Linkstravaganza?

[alanajoli]

I probably don't actually have enough links for an extravaganza, but it sounded good in my head, so I'll let it stand.

• I've been waiting until it was public to announce this, and since this interview at Operation Awesome is up, I'm going to say that makes the news officially out there: lyster , aka Max Gladstone, is being represented by Weronika Janczuk of D4EO Literary Agency! He talks about it on his blog here. So many congratulations, Max! The world is one step closer to seeing your awesomeness in print!


• New bits of my writing on the Web: a series review I did for School Library Journal is up here. The history column is progressing with some fun questions and answers. I got to write about the mysterious Great Oak at Double Beach, which no one remembers coming down; a wacky local legend about early governor of Connecticut Gurdon Saltonstall and the lake that bears his name; and weird road names in Branford and how they came to be. I've also started doing some articles for Branford Patch beyond the column, the first of which is about our local toy store, Kid Wishes, closing the bricks and mortar store and moving online..


• Other new fun stuff related to my writing: the director's commentary style interview that I did with Brian LeTendre (of Mo Stache and Secret Identity Podcast) is up streaming here, and is available for download at my home e-tailer, DriveThru. (The interview is downloadable for free.)
• Speaking of e-tailers and e-book sales (with just a slight segue jump), Chuck Wendig wrote a great piece on how the low ball prices on e-books can impact your favorite authors. Don't get me wrong -- I love getting books at the $3 price point. sartorias 's books are available at around that price over at Book View Cafe. I priced Into the Reach and Departure at under the $5 mark. jeff_duntemann 's new novella and an accompanying novella by James R. Strickland are priced together at $2.99 at Barnes and Noble, and will soon be on Kindle for the same price. Clearly, authors I know and respect are offering their fiction at rates that are incredibly affordable -- less, as Cat Valente says, than folks pay for a cup of designer coffee. I don't know how the business model will shape out, but it is interesting to watch. And I agree with (and am a follower of) Chuck's final point: if you like a writer, buy their stuff, and recommend that your friends do the same. I don't always have room in my budget to do so, and I may hold off until after the release date when cash is flowing more freely (and my review pile has fewer books in it!), but I try to support the authors I really want to keep writing more books.


• Of course, that crazy e-book market is doing things that the e-prophets have been anticipating since, oh, 2000 when I went to the Denver Publishing Institute and first heard the voice crying out in the wilderness. According to PW, e-book sales were up 202% in February. But while those percentages don't always mean much to me, the big number in this article is that publishers reported over $90 million in e-book sales. Despite this, and despite the uptick in college students reading e-books, most college students aren't using e-readers for their text books. I'm actually kind of astonished by this, since I first got hooked on e-readers as a great idea when thinking about how much I'd have preferred to carry around something the size of a nook on campus, rather than all my text books -- assuming that it took notes more like a Kindle. ;) (I'm still not a fan of the nook's note taking capability in comparison, but luckily, I don't need to take notes much anymore, unless it's in a review book, and those are almost always ARCs.)


• And last in e-book news, Kindle owners are in luck: they'll be able to start borrowing books from their libraries just like nook and Sony users! PW's link is down, weirdly, but here's the news from Venture Beat. No word yet on a time frame, but I'm super psyched that Amazon decided to make library lending possible for the Kindle. It's a big win for libraries!

Actually, that ended up being more links than I thought I had. Ta da, extravaganza complete!

Comments

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Oooh, thanks for the article link.

A friend of mine who works in business publishing mentioned the concern about how little of the money charged per book is actually spent on the physical product -- and how much more of the cost per copy goes into paying for authors, images, and administration, at least at her house. I suspect that book pricing works differently over the different parts of the industry, and that's going to get skewed as the e-book market grows and develops, as well. I have the feeling that traditional trade houses are going to go toward the indie model I've seen with smaller advances and larger royalty percentages -- something I'm not thrilled about, considering my own experience with a similar contract! But you're right, the whole market is a brave new world, and we'll just have to hang on tight!

[jeff-duntemann.livejournal.com]

I'll write more about this in the future, but my vision has two big elements:

1. Authors are going to have to do more than just emit words into manuscripts. Ebook formatting will be as essential a skill as word processing is right now. Ditto editing, especially in fiction. Too much of the need for editing is an excuse for lazy writing.

2. Publishers will gradually morph into author co-ops, in which authors share online resources but ultimately create their own books. The key is that authors will own and control the process, though the transformation won't be complete until all printing is POD printing.

The days of the 55% retail discount are numbered.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Jeff, are you familiar with Book View Cafe at all? They're exactly the kind of co-op you're talking about -- so yes, I think that future is already coming into being!