Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary

One of the most attractive things about the iPhone/iTouch and soon to be iPad is the robust App community that offers everything from the ridiculous (fart apps) to the sublime (Stanza). But Apple rules the App store like Tomas de Torquemada (Inquisitor-General of the Spanish Inquisition). It’s a reign of terror and uncertainty [...]

Author LA Banks introduces President Obama at a Healthcare Summit in Philadelphia. Banks writes the popular The Vampire Huntress series published by St. Martin’s Press and a new angel based series for Pocket. H/t to Rose Fox.
Ms Banks blogged about her experience and it’s pretty moving:
But my speech had gone out of my [...]

I had a product demonstration of GetGlue today with Ami Grecko.  I had learned of GetGlue before but I really didn’t understand how it worked.  After all, do I really need another social networking service?  At the end of the thirty minutes, I was convinced that this wasn’t just another social networking service and I [...]

This week has been bereft of news links because of our giveaways like “Save the Contemporary” and the “ACE/ROC Giveaway”.  This does not mean that news hasn’t been happening so here’s my two bit summary:

Overzealous copyright enforcement results in harmful and crazy results. First example is OK Go. EMI, the record label of [...]

More plagiarism from authors and journalists.
NY Times has another reporter who has admitted to lifting text from other journalists, specifically from the Wall Street Journal. He apologized and said he thought it was his own material. Slate made up its own list of excuses by plagiarists.
But apologies might be a [...]

This is a quite hilarious ad by Verizon mocking AT&T’s pathetic coverage (I am an AT&T customer via my move to the iPhone). Watch until the end.

Guardian asks whether crowdsourcing author advances is legitimate. Deanna Zandt wanted to write a book on using social networking for social change and action, specializing in [...]

I was browsing books last night and came across Patricia Briggs’ Silver Borne (non affiliate Kindle link).  Right now the Kindle price is $9.99 if you pre-order.  My understanding is that Kindle pre -orders do count for bestseller lists so you can get the book now and still help out a favorite author.
Amazon is playing [...]