Viral money-and-politics rant

December 14, 2008 | 17 Comments

In case anybody missed it, I’m a Libertarian. Now, RJ Keller got me started and of course, it doesn’t take much to push me over the edge some days. In Maine, where she lives, apparently, people on state assistance get to purchase alcohol and tobacco with their state-granted funds, so she’s a wee [...]

Dec

11

Road. Hell. Intentions.

December 11, 2008 | 18 Comments

So for the last 2 years I’ve been collecting recipes for plain cleaners and wanting to go “green” and cheap, and have done nothing. Nothing! I tell you. I am ashamed.
At least we have our 72-hour kits and a good supply of food laid in (but what WE have depends on electricity, yipes). [...]

Dec

7

The perfect bookstore

December 7, 2008 | 21 Comments

Hey, publishers and booksellers. Let me help you solve all your problems, ’kay? Behold the perfect bookstore:

The problems? You know exactly what they are and obviously you aren’t interested in solving them.
You booksellers have been rolling around on the back of the consignment system like it’s catnip for too long—and it’s still [...]

Dec

1

My way or the highway

December 1, 2008 | 10 Comments

Lately I’ve been reading a snowballing number of posts in the ebook community about adopting EPUB as the international (and pleasepleaseplease DRM-free) standard. This is great and I’m SOOO on board with that. What’s got me disturbed is that the subtext (and sometimes it’s not even that subtle) is that in order to adopt [...]

Nov

26

Make it easy on the customer

November 26, 2008 | 19 Comments

There’s a book I really really really want to read. However, it’s only available in e-format 2 ways: Serialized on the author’s blog (i.e., on the computer—no thanks) and via Kindle (no thanks). Now, I’m getting ready to email him and ask him if it’s available any other way, so we shall [...]

Nov

24

Moratorium on manuscript buying

November 24, 2008 | 8 Comments

From Publisher’s Weekly:
It’s been clear for months that it will be a not-so-merry holiday season for publishers, but at least one house has gone so far as to halt acquisitions. PW has learned that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has asked its editors to stop buying books. [...] Another agent who had also heard about the no-acquisitions [...]

Nov

13

Book design: ur doin it rong

November 13, 2008 | 21 Comments

Thank Mike Cane for this rant.
I’ve read a few self-pubbed books lately. None of them were egregiously horrible in the design department and a couple of them were even fairly decent. And frankly, after I converted them to digital and put them on my ebook reader, it wasn’t an issue at all. But [...]

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