Fifteen years ago, Russian paleontologist Kirill Yeskov decided to rewrite Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” for fun. His new version, “The Last Ring-bearer,” assumes that the original story of the Ring of Power is actually a retelling of a major war as written by the victors — and as with human history, the vanquished [...]
self publishing
My experience with the Espresso Book Machine
I was in midtown NYC earlier today when I stopped to have a coffee and catch up on my RSS feeds, and I saw a couple of blog references to a video of the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) posted over on NPR’s Science Friday blog. The video is a short, lighthearted overview of an EBM [...]
Indie ebook “hall of fame” site tracks the best reviewed self-published books
If you’re looking for something new to read that’s not from one of the big publishing houses, check out the Indie eBook Hall of Fame blog. It’s a bare bones site set up by Joanna, a Teleread contributor and fan of indie books, to help highlight the good stuff from all the not-so-good stuff. Joanna’s [...]
Publetariat asking for dollar donations to stay afloat
If you write with the intention of publishing, and if you’re online much at all, you’ve probably come across Publetariat, a popular online community serving authors and publishers. Today the editor posted a public request for donations to keep the site afloat as she struggles with private medical and financial issues. She writes: “This morning [...]
Amazon thinning out the public domain herds on Kindle store?
Morris Rosenthal, the man who posted a helpful list of free classics on the Kindle store last month to help readers bypass unnecessary fees, just announced that Amazon pulled his test version of a Dickens classic and told him that they were cracking down on duplicate public domain titles.
Why DRM is a distraction
There are bigger problems in the ebook marketplace than individual piracy. You may not feel that way if you’re an author or publisher with a marketable title. And you may not feel that way if you’re a staunch consumer advocate, or if you worry about how DRM prevents ebooks from being future-proof. But the underlying [...]
I wrote a Halloween story!
To celebrate Halloween and the sort of horror fiction that I like to read, I wrote a short story. It’s about growing up, trick-or-treating, and death. It’s also got death in it. And more death. Did I mention it’s a horror story? Good.
How to automate KindleGen on OS X
Update – 16 March 2011: With the help of a reader named Ivo who left some advice in the comments, I’ve updated the suggested code so that it works better. If you tried this before and had errors, please try the new code. This is without a doubt the geekiest thing I’ve ever posted here. [...]
Free excerpts on the Kindle Store: you're doing it wrong!
“Many free Kindle books are awesome. Not this one… You don’t get 10 stories, you get mediocre previews of 10 books.” – Working Mom “Maybe I missed it in the description but this only had one section. I didn’t enjoy it much.” – Ve “…The biggest fiction was the pricing that implied that the Kindle [...]
Harkaway's four strategies for digital publishing
On Futurebook.net, the digital blog launched by UK magazine Bookseller, Nick Harkaway just published two insightful pieces on digital publishing. Maybe I think they’re insightful because they speak to my own prejudices, but I do think he makes clear, logical arguments that address some of the more self-defeating behavior of publishers in these unsettled times. [...]
Writers, readers, publishers, and the desire to know everything at once
I like infoporn. I love to pore over traffic charts for websites, or look at survey numbers from opinion polls, or sit back and marvel at a really good graph, which is infoporn’s centerfold. One area where the data-crunching promise of personal computing has delivered is in capturing, assembling, and displaying this kind of labor-intensive [...]
Two of the best explanations of the Amazon/Macmillan book battle
The feud between Amazon and Macmillan (and now Hachette) over how to sell ebooks is a complicated mess. Two of the best analyses I’ve found come from published writers who hold an obvious interest in what Amazon and publishing houses end up doing.