May 7 2012
Monday Midday Links: Cover Contest Is Alive, Scripts Released as Ebooks, Used Bookstores and Digital Books
The annual cover contest is ready for your votes. Go forth and vote for the best and the worst. The worst are really bad.
The Gift of Charles – CNN.com – “Charles fell into the family’s arms in November 2007. Tremica’s cousin, Charles’ biological father, had been imprisoned for illegal possession of a firearm, his third felony conviction in California. That made Ray Charles Daniel a lifer. “Will you take care of my son?” he asked. “Absolutely,” Forest replied. “You always take care of family.”” CNN Personal Note: you may need to have some tissues handy but it’s an inspirational story of a magnificent family.
Used-Book Stores in the Digital Age – “Recently Half Price surveyed customers to find out if e-readers were eating into their business. “What we’re seeing is interest in both e-books and print books,” says Thomas. “It’s going to depend on how cheap e-readers are.” To entice customers, a third of whom don’t know what they’re going to buy when they enter the store, according to respondents, Half Price has begun adjusting its product mix. It is adding more puzzles and is testing other nonbook items like leashes in the pet section.” Publishers Weekly. Personal Note: It’s a really good article with anectdata that supports a trend you see in new bookstores, a movement away from just books to books + many other items.
iPad Renews Tablet Dominance as Kindle Fire Sales Drop Like a Rock – “International Data Corporation (IDC) said worldwide tablet sales for the first quarter of 2012 numbered 17.4 million units. In its quarterly earnings call Apple said it had shipped 11.8 million iPads (both the current model and iPad 2), accounting for 67.8% of the market. That’s a big jump from the holidays, when 54.7% of all tablets sold were iPads. The holiday season, of course, was when the Kindle Fire made its debut at the rock-bottom price of $200. The Fire instantly burned through market share, becoming the second-place tablet with 16.8% of the market. This past quarter, though, sales clearly weren’t as robust, and the Kindle Fire’s share fell to just 4%, in third place.”
Warner Brothers To Release Scripts As eBooks – GalleyCat – “AppNewser has more: “While you may not be able to stream classic films like Casablanca, Ben-Hur, An American in Paris and North by Northwest on your iPad, Kindle or Nook, soon enough you will be able to read the original scripts.” According to The Wall Street Journal, these eBooks will retail for $10 each and will come with some kind of special historical document.” GalleyCat
E-book bestsellers breakdown: I married a billionaire — paidContent – “How it [Jennifer Probt's The Marriage Bargain] hit the bestseller list: Probst, the author of several erotic and contemporary romance titles, built up her presence on social media months before the book was published in February. She did a 20-stop blog tour in early 2012 to promote the book. Entangled bought a Goodreads ad and “steady positive reviews began to trickle in from various outlets.”” PaidContent
Fan fiction promises to be a rich vein for publishers – Published free online, it [Fifty Shades of Grey] began its slow burn to bestseller status surrounded by a passionate peer group of fellow fans and writers, more female than male, who are not merely consuming literature, but remixing and co-producing it. As publishers hunger for popular content while cutting promotional budgets, such ready-formed, literate and ebook-reading groups are likely to become the engine rooms of fiction. Guardian Personal note: Ethics aside, pulled to publish fan fiction is legitimized and the fan fiction community might have to come up with new community guidelines.
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May 07, 2012 @ 12:54:39
“To entice customers, a third of whom don’t know what they’re going to buy when they enter the store, according to respondents, Half Price has begun adjusting its product mix. It is adding more puzzles and is testing other nonbook items like leashes in the pet section.”
This doesn’t thrill me. Then again, the nearest Half Price Books to me is maybe 70 or 80 miles away, so my shopping habits there probably aren’t those of their usual customers. When I go, I go intending to spend a good chunk of money all in one go…on used print books, not lots of other things. Personally, I’d love to have a Half Price Books closer, so I could do regular trips to look for OOP manga. My dream would be for one to pop up in town, but I’d even take 45 miles away.
May 07, 2012 @ 13:13:46
re: The Gift of Charles (what a lovely and inspiring family)
I was seriously shocked to learn that the US has only three children’s hospices. I double-checked the number with my husband and found that it’s really just three. How can that be? It can’t be right. I’m so used to the idea of having a children’s hospice in every major town in Britain that I – this, I admit – took it for granted that it’s the same in the US and elsewhere. Quite a humbling moment for me.
May 07, 2012 @ 13:42:41
Wake me up when the tablet wars are won so I can find out if I bought the right ones.
May 07, 2012 @ 14:18:07
Won’t it be interesting when publishers start hiring ghost writers (like they often did did with ‘authors’ like Carolyn Keene and Leslie McFarlane) to write fiction based on the posted-for-free fan fiction?
They can pay the writers nothing but a base salary. A small investment for what could occasionally be a huge payoff.
If called to court to account for the ‘adoption’ of someone else’s work they can point to ‘that book’ and say “it’s all good, we used different names”. Fun times.
May 07, 2012 @ 16:01:19
RE: Tablet Wars– I’m sorry the iPad is trouncing the competition because I won’t buy Apple, but until someone comes up with a real competitor it’ll continue to happen. The problem is, the best-selling is not always “the best” product. Sometimes the best-selling is simply the one who got there first and had the money to create the buzz.
I just bought a Fire, so I’ll play around with that until I find a better iPad alternative. ;-)
May 07, 2012 @ 16:56:58
I have a Transformer (not-prime) and just about every time I use it I wish it were an iPad. It’s not as intuitive as iThings or as precise when you’re typing or trying to select text. I have the worst trouble placing the cursor in a block of text; it tends to just go where it wants to go. It’s what? Six times bigger than my iPhone? And it takes me twice as long to type a message. Either Apple has all the good engineers or they’ve patented all the good tech building blocks. Maybe everybody is switching over after comparing other tablets to their iPhone/iTouch.
May 07, 2012 @ 19:33:54
My 4 year old can use an ipad as easily as my 65 year old mother and neither of them have a clue about how “computers” work and, more importantly, neither of them WANT to learn how computers work. They just want to play games, watch youtube and skype. I suspect a good 80% of the tablet market feels the same way. They don’t want the best technology available, they just want an entertainment thing that is easy to use and predictable in behavior. That’s an iThing. If you know how to use one iThing (ipod/iphone/ipad) you know how to use them all. People like that.
May 07, 2012 @ 20:20:41
The geek in me totally wants to buy those scripts and read them. If only Joss Whedon would do that for Buffy I’d be in hog heaven.
May 07, 2012 @ 21:52:56
I want to know when they’re going to discover MY fanfiction, which has so little to do with the movie/book it was based on it would actually be a breeze to turn it original. *sniffles*
May 07, 2012 @ 22:19:09
@Melissa Blue: You probably already know this, but printed script books for Buffy have been around for quite a while, and before that there were fans who faithfully transcribed the episodes. I had the first five or so seasons of Buffy and the first three of Angel on my Palm Pilot. I still have them all in a backup file somewhere.
May 07, 2012 @ 23:12:36
I wish people would stop pretending iThings are intuitive. Figuring out how to turn off my iPod so the battery doesn’t drain has required a forage for the manual on a regular basis. So does changing the volume. Intuitive, my ass.
May 08, 2012 @ 00:09:02
@Sunita: No! I did not know. Never thought to look for them. OMG, you have got to love fans. And still, I’d want them as e-books. lol I am rough on paper.
May 08, 2012 @ 00:15:49
@Melissa Blue: Oh yeah, e-form is mandatory. Amazingly, the transcripts are still around.