As some of you are aware, every November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. If you’re a NaNoWriMo DoRk–and I can use that term because I’ve been one myself in the past–then you know that it’s incredibly difficult to squirt out the minimum required number of words every day for 30 days straight. (I never made it past day 3.) Most likely, the last thing you need at this delicate point in your quest is to be interrupted by a bunch of writing advice. What you need is caffeine, snack items, and another big helping of willful idiocy self-abuse.

But these titles probably won’t be free much longer, so try to sneak over to Amazon and grab them before they go away. Then, come December, you can peruse them at your leisure over a snifter of brandy while you relax by your hearth; I’m pretty sure no writer worth his salt would sit by a regular fireplace.

Unfortunately, even the best fanfic content usually remains underground, shared among fanfic communities but never distributed at the mainstream level, both for copyright reasons and because plenty of authors and publishers hate the idea of strangers swooping in on their creations.

UK sci-fi/fantasy publisher Angry Robot Books is taking a different approach: this fall it will launch WorldBuilderOnline, where anyone can submit pretty much any sort of Creative Commons-licensed original content based on specific works published by Angry Robot. The best submissions will be repackaged in anthologies and published professionally, “with most of the proceeds going to the creators” according to Angry Robot’s blog announcement.

It’s not just about writing, either. Publishing Director Marc Gascoigne says in the comments to that post that they’ll accept “pretty much anything germane to the world – fiction, articles, maps, gazeteers, encyclopedia entries, faux advertising, music, poetry, and of course artwork and designs of all kinds.”

The first title to be opened up to fans will be the forthcoming “Empire State” by Adam Christopher, which the publisher describes as a prohibition-superhero-noir novel set in an alternate New York City. (You can read an excerpt at Tor.com, and ask Amazon to email you when it becomes available.)

The WorldBuilder site will be managed by Mur Lafferty, a writer and editor who is probably best known for her podcasts over the past seven years (including an audio anthology of short fiction in 2006 featuring stories read by the authors). She’s also got her own superhero novel called “Playing For Keeps”, so she’s especially suited for the launch title of WorldBuilder.

There are other communities where fans are being enlisted to help world build, like

• Baen’s Grantville Gazette based on the works of Eric Flint;
• The Mongoliad, a serialized epic where the original fiction is being provided in part by Greg Bear and Neal Stephenson;
• and Runes of Gallidon, which works a lot like WorldBuilder but sprang into existence without a seminal work.

On the other end of the world building spectrum is J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore, which is intended to provide an immersive online world for fans of the Harry Potter series, but which doesn’t welcome user-generated content.

But Angry Robot’s WorldBuilder concept stands out to me as something fresh for the way it plans to formalize the best fanfic, by publishing it traditionally alongside the original work and then compensating the fans who created it. This in turn may help market the official book, and it could help build an audience for future titles in the series. We won’t know until sometime next year, but maybe Angry Robot has figured out a path forward where fans, authors and publishers can all profit by working together.

Update: If you have specific questions about how WorldBuilder will work, you can ask “Empire State” author Adam Christopher over at his official blog.

Around this time last year, Rowling started hinting that she was no longer completely against having official ebook editions, but nothing more came of it other than a few hopeful articles and blog posts.

But today she finally made an official announcement (one that neatly coincides with the growing marketing push for the final movie). She’s come around to ebooks:

“E-books are here and here to stay. Later than a lot of people, I for the first time downloaded ebooks and it’s miraculous for travel and for children in particular. I feel great about taking Harry into this new medium.”

Accordingly, in October she’ll start selling official DRM-free ebook editions and digital versions of the audiobooks from her own website, Pottermore, which will also be a free online reading community that will contain new Potter-related writing that hasn’t been published before.

Some interesting details of the arrangement:

• Rowling will sell the ebooks, not Amazon, B&N, Sony, Kobo, or any other retailer, but they’ll be compatible across all of the major ebook devices.
• Sony will be handling the online community aspects of the site for easier hacking and account thievery. (Oh snap!)
• The cross-compatibility editions will be managed by OverDrive, the company that handles the vast majority of library ebook lending in the U.S.
• The website will soft launch on July 31st with one million members, then launch officially in October with the accompanying ebook store.
• The site will feature newly-commissioned illustrations and interactive experiences, like shopping for a the right wand or being sorted by the Sorting Hat, that you can participate in as you read the corresponding chapters in the books—think of it as an enhanced ebook where all the enhancement is hosted online.

Although the details on translations and regional availability are a little fuzzy, The Globe and Mail says the website will launch in English, French, German and Spanish, and also says that the ebook editions will be made available in multiple languages. I don’t know who owns the ebook rights to HP… (Update: Rowling indeed holds the ebook rights, not her print publishers, reports Wired UK.)

As for the cross-platform compatibility, which I’d say is the real magic Rowling is performing here, my guess is that it will be possible because of Amazon’s upcoming move to work with OverDrive to allow library lending of the Kindle format. This also suggests that Amazon will launch its U.S. library lending program by October. Update: Via The Digital Reader, the ebooks will be DRM-free but watermarked with the purchaser’s identity to dissuade rampant piracy, so it looks like this isn’t dependent upon Amazon’s library lending program after all.

Another mystery is how the online community will work, and what “free” actually gets you in terms of content on Pottermore. The Bookseller notes that Rowling has 18,000 words worth of new content, including some backstory on Professor McGonagall, that will be available exclusively on the new site.

Right now it’s in public beta, which means you can sign up and start adding books, but be prepared for rough spots. For instance, the first book I searched for—”Foreign Bodies” by Cynthia Ozick—wasn’t in their database, even though it’s the most recent book of hers and was published in 2010. The mobile apps the service promises on the home screen don’t seem to actually exist, at least not on iTunes or Amazon’s Android app store. I also had some trouble with the rating system, where my star rating didn’t appear to be captured properly on a couple of titles, and I couldn’t find a way to delete books from my shelves once I’d added them.

If you already have an established presence on Goodreads, Shelfari or LibraryThing, I’m not sure you’ll be that intrigued by what BookLikes has to offer right now. Amazon’s Shelfari is the strongest direct competitor—not only is Shelfari beta testing a similar recommendation system, but it’s clear that some of BookLikes’ main user interface elements were “borrowed” from Shelfari. On the other hand, the one thing BookLikes definitely offers that Shelfari can’t is independence from Amazon, at least at this early startup stage.

The dilemma of a site like this is that as long as there isn’t a large community of like-minded readers to help suggest books, there’s not much point in joining—but if nobody joins then there will never be that community. I’ll check back periodically to see whether it comes into its own as more users sign up. (I won’t be checking back periodically after all—see my update above for why.)

BookLikes

Well, “new” isn’t quite right. These are either classics, like E.M. Forster’s “A Passage to India,” or books that went on to become classic movies, like James Leo Herlihy’s “Midnight Cowboy” and Charles Webb’s “The Graduate.”

The remaining two titles might not sound as familiar, but W.P. Kinsella’s “Shoeless Joe” became “Field of Dreams,” and Peter Bryant’s “Red Alert” was the basis for “Dr. Strangelove.”

All five books are temporarily being offered for free from RosettaBooks on the Kindle store, although it looks like they’re only being made available to U.S. customers due to SRI (stupid rights issues).

Fun ebook history trivia!

(This is about the publishing industry, not about bargain books.)

RosettaBooks actually plays a huge role in the burgeoning ebook industry. It was founded in 2001 by the owner of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, and it made deals with authors whose existing contracts with publishers didn’t include e-rights. It was sort of the same business plan Wylie Agency started last year with its Odyssey Editions company.

Random House immediately sued RosettaBooks and sought to prevent the company from publishing digital editions of the printed titles it controlled, but it lost, and lost an appeal as well. Eventually Random House was forced to work out a deal with RosettaBooks with respect to the titles in question. Random House also worked out a deal with the Wylie Agency last year over the Odyssey Editions titles, presumably because it knew from experience that another lawsuit was probably pointless.

(Photo: The Graduate, 1967)

If you’re a King fan, or just want free fiction, this is a good opportunity to put one of those free “send to your Kindle” plug-ins to work. I opened the print version of King’s story so that it’s all on one page, then used Klip.me (formerly Send to Kindle). I had to add Klip.me’s email address to my Amazon trusted address list first (the service will walk you through this the first time you use it), and then it worked just fine, and now the story is on my Kindle. One great thing about Klip.me is that it lets you edit the text before sending it off to Amazon, so I was able to delete the sidebar stuff that interrupted the flow of the story. Nice!

“Herman Wouk Is Still Alive” by Stephen King (The Atlantic Magazine)

(Photo: eparales)

One of the big problems with the [orphaned books] agreement was it was only Google. The U.S. Department of Justice in fact [realized it was] sanctioning a monopoly here. Why should Google have the right to circumvent copyright law or supplant copyright law with this private agreement? That may be good for the authors and it may be good for the publishers and it’s certainly going to be good for Google, but they’re not the only game in town. So, now if Amazon wants to do something similar, they’re going to have to go back to square one and renegotiate this whole deal. And Microsoft is going to have to do it all over again, and then we’re going to have multiple bodies out licensing this stuff around.

If you’re still unsure about what the heck’s going on between Google, the Authors Guild, and individual authors and publishers, check it out.

“Google’s ‘Orphaned Books’ Litigation; Effect on Digital Sales” [Practical eCommerce]

(Photo: Ben Woosley)

In other words, this isn’t about digital titles specifically. It’s about HarperCollins taking advantage of the ebook transition to enforce a very short lifespan on new book purchases. If they’d had the technology to do it with printed books, believe me, books would be crumbling into piles of dust every 12 months at your local library.

Earlier this week, a Booksprung commenter asked, “Does anybody know, on average, how many check-outs a typical (print) library book lasts before it has to be replaced due to loss, damage, or wear and tear?” I didn’t, but now we have some answers thanks to a video posted by the Pioneer Library System.

Although it’s true that librarians have a wry sense of humor, you might not feel like watching the whole thing. Here’s a summary.

Main takeaways:

• Of the five physical books on display — each of which have been purchased once — the library would have had to make 13 total purchases at this point, with a 14th being triggered after one more checkout of “Sooner or Later.”
• The most popular book has been checked out 120 times. Its spine is damaged and needs to be repaired, but otherwise it’s still lendable. The second most popular book been checked out 65 times, yet it’s still in excellent condition.

Here are the stats on each title in the video:

“Metro Girl” by Janet Evanovich
Checkouts: 65
Condition: Excellent
If this were an ebook: 3 purchases

“Ruby Holler” by Sharon Creech
Checkouts: 39
Condition: Slight spine damage but otherwise good
If this were an ebook: 2 purchases

“Coraline” by Neil Gaiman
Checkouts: 48
Condition: Good
If this were an ebook: 2 purchases

“Swimming to Catalina” by Stuart Woods
Checkouts: 120!
Condition: Damaged spine but repairable
If this were an ebook: 5 purchases

“Sooner Or Later” by Debbie Macomber
Checkouts: 25
Condition: Nearly perfect
If this were an ebook: 1 purchase, but only one checkout left

“HarperCollins 26+ checkouts” [YouTube via Teleread]

Related:
“HarperCollins tries to justify its new library policy”
“How your next ebook loan might sap your library’s book budget”

I’m not at all surprised at the two Borders locations in NYC that are closing — if anything, I’m surprised that the gigantic, gorgeous one in Wall Street will stay open, considering that it’s been entirely empty every time I’ve visited. Update: Never mind, it’s closing too.

View Borders Store closings in a larger map

“My local Borders store isn’t closing, is yours? (map)” [The Digital Reader] ]]> http://booksprung.com/heres-a-map-of-which-borders-stores-are-closing/feed 2 http://booksprung.com/borders-files-for-bankruptcy-will-close-200-stores http://booksprung.com/borders-files-for-bankruptcy-will-close-200-stores#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 14:49:01 +0000 Chris Walters http://booksprung.com/?p=5481 As expected, Borders has filed for bankruptcy. John Mutter at Shelf Awareness says the bookseller plans to close about 200 of its 639 stores over the next couple of weeks. Update: Here’s a map of which stores are closing.

Mutter writes that since last December Borders has been buying new books “following procedures familiar to retailers on credit hold”:

The struggling retailer has been using wholesalers, buying books shortly before publication, and paying the usual 30-day wholesaler terms. Many national accounts managers have been working with Borders through wholesalers on book buys.

Still, the company currently has over US $1.2 billion in debt, and owes between $20-40 million each to Penguin, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Random House and Harper Collins. It owes key distributors another $15 million. Update: Here’s a more extensive list of unpaid publishers.

As for customers, things like Borders Rewards will continue to operate as normal; the company is keeping nearly 500 retail stores as well as the website open for business as usual. Borders says “customers will be notified of closing stores in their general area” in the coming days. You can check this map to see if your local Borders is on the kill list.

“Borders Files for Bankruptcy, to Close 200 Stores” [Shelf Awareness] www.bordersreorganization.com

(Photo: doortoriver)