The Kindle App for iOS has been updated so that you can now email yourself documents (mobi, pdf, word) and read those files on your Kindle App. This feature used to be only for Kindle device owners and it is one of my favorite features offered by Amazon. Amazon gives you an email address which you can edit. Then you email documents to that address. I like to change it to make it easy for me to recall like jane.fire@kindle.com or jane.iphone@kindle.com.

All the personal documents you send are stored in Amazon’s cloud. You are allotted 5 GB for free. What makes this such a killer feature is that the personal documents get the whispersync treatment. This means if you start a book on your iPhone and pick it up on your Kindle device, it syncs the last place read along with all your notes and bookmarks. The iOS Kindle App even allows you to access your entire archive of personal documents, a feature that is not available on the Kindle Fire. Yes, the Kindle App is more robust than the Kindle Fire. *Headdesk*

For newcomers to the Personal Document Service (PDS) of Amazon, please read this post. It tells you how to get around charges to the PDS.

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File this under ridiculous but the Atlanta Braves is unhappy Disney has named its upcoming fairy tale Brave.

This news comes from the trusted Disney news source Stitch Kingdom, whose report states though trademarks differentiate between the singular and plural use of a word, the Atlanta National League Baseball Club, who own the Braves, believe “that damages will occur as a result of Disney’s trademarks being approved as they have used the singular form before on merchandise and insist it is common for fans, media, et. al. to use the singular form when referring to a single player, whereas the pluralized form refers to the entire team.”

And Apple has won a patent case against HTC which would effectively ban the sale of all HTC phones in North America because of a patent Apple has over how bits of data are highlighted and turned into clickable links. Those links launch different apps like Maps or Safari. HTC is going to remove this software from its phone, but hello, the patent system is so messed up.

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When I was getting the deals listing ready, I noticed PC Cast’s name and it reminded me of this totally horrible thing that Cast had done and I forgot to share it. I think I tried to block it out of my mind. Anyway, apparently Cast has a fondness for using the word “retard” in her books. Like

“I mean, it’s nice that my call to Thanatos worked so fast and we’re being allowed to go back to school, but a short bus?”

“Twin! They sent the retard bus for us!” Erin said, giggling.

“Twin, that’s really mean,” Shaunee said.

“I know, Twin. I can’t believe Neferet’s so f-ing evil she sent the retard bus for us,” Erin continued.

“No, I don’t mean Neferet’s being mean. I mean it’s mean to say retard,” Shaunee explained, rolling her eyes at her Twin.

“Ithink Shaunee’s correct, and you should consider expanding your vocabulary. You’re using mean too many times; it’s redundant,” Damien said.

(Also fag and gay and well, probably any other number of offensive words). But it’s funny right? So so funny. A mother didn’t think so and complained to Cast and also threatened to try to get Cast’s books removed from the district library. So Cast, because this stuff just does not bother her at all, decides to not only castigate this woman online and double down on the usage of retard, but does the Lori Foster and INSERTS HER DEFENSE IN HER BOOK!!! Wow, that’s not passive aggressive.

Aphrodite, stop sayin’ retard!” Stevie Ray shoued at her. “I swear you need to check out www.r-word.com. Maybe you’d learn that some people get their feelin’s hurt by the r-word.”

Aphrodite blinked several times and then scrunched her face. “A Web site? Seriously.

“Yes, Aphrodite. Like I have tried to tell you a bazillion times, using the r-word is demeaning and just plain mean.”

Aphrodite sucked in a deep breath and let out a rant. “What about a site for the c-word-as in cunt, which demeans half of the world? Or wait, no. Let’s keep it the r-word site only make the r-word rape, which does more than just hurt upper middle class mommies’ feelings. Or-”

“Seriously,” I stepped between them. “We get it. Can we go back to the Shaylin and the True Sight issue?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Aphrodite said, flipping back her hair.

“Aphrodite’s mean, Z, but she makes a good point,” Erin said.

I glared at Shaunee who only nodded enthusiastically, but didn’t chime in. My head felt like it was going to explode. “Ah, hell,” I said, throwing my hands up in frustration. “I can’t remember what we were saying before the retard part.”

So what have I learned from this? Cast is an insensitive author who writes really banal dialogue and has no ability to construct a logical defense. I can’t tell if she is defending rape here or suggesting that upper class mommies are wrongly offended by the word rape. It’s a muddle. Further, Cast is using Aphrodite as a mouthpiece, thus breaking the fourth wall, and now anyone who reads her and knows this can equate Aphrodite’s words and actions to Cast. Way to go Cast. And Harlequin? MacMillan? This is your book. Your YA book.

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The Borders Bankruptcy is winding up. According to Publishers’ Weekly, publishers may get a little over 10c on the dollar. Yay! Because when you have a $40 million debt (Penguin) getting $4 million is awesome. I suppose it is better than nothing.

With this morning’s court approval of Borders’s liquidation plan and the sale of its Kobo interest and IP addresses, publishers will do better than expected in terms of recouping their losses with the bankrupt chain. While Borders originally anticipated paying 4¢ to 10¢ on the dollar to creditors, it will likely be at the high end and could even exceed that, according to attorney Andrew Glenn.

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Malinda Lo has written a lovely retrospective post about diversity in fiction. She acknowledges that it is both important and difficult to write about characters outside of one’s experience and important and difficult to write about one’s personal experience. In sum, diversity in fiction means more than just diversity of characters or diversity of sexuality but in true diversity:

This brings me back, full circle, to my original goal for Diversity in YA: To celebrate great books that also happen to be about characters of color or LGBT characters. To steer the conversation away from one that edges toward the negative connotations of quotas, to one that edges toward the positive connotations of inclusiveness. Away from the narrowness of “authenticity,” toward the infinite possibilities of personal experience.

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And because I am totally a sucker for these awesome videos of engagements, I share with you:

Meme Proposal | Tim * Audrey from Crazy Monkey Studio on Vimeo.

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Deals

Don’t forget that the Sourcebooks and Avon deals are still going on. Today I’ve got some Macmillan deals for you. Special thanks to the Macmillan, Sourcebooks and Avon peeps who are sending me these links so I can share with you all. It really makes my life easier and from the sounds of it, you readers love it too, right?

• Evermore by Alyson Noel * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Dead Simple by Peter James * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Marked by PC Cast * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Still Life by Louise Penny * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Wild Cards I by George R. R. Martin * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Suicide Kings by George R. R. Martin * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Busted Flush by George R. R. Martin * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Inside Straight by George R. R. Martin * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor by Lisa Kleypas * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Fatally Frosted by Jessica Beck * $4.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Glazed Murder by Jessica Beck * $4.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Sinister Sprinkles by Jessica Beck * $4.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Bellfield Hall by Anna Dean * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Lady Lazarus by Lang, Michele * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• True Colors by Kristin Hannah * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• A Taint in the Blood by Dana Stabenow * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Twin Fantasies by Opal Carew * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo
• Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas * $2.99 * Amazon | nook | Sony | Kobo

Kindle’s daily deal is Gemma Holliday Boxed Set is $1.99 for five books.

Related posts:

1. Tuesday Midday Links: Good YA Deals
2. Thursday Midday News and Deals: Prices Up Says DWJ; Prices Down Says Data
3. Tuesday Midday Links: News and Deals

• Halfway to the Grave with Bonus Material: A Night Huntress Novel for $1.99 * Amazon | nook | Kobo
• Cassie Palmer Series: Touch the Dark, Claimed by Shadow, Embrace the Night and Curse the Dawn in one bundle by Karen Chance for $7.51 – Amazon | (couldn’t find this set at nook store) |  Kobo ($8.99 at Kobo)

Related posts:

1. Wednesday Midday Links: Amazon partners with Overdrive to allow library lending for Kindles
2. Wednesday Midday Links: More on digital lending and libraries
3. Wednesday Midday Links: BN lending features are disappearing

Many publishers have signed with them to allow 20% previews of the upcoming releases and those will be available through the app as well. They asked if we wanted to be included and I agreed. There is no money exchanged and basically what it does is reformat the RSS feed of Dear Author into a more pleasing platform. It’s a really nice way to read it. If you want to comment, you’ll have to click on the DA link to come to the site itself, but because you can save posts and because of the nice way that it is formatted to work with your device, it’s probably a more pleasurable reading experience. The iOS app should be available at the end of July and the Android App is due out in October. Let me know if you enjoy it.

Here’s some photos:

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There was no bidder for Borders and thus it plans to liquidate.  What’s horrible about this isn’t the closing of the stores, but the lay off of over 11,000 employees.  The executives appear to be getting some severance plans but there is no word on how Borders and the bankruptcy court will help these employees gain new employment.

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Publisher’s Weekly has an article about a new company called Book Lamp which is in beta testing right now.  Book Lamp is a recommendation engine that is based on the content and writing style of the author:

The Da Vinci Code, for instance, contains 18.6% Religion and Religious Institutions, 9.4% Police & Murder Investigation, 8.2% Art and Art Galleries, and 6.7% Secret Societies & Communities (among others), according to BookLamp’s engine. The program also catalogs things like denseness and length, all of which allow it to take someone’s favorite book and recommend others like it.

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Sarah from SmartBitches tweeted a fascinating Q&A John Meyer did at Berklee.  As one commenter said “Even though I don’t go to Berklee and am not a music major in any way this is an amazing piece.”

It is.  It’s an article I’ve bookmarked because there are so many really wonderful things to ponder in the article. Mayer talks about always trying to better oneself and putting down other artist’s works.  He spoke about inspiration and allowing yourself to write bad content.  This Q&A could spawn a hundred thoughtful blog posts in a dozen different fields.  It truly is inspirational.

Related posts:

1. Tuesday Midday Links: Dear Author’s New Design
2. Tuesday Midday Links: More on the pedophilia author
3. Tuesday Midday Links: Bad Sex Award given to an author maligning the nipple

I don’t plan on getting this device but if someone does and wants to review it for DA, let me know jane at dearauthor.com.

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Sony plans to release a new slate of ebook readers and tablet computers this fall.  The speculation is that the ebook readers will be cheaper with new software.  The tablet computers will integrate the reading application with the bookstore (more attractive to me).

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Borders did get an offer of purchase but it has turned down the offer and now looks to be pursuing liquidation.

Borders Group Inc. said it will seek court approval to sell itself to a group of liquidators, rather than to a unit of Najafi Cos., after revisions to the earlier sale agreement and the terms of its bankruptcy loan.

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RT apparently has pulled the plug on Mr. Romance. I’m not surprised nor sorry to hear this. Dorchester was the long time sponsor of Mr. Romance and no other publisher has stepped up to offer to take Dorchester’s place.  Mr. Romance, while maybe fun for the attendees, simply perpetuates the “romance is porn” mantra and contributed to an oversexualization of the genre.  Glad to see it go. I also suspect with this gone, some big name authors who have been absent in the past will be attending the conference.  It’s in Chicago next year.

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We had a post from Maya Banks about her experience in publishing. Maya has been very successful, in large part due to her hard work.  A post on BookEnds shows a slightly different experience from author Ellery Adams.  Writing is tough work.

• Number of publishers I’ve written for — 3
• Average number of series I’m writing at once – 3
• Average advance received from publisher — $6,000 per book
• Average amount paid for large print or foreign rights — $500 or $1000

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ABA, the independent bookseller’s association, is partnering with Bluefire to bring an ABA endorsed reading app to the masses. My understanding is that Bluefire has removed all the internal buy links and catalogs and thus to get books on your ABA app, you’ll have to buy them using your computer, download the books using Adobe Digital Editions, and then send them to your device, either through email or syncing via the USB cord and iTunes.

Related posts:

1. Thursday Midday Links: Beauty and romance
2. Thursday Midday Links: Random House hires Sue Grimshaw, former romance buyer for Borders
3. Thursday Midday Links: Is Harlequin Trying to Move the Brand Away from Romance?

That said, Amazon Montlake’s cover and then the title were in auspicious starts.  The cover, particularly the font, recalls an 80s contemporary and the title doesn’t have a historical feel, but a chick lit feel.  But setting that aside is the astonishing bad quality of the teaser chapters.

Update:  It has been pointed out that the teaser chapters are unedited. I don’t know if that changes how I feel about this, but I felt like I should point it out.

This is Amazon’s own product and frankly, mobipocket is really just a container of html files.  The cleaner the html file, the better the end product.  (Remember this point for the next part of this post). One would think that Amazon and all of its tech folks would put out a proper ebook, right? Particularly for a book that is intended to launch its line in a crowded market?

Let’s set aside some of the editing problems I think the chapters had and just focus on the formatting.

• Random indents

• Inconsistent formatting

• Underlining where there should have been italicization

And then this completely bizarre passage which I believe is an editorial suggestion:

Then there is the actual content.  The first couple pages contains this line.

Because aside from not knowing if the setting sun would be bright enough to cover his scramble for that depression, he had no idea if the linen would burn or how fast it would if it did

Shouldn’t that be aside from not knowing if the setting sun would be dark enough to cover his scramble?

As reader S. McNulty points out there are several continuity problems:

So what’s his name? Is it James Owen or James Owens? It changed by paragraph. Also, with the secondary male, Pomfrey. He was a colonel. Then he was a captain. Then a colonel again. And which is it? Colonel Lord Pomfrey or Lord Colonel Pomfrey? I know there’s a fun story here but the editing problems and the continuity problems kept taking me out of it. I hope the book is still in draft and that these issues can be addressed before the November 1, 2011 release date. I would really like to read the finished product.

None of this is Brockway’s fault, of course, but it does say something about Montlake and Amazon’s commitment to quality publishing. This piece is not ready for public release yet.

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Remember what I said about clean html?  It’s something that needs to be drummed into self publishers and those who deem themselves to be publishers.  BookEnds is publishing Christie Craig’s Dorchester books.  As Dhympna reports, the production quality is really poor.

She has more screenshots but I figured this post was getting image heavy.  Any one who is in the publishing business whether it is Random House (who is notorious for these kinds of errors) or Amazon or an agency publishing books for their clients.  Don’t forget the Lora Leigh/Berkley debacle.   Some of these problems occur during the OCR process (turning the screen image into text) and some of them occur due to html problems.  My suggestion for authors digitizing their backlist? Go and pirate your own book. You will likely find a well proofed copy of your own book that will have pristine html code.

The question is, of course, does any of this really matter? Are we making mountains out of molehills?  Dean Wesley Smith, self publishing advice giver who proclaims that one should never ever ever give percentages of your work away, doesn’t want to hear about typoes from readers. He is going to write 100 stories in one year and publish them (although what does publish mean here?)

#1… Please, I know I will make typos and such.  I don’t care and please don’t tell me. Thanks. If you have trouble reading something with a few typos, please don’t read these stories. There is no such thing as a perfect story and I ain’t trying to write one. Or 100 for that matter.

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Kobo is taking over the Borders ebookstore.  If you have bought even one book from Borders, go to this link and start the transfer of your books. It’s painless but important.  You will need your Borders username and password.

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Amazon has disallowed tagging for digital books. Some cry conspiracy by Amazon and the Big 6 because Amazon has an interest in pushing down the self publishers. OHREALLY?  Another author posits that this was taken away because Amazon was aware of how blatantly authors were using tagging to game the system.

I have no more data than anyone else so I won’t go so far as to claim no doubt but it’s my educated guess that tags stopped being a reflection of what readers thought and just a cheap way for authors to game the system. So Amazon killed them, at least in their original form.

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This link has images of Jane Austen’s original manuscripts.  She edited herself.  A lot.

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Finally, do you sometimes get the impression that cover artists are just, well, messing with us?  Is that a penis poking out of your pants or are you just the product of a photoshop job gone bad?

Related posts:

1. Friday Midday Links: Borders Q3 Profits Dismal
2. Thursday Midday Links: Can a “no issues” book truly be no issues?
3. Friday Midday Links: To Heaven and Back Again, the Ebook Saga

According to AAP's monthly sales estimates, e-book sales jumped 202.3% at the 16 publishers that reported results, hitting $90.3 million. The rest of the trade segments, however, all had declines in the month with adult hardcover sales plunging 43%, to $46.2 million at the 17 houses that reported figures, while mass market paperback sales tumbled 41.5%, to $29.3 million at the nine reporting houses.

Romance, if you recall, makes up about 50% of those mass market sales. Jennifer Crusie has thrown her advice hat into the ring. She doesn’t believe self publishing can be done without professional help.   She also dislikes the terms “Big 6″ and “legacy publishers”.   I wonder what she thinks of “Agency Publishers”.   I actually agree with a lot of what Crusie says in that how you publish establishes who you are as a professional.   Self publishing is hard, particularly if it is done right.   Yet, when Crusie ends with the summary you “really need both print and e-publishing” she does something that is actually pretty misleading.   She conflates self publishing and digital publishing into one basket.   I’ve seen this time and again.   Digital publishing is going to be the norm in the future and print will not be.   Don’t conflate self publishing and digital publishing. They aren’t the same.

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New Yorker has a long story about the conflict between George R.R. Martin and his most ardent supporters.   Basically ardent supporters have turned bitter due to the long wait for the conclusion of the Fire and Ice series.   Laura Miller describes the readers as consumers who are impatient with the delivery of their product and perhaps not as respectful of the author’s creative process.   Some readers regret even reading the series given the tortuous wait.   Martin worries about not delivering.

It’s not that I don’t feel for the author.   Probably Martin is trying to write as much as he can when the creative muse strikes him.   But readers aren’t the patient sort and I don’t think that authors should expect that.   Impatience works in their favor.   Look, for example, at the success of the Jean Auel’s The Land of Painted Caves which has been hotly anticipated since 2002.   Impatient readers are a mark of a successful book and really, something to be celebrated rather than despised (not that I think Martin despises his readers).

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Courtney Milan points out how much the Google Book Settlement could have cost authors taking into consideration the most favored nations pricing require by Amazon.

But the terms that are most damaging to authors are buried after the royalty rate. Those are the terms that allow Google to set any price it wants, so long as it pays you the royalty on the List Price you have set internally. Yes, you can set your price to any price point. But Google has the right to discount off the price that you set.

Why is that worrying? Because in order to get Amazon's 70% revenue, you have to let Amazon match prices online. So if Google had rights to your backlist titles, and you put your books up on Amazon, and Google lowered your price (as it was allowed to do), Amazon could match that price lowering. And if Google lowered its price below $2.99, Amazon would match- and you'd get bumped from the 70% royalty to the 35% royalty.

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Publishers Lunch is reporting that several of Borders’ executives have resigned (reg req’d or Det News link) while Borders asks for millions of dollars to be paid in bonuses to the executives who have stayed.   No one likes the idea of the executives making so much money trying to bail out a company.   The argument for executive bonuses is that these execs are necessary to pull the company out of bankruptcy and that the executives are taking on an extraordinarily difficult task that has a lot of personal risk for them (i.e., if the company doesn’t make it, they are out of a job).   The argument against bonuses is that this money should be used to finance the reorganization, not line the pockets of the already wealthy.   I think Borders’ chances of getting out of bankruptcy is slim at this point.

Related posts:

1. Monday Midday Links: Mass market sales continue to plummet
2. Thursday Midday Links: Random House hires Sue Grimshaw, former romance buyer for Borders
3. Brava to Re Issue Trades in Mass Market

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Borders romance buyer, Sue Grimshaw, will be the new Editor at Large and Category Specialist for Random House acquiring “selective romance titles for hardcover, paperback and original digital lists”.   Original digital lists.   Sounds like Random House is following Avon Impulse who followed Harlequin’s Carina Press.   Sue starts her new position on March 28.   Congratulations Sue!   Who’s next?

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Amanda Hocking, self publishing star, has purportedly signed a deal for four books in excess of $2 million with St. Martin’s Press. Hocking is tired of the publishing gig and just wants to write. One thing I thought was really curious about the Barry Eisler/Konrath exchange was Barry and Joe’s claim that self publishing saves time

Now, with digital books, once again there's no more profitable use of an author's time than writing.

…

Dealing with a legacy publisher can be quite time-consuming, and aggravating, too. Of course, publishers might say the same about authors! But that doesn't change the fact that publishers can take up a lot of your time.

Compare to Hocking who says

I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling e-mails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full-time corporation.

I think the big difference between Hocking and Konrath (and what may affect authors going forward) is reach.   Konrath’s success is built on cumulative volume.   He has over 24 stories for sale and the cumulative sales is what makes him a success.   His individual sales must not be significant enough, however, to attract the deal that Hocking is getting.   If you recall, Konrath shopped around his book, like Hocking, but did not have enough interest from publishers at the price Konrath wanted.   Hocking must have broader and more mass appeal creating volume from a single title alone.

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A modern day artist recreates a few Mills & Boon covers. My favorite is the last one where it looks like the hero is choking her.   Oh, I am sorry. Maybe he is just a face holder.

Related posts:

1. Thursday Midday Links: Beauty and romance
2. Thursday Midday Links: Borders’ Corporate Building List for Sale
3. Interview with a Buyer: Sue Grimshaw, BGI

The announcement made this morning was foreshadowed last night when it implemented an ordering freeze and Ingram, its lifeline to the publishers, stopped shipping books. Publishers are on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars led by Penguin Group (USA) which is owned $41.1 million, followed by Hachette at $36.9 million, Simon & Schuster at $33.8 million, Random House at $33.5 million, and HarperCollins at $25.8 million. Neither major book distributor, Ingram or Baker & Taylor were among the leading creditors, and only one book distributor, National Book Network, which is out $2 million.

All these publisher debts are unsecured which means that they will have lower priority with the bankruptcy court. Unsecured debt is debt that is not secured by an asset. In our lives, credit card debt is unsecured whereas a mortgage is secured (secured by the home). Ordinarily, a chapter 11 will result in a debtor being paid cents on the dollar owed. In the long term, the contraction of Borders will translate into smaller print runs (the number of books printed in one order in advance to the retail sale).

Another bankruptcy that will adversely affect the bottom line is the bankruptcy of Fenn in Canada. Fenn was Canada's largest book distributor. It’s largest unsecured creditor is Macmillan to whom Fenn owes $10 million and Harper Collins is owed $3.3 million.

There is no mention as to what will happen to Kobo. Maybe one of Borders’ most valuable assets is its minority share in Kobo. Borders has a 20% investment. My guess is that the plan for restructuring will include the Kobo business at its center. EBooks are on the rise while retail store book sales are declining. According to preliminary US Census Bureau data, bookstore retail sales fell 1.4% whereas general retailer sales rose 6.6%.

Based on Barnes & Noble’s success with the nook (as opposed to book retail sales), a book retailer without a digital plan probably doesn’t survive on a national scale.

Other investors in Kobo include Indigo; Instant Fame, a subsidiary of Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd. of Hong Kong; and REDgroup Retail of Australia. Kobo also announced it had raised $16 million CAD (about $15.1 U.S.) in financing from its investors. Indigo will retain approximately 58% ownership of Kobo. Source: News Release

Kobo put out a release to assure customers that their ebooks are safe and that it is unaffected by the Borders’ bankruptcy:

Will I lose access to ebooks I have purchased at Borders.com?
Your ebook library is perfectly safe. The Borders ebook experience is powered by Kobo, an entirely separate company from Borders. Kobo is financially secure and will continue to maintain your ebook library no matter what happens.

and

Nothing. Kobo is an independent, financially secure company that provides a Global eReading Service. Today will be another day filled with books being downloaded every second by Kobo users in over 100 countries.

The list of 200 stores to be closed have not yet been announced. Wall Street Journal has posted a sortable list of the 200 store closings. I’m curious which of our readers shop at Borders and may be affected by the closures.

Related posts:

1. Book distribution company (AMS) files for bankruptcy. Losses huge.
2. Author’s Rights When a Publisher Files Bankruptcy
3. Publishers Trying to Force Anderson News Into Bankruptcy

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Freebies from Samhain this month include:

• 2/1/2011 through 2/28/2011 Hara’s Legacy by Bianca D’Arc
• 2/1/2011 through 2/14/2011 Just Right by Erin Nicholas
• 2/15/2011 through 2/28/2011 Without Reservations by J.L. Langley

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Amazon reported its first $10 billion sales quarter ever and announced that digital book sales had exceeded the sales of paperbacks for the first time (both trade and mass market).   One person commented to me privately that Amazon had never been a dominant player in the paper book sales market so this shouldn’t come as a surprise.   The official statistic is that for every 100 paper books purchased, 115 digital books are purchased.   Digital books at Amazon outsell hardcovers 3 to 1.

Another statistic that is being bandied about with great hope is that ebook readers are buying more print books but here is what I believe that statistic means.   Amazon is gaining new book purchasers and these individuals are consolidating their purchases in one spot.   So whereas customer A prior to owning a Kindle might have bought books at the supermarket and a brick and mortar store are instead buying everything from Amazon because they are now part of the Amazon eco system.   Thus, at Amazon there is a rise in paper book purchases but it is not an overall industry trend.   The AAP numbers don’t support this.

The stock price of Amazon fell by over 7% despite the big quarter because operating expenses were higher in the 4th quarter and Amazon had experienced an adverse impact due to unfavorable exchange rates. Overall, though, Amazon met the analysts predictions.

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Borders did get a $550 million loan committment from GE Capital but it came with strings attached.   One of the requirements is that the publishers accept notes for the delayed payments.   Yesterday, Borders sent out notices that payments would not be made in January.   The conditions are unlikely to be met and I would expect Borders to announce either a Chapter 11 reorganization in a few weeks or complete liquidation. In order to undergo Chapter 11, Borders would have to have sufficient capital to see it through the reorganization period.

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At least one industry person believes that Barnes & Noble is positioning itself to be sold.   The Riggios are book people and in order for BN to succeed in the future, it needs to be a technology company.

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According to Nielsen, customers have been enjoying a record high percentage of discounts on print books in 2010 (thereby making the digital customer jealous and unhappy).   Print books are not subject to agency pricing model:

Retailers slashed a total of  £600m from the price of books in 2010 as book-buyers enjoyed their best year for bargains since records began.

The average discount given off a book’s r.r.p. last year was 26%-’ slightly deeper than in 2009, when books were discounted by an average of 25.5%, according to Nielsen BookScan data. This means that for the ninth consecutive year, since BookScan Total Consumer Market records began in 2001, discounts have deepened. In 2001, discounts averaged a much shallower 17%.

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I’m sure that most of the savvy readers of Dear Author recognize that the celebrity books, by and large, are ghost written.   For example, LuAnn McLane helped pen the Wynonna Judd “Restless” hardcover romance release.   Globe and Mail looks at a few other celebrity books and their ghost writers. Often a reader will never know the real name of the ghostwriter, but in certain circumstances, like the McLane/Judd book, it is openly acknowledged.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin (aka Diana Norman)
2. More Great Diana Norman News
3. Diana Norman Fans: Did You Know . . .

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Here is a really wonderful article about the changing landscape of publishing by Brett Sandusky, Director of Product Innovation for Kaplan Publishing.

Several months ago, the president of my company tweeted about how she let all of her book industry association memberships run out without renewing them. The next day, she signed up as a member of the Software and Information Industry Association. And that was that. We were now a digital company.

Kaplan is giving away 130 of its digital study guides and business books. These can be found at Barnes & Noble, Sony, and Apple.

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Sony offers an online recycling trade in for electronics as does Costco. Best Buy has jumped into the fray. Sell back your old unused electronic devices for store credit.

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Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches had a great piece on the changing standards of beauty in romance.

I think there's good and bad parts to the female standard in romance novels. Among the good parts: sexual agency, self-actualization and discovery, physical and emotional achievement, and generally winning at the end, plus orgasms and being appreciated for who one is, without requirements that one change to fit another's world view. Also, orgasms.

And most goodest among the good: a somewhat slowly but still changing tendency toward away from youth, virginity, thinness, and the ideal pictured on the cover. The old standard, alas, was very troublesome to me.

Do you agree or disagree that romance heroines have become more varied in phenotypical terms?

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A fan of Sarah Mayberry or Karina Bliss? These two writers publish with the Harlequin Superromance line. The Super authors have started a group blog to keep readers up to date on their upcoming books and their backlist titles. I’ve read Molly O’Keefe’s “His Wife for One Night” and it’s a great angsty friends to lovers / marriage of convenience book. It’s all my favorite tropes smushed together.

The first week they will be giving away 2 sets of this month’s Superromance releases (2 x 6 books), and there will be a Kindle up for grabs in the first month. Wanda Ottewell, the senior editor for the line, and Victoria Curran, the other dedicated Superromance editor, will be blogging on occassion. Fridays will be dedicated to writing tips for aspiring writers, and the weekends will update readers on author news.

Related posts:

1. Thursday Midday Links: Here Come the Category Bestsellers
2. Thursday Midday Links: Kindle 3 Available for Order, Ships Aug 27
3. Thursday Midday Links: Take a Cowboy Home

“We think the playing field should be even,” the B&N statement says. “We expect publishers to offer same terms to all other booksellers, including Barnes & Noble and independent booksellers.   We fully expect publisher's will require Borders to pay their bills on the same basis upon which all other booksellers pay theirs.   Any changes in publishers terms should be made available to all.”

The special deal between Borders and the major publishers could be subject to a collusion charge.   Is Borders saveable? I think everyone in publishing is hopeful that it is.   For romance books, Borders can represent between 5-30% of an author’s print run.   (Print runs being based on orders from wholesalers and retailers).   If Borders goes under, this will result in a serious contraction in the market.   Some of the loss may be replaced by shoppers moving to Barnes and Noble.   Some of the loss may be recouped in the move to digital sales.   Some may just be a loss.

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I’ve read that there might be as many three to five million readers were activated during the Christmas holiday.   That figure must not include the wifi only versions as there is no “activation” for those devices.   This has led to an increase in the number of digital books purchased.   According to USA Today, tomorrow’s list will herald a first in digital publishing:

E-book versions of the top six books outsold the print versions last week. And of the top 50, 19 had higher e-book than print sales.

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Onnesha Roychoudhuri published a piece for the Boston Review on how Amazon is turning books into widgets and this isn’t good for anyone, least of all the reader.

What happens when an industry concerned with the production of culture is beholden to a company with the sole goal of underselling competitors? Amazon is indisputably the king of books, but the issue remains, as Charlie Winton, CEO of the independent publisher Counterpoint Press puts it, "what kind of king they're going to be." A vital publishing industry must be able take chances with new authors and with books that don't have obvious mass-market appeal. When mega-retailers have all the power in the industry, consumers benefit from low prices, but the effect on the future of literature-’on what books can be published successfully-’is far more in doubt.

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Having said all this dire news, the fact is that until the Borders debacle, I think many people felt good about the publishing market. According to this report at Publishers Marketplace (paid link), there was no real drop in hardcover sales:

In format sales, despite publishers concerns’ over protecting hardcover sales–and price points–from encroachment electronically, hardcover unit sales were almost flat, declining by less than 1.4 percent. Trade paperback sales declined by 2.9 percent, with the biggest loss in mass market paperbacks, which fell by 13 percent. (The elimination of hundreds of mall-based stores by B. Dalton/Barnes & Noble and Waldenbooks/Borders by the end of 2009 likely had an outsized impact on this segment.)

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Digital Book World is coming up soon. It is a conference about digital books for publishers.   It’s a place where they talk about the importance of DRM, or at least that was the tone last year.   In other words, it is very pro publisher which isn’t necessarily anti reader but publishers have a different perspective and objectives, obviously, than we readers.   A couple of companies performed an agent survey about ebooks and it includes belief that ebook royalties must go up and that almost a third of agents are intrigued by setting up their own ebook publishing firm.   I’m not sure how ebook royalties can increase if ebooks become the primary source of revenue for books and advances still exist.   High ebook royalties (greater than 50%) in a no advance setting instead of ebooks as a secondary, supplementary source of revenue seems to be setting up a publisher for a loss.   It might make sense in terms of backlist titles, though.

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NPR follows up on an EFF ongoing story about reader privacy.   Your ereading habits are being observed by the vendors.

Most e-readers, like Amazon’s Kindle, have an antenna that lets users instantly download new books.  But the technology also makes it possible for the device to transmit information back to the manufacturer.

“They know how fast you read because you have to click to turn the page,” says Cindy Cohn, legal director at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation.  ”It knows if you skip to the end to read how it turns out.”

I think this only applies to those books you buy from the retailer that have the sync feature. I don’t believe this type of “watching” occurs when you sideload a book.

Related posts:

1. Wednesday Midday Links RoundUp: Big Changes at Simon & Schuster
2. Wednesday Day Midday Links: Jane Friedman looking at romance books?
3. Wednesday Midday Links: New Devices on the Horizon

• 1/1/2011 to   1/31/2011 Oleander House by Ally Blue
• 1/1/2011 to 1/14/2011 Rough Cut by  Mari Carr
• 1/15/2011 to 1/28/2011 Big Girls Don’t Die by  Crystal Jordan
• 12/15/2010 to 1/15/2011 Going All In by  Jess Dee
• 12/15/2010 to 1/15/2011 Make Mine Midnight by Annmarie McKenna
• 12/15/2010 to 1/15/2011 The Bite of Silence by Mary Hughes
• 12/15/2010 to 1/15/2011 With this Ring by T.A. Chase

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BestBuy has the nookColor for $199 from January 2nd until January 8th.   This is a pretty good deal if you want a color reader.   I prefer the eink for reading but the lcd is snappy and it’s the right size (although it could be lighter).   This article suggests that it might be BestBuy.com only but you may want to check your stores.   Here’s the review of the nookcolor we posted at Dear Author.

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Publishers Marketplace broke the story on Thursday that Borders sent out a notice that said there would be delays in payments to some publishers due to a liquidity shortfall. Borders needs refinancing in order to meet its credit agreements in 2011. Ironically, this is not a dissimilar story than what appeared in January of 2010 wherein Borders delayed payments to small publishers. The difference is that big publishers are now being jilted. Expect stock to be dramatically reduced at Borders as publishers begin to withhold shipments of books.

There is an interesting post by literary agent Joshua Bilmes on the rise and fall of Borders. The upshot of this is that if you received a Borders gift card for Christmas, you should probably use it now.

Why is this a big deal? Borders is the second largest brick and mortar retailer of books in the U.S.   Hardcover print sales are the core of many publishers’ businesses.   If one of the main retail sources go under, then the overall sales from the publisher to their customer (book sellers) will decline dramatically.

For the author, this means their advances will be reduced even further as print runs will decline.   However, on Twitter, yesterday, Moira Rogers and Melissa Schroeder had a conversation that I “overheard” in which they discussed the fact that the explosion of digital readers had turned their digital writing careers into something very profitable.

Via WSJ (first link).

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Reviewing can be a tough business.   Recently, a restauranteur outed a food critic who had successfully hid her identity as a reviewer for over fifteen years.   The owner of the restaurant made the food critic’s party wait then snapped her photo and asked her to leave.   After she left, her picture was posted on facebook for every one to see. The LA Times posted about why food critics are anonymous:

This concern with anonymity has been a peculiarly American trait, growing out of restaurant reviews’ roots in consumer reporting. In Britain, restaurant critics tend to be among a newspaper’s celebrities, and photos run alongside their reviews. In France, they’re regarded -’ at least by themselves -’ as public intellectuals. And far from being anonymous, they announce their visits days in advance.

But in this country -’ at least for critics at major newspapers -’ we recognize that for most of our readers, a big night out at a great restaurant is a major expenditure as well as a celebratory event. That’s also why we base our reviews on multiple visits -’ to make sure we’re not catching a restaurant on either its best or worst night.

I think this story really goes to   the heart of the reviewing dissonance.   Reviews are for the consumers but are felt deeply and personally by those being reviewed, whether it is restauranteurs or authors.   Thus, the expectations and desires of those being reviewed often aren’t in concert with the expectations and desires of the consumers.   Reviewers have to decide for whom they are reviewing.   In the LA Times case (as in ours), the reviewing is done for the consumer and thus the way in which they conduct their reviews may be at odds with whom they are reviewing.

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Amazon rolled out lending for Kindle. It has the same “features” as the nook.   You can lend one book for 14 days one time.   During that time, the owner of the book has no access to the lent book.   I put features in scare quotes because this type of lending is very limited, very restrictive.   Further, very few books seem to be lendable.   As I perused by Kindle book list the following publishers were allowing lending (or Amazon had allowed lending by default per the contract):

• Samhain
• Scholastic
• Kensington (this was hit or miss for me but mostly hit)

Smaller publishers were more likely to allow sharing as well as publishers who don’t traditionally impose DRM.   Harlequin, Avon, Penguin, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and Random House books all had the lending feature disabled.   I’ve sent out emails to the various houses to find out what the stance is regarding lending.   Will keep you all posted.

Goodreads has a Kindle lending community here and others have formed or are forming.   (Here is a nook lending community).

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Barnes and Noble put out a press release that it now sells more digital books on its online retail site, BN.com, than it does paper books.

the world's largest bookseller, today announced that with millions of NOOK eReading devices sold, the line has become the company's biggest bestseller ever in its nearly 40-year history. The new NOOKcolor Reader's Tablet, introduced just eight weeks before Christmas, is the company's number one selling gift of the holiday season.  Barnes & Noble also announced that it now sells more digital books than its large and growing physical book business on BN.com, the world's second largest online bookstore.

Ironically, BN’s successful selling day wasn’t met with a successful delivery day.   Christmas day was plagued with technical problems on BN’s side as it wasn’t fully prepared to meet demand.   So on Christmas, you could purchase nookbooks but you couldn’t download and read them.   This is the second year in a row in which Barnes and Noble has been unprepared for the internet traffic during the holidays.   Perhaps three times will be the charm?

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Kobo also set ebook sales records over the holidays.

Over a million people connected to Kobo, and hundreds of thousands of devices were activated each day since Christmas Eve, fuelling the highest eBook download rate in the company's history. People around the world chose Kobo this Christmas, with the popular easy-to-use Kobo Wireless eReader, dozens of compatible eReaders, top-rated applications for iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and one of the largest catalogues in the world with over 2.2 million eBooks, newspapers and magazines.

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Self publishing was a hot topic in 2010 and it will become an even hotter topic in 2011.   Heading up the chorus of self publishing is awesome is new evangelist Joe Konrath.   He posted his story about how he is selling more books published by himself than he ever did with a New York publishing house.   Mike Cane reminds Konrath of how he, Konrath, viewed self publishing as a pathway of the delusional author.   Chuck Wendig posts a “should I self publish” checklist.

Related posts:

1. Saturday Midday Links Roundup: Writers Organizations Mad at Harlequin
2. Sunday News Roundup: Free Books from All Romance eBooks
3. Saturday Link Roundup: AuthorTalk Bares All

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Sarah Weinman writes for Daily Finance and has the latest analysis of the incredibly dismal Borders’ news. Borders Q3 financial news was that it suffered a $74.4 Million loss and a 17.6% sales decrease.

The primary culprit was the gross margin from the stores that remained open: It plunged from 18.5% to 15.4%. Borders blamed “the de-leveraging of fixed occupancy costs caused by negative comparable store sales.” In other words, stores’ sales shrunk, while their fixed costs — things like rent, insurance and electricity — remained the same.

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/fYboBQ

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Not every social media platform launched by publishers is going to work. HarperCollins is closing BookArmy which was a site designed to engage readers in the UK. The site was launched in 2008 and was to compete with Goodreads, LibraryThing and Shelfari.

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Speaking of social media sites for readers, Goodreads has its 2010 reader poll out. For romances, there are some interesting choices including a m/m title: Promises by Marie Sexton. Strawberries for Dessert by Sexton was reviewed during the Gay Writes week here at Dear Author and was one of Sarah F’s books of 2010. I voted for Meljean Brook’s The Iron Duke but I loved seeing the broad range of choices including another small press book from author Lorelei James.

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An interesting data point from Goodreads was shared a couple of days ago. Apparently goodread users read more books published in 2009 than 2010 during the year 2010. This could be that more readers are signing on to Goodreads and adding books to their libraries that they read in the past and just haven’t correctly categorized those books (guilty) but I read a lot of backlist titles and with publishers and authors digitizing their backlists, these titles are a lot more accessible.

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I loved this blog post by author Michelle Styles about markets outside the US.   While the US remains the largest market for romance authors, according to Styles, there are other growing markets out there and they have different tastes:

As an overseas editor explained to me several years ago, they find the books through Harlequin's internal database as well as publications like the RT Book Reviews but always it is based what their specialised knowledge of what their readership wants. And the readership desires do differ. For example, Germany has never been a Regency driven historical market.

Harlequin’s push internationally is something to watch.   According to this blog post at iLook China, “Harlequin received official, red star-stamped permission to place half a million copies of twenty titles in Mandarin and a quarter-million copies of ten English versions on the shelves of Xinhua.”   The blog post linked to another article published in 2007 about the increasing demand of romance books and the corresponding worry about the message of these books.

Some Chinese experts are worried about the new reading trend. They feel anxious due to the submissive psychology in these romances and they wonder how such plots will affect young girls with no exposure to any feminist principals. These experts feel that the stories might addict readers to scenarios urging them to act obsequiously, thus mirroring the yielding concubine heroine who eagerly seeks the protection and favor of a powerful man. Psychologists wonder if reading these books could create dependent personalities and negatively impact on contemporary Chinese female characters.

The entire article is worth a read.   The societal culture in China is much different than in the US and it is more patriarchal.   Good thing that Jeannie Lin’s book is about a warrior princess!

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David Pogue at the NYTimes reviews the color Nook. (sign in required) Pogue likes the bright and beautiful LCD screen, the touch screen interface, and quickness of the device. He thinks, however, the interface is too confusing:

The price you pay is complexity. The Color Nook offers far too many pop-up control racks. There's the Quick Nav bar, the Status Bar, the Media Bar, the Library, the Daily Shelf and the Recent Items menu. It will take you quite awhile to master what's where.

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Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches Trashy Books was featured in the New York Times yesterday in an article about romance readers and ebooks.

Romance readers tend to be women ages 31 to 49 who are -’ contrary to the popular image of Miss Lonelyhearts living vicariously through fictional tales of seduction -’ in a romantic relationship, according to the writers group. They frequently fly through a book or more a week, and from the beginning they have jumped at the chance to store hundreds of titles on a single device -’ where the next happy ending is a download away.

Romance ebooks is the fastest growing segment of sales for digital books.   This makes sense as romance readers are voracious, buying on average three books a month according to BN chief William Lynch.   One of the benefits to reading digitally is that romance readers don’t have to face the scorn and disdain from others like clerks or fellow subway passengers.   That benefit was made all the more obvious by the commenters who wasted little time in trashing romance readers as well as the books in the genre.   Apparently there was some disdain for the article by romance readers on twitter and other places, but I was happy with the article and thought it portrayed romance readers as dedicated readers who are just as ready and willing to spend their disposable income on a tech gadget and books as the boys are which is also contrary to the popular image of Miss Lonelyhearts.   The truth is that most of the covers are embarrassing.   We aren’t embarrassed of reading romances- the content-but the covers are mockable and who can blame people for associating romance readers with the covers.

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Aldiko, one of the more popular Android reading apps, will be adding ePub DRM support in its next upgrade.   I’ve recruited commenter Brian to write up an Android eBook Reading 101 Guide.   Thanks Brian!

Related posts:

1. Thursday Midday Links Roundup: Education is moving toward digital
2. Wednesday Midday Links: February Book Specials
3. Books Top Seller for Internet

I also follow Teresa Medeiros on Twitter and she ended up writing a book about two people who fall in love on Twitter and I found the whole book unbearably twee. I will be posting a review on it at the end of the month when the book releases, but suffice to say that this is one book that was probably far better in concept.

Instead of doing the book trailer, Mallery has created these online magazines that feature articles about her characters. The first one was a wedding magazine that had a pictoral layout of the wedding of former champion cyclist and Fool’s Gold city planner. The most recent one is about Fool’s Gold, the city. It’s a Holiday magazine and part of the advertisements feature bloggers and other websites (we did not pay to advertise, it’s kind of an Easter egg of sorts).

The view stats for the magazine indicate that other people are enjoying the magazine as well. The Holiday magazine has been viewed 82,069 times.

Compare those stats with the book trailer done by Circle of Seven for Christina Dodd, a bestselling author like Mallery. The book trailer has 6,339 views and was uploaded over a year ago.

One thing I don’t like about the Mallery promotion is that there is no good way to embed the magazine. It’s really best viewed at the hosting site.

Another example of an author promotion that I really liked was the audiobook widget for the upcoming Susan Elizabeth Phillips. I generally disfavor widgets because they don’t really offer anything useful and seem more advertisement and less a benefit for me as a reader or blogger, but I liked this audio widget because you can play the audio sample right from the widget itself. no click throughs or anything. (As an aside, I enjoyed this book quite a bit and we have a couple of reviews, both positive, but with very different thoughts from Jennie and Robin to be published next month).

Twitter sells books according to some publishers. The publicity director for Algonquin shares his ideas as to why Twitter is becoming an effective medium for them:

The trick to their success may lie in the community building which is so crucial to Twitter. Taeckens explains his three point plan for engagement: “First, be pro-active about interacting with other people; you have to engage in conversations, not merely post as if you’re reporting to a captive public. Second, display your sense of personality; use wit, humor, creativity, and have fun. Third, post and comment on topics you know and care about–not just literature and publishing, but all topics in the cultural dialogue.”

I’m a big tweeter and one thing that I really dislike and that I am seeing more of is what I like to call “the circle jerk of promotion”. This happens when a group of author friends retweet or repost one of the group’s new release so all you have in your entire feed is a bunch of authors retweeting the same thing about Author A’s book being out. It becomes total white noise. If you want to tweet about the release, can’t you come up with something new and innovate to say about your friend’s book?

I could write all day about the horrible websites out there and it seems like Karen Marie Moning’s relaunched website breaks all the rules. First, it is run on flash. Flash, as you may have read, cannot be viewed on any iThing. So that is like 80 million devices that can’t view whatever it is the author spent so much money to have on her site. Plus, it takes time to load and people with slower internet connections are likely clicking away. Further, many people visit during work hours and can’t even see or enjoy the fancy shmancy thing. Beyond the flash is the audio that starts up when the site loads, with a voice over by some guy (who I have since found out is her husband?) I think he is supposed to sound seductive, but the extra breathing at the end of his words and the indecision as to whether he should be singing or simply narrating the text made it sound funny. The background track was annoying. I eventually turned it off so I don’t know the whole soliloquy given by the narrator (and isn’t this whole series about a chick and not a guy anyway?). Then I thought, maybe this site is just for her fans because after all she is celebrating the release of the fifth and final book in her series. Maybe it’s not to bring in new fans at all.

Another thing that I am ambivalent about is a members only section of an Author website. I’ve heard that some readers (generally the fans) enjoy it but new readers don’t. Susan Mallery, who I referenced above, has a members only section and while I like her magazine and her twitter feed, I am not signing up for a members only section.

Thoughts? Likes/dislikes?

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Borders has a really ugly, high priced something on its site that is designed just to display recipes.

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Nate over at the digital reader points to the results of a new survey regarding publishers and ebooks. Over 62% of publishers don’t know what the ROI on ebooks are yet. I think the downfall of pricing right now is that as the ebook industry grows rapidly so does ebook revenue because new entrants are buying books. The question is how much greater could growth be. Ebooks are currently viewed as additive sales versus replacement sales even though sales of books like mass markets are declining by double digits.

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All About Romance has published its top 100 list which is voted on by the readers of AAR. Number one is Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase. Big names and historicals seem to dominate the list.

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The Roses of Prose are looking for another blogger to join our group of four authors. If you’re a published author – traditional, e-published, or self-published, and would like to blog with them, check out the guidelines on their site http://www.rosesofprose.blogspot.com/.

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Related posts:

1. Wednesday Midday Links: Dear Author Community Bundle
2. Wednesday Midday Links: JA Konrath Posts a Must Read Article and Dear Author Has Neat News
3. Wednesday Midday Links: Authors Releasing Backlist Titles in Digital

For category books, like Susan Napier, the prices were stunning at $2.55 v. $2.88 and up at Amazon. Unfortunately, Google only had four titles whereas, Amazon had eight.

Lara Adrian’s Midnight Rising was priced as follows:

• Google: $6.07
• Amazon: $6.29
• BN: $6.29

Google will have an app for the Android and iThings.   I believe the Android App is available now but the iThing app is not.   There is no desktop software.

Google wants you to use the browser BUT Google won’t allow you to read “Offline” using the Web Reader on your desktop so you’ll need to download and use your favorite ADEWe currently do not support offline reading using the Web Reader on your computer.   I believe that so long as your browser is open and the Google book page is open, you can continue reading your book even after logging off the internet, but once you close out of your browser, you will not be able to open the browser back up and load the book. Instead, you will need to reconnect to the internet.   I’m not sure if it saves last place read.   In other words, if you read on your computer, you should download the ePub or PDF file.     Also, I could find no bookmarking or annotation option in the web reader.     On the iPhone, the web version does not look good:

Google uses ADE for encryption and thus you can follow this guide here for how to use Google Edition books with other devices.   Note, with the web browser on the Kindle, you can access your Google Cloud. Reports are that it works great.    There are a number of books that are in PDF only.

Any ebook that is scanned in only and doesn’t have reflowable text will be accompanied by a “Better for larger screens” alert.   One last detail, you must have a Google checkout account to buy books.

Any ebook that only comes with scanned pages will display an alert message (“Better for larger screens”) before you purchase or get the ebook.

For non US readers, don’t even bother. It’s just a bunch of public domain books and web reading only.

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I had the good fortune to participate in a podcast with Michael Weinberg at Public Knowledge about the lost books sale site. Hopefully, as digital books become more popular and the copyright geographical barriers will become easier to navigate.

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Deadlines for submission of paper proposals to two romance-focused academic conferences are fast approaching. December 15, 2010 deadline for submission to the Romance Area of the Popular Culture Association’s National Conference in San Antonio, TX (Passover/Easter weekend: April 20-23, 2011); January 1, 2011 deadline for submission to the Third Annual International Conference of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance in New York City (June 26-28, 2011, the three days before RWA’s NYC conference). For more information, go here:  http://teachmetonight.blogspot.com/2010/12/final-calls-pca-dec-15-2010-deadline.html

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There is a lot of discussion going on outside the book world about Amazon kicking Wikileaks off its web service space. I have a   lot of conflicted feelings about Wikileaks but the idea that hosting services will be deciding what we can and cannot read on the internet is really dangerous.

Given that citizens are increasingly dependent on privately owned spaces for our politics and public discourse, however, the fight over how speech should be governed in a democracy is focused increasingly on questions of how private companies should or shouldn’t control speech conducted on and across their networks and platforms.

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While Rowan Somerville was gracious when he accepted the Bad Sex award, he hated receiving it.

It's a hard pill to swallow. It takes years to write a novel and, if you are serious about what you do, quite a lot of sacrifice. Furthermore, despite the excellent reviews, The Shape of Her had not sold well: to be honest it had disappeared. No, the last thing I was going to do was throw myself into a pit of baying toffs – the magazine started by Auberon Waugh is renowned for drawing its staff from the upper classes – and add public humiliation to my disappointment.

In the end, though, Somerville acknowledge that the award brought his book back into the media limelight.

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Strangely (at least I find this strange), the largest investor of Borders has indicated that it is interested in purchasing Barnes and Noble.

Ackman said Pershing Square Capital Management, which holds a 15% stake in Borders, is prepared to bid $16 per share in an all-cash or stock-and-cash transaction, representing a 20% premium on Barnes & Noble’s closing price of $13.28 last Friday.

So the investor is prepared to throw more money in hopes of turning the 15% into a profitable stake.

Related posts:

1. Monday Midday Links: NYTimes Ethicist OKs Illegal Downloading of Books in Certain Circumstances
2. Wednesday Midday Links: Google Gives the Finger to China
3. Monday Midday Links:

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A new website, Shameless Yonis, is devoted South Asian women writing, exploring and discussing all things erotic. Most of the women who are writing for this site are authors of multicultural erotic romance.

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Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks has been putting herself out there to explain what exactly a publisher might offer to authors who are debating whether to go the self published route. This is a recap of what she spoke about at Frankfurt bookfair.

Unsurprisingly, Raccah rounded on the idea that e-books should be “free or $0.99″. She said: “It comes from the concept that we are not adding any value, and I feel we are adding a lot of value, and it's not cheap.” She added: “Book publishing is not book printing, let's be really clear about that: if you think all publishers do is print, you have a problem.”

Raccah also wrote an article for RWR (Romance Writers’ Report) which she republished on the Sourcebooks.com blog.

This deluge of books has, I believe, two big implications:

1. It devalues content-’there's too much of it and too little time. So there's increasing pressure to keep prices low and to give readers more for their money. Not necessarily a bad thing, by the way.

2. It also creates an overwhelming sense of constantly being sold to, which, when combined with the fragmentation of media, makes marketing increasingly difficult. No one likes being sold to. And today there are fewer and fewer mass market media outlets.

….

For me, the real job of a publisher is many, many things, all of which center around the incredibly rewarding challenge of connecting authors and readers. In the end, whether physical or digital, the role of the publisher is to create an audience for the author. It's to bring the author and the book to market. It's never really been about printing. And that's really clear now, isn't it? It's always been about connecting authors and readers.

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Sony is finally bringing its content to the app market. In December iThing and Android users will be able to use Sony Reader App to read their books and it looks like the Sony Reader store will be web based and will not require a software download. I think this signals that Sony intends to stay in the reader market for a while.

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Gawker published 21 pages of Sarah Palin's upcoming book and this made Sarah Palin unhappy. HarperColliins has responded by filing suit. On Saturday, a temporary injunction was issued and Gawker was ordered to remove the content. I'm not sure whether the reason for this is because the content had not yet been published and therefore republication would not be considered fair use or whether the republication of 21 pages is considered to be beyond fair use.

Interestingly the pre publication of Palin's books by conservative sites have not been targeted by HarperCollins.

I think litigation of fair use is a valuable activity and I am very interested to see the outcome of this.

I saw the Gawker suit on NBC Today show so the Nick Denton media network is getting a lot of airplay as a result of these suits (Apple's suit against Gizmodo for the acquisition of the iPhone 4 pre release and now this one).

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A couple of other really important copyright cases that are going on include the suit against mp3tunes over the safe harbor provision of the DMCA. According to the DMCA, an internet service provider or a hosting service isn’t legally responsible for the illegal content hosted on its servers until it receives notice of the illegal content and fails to take prompt steps to remove such content. EMI sued MP3Tunes, which allows users to upload content, because users were uploading illegal content. Youtube won a similar suit against Viacom but in the Ninth Circuit. The MP3 case is in the Second Circuit.

The second important copyright case is the Costco Wholesale Corporation v. Omega SA. Costco went overseas and bought a whole bunch of Omega watches and sold them at a discount in the Costco warehouses. Omega sued Costco for copyright infringement. This case was argued to the Supreme Court of the United States on November 8, 2010. The ruling in this case might have impact on geographical restrictions, among other things.

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Amazon introduces the PriceCheck app. News of this had leaked a few weeks ago, but the App is live today. If your phone has a good enough camera, you can take a picture of an item's UPC and then price check using Amazon's app. You can also speak the product's name and Amazon will look up the price of the product. The results that are returned are from Amazon and other online merchants.

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Borders will be closing 17 superstores after the holidays because they don't fit in with Borders' business objectives. Whatever those may be.

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I thought this article in the Guardian about how the King James Bible has influenced the secular language was fascinating.

As well as selling an estimated 1bn copies since 1611, the KJB went straight into our literary bloodstream like a lifesaving drug. Whenever we put words into someone’s mouth, or see the writing on the wall, or go from strength to strength, or eat, drink and be merry, or fight the good fight, or bemoan the signs of the times, or find a fly in the ointment, or use words such as “long-suffering”, “scapegoat” and “peacemaker” we are unconsciously quoting the KJB. More astounding, compared to Shakespeare’s prodigal 31,000-word vocabulary, the KJB works its magic with a lexicon of just 12,000 words.

The word scapegoat is a great closing argument in a trial. The story goes that the word scapegoat is derived from an Old Testament ritual described in Leviticus 16. In order to atone for their sins, a clan would gather together each year. Two goats were chosen from the herd, perfect and without blemish. One would be sacrificed. On the head of the other, however, the clan would cast all its sins, hurts, jealousies, aggrievements (is that a word?), misdeeds. This blameless goat would then be driven out into the desert, alive, to suffer alone and die as atonement for the wrongs of all the clan.   (then you appeal to the jury and say something like “this is what the opposing side would have you do, heap all the wrongs and misdeeds of an entire corporation on the head of one person, and drive that blameless person out into the wilderness, alone and helpless, a scapegoat for someone else’s wrongdoing.”)

Related posts:

1. Monday Midday Links: The Macmillan Amazon Fight Post Mortem Continues
2. Monday Midday Links: Best Social Media Story Yet
3. Monday Midday Links: SFR Holiday Bash

It is currently accepting pre-orders for the hardcover version of ‘I Am the Market: How to Smuggle Cocaine by the Ton, in Five Easy Lessons’ by Luca Rastello.

And in 2002, the United States Justice Foundation, a conservative group, threatened to sue Amazon for selling ‘Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers.’ That title is still available through Amazon.

Perhaps those concerned can voice their complaints loud enough to have even more books removed.   There are already one star reviews on the books by David Riegel, author of Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers, that started being posted yesterday.   In googling, I found that Amazon had removed another title regarding pedophilia in 2000 under pressure from Evangelical Christians, although it is offered for sale from secondary sellers on the site.    Oh well.   (I blame all the people who brought this up for my knowledge of the NMLBA’s existence. I could have lived without that but now I inflict it on the rest of you.)

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Bluefire App has been updated to allow for library rentals.   This means you can use your local digital lending library with Bluefire.   Basically, you download the digital book from your local library and then copy it over to iTunes and then sync.   It’s important to remember, though, that downloading an ePub book requires two steps.   First you download the “ASCM” file and then you double click on that file.   Your computer should open Adobe Digital Editions (or the Sony Reader Software if that is how you have it set up).   ADE will then download the actual book.    The book should be found in My Documents/Digital Editions folder.   I have a tutorial with pictures here as does Bluefire here.   Yay, Bluefire!

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New York Times will have a separate ebook bestseller list beginning in 2011 which means that authors like the Harlequin Presents authors who are routinely showing up on the USA Today list and the self published authors that are ranked high on Kindle might show up instead of others.   I suspect, however, that the ebook bestseller list will largely mirror that of the print list because frankly ebook reader tastes aren’t so different than digital reader tastes if the existing top selling lists at Amazon are any marker.   There will be one list for fiction and one for non fiction which leads me to wonder if there is going to be a future abrogation of format distinctions between hardcover, trade, and mass market and what that means for bookselling.

Further, given that Amazon has at least 50% of the market, if the Times list doesn’t track very closely with the Amazon list then its methodology will be put in question.   And if Times list is tracking digital books and Amazon does retain 50% of the market, what is the use of the Times list in the first place?

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Borders has partnered with a fulfillment company to offer free two day shipping for $79 AND free shipping on returns.   This is the cost of an Amazon Prime membership (which I have and   love).   Amazon offers Prime eligible shipping for things other than books but it does not offer free shipping on returns.   This is smart by Borders.

Related posts:

1. Thursday Midday Links: More on Amazon and Macmillan
2. Thursday Midday Links: The Year of the Digital Backlist
3. Thursday Midday Links: Orbit to Publish Digital Shorts

Next week we are going to celebrate National Coming Out Day and the “It Get’s Better” movement started by Dan Savage:

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With all the layoffs and downsizing, Borders has no need for the space its current headquarters offers. Thus Borders Corporate in Ann Arbor has been quietly listed for sale for a bargain $18.439 million dollars. That has to be a blow for the local Ann Arbor economy given that only an estimated 600 people still work there.

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Macmillan Publishers (you know, the company whose CEO won’t allow digital lending of books and thinks readers should have to get out of their house to buy a book) is launching Macmillan Films so that it can package literary projects to Hollywood. I suspect Macmillan will start to want authors’ film rights now.

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On Agency Gatekeeper Blog is a fun rundown of things that drive an anonymous reviewer for a “major book-reviewing outlet” crazy. (no, it’s no one from Dear Author that I know of). While the reviewer holds up the JR Ward series as one that gets it right (which is ironic given that the Ward series is devoid of any female personality and the heroines are distinguishable only by the color of dress that they were), she nails some points like how

#2– A career is something that happens while you’re waiting for a rich man (or in some cases, a rich vampire) to sweep you off your feet. If there is ever a choice between pursuing your career, maintaining friendships and enjoying daylight versus becoming a blood-sucking immortal fiend of the night who forsakes all human contact and can’t practice medicine anymore, a woman will always choose her man.

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Speaking of lists, I particularly enjoyed Stephanie Draven’s 7 Deadly Sins of Paranormal Romance.

GREED: Too Many Speculative Elements. The best paranormal romance takes the world as we know it, or the past as we imagine it, and twists one or two crucial elements, following the repercussions from those changes like ripples on a pond. The worst paranormal romance turns itself into a carnival for every strange and unexplained myth, magic, and phenomenon in the cosmos. Elves and vampires, mining together on Epsilon 4 with space aliens who are ruled by the Wicked Witch of the West in a kingdom called Oz-readers need to be able to focus. In a world where everything is possible, what is truly at stake? (For an example of how too much of a good thing can ruin a series, see the television series LOST which started out with an intriguing premise, but eventually piled so many new paranormal elements onto the stack that the whole thing collapsed under its own weight, bleeding viewers and disappointing long-time fans.)

I refer to Greed as the “No Paranormal Left Behind” syndrome.

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Sourcebooks is launching a new “line” of books called Casablanca Classics. CC will republish old books that have gone out of print. Unfortunately, the price of these new books will be $9.99. I love this idea and hate the price point. After all, I can find most of these used on Amazon for $.99 + shipping.

November 2010
Devil’s Desire by Laurie McBain

February 2011
Fierce Eden by Jennifer Blake
Moonstruck Madness by Laurie McBain
My Love, My Enemy by Jan Cox Speas

March 2011
Merely Magic by Patricia Rice
Legacy by Jeanette Baker

May 2011
Tapestry of Dreams by Roberta Gellis

June 2011
Bride of the MacHugh by Jan Cox Speas

August 2011
Midnight Waltz by Jennfer Blake
Catriona by Jeanette Baker

Given that the only thing Sourcebooks has to do is pay for a new cover and marketing, the $9.99 price point seems excessively high.

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Random House is running at online promotion at Suvudu.com where fans get to vote on the direction of a chain story, in a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style. Here is the link to the page, and the original announcement is below. Lara Adrian, Harry Connolly, Lucy A. Snyder, Kelly Meding, and Stacia Kane are writing this short story of Munira, a "retriever" of magical items in the fictional city of Port Nightfall.

The daughter of a djinn, Munira is contacted by the most powerful sorcerer in the city, the wily Temesis who makes her an offer she can't refuse: steal the Light of Ta'lab from an evil necromancer or he will kill her father! Fans will have the opportunity to vote on the choices Munira makes in the story via Suvudu.com, and each new section (penned by the various authors), will reflect the fans' voices. The short story began on Monday, September 20, 2010 and, once completed, will be available for download as a  ¢99 eBook.

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Orbit has launched The Orbital Drop which is a monthly special ebook deal. Deals will include two-for-ones, digital boxed-sets, and big discounts on some of the best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Urban Fantasy in the known universe. Each deal lasts one month though. You can sign up here. When I signed up, it looked like it might be US only which is a big shame.

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You know who loves happy endings? It might not be who you think. Eva Ibbotson, author of several beautiful YA novels, admits to loving the happy ever after ending. Eva’s childhood

was a “very cosmopolitan, sophisticated and quite interesting” childhood, but it was not a happy one. With parents who were very bad at hiding their dislike of each other living at either end of the country and grandparents in Vienna, Ibbotson was “always on some train, going about and wishing I had a home. When I came to write, consciously or unconsciously I always wanted to make things right for the hero or the heroine.” As a result, Ibbotson describes herself as a “happy endings freak”.

Thanks from Reader Robin F.

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HarperCollins’ CEO says that revenue from digital books, excluding children’s books, is about 20% this year. That’s a hell of a sea change from just a year ago. No wonder publishers are in turmoil.

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Related posts:

1. Publishers Making the Backlist More Accessible
2. Wednesday Midday Links: February Book Specials
3. Tuesday Midday Links: New Readers, New Prices

Sony has always manufactured a beautiful feeling product and I don’t doubt that these feel great.   At $179, though, I think the Kindle is a much better deal particularly because the $139 one comes with the same screen (although no touch) and wifi connectivity.   Even the nook at $149 comes with wifi and a small touchscreen.

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Borders has cut the prices of the Kobo and Aluretek readers.   The Kobo is now $129 and the Aluretek is $99.   The Kobo at $129 is too high because it lacks any kind of connectivity, has content issues (not enough content compared to BN and Kindle), and has much lower refresh.

Borders is also going to sell Build a Bear accessories in its children’s section.   BN has a large assortment of toys and stuffed animals as well.

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After several quarters of struggle, Random House has seemingly turned its ship around with the help of sales by Stieg Larsson.   Digital is also growing.

"In the past half year we have really embraced digital transition throughout our companies, replacing anxieties about the format with forward thinking and with well-executed action," Dohle said with Random on track to generate e-book sales of over $100 million (which will roughly be about 5% of worldwide sales). The majority of sales have come in the U.S., but the U.K. and Germany have also seen good gains. E-book publishing operations will soon start in Latin America and Spain.

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Michelle sent me this link to an Amazon discussion regarding the bleeding of paranormal romance into urban fantasy.   What I think is interesting is how proprietary readers are of their favorite genres and how much they dislike any “mislabeling.”   I am the same way for romance.   Some of these readers really dislike romance (which is perfectly fine) but I thought reading the thought processes of other readers was interesting.

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Sarah Rees Brennan, author of the highly recommended Demon Lexicon books, talks about why she doesn’t write negative reviews.   For various reasons from not wanting to unintentionally hurt someone’s feelings to understanding that her viewpoint might not be totally objective, Brennan talks about the books she loves but understands and appreciates those that write the negative reviews. Reviews, she concludes are primarily for readers.   (I agree!).

Related posts:

1. Tuesday Midday Links: Harlequin Horizon’s, A self publishing venture
2. Tuesday Midday Links: Publishers still thinking not thinking about readers
3. Monday Midday Links: Sony Drops eBook Reader Prices

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Barnes and Noble is advertising free digital books.   Except these are books that are in the public domain so its a pretty lame promotion, if you ask me.   I did a post a couple of weeks ago about where to get public domain books which include   Project Gutenberg,  MobileRead, and  Feedbooks, Amazon and Sony.   Commenters pointed out manybooks.net.   The reality is that BN does have some good freebies to promote such as Karen Marie Moning’s DarkFever and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Steve Hockensmith.

Don’t forget to check out Books on the Knob for a list of more promotional freebies.

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Books on Board has a list of all the RITA nominees on one page.   I really appreciate this.   I use the RITA nominees to find new category books (not so much for the mass markets).

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Borders has opened up its ebook store.   It sells ePubs encrypted with the Adobe DRM.   Last week it was giving away a few books but that promotion appears to have ended. In perusing the store, I noticed that if Borders could discount a book, the book was generally at least 20% off.   I found one really good deal and a worthwhile freebie:

• Too Good to Be True by Kristan Higgins $3.60
• Dark Fever by Karen Marie Moning Free

Because Borders is missing a lot of content, it isn’t a replacement for your main shopping site, but it would be worthwhile to check out from time to time to see if you are getting the best deal for your Harlequin, Kensington and Random House purchases.

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Hearts’s iPad Magazine Apps will offer more functionality than just allowing a reader to peruse the magazine contents.    The Oprah magazine will have a built in ebook reader and will allow readers to purchase Oprah recommended books and read them through the “O” magazine.

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Michael Wolff writes for Newswer that it is a wasteland at the Times and SundayTimes in London behind the newly institute paywalls.

A Murdoch and Fleet Street veteran with whom I've been corresponding about the paywall reported to me on his recent conversation with an A-list entertainment publicist: "What was really interesting to me was that this person volunteered a blinding realization. "Why would I get any of my clients to talk to the  Times or the  Sunday Times if they are behind a paywall? Who can see it? I can’t even share a link and they aren’t on search. It's as though their writers don’t exist anymore.'"

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Paul Biba writes that there is a strong rumor that Apple and Amazon are going to employ individuals who will pursue ebook rights from authors whose rights have reverted or whose digital rights have never been sold.   This will be interesting.

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I thought this post at All About Romance by author Lisa Kleypas was quite interesting.   She said that she hoped her next books would be paperback or trade paperback at least.   It sounds like the publisher is pushing for hardcover.

Because this is a Christmas story, it’s going to be a shorter book in a hardcover format (I think price is 16.00)–this length and format seems to be what many readers prefer for a holiday read. But every book in the series can be read on its own, and the following three titles will all be full-length (which to me is much easier to write than a shorter length!) I would love for them to be released in paperback or possibly trade, but no decisions have been made yet.

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Speaking of libraries:

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Last, but not least, is a news bit about Lazy Day Publishing.   LDP came to my attention via a notice in my inbox.   As new epublishers spring up, I try to check them out.   This one, however, lacked any concrete information on who was backing the publishing house.   I put the email aside and figured I would check   back upon the release of their books.

This weekend I received an email that LDP was upset about the comments on Absolute Write Forum.   AWF, like all forums, has good information and bad information but there is no doubt it is a seriously valuable tool for aspiring and published writers a like.   AWF, for example, had posters up to two years ago reporting non payment by Dorchester. The purpose of AWF is to provide a safe haven for writers to share ideas about craft but also advice about the business side of publishing.   One of its most oft visited areas is the Bewares section.

Lazy Day Publishing starts its own thread on AW and the commenters were initially cordial but eventually there were the “who the f are you?” questions because, well, who are these people and what do they know about publishing?      Lazy Day took exception to this thread and wrote a blog screed which they deleted after a couple of days.   Why delete Lazy Day?   Have you not heard of Google cache? or um, screencaps? (I took the screencaps because I KNEW that this would be deleted).

took the higher road on this forum.  This was  not an easy thing to do.   How these cranky, arrogant and rude authors suddenly became the voice of the forum, I'm  notsure.   I guess the better question would be how they became so  negative in the first place?   Maybe it's all the rejection letters they have received in their lifetime.    

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These few authors who fuel the negativity on this site are doomed to an unhappy existence of barely making it as a writer.   I feel sorry for them.   I feel sorry that they have forgotten about the art of storytelling.   They have lost the dream of sharing their writing with others.   They have created this microcosm of hostility.   An existence I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Wow, does this sound familiar or what?

In reading over their website, there are wrong word choices and bad grammar usage.   There is no question that you will see bad grammar on our site all the time, but we are an unedited blog site, not a site for a publishing house.

So what do I take away from Lazy Day Pub?   They have short fuses, will try to embarrass you on their blog if you cross them, and they lack a copy editor for the Frequently Asked Questions.

Related posts:

1. Authors Behaving Badly: #2, RWA Literacy Episode
2. Authors Behaving Badly Episode #3: Jan Butler
3. Update on the Hachette eBook Situation or Retailers Behaving Badly