My weekly round up of “interesting stuff I found while procrastinating”:

#1: Blogger King Rat on authors behaving badly towards reviewers who write negative reviews. I agree that authors have the right to respond to negative reviews. It may not necessarily be productive depending on how it is done, but if they feel the need they are entitled to do it. I don’t think authors have the right to encourage stalking by handing out reviewers’ personal contact details and trying to inflame readers to contact reviewer (or worse).

#2: An interesting piece over on Tor.com by Brian James on whether we should judge a book by its cover. I have to admit that I’m guilty of this. This is one area where self-published books really shoot themselves in the foot because the covers invariably have a quality that marks them as self-published.

#3: It looks like Alan Dean Foster is writing the first book in the new Star Trek universe, following his novelization of this summer’s movie. The novelization was listed at $20 for the paperback which I thought was a ridiculous price–even regular Star Trek books are priced ridiculously for the “Harlequin” of sci-fi. No news on whether regular pricing will return with this book. If you read the article closely you’ll see that there is already a sequel to this summer’s movie in the works (news to me, but then I don’t keep up on these things).

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Finally, finally I have found ebook downloads for you! I have been looking but they have been pretty scarce the last month or so. I’ve come across an ebook “world fair” that, as far as I can tell, is legitimate (as in legal).

The World Ebook Fair appears to be a yearly event where, for one month only (until August 4th this year) you have free access to the ebooks of participating libraries (normally there is a monthly charge though some libraries included appear to free all the time). They say that there are 2 million books in the combined collection.

The collection includes some sites that are always free and have been featured here before (like the BAEN collection). It looks like there are a lot of older and/or obscure titles included but that doesn’t mean there isn’t interesting reading to be had. If you are a writer (or just the curious type) there are a number of government and academic libraries on the list that look like they have a wealth of information on obscure topics.

Another plus is that you will find books in different languages. I recognized Spanish, Dutch, and French sites, but I didn’t look through the whole list (it looked like there might be some Japanese books as well).

Enjoy and let me know if you come across anything good. With 2 million books to go through it would be great to have some leads to narrow it down!

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Released June 2009 (Little, Brown & Company) * 262 pages * ISBN-13: 9780316070089

The marketing for The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor talks a lot about the newly discovered fossil Ida. In fact, all of the quotes on the back of the hard cover reference the fossil rather than the book. Add to that the copy on the inside flap of the book cover that talks almost exclusively about Ida and the author’s exclusive access to the scientists that discovered and studied her and you’re left with the impression that The Link is all about the Ida fossil. It’s not.

On the whole, The Link is a recap of what is known about life on Earth based on the fossil record with a focus on the evolution of primates. In that respect it is a decent book, though as a visual learner I would have liked more images for the different species discussed as it all became a blur of names after a while. As a book about Ida, The Link disappoints. The first 30 pages and the last 30 pages talk about Ida and the other 200 pages talk about the fossil record leading up to primates. The 200 pages are presented as “context” for the Ida fossil but I found that a bit of a stretch for a book marketed as being about one particular fossil. The 60 or so pages that do talk about Ida include a lot of repetitive information and don’t reveal much about the process of studying Ida.

I was also disappointed that the images included in the book are not referred to in the text making it difficult to find their context at times. In particular, there are several images of a computer generated three dimensional representation of Ida’s skeleton. Presumably this image was based on information collected from the Ida fossil. Since the fossil is flattened, it would have been interesting to find out how they came up with the measurements and other data needed to make a three dimensional model of the skeleton as the animal might have appeared in real life. Unfortunately, there was no mention of how the computer model was generated in the book.

On the whole, The Link is a good overview of the fossil record on primates and their ancestors. As a book on the Ida fossil, The Link simply does not have enough information on Ida to justify the marketing. Whether you enjoy The Link or not will depend largely on what you are expecting from the book. If you’re interested you can check out an interview with the scientist that discovered Ida.

You can buy this and other books by Colin Tudge at bricks and mortar stores as well as online booksellers like Amazon (US, Canada and UK) or The Book Depository (free shipping to 90 countries).

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I have rediscovered StumbleUpon so not only am I getting less done, I am finding way too many websites of interest. If any of you are using StumbleUpon and want to connect (or friend, or fan, or whatever it is called there) you can check out my page.

#1: Some very cool bookshelf projects to be found on Instructables.com. Originally I went there for the Inverted Bookshelf, but they also have a Hidden Door Bookshelf, a bookshelf made of encyclopedias, and an Invisible Bookshelf. There’s more, I’m sure, if you poke around the sidebar for related projects on that site.

#2: If you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you might find the video below of interest. It shows how to make a dock for the iPhone/iPod Touch out of nothing but binder clips. I don’t have the right sizes handy but the next time I’m at the dollar store I’m going to stock up and try it out. Be warned the video has a soundtrack (you won’t lose any information if you turn the sound off since the instructions are given as captions only):

#3: How could I not link to a series of posts called “How NOT To Be a Douchebag Author 101“? It’s a series of posts by a book editor on how authors can navigate the publishing world without being a jerk/pain about it.

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Not too many links this week since I haven’t been online much to come across them:

#1: An update on J.D. Salinger’s bid to block publication of a book based on The Catcher in the Rye. A temporary restraining issue was issued, but the judge reserved judgment on the fair use issues raised.

#2: J. A. Konrath, author of Whiskey Sour and other novels, weighs in on the price of ebooks: “The rules of supply and demand don’t work in a digital world, because the supply is unlimited. You don’t fight piracy with weapons. You fight piracy with cost and convenience.” Exactly!

#3: One of the advantages of the Kindle is supposed to be that your library of books you’ve bought is always there for you to download so you don’t have to keep copies of every single book on your Kindle. Well, apparently the downloads aren’t unlimited. If you download a book too many times Amazon won’t allow the download and you’ll have to pay for the book again. Be sure to read the next article in the saga (linked at the bottom of the first article). It seems even Amazon doesn’t know what’s going on. More on Kindle DRM issues.

#4: A very good assessment on How the eBook Industry Isn’t Like the Music Industry.

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Time to pick the last two winners of The Link. This is both for the June 17 drawing (I only got enough entries to draw one winner for this date) and the June 24th drawing. You’ll notice my review is not up yet for reasons already explained. I do like to have reviews up during a giveaway so my apologies for not managing that this time. I’m reading as fast as I can and as fast as my schedule will allow.

Anyhoodle …

According to my spreadsheet and random.org, the two winners are:

• jmnlman
• T Spradlin

Emails have gone out but I’ll need to hear back within 72 hours or I’ll have to pick someone else. If you didn’t win, there is another giveaway coming from Self Counsel Press (previously announced, but then I got sick and didn’t put it up).

I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to mention their favourite science book. There were quite a few I hadn’t read so I’m adding to my reading pile (What? You thought I just asked to make you do more work for an entry?). I’ll post a list of the book recommendations later (*cough* in my spare time *cough*) for those who are interested in their fellow readers’ recommendations.

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Just a note to let you know that the drawing of the winners for this week’s giveaway will be delayed. I have a cold that has knocked me flat so I don’t have the energy to blog or read this week. I should be posting again next week and will try to post the new giveaway I promised next week as well. In the meantime, the giveaway for The Link is still open (I hope to have the book review for you next week).

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Released December 2008 (Self-Counsel Press) * 232 pages * ISBN-13: 978-1551808666

Start & Run a Real Home-Based Business by Dan Furman takes you through what you need physically and mentally to run a home-based business. The tone is conversational and straightforward. Dan Furman has been there, done that, and made the mistakes to prove it. Not only did he learn from his mistakes and now runs a successful home business, but he has also made it easy for you to learn from his mistakes in this book (that way you can find new and creative mistakes to make ).

This is the kind of book I needed but didn’t know to look for. I am in the process of starting up a freelance business, but have had no idea exactly how to go about it or what to consider. The whole process is just so big that it’s hard to know where to begin and what to avoid. Start & Run a Real Home-Based Business gives an overview of how to determine whether you are prepared to run a home-based business and what steps to take first.

The book covers businesses that sell services that are local (for example plumbers) and those that can sell globally (like things that can be shipped or transferred digitally). The book is divided into three sections: Mind, Body, and Soul. The Mind section covers how to go from initial brilliant idea to assessing the value of the idea to actually getting off your keister and starting a business (One of the chapters towards the end of this section is called “You do realize you’re the one who makes work appear, right?”). This section also talks about the boundaries that mindset imposes on us and how to overcome a limiting mindset.

The Body section focuses on the physical requirements for starting a business: money, space, software, documents, advertising, etc. The advice is straightforward and useful. I found the advertising section particularly useful as I really had no idea what to consider or rule out for a business just starting out. Now I have a number of ideas based on the reasoning and advice of this section. I also found the section on forms interesting as Furman gives an example of how changing the wording on his quote form increased his closing rate from 50% to 75%. It’s a common sense change but I rarely see it on quote forms I’ve been given by service providers (more on forms further down when I discuss the accompanying CD). Other interesting information included a compelling argument for having a separate phone line for home-based businesses as well as voice mail (something home-based business owners often think they can do without).

The Soul section covers topics like pricing, dealing with difficult customers, being a good boss to yourself, dealing with competitors, customer service and making time to work on the business itself.

A lot of what Furman says is common sense, but the thing about common sense is that you have to understand how something works in order to have common sense about it. Otherwise you’re just guessing and a lot of people guess wrong (that’s why so many people make the same beginner mistakes no matter which skill they’re learning). This book not only goes over what to do, but it also goes over why the beginner mistakes are mistakes by explaining why a particular approach doesn’t work.

This book comes with a CD of forms to get you started including forms on focusing the idea of your business, coming up with a start-up budget, a guide to writing a press release and instructions for writing a marketing proposal (there are a few other odds and ends on the CD as well). These files are actually quite useful (and I say this having taken a course on business writing and on branding small businesses), but they are not reproduced in the printed book so access to the CD is vital to benefit from these forms. This is where the publisher made a strategic blunder.

The files on the CD are in .doc (Microsoft Word) and PDF (Adobe Reader) format which is great because it makes them accessible to almost anyone–or at least it should. For reasons that escape me these files are sequestered in a proprietary program interface that must be installed on your computer (strike one) and ONLY runs on Windows (strike two). Got a Mac? No document access for you (no, you can NOT just pull them off the CD using a Mac–strike three). Now, the publisher does disclose that the CD is PC only. The issue is that there is no justification for excluding Mac users (or any other non-Windows operating system).

The proprietary interface which requires installation on my PC (which, take note, I hate because the last thing I need is another useless program installed on my PC) appears to have the sole purpose of requiring you to accept an agreement to not redistribute the files and give you a pretty browser interface to find the file you want. That’s it. That’s the sole reason–as far as I can see–to prevent Mac users from accessing otherwise platform-agnostic files. It’s not a good reason. All the program does is unpack the files so that you can copy them to your hard drive … at which point they can be read on any computer (so the proprietary program is also pointless in its purpose of keeping the files only on the original hard drive).

The good news, if you’re a Mac user, is that the unpacked files can be read on a Mac IF you can find a friend with a PC willing to install the program to unpack them on their computer. The bad news is that likely violates the agreement that publisher wants you to agree to (though technically the agreement is to only have one copy of the files so if you delete them from the PC …). Do with that information what you will.

CD issues aside, I really like Start & Run a Real Home-Based Business and found it surprisingly useful. In fact, I’ve recommended it to several of my peers who are also contemplating a home-based business.

You can buy this and other Self-Counsel Press titles from Self-Counsel Press (US and Canada) and Amazon (US, Canada and UK). If you want a chance to win a copy (or one of several other books recently released by Self-Counsel Press that I will be reviewing in the coming weeks), come back soon to enter a giveaway from the publisher (I hope to post the giveaway tomorrow, but I’ve come down with some kind of virus so I don’t know if I’ll be up to blogging tomorrow).

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Here are some interesting book- and publishing-related links that I found around the Internet this week:

#1: A judge ordered a pharmaceutical executive to write a book. Now that’s punishment!

#2: Not really publishing related, but since I spend a lot of time on Twitter: 10 irrational behaviors on Twitter that’d make you look crazy in real life.

#3: What would you do if someone cut your salary by 23%? I’d probably do what this editorial cartoonist for the Boston Globe did. (It’s this kind of thinking that makes me well-suited to freelance work and not so much to having a boss).

#4: It takes a special sort of person to ponder “Menstrual Cycles in Romance Writing & Reading.”

Enjoy.

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Time to pick winners of The Link for the first week. I will try to have my review up next week though the way my life is going I make no promises. According to my spreadsheet and random.org, the two winners are:

• sara
• Christina Brunetti

Emails have gone out but I’ll need to hear back within 72 hours or I’ll have to pick someone else. If you didn’t win, there are still three more copies to give away. If you haven’t entered, you can still do so.

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