Tuesday News: Twitter chat with the Ghost from Nalini Singh’s series; Amazon and Apple fight over public disclosure of trial information; Stephen King snubs ebooks
I’m hosting a twitter chat with “The Ghost” on Thursday, May 23rd, from 9:00 to 10:00 pm EDT. Even if you are not on twitter, you can follow along at this link. You may not want to come if you don’t want to know any spoilers about Heart of Obsidian.
Amazon Fights to Keep Secrets in E-book Trial – The price fixing case is set to start on June 3, only two weeks away, and the pretrial motions are being filed at a furious pace. Poor Judge Cote. These will keep her up at night. The latest round of motions have to do with how much of Amazon’s dirty laundry will be aired in the public trial. Apple says all of it. Amazon says none of it.
Who will win? My guess is Amazon. Courts (despite being about open access) routinely enter protective orders for business reasons and Amazon asserting a trade secret argument is likely going to win. It’d be great for us if Amazon lost, only because we’d get to learn about internal workings of a private company, but I suspect that is wishful thinking. Publishers Weekly
Stephen King Skipping E-book on New Novel – Stephen King wants you to go into a bookstore and buy his book so he won’t be making his next book available in digital format. There’s no word whether the digital book will never exist in digital format except through the pirate market, or whether this is just a windowing technique. h/t Katiebabs Vulture
How to Help Oklahoma – Over at Reddit, they started a thread to compile all the ways you can help Oklahoma City in recovering from the devastating tornado. My heart goes out to all the families there who were affected, particularly those who had children at the Plaza Tower Elementary.
The news out of Oklahoma is terrible. My heart and thoughts go out to the folks caught up in all that mess, and especially to the families and friends who have lost loved ones.
RE: Amazon vs. Apple. It’s my shameless anti-apple slant showing here, but I hope Amazon wins the fight to keep trade secrets private. I’d like to think Amazon will win the overall case, and I don’t want to see apple get some payback by exposing Amazon’s secrets as it goes down in flames.
…ironic, in that if it were Amazon vs. my curiosity (and yours), then yes, I’d love to know the internal tick-tock behind some of the things I buy, some of the things I’m offered, and how those decisions get made.
Jane, can you storify the chat with the ghost? I’m avoiding spoilers but would love to read the chat after I read the book.
@Heather – yes, I’ll try (full confession. I’ve never storyfied before).
Hasn’t Stephen King done that with a book before? Or maybe the ebook was windowed that time.
@Heather Greye: Ooohh…great idea! I’ve been saving HOO for vacation and am avoiding spoilers, too but would love to be able to go back eventually and read through the thread. I hope Jane can make it work!
If Stephen King’s new book is as long as some of his previous novels then he’s doing his readers a disservice by not releasing it in ebook. I have Under the Dome sitting in my TBR but the thing is so heavy I can’t imagine hefting it around.
@Jenny: Hah, Under the dome’s trade being as big and heavy as the hardcover was what finally brought me over to ereaders as well! I could only read it at a table, not on the bus or in bed or anywhere else. If it is delayed digital I don’t mind, but if he was a day-one buy author I might be more miffed — I’m the reader, I pay the money, is it really necessary to tell me to go for a walk instead of read it in my preferred format?
If King’s not releasing it on ebook, I guess he just doesn’t want me to read it. My eyes are getting worse all the time, and my Kindle’s a freaking lifesaver, with font size adjustment. Not to mention, as Jenny said, the SIZE of his books! I read in bed with books over my head – I’d give myself a concussion if I dropped one of his on my face.
So this Twitter talk with The Ghost FROM Heart of Obsidian seems to be saying that the hero from this book is The Ghost – is that what I should read from that? Or am I just reading this wrong because I want to be right about my guess of his identity? Haha.