publishing house for 4 books.  Why? She was raking in the money as an indie.  Well, because the terms were better for her.

All of 'em say they'll continue to self-publish as well and Courtney says she may publish with a big house or publisher again. And you know what? Joe and Barry say their deal will help promote and publicize all their books - and that's very true for them and for Amanda and Courtney.

The blogosphere has been buzzing.  Lots of indies are portraying all of 'em as traitors. I've been a big time fan of indies, but you know what?  I cheer for Courtney, Joe, Barry and Amanda.  Because I see this as meaning that finally - at long last- authors are holding the power.  The deal they'll make is the one that is best for them. It may be a big publishing company, the Rebel new powerhouse (Amazon) or going it solo.  Whatever it is, it's long past time that the people producing the work have the power to control how they'll make money with it.

I know that despite all my cheering for indies, I'd look at an offer from Amazon or a big publisher. What I did would be decided by what's best for me and my family.  Despite all the rampant shouting, I think any writer would make the choice the same way - which is just what Joe, Barry, Courtney  and Amanda did.  Which is as it should be.

So the newest wrinkle in the indie revolution is that POWER HAS SHIFTED.  Writers now have "hand."  Joe and Barry's piece phrased this best: "If you're selling eggs, don't piss off your chickens."  

Publishers have long sold the eggs without respecting the chickens.  Now the tide has turned and that's the best possible result of the indie revolution.

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This post is just a quickie.  AOFM may post a better one later today - or maybe not. It's a holiday weekend at Casa de Graham too. 

It's finally happened. E-readers are starting to be priced within even the greatly reduced budgets most of us have today! Buy.com is selling the Aluratek Libra eBook Reader Pro for only $49.99 after a $20.00 rebate. 

I don't own this one but it looks like a great deal.  The E-Reader handles Epub - which is the industry standard in most places. You can buy Epub books at B&N, Sony, KOBO, Smashwords, eHarlequin, Google, All Romance Ebooks and just about everywhere else.  But the unique aspect of this device is that it will handle non-drm mobi files.  Mobi is the Kindle language peeps.  That means that you can also buy from Amazon - but only the ebooks without drm.  A bunch of 'em at Amazon have drm, but not all - so this reader gives access to some of the vast Kindle ebooks. 

It comes pre-loaded with 100 free ebooks and has the epaper technology and supports BMP, JPG, and GIF.

Check it out. If your budget hasn't allowed an E-Reader purchase before, this one might be one of the best bargains around for what you get - universal Epub access and even some limited Kindle availability.  That's big peeps.

Sounds like a lot of value for a mighty affordable price.  This deal may not last so if you're interested, you better put your boogle in high gear and race over to the link to pick one up!!

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Hey guys, the big guy here.

Think back to almost a year ago when I told you that the tablet computer (the iPad, et al) was nothing really new. It was simply a culmination of several computing and communication technologies that had finally become affordable and reliable enough to put into one marketable device.

Well, today Mary Anne found proof of this via Twitter, in the form of a fascinating video made by the Knight Ridder News company back in 1994. In it they describe what they believed the future of newspapers would look like: a tablet device called an "electronic newspaper". The device they depict has many uncanny resemblances to, you guessed it, an iPad.

This is an amazing feat of prognostication, considering that the first recognizable Windows web browser (Mosaic) had been invented only a year prior to the video's release, and there was really no such thing as Internet video or animation at that time.

...continue reading "AOFM-MWU – Flashback: 1994’s Concept of Tablet Computers"

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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

 The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost (1915)

This week in the publishing world brought the stories of 3 authors: Amanda Hocking, Barry Eisler and Connie Brockway. All are taking different paths and I wish all of them well. But looking at them raises interesting questions and yes, it did remind me oh-so-much of the poem by Robert Frost. Mr. Frost's poem is one of my all-time-faves, and any time I'm in a position of "choosing" - first I consider myself lucky - and then, I reflect on Mr. Frost's words. I wonder if these words went through Amanda's, Barry's and Connie's minds over the past few weeks?

...continue reading "The Roads To Publication"

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Let's talk about the Castle. You know, the one that used to exist and house the publishing elite? It now lies in ruins. Indies don't even have to seige it anymore. You know why? The Royals are destroying it from the inside. It's so nice when an enemy takes care of destroying themselves. It lets all the indie writers just smile as we press forward with our WIPs.

 Two pieces of news inspired this post. More recently - just this week - e-book sales figures for January, 2011 were announced. Sales for January, 2011 more than doubled over numbers for January, 2010. In January of this year, sales were 115% better than they were just a year earlier.  E-books outsold hardcovers and mass market paperbacks in January. 

 While news of e-books outselling traditional books just made it to the public's eyes, industry insiders would've had these figures for quite a while now. If they didn't have the hard numbers, the Royals had enough data by late February to see that this whole e-book thing that they'd ignored and underrated, well, maybe it deserved more of their attention. So they gave it - in the wrong way, of course.  

In late February HarperCollins proved that the stupidity of a publishing house can not be overstated. HC announced on 2/25/11 that new titles of ebooks licensed by public libraries could only be checked out 26 times before the license would expire. The company's move shows the snobbery of the literary elite and its utter lack of concern for the plight of millions of Americans. HC couldn't have made it any clearer if they'd rented a billboard in Times Square and displayed the message in flashing neon: The type of people who use public libraries aren't the type of customers we want anyway.

...continue reading "Indies Don’t Have to Seige the Castle Anymore"

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Visit Smashwords & Fill Your E-Reader
All Quacking Alone Romances 25% Off

This week, March 6-12th, is International Read An E-book Week (RAE Week) and e-tailers all over the web are celebrating with special deals and give aways. If you own an e-reader this is the week when you can snag more free e-books than at any time in the year. If you miss this week's steals and deals you'll pay for it - literally - all year long. But as the week begins, lets take a moment and look back at the history of the e-book.

This is lucky year seven for the RAE Week celebration, which began in 2004. However, a lot of folks don't realize that while this week is the 7th birthday of the RAE Week celebration, it's the 40th birthday of the e-book. The e-book was born in 1971 when Michael Hart used a Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer to create the first e-book - The Declaration of Independence. Fitting choice, wasn't it?

Mr. Hart believed that "the greatest value created by computers would not be computing, but would be the storage, retrieval, and searching of what was stored in our libraries."  The creation of that first e-book was the beginning of what became Project Gutenberg. It hosts 20,000 free texts on its site and over 100,000 are available through its partners and today over 3 million e-books are downloaded each month.

...continue reading "March 6-12 – Read an E-Book Week"

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Recent days at Casa De Quack have been a hodgepodge of working on my WIP (The Duke of Eden) and monkeying around with marketing. I've made no secret of the fact that I'd love to write full-time. My last post, Digit Envy, made that pretty darned plain. In a lot of ways, I guess this post is a follow up to that one. It's to tell y'all about my trials and tribulations along the path of making my dream come true.

I think a dream becomes a reality in stages. It's a lot like going to sleep or waking up. Unless there's a real jolt, a real emergency, we don't drop off to sleep the second our eyes close and we don't wake up the second our alarms go off. Both are processes and I've decided that turning a dream into reality is a process too.

Often - but likely not often enough - I give myself a hard time. But part of the process of figuring out how to get enough of it right is to recognize what I got right already. I have got some of it right - stop it; don't make that face; do you want your face to freeze like that? My first step to getting it right was to gather the courage to put my work out there. It does take courage. While your books are on your hard drive, they're still yours. Put 'em out there in the world, and they belong to the reader - not just the words, but whatever the words may reveal about who you are or why you are whatever you've become so far. Writing is an intimate act and every time a writer shares her work with another person, the writer is sharing a very personal, very private experience with the reader. Yes, putting your work out there is the first step. If you haven't taken it yet, I encourage you to try.

Get your book formatted. Download GIMP and design a cover or go to Createspace or Lulu and use their cover formatting software. I was lucky enough to be married to a graphically gifted computer guy. But even if you lack that advantage, I bet you know someone good with art and computers. Offer an illustrator credit for the first cover or give it a shot yourself. You may find another hidden talent. But get a good cover because it matters. And format your manuscript right. Again, my hubby is a big advantage for me, but you can format for Kindle and Smashwords and Createspace. Those three are the keys to the world. They'll get your book everywhere in ebook and paperback format.

...continue reading "Boogling From Dream to Reality"

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Published on 4 Comments on Digit Envy

Hot off the press from Amazon comes a late Christmas gift to indie authors everywhere. The company has announced that during the last 3 months of 2010 ebooks outsold paperbacks.

The trend continued this month, with 115 ebooks sold for every 100 paperbacks. It encompassed all of last year with Amazon selling 15% more e-books than paperbacks.  In July of 2010 Amazon reported that it had sold more ebooks than hardcovers. By year's end the etailer had sold 3 times as many ebooks as hardbacks. And yes, Virginia, that figure excludes free ebooks.

And you know what? Amazon sells lots of stuff. All kinds of stuff. If it's legal to buy and sell, it's probably sold somewhere on Amazon. Despite all of that, despite all of the gazillions and God-help-me trillions of items that Amazon sells now and has ever sold - you know what? The Kindle is Amazon's best selling item in its 16 year history.

What does it all mean to authors? It means that new indie writers will start getting directions that sound something like this - Yes. You know where those Castle walls used to be? Well, you go that way, and ...

It means that times aren't just "a-changing." It means that they've changed.
There are indie authors everywhere selling enough books to quit their day jobs. Guest blogging over at Joe Konrath's place, Robin Sullivan posted a list of VERY successful indie writers that she and Derek J. Canyon compiled of indie authors December, 2010 sales numbers.  There's more detailed info over at Derek's blog.

Okay. That was transference. It doesn't say that all the writers on the list have quit their day jobs. I believe that Konrath has (hero-worship much?) and he's mentioned that before on his blog. Yeah, it's the kind of fact that sticks with me. The list is of December sales numbers of some very successful indie authors. It may be just the ebooks on Kindle (I was a little unclear about that). Most of them never had a previous print deal with a major publisher. These are folks selling in the thousands every month. And yeah, if I were selling Joe's numbers, Stephen Leather's numbers (over 40,000 in December) or - Lord Love A Duck - Amanda Hocking's numbers (over 100,000 in December), then I'd surely quit my day job.

...continue reading "Digit Envy"