Thursday News: Unlimited subscription access offered to kids from Amazon; Verizon wants to spy on your living room; HQE and Cosmo team up to bring forth a new digital imprint
Publishing NewsAmazon / Harlequin / privacy7 Comments
Twitter / HistoricPapers: @Amateur_Casual @JayneShrimpton … – This fantastic photo turned up in my twitter stream. It is a Victorian photograph. Historic Papers
@amateur_casual @jayneshrimpton Not sure what decade this is from but possibly a close contender!? twitter.com/HistoricPapers…
— Historic Newspapers (@HistoricPapers) December 5, 2012
Kindle FreeTime Unlimited – Have a kid who wants a tablet but worried about the cost of content? Amazon has now introduced Kindle FreeTime Unlimited which allows unlimited access to books, games, movies and TV shows curated by Amazon for a monthly fee of $4.99 per month for one kid or $9.99 for up to six kids. Currently there are 1,513 items available in the “all you can eat” subscription offering.
Over 1,000 of those items are books. Amazon
Big Brother is Coming! – This is terrifying. Verizon has patented a DVR that will watch and listen to everything within your living room so as to provide targeted advertising. Who would want this? Aside from the obvious, this brings to mind the story about the Nike Fuel band results which revealed to a woman her boyfriend was cheating on her. Her boyfriend shared his Fuel Band data with her and must have forgotten. It showed unusual activity around 1 and 2 in the morning when he should have been, well, sleeping. Instead, I guess he was screwing around on her. I can now see a new version of the “walking in on the fiance while he cheating trope.” “Dude, I saw you via our Verizon spy unit.” SourceFed
First Page gets published. – Rhiannon Hart participated in our Saturday First Page feature where a first page is offered up for critique. Since then Hart sold her book, Blood Song, to Random House Australia and it is now available as an ebook worldwide. Congratulations! My inbox
Cosmo and Harlequin hook up to provide a new co branded imprint of novellas – Harlequin and Cosmopolitan are working together to bring “Cosmo Hot Reads” from Harlequin to the market. These novellas (approximately 30,000 words) will be priced at $3.99 and “will present independent, adventurous women in contemporary settings and feature fast-paced plots, great dialogue and compelling romance”. Beginning in May 2013, Harlequin will publish two books a month. Given Cosmo’s articles and dubious relationship advice, I can only imagine what kind of books will come out of this partnership. Alas, I am not the target audience as I am no fan of novellas. Authors can submit their books here. My inbox
I am a fan of novellas. I think it takes a lot of skill to write a good one, but $3.99 is expensive, especially considering that $3.99 is also the price of the new 80,000-words Superromances. But maybe these novellas will include priceless sex tips, like these: http://www.nerve.com/advice/ridiculous-tips/the-best-of-ridiculous-tips-for-a-miserable-sex-life-emcosmopolitan-em-edition
@Brie:
Thank you, I nearly choked on my water reading about the hand job instructions! Priceless.
As for Verizon, how about this patent that Microsoft has applied for:
I got this from Techdirt.com, but they were quoting Geekwire.
Love that picture. The ladies dress looks 1870s and I do believe the style of train is called a fishtail train. So perhaps we have our deep sea diver with his mermaid bride?
Lovely cover for Blood Song. I’m curious, did the author say if First Page was a factor in her being published? As far as worldwide availability, I’m not seeing it at BN.
So Verizon actually wants to monitor me in my home? Hell. No. Why would they think this is a good idea rather than incredibly creepy. Fail.
@Brie: “If, at any point during this oddly elaborate ritual, he looks confused, toss him a heated stare and say, “I crave you” — you know, to clear things up.”
Oh, please. Will some author include this in her next sex scene?
Dear Amazon, please can I have 1000 books a month for $4.99? I promise to be good.
Who knew that Max Headroom was prophesying the future? Any day now, they’ll install spy technology on our cable boxes, and “off” buttons will be illegal.
There was a scandal in recent memory (last year maybe?) in which a school was spying on students in their bedrooms via school-issued laptops. It’s really, really disturbing. We’re all being converted into marketing data points, and are agreeing to give up so many rights in exchange for convenience and entertainment.