ebooks

Not feeling the love

Moriah

You know, I like good m/f/m menage erotica as much as the next girl, but could you please give me some emotional basis for it first? I mean, really. When I go to an erotic romance site to buy a book, I expect some romance.

If you want to shag from page 58 [in my ebook reader, which is roughly page 24 in print], please give me a reason other than some esoteric werewolf rule thing, which must have been explained elsewhere, but the book is not marked as part of a series that Must Be Read In Order. I usually don’t even read werewolf/paranormal anything. I just thought the blurb was funny.

Now I’m feeling a bit bitter about spending what little leisure time I have right now trying to plow through a dozen names I think I should know from previous books, trying to figure out who’s what to whom, trying to figure out this world’s rules, and having absolutely no reason to enjoy a girl sandwich, and trying to get past “slow-eyed.” (Pssst: It’s sloe-eyed, as in sloe gin fizz.)

And I’m peeved I spent money for it.

For future reference

Moriah

Over on Teleread, there’s a new blog post today about ebooks being fertile for annotation. I envision this somewhat like a post littered with Wikipedia links to explain things so that the reading audience who doesn’t know what he’s talking about can go get a little primer, and the part of the audience that does know won’t have its reading flow interrupted.

I could have (and still could at any point in the future) litter The Proviso with references and annotations embedded in the ebook editions, but my question is this:

If you had an ebook reader (or if you HAVE an ebook reader), how do you think you’d like such a thing?

On the ebook front, nothing much to report except the iLiad just released a new thingymajig that’s not getting rave reviews. And the Kindle’s not coming out in the UK this year.

On the publishing front, The Mysterious They say that if you’re a midlister or a new author–or an agent specializing in such–y’all are just SOL ’cause the PTBs at major houses are tightening their belts (which means either the smaller houses will be, too or they’ll step in to take up the slack and make a mark).

Yeah. I don’t have that problem.

Oh, one more thing. As a reader, I have a suggestion for you e-publishers: Put the blurb of the book on the first page. That way I haven’t forgotten what the book is about when I open up my ebook reader and see titles and author names. I’m terribly forgetful and have no wish to dive into a book I don’t know what it’s about. Yeah, I downloaded it so it must have intrigued me but now I don’t know why. With my print books, I always go to the blurb to figure out what I want to read next, but obviously, there is no back-of-book on an ebook.

And by the way, we did put The Proviso‘s blurb in the front for that very reason.

So what’s stopping you?

Moriah

I’ve referenced agent Lori Perkins before because she’s not constantly talking about how to write a better query or cheerleading constantly. YOU!CAN!DO!IT! YES!YOU!CAN! as if the odds of being picked up by an agent and, in turn, a publishing house aren’t astronomical. (And for a pittance, even.)

Anyhoo, today’s LoriPost What Does This Economic Downturn Mean For Writers? is even more sobering for those of you still laboring in the shadow of the faint hope of The Call:

These publishing companies work so far in advance, that when they decide to slow down acquisitions, they can literally just stop buying for 6 or 9 months. And that’s what I predict will happen here.

And yet the news with epublishing is exciting, the industry vibrant and growing, niche markets blossoming as readers find what they want to read that isn’t the SSDD the gatekeepers must buy to maintain their bottom line.

Perhaps it’s time for more writers to shake the dust of [sneer] self-publishing (otherwise more properly known as independent publishing) off their feet and make like the shoppers at Home Depot: Do it yourself. Yeah, it’ll take some time, quite a bit of money if you do it right (e.g. and *ahem* avoid the more egregious vanity/subsidy presses, pay an editor, hire a graphic designer), a complete 180-degree shift in your thinking and attitude, and a helluva lot of hard work (details! O, the details!) but you’re in control.

Freedom, man.

My mother once asked me, “Why are you basing your goals on decisions someone else has to make?”

Bits and bytes

Moriah

This and that, in no particular order. Mostly stuff I forgot in the ePub post or didn’t know while I was writing it or changed as soon as I hit the “publish” button.cybook-specs.jpg

BOOKEEN CYBOOK. I briefly mentioned this in the ePub post, but forgot to say that this is one that’s caught my attention more than a few times. It’s just that it gets overshadowed by the Biggies and I forget about it. eInk (therefore, no backlight–but you knew that), supports PDFs (don’t know about reflow), plays mp3s. Also supports Mobipocket, HTML, TXT, and PalmDoc. It runs $379, which is a bit rich for my blood.

BEBOOK. There’s a new little kid in town. According to MobileRead forums, this puppy’s got 30k machines in circulation (which I have no idea what that really means). At $349, you can add it to the eInk contenders.

BOOKS ON BOARD and DIESEL EBOOKS. I know I talk about Fictionwise a lot, but more and more I find myself going to booksonboard.com and diesel-ebooks.com just because their formats are easier to follow and I can find stuff more easily. Fictionwise is a nightmare for my poor ADD. So, hey, Fictionwise. Do something about your web design, because you’re about to lose a customer.

ESPRESSO IN-STORE POD. Behold: espresso.png

Coming to an Australian bookstore near you. Am I the only one who can visualize this beast in the middle of Wal-Mart and Target, Sams Club and Costco? I mean, this isn’t new news; the concept has been around for a while, but the machines are expensive.

Still, I’d think Barnes & Noble and Borders would find this to be worthy of early adoption, if only to reduce their stores’ square footage and associated costs. Why are you still sitting in that small box? Your cheese moved.

[Okay, okay, to be fair, PersonaNonData reports that they’re steadily rolling out in the US.]

As ebookie as I am, I’m excited about this thing Time called an “ATM for books.” Paper is still my first love, to stroke and fondle, to smell and behold. Uhm, paper prØn?

STANZA. I’ve been hearing a lot lately about this ebook reading software which runs (built expressly for? I don’t know) the ePub format. After preliminary perusal, we at B10 find this pertinent to us in that it offers ways to convert text to the ePub format and an iPhone/iTouch app to read ebooks on those devices. According to the website, it is also:

…the first program that has a built-in export feature especially for the Amazon Kindle. Your PDFs, Word documents, and other eBooks can all be exported to the Kindle’s native format and copied over to the device using a USB cable.

However, before we get our hopes up, Apple may blackball Stanza the way it’s blackballed Podcaster. Still, Stanza 1.4 (newest version) is now up in the iApps store.

So along with Stanza, the current state of publishing, the slow (in my opinion) early adoption of the Espresso by outlets such as Barnes & Noble and Borders, please simply add in the requisite anti-DRM rant–

Just how long until commercial publishers start using Stanza to sell and distribute their wares as nonDRMed ePub? And how will the terms compare to those of Amazon and others? (From the Teleread article linked above.)

This is where you start wondering where the Greedy Bastards went. Ban? Ignore? Flee? No! Embrace! Embracement = mo’ money. Where’s Gordon Gekko when you need him?