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Kindle for PC

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:46:00 -0500

One of the features lacking in Amazon's Kindle plans for e-book domination has been the fact that in order to read e-books purchased from their store you need to have a Kindle.

No longer.

Amazon has just released the new Kindle for PC software, currently in beta with Mac version coming soon, which is a free download and allows you to view Kindle e-books on your home computer or laptop.

If you're leery of beta software best wait for the release version, though I installed and did the basics without any issue.

Kindle for PC is a quick install. In moments, I was presented with the application's opening screen:

The "Register now to get started" dialog wants your Amazon account information, but it is not necessary to fill this in as there is a "continue without registering" option. I went ahead and filled in my Amazon account information and clicked "Register".

Here's the application resized for better viewing:

The interface is simple almost to the point of being plain. But then it has a fairly narrow, specific purpose: to view Kindle-formatted e-books. Since I registered the software with my Amazon account, Kindle for PC went through a quick sync cycle to see what Kindle e-books I had already purchased. Of course, I don't own a Kindle and therefore have not purchased any e-books from the Kindle store, so nothing showed up.

Fortunately, Amazon makes it easy to add Kindle e-books to my collection by placing a button at the top of the app that says, "Shop in Kindle Store":

That, of course, brings you to the Kindle storefront where, with a quick search, I can find my e-book, The Hall of the Wood.

If you're curious about how the buying process works, click on the "How buying works" link beneath the "Buy" button at the right. This will bring up the following dialog with the new Kindle for PC option listed alongside the more traditional ones:

You'll also see the Kindle for PC device already selected if you registered when the app came up:

For demonstration purposes, and because I've never actually seen my e-book other than in DTP preview mode, I went ahead and purchased my own e-book. Chalk up another sale for me. Once I went through the payment method, etc., I get this:

After clicking "Go to Kindle for PC", I'm brought back to the Kindle for PC app:

A quick double-click on my e-book and it brings it up in all its glory:

Now that's cool.

I can't say I'm real keen on reading e-books on my PC (or Mac if I had one). In other words, I still want an e-reader. But Amazon is addressing a void in the Kindle's feature set. One less thing for someone on the fence about purchasing one e-reader over another to concern themselves with. Plus, who knows, for people who want to buy e-books from Amazon but don't have an iPhone or Kindle, now they can.

Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 3: Book Covers

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:50:00 -0500

This is the next post in a multi-part series about self-publishing your e-book online. Posts include:

1. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 1: Introduction
2. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 2: E-book Formatting
3. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 3: Book Covers (this post)
4. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 4: Amazon.com
5. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 5: Smashwords.com
6. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 6: Scribd.com

Book covers are important, especially in the online world where a potential reader cannot pick up, examine, or thumb through the pages. While studies have shown that a book on a three-for-two table has about one and a half seconds to catch a reader’s eye, I have to wonder if when browsing a list of books on Amazon if a reader doesn't scroll past or click on 'next' in less time than even that. Even when a book is picked up, a reader may only spend "eight seconds looking at the front cover and 15 seconds looking at the back cover" (source: The Wall Street Journal). But, by that time, the book cover has served its purpose: it's caught the reader's eye, and he or she has picked it up.

In summary, that's why a book cover is so important. I'll take that further and say that's why a professional book cover is important.

JA Konrath, who's published a number of books and e-books, identifies five important aspects of book covers:

Branding
Genre
Professional
Reduceable
Eye-catching

In fact, he saw sales increase dramatically when he went from his own home-grown covers to ones designed by a pro.

As a potential self-publisher, I see myself as having three options with regard to book covers:

Don't use one
Create my own
Hire a professional illustrator

Let's discuss each.

1. Don't Use One

IMO, this isn't really an option, but let's at least talk about why not. We all know the old adage don't judge a book by its cover. But what about a book that doesn't have one? Do we judge it at all?

I don't.

Perhaps I'm superficial, but first and foremost I nearly always judge a book by its cover—the quality, the initial impact of the illustration, the colors. They're all important. Even more, the cover should reflect the content of the book, at least in part.

In terms of selling online in, say, the Kindle store, here is what potential readers will see if there is no image associated with your e-book:

Now, that ~~makes~~ does not make me want to click-through and read the book's summary.

2. Create my own

It's cheap, it's easy, but not going to win any awards. I have no illustrating or drawing talent whatsoever. But I've found an easy way to create a cover is to start with a photo. It can be your own or someone else's, but make sure if the latter that you have rights to use it.

A few places to find 'resusable media' not requiring licensing or royalties includes Wikimedia Commons, stock.xchng, and morgueFile. Always double-check the licensing on each image just to be sure.

Once you've got a basic image or photo, you'll need to fix it up a bit with the title of your book and your name at the bare minimum. I've learned it's best to keep it simple, though, especially considering that the image will be shrunk down for display on a product page. Make the font as big as possible so that when it is scaled down the words are still visible.

You don't need to buy something expensive like Adobe Photoshop, either. Check out Paint.NET. It's free and does just about everything I've ever needed.

3. Hire a professional illustrator

Seventy-five percent of 300 booksellers surveyed (half from independent bookstores and half from chains) identified the look and design of the book cover as the most important component.

If you think that, too, you might want to look into hiring a professional. JA Konrath saw immediate results when he went from covers he designed himself to ones a professional cooked up for him.

There are a lot of designers and illustrators out there. I'll leave it up to you to search for them least it look like I'm trying to endorse one or another, which I could only do if I had personal experience with that person.

Conclusion

I was a little hesitant about writing this post, mostly because I feel it's a topic that really shouldn't require much convincing. However, here it is. Hopefully I presented my case. Next, we'll move on to the first of the online retailers I want to cover, Amazon.com.

Further Browsing

Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 2: E-book Formatting

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:26:00 -0500

This is the next post in a multi-part series about self-publishing your e-book online. Posts include:

1. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 1: Introduction
2. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 2: E-book Formatting (this post)
3. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 3: Book Covers
4. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 4: Amazon.com
5. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 5: Smashwords.com
6. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 6: Scribd.com

Let's talk about e-book formatting.

From looking at the Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines document, you might quickly think you need a masters degree in publishing and a whole lot of designer talent to pull this thing off (I did). Not true at all. My experience thus far has been that getting an e-book ready for publishing is really a pretty painless process. The retailers I'll be talking about in later posts accept a variety of formats, and where the expected format is proprietary (like for the Kindle), tools are provided to do the conversion.

Now, I'm not a designer in any sense of the word. So I'm not going to even try giving that sort of advice. But what I can do is point out some simple tips as well as resources that helped me format my e-book. The latter will be a running list; I'll add to it as I find new resources, and intend to use it as reference information myself.

As far as some basic guidelines, here's a few things I've run across:

1. Keep it simple

Don't go crazy with fonts, font sizes, and the general layout. Keep it simple. You want your e-book to be readable on as many devices as possible. The best first step in guaranteeing that is to not go crazy with styling.

2. Use a book cover

This one is HUGE in my opinion, mainly because I'm one of those people who uses the cover as a gauge of the overall quality of the work. Turns out coming up with a professional looking cover is not that difficult. I'll touch on this subject some more in the next post in this series. For now, though, here's the cover I used for my fantasy novel, The Hall of the Wood:

3. Do have a title page

Keep it basic: the name of the book and the author's name, possibly with some artwork if you have it.

4. Do have an 'other books' page

If you have other books available, why not let your readers know about them? Remember, too, that when you do release new e-books, go back and update your previously published ones with the title of the new book. One of the nice things about electronic publishing is that it is not immutable.

5. Do have a copyright page

Some online publishers/retailers require this. It's best to explicitly declare your copyright and/or licensing. If you're a resident of the United States you're automatically covered under standard U.S. copyright law, but something I'm considering is also releasing my work under a Creative Commons license also, similar to how I protect my blog posts.

6. Do have an attribution page

Use this page to thank anyone who helped you along the way.

7. Do have an acknowledgments page

This one is optional, but if you want to include a paragraph or two thanking various people…

8. Do have a quotations page

Another optional one, but some authors like to include a short quote as a lead-in to their content.

The order of the above pages varies. Right now, I'm reading Boneshaker by Cherie Priest, and the order I see is: praise/quotations, other books by author, title page, copyright, dedication, an acknowledgments page, a map of Priest's vision of Seattle, an excerpt from a fictitious history text, another title page (this one with just the name of the novel), and, finally, the content.

That's it for tips, and that about wraps up this post.

I'll leave you with a short list of styling resources I've discovered:

Smashwords Style Guide
Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, wrote this free e-book on how to style your e-book prior to publishing with Smashwords. At twenty pages, it's a fairly quick read, but has some good information in it. While intended as advice for publishing with Smashwords, the information is general enough to apply regardless of where you decide to publish.

Scribd's "Preparing Your Content"
Scribd is another online publisher which I'll be talking more about in this series. This forum entry has some good information about page size, fonts, and a tip I found especially useful regarding using text on your book cover image.

Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines
The first so many pages of this document are a worthwhile read, but when it starts to look like Greek it's time to shut'er down and move on. Too much low level detail for me, but some good stuff early on.

Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 1: Introduction

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:56:00 -0500

This is the first post in a multi-part series about self-publishing your e-book online. Posts include:

1. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 1: Introduction (this post)
2. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 2: E-book Formatting
3. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 3: Book Covers
4. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 4: Amazon.com
5. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 5: Smashwords.com
6. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 6: Scribd.com

One of the thing I've been interested in for some time is selling my book (should be books soon) online. I'd already been doing some research into this, so thought I'd share my findings and investigative work through a new series. The series will likely cover e-book formatting, book covers and why they're important, and, last but certainly not least, the various online retailers that allow you to showcase your work and therefore skip the traditional publishing process entirely.

Selling without a publisher (i.e., self-publishing) is nothing new, but it seems only recently with the advent of popular e-readers that the possibility for e-books has really opened up. We're very possibly at the beginning of a new, mainstream medium for consuming literature, and there's no doubt the publishing game is changing. But going it alone sans agent or publisher isn't easy. Fortunately, there are online partners with whom we can collaborate: while you provide the content, they provide the showcase by which you can present your work. They, of course, take a percentage of your sales in exchange for this service.

Whether that is a fair trade or not is a matter of opinion (rates vary by partner site), but I think it helps to look at what these sites provide you. I mean, we all have web sites or blogs upon which to host the electronic versions of our books. So what are they providing that merits sharing the profit from a sale?

1.) Eyeballs

This one can't be stressed enough. As writers, we work in obscurity until we find representation or a big name publisher, or we work our way up through lesser known channels until we've built a following. Either way, we all start small, which means we probably aren't getting all that much traffic to our web sites. Online retail sites, like Amazon, for example, give us the opportunity to put our work in front of a lot of people who otherwise might never know it existed.

2.) Ratings

They also provide (in most cases) a means by which readers can rate our work. While this can be a two-edged sword in its own right, what we gain is essentially a third-party that removes the suspicion of impropriety were we to host such a facility on our own site.

3.) Community

Some online retailers create a community atmosphere around their product offerings. Scribd Community is one. Amazon Communities is another. You can gain support from others also trying to do well with this avenue, build a following, and connect with readers.

4.) They handle the transaction

They collect the dough, then send you your cut either at set intervals or, more likely, when a certain threshold is surpassed. The exact threshold varies by partner site. This has the nice benefit that you do not have to deal with providing a secure site in which to collect payment information, worry about storing such information for return visits, deal with the case where merchandise is returned (can you return an e-book?), etc.

Those all seem like good reasons to me, and well worth sharing the proceeds of a sale.

With that, I'll leave you with this introductory post for now. Look for Part 2 sometime soon.

New Look

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:14:45 -0500

Every once in a while it's a good idea to freshen up the ol' web site/blog. Truth be told, that light blue background has been bothering me for some time now, but every time I tried to swap out the color I just couldn't find the right one. I was trying to go with a darker blue, and it kept coming out too… purple.

But last week I had sort of an epiphany. The layout, color scheme, and an overwhelming desire to simplify all hit me at once. Next thing I know, I've got a new look for the site.

The overall layout is more or less the same, except I cleaned some things up, took out the "About Me" section, and added a new "Bookshelf" section to highlight what I am currently reading.

Here are the old and new looks, for purposes of my own nostalgia if nothing else.

New look:

(Hopefully the menu bar color looks darkish red; it's actually CSS brown… doesn't look brown to me, but I like it)

Old look:

Much improved, I think.

The nook: More competition for Amazon's Kindle

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:16:00 -0500

Barnes & Noble has released for pre-order their Kindle-killer: the nook (lowercase 'n' on purpose).

'Kindle-killer' is perhaps a bit of an overstatement given that the Kindle owns the e-book reader market right now. But the Nook's imminent arrival is what caused Amazon to preemptively drop the price of the Kindle, so its impact has already been felt.

And make no mistake: e-book reading devices are important not only to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but especially to book/e-book publishers.

Why?

Because, since the arrival of Kindle and the Sony Reader, reading is up:

Amazon […] says that people with Kindles now buy 3.1 times as many books as they did before owning the device. That factor is up from 2.7 in December 2008. So a reader who had previously bought eight books from Amazon would now purchase, on average, 24.8 books, a rise from 21.6 books.

Sony adds this:

Sony […] says that its e-book customers, on average, download about eight books a month from its online library. That is far more than the approximately 6.7 books than the average American book buyer purchased for the entire year in 2008, according to Bowker, a publishing industry tracking firm.

More reading by consumers means more profit for the publishers. With a price war being waged between Amazon and Wal Mart (and now Target), there is real concern by the publishers over margins and profit.

There will no doubt be an exhaustive series of technical articles detailing the differences between the nook and the Kindle (here's one, from B&N's perspective). For now, though, we can take a look at this feature set from Barnes & Noble's eReading Blog:

Download eBooks, magazines and newspapers in seconds flat
Enjoy eBooks on an incredibly readable E Ink® reading screen
Navigate your eBooks and other content on a color touchscreen
Sync your eBooks to your iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Mac or PC
Share eBooks with friends using one of our eReader clients
Read any eBook for free in a Barnes & Noble store
Get special content and promotions in any Barnes & Noble store

The one thing I really like about Barnes & Noble selling an e-reader is that I expect I'll be able to visit my local store and demo the reader. That's something you can't do with the Kindle. I would keep in mind, though, that the nook is a first generation product. Even the Kindle has gone through one iteration now, and I think in many cases people who bought the initial model wished they had waited. This may or may not be the case with the nook.

As far as e-book formats go, the nook supports EPUB, the open e-book format. This is huge. Most of the new readers post-Kindle support this format. Kindle, by comparison, only supports their own proprietary format (the DX model also supports PDF). People do not want to be locked into proprietary formats. They want open formats, which allows them to view any content on any device. Kindle-formatted e-books are viewable only on the Kindle and it's associated applications (like the iPhone Kindle app).

I'll leave you with possibly one of the most tantalizing features of the nook:

The Nook also has software that will detect when a consumer walks into a store so that it can push out coupons and other promotions like excerpts from forthcoming books or suggestions for new reading. While in stores, Nook owners will be able to read any e-book through streaming software.

In my opinion, it's this sort of interactivity which eventually will lead to the demise of the printed book.

The nook is available now for pre-order, will be available for purchase Nov. 30, and be in stores Nov. 28.

Some thoughts on traditional vs. electronic publishing

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:31:00 -0500

You may have noticed a recent slant in my posting topics towards e-books and electronic publishing. This is not without purpose. For a while now I've been considering foregoing the traditional publishing route in favor of the electronic, self-publishing one. The reasons for this are many. For one, it's disheartening (yet encouraging at the same time) when established writers divulge sales information that poignantly dismisses the traditional route.

Second, this writing thing is not my only thing. It's something I thoroughly enjoy, yet I don't expect to make a living from it. I'm not saying I wouldn't want to make a living from it, but the realities are that my day job will likely always pay more, and I'm at the point in my life where I'm not willing to downsize or give-up my lifestyle (such as it is). Perhaps going the traditional route is a game for the young.

Or perhaps it just isn't the route to take at all anymore, at any age, because the direction of things has changed.

Traditional vs. Electronic Publishing

Currently, I don't have a publisher. Nor do I have an agent. In truth, I wonder sometimes if I really need either. You see, the rules themselves have been altered. No longer do writers need to rely solely on publishers for exposure and distribution. Sure, publishers can give your career a boost out of the starting gate. But so much of it relies on the author taking it from there that the publisher/agent model soon becomes a hindrance and, in some cases, a detriment: while said writer is engaging in all the work, guess who's siphoning off the majority of the profit?

While I admire and envy those who have found success via the traditional publishing route, I'm seriously considering that it might not be right for me. I already have a day job; the reality of the situation is that I'll always be more self-sustaining doing that than writing. But I love putting words to paper, and especially concocting fantastic stories and the characters that populate them. Fortunately, there is hope for people like myself, and it is e-books.

E-books

E-books and the proliferation of high-quality e-reading devices are becoming the new medium for reading. Paper books will no doubt have their place for years to come, but it is a dying model. The world has gone green, and convenience coupled with instant gratification is a powerful driving force. Amazon, for example, touts their Kindle reading device with 3G wireless with this line: "...think of a book and you'll be reading it in less than 60 seconds". Competition in the e-reader space is growing every day. This, in turn, will continue to drive prices down. With many e-books already selling for $0.99, and price battles going on between the major players, this becomes a win-win for consumers.

But it's also a win for writers. Amazon, Scribd, even our own web sites become our distribution warehouses and provide the exposure we might not otherwise obtain. The middle-men—namely publishers and agents—are taken out of the equation. With more hands removed from the pot, the shares of those remaining gets bigger.

However...

Going electronic is not for everyone. For one, it's unlikely you can make a living off it (yet). But then everyone's definition of 'living' is a bit different, so a decision of this nature really becomes a personal one.

It's not an easy decision to make, either. I wonder in that you don't risk alienating yourself from ever breaking into the traditional model by jumping into the electronic one. Maybe that doesn't matter.

Of course, what I'm really talking about here is self-publishing, which has been around for a long time. Some authors (Paolini comes to mind) self-published, only to find great success under the traditional model after the fact. Is electronic publishing therefore any different?

Amazon Kindle: Now, is the price right?

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:44:00 -0500

Amazon cut the price on their Kindle digital e-book reader again. This marks the second price cut of the year so far (the previous cut was $60). With Christmas rapidly approaching, and more digital readers hitting the market all the time (now, Barnes & Noble is going to sell one), one wonders if we won't see another price cut—or possible holiday price reductions—before the year is out.

As it stands now, here's the current breakdown of Kindle models and prices:

The $259 and $279 Kindle differ only in that the latter allows one to download e-books when traveling abroad (outside the United States). The Kindle DX is the deluxe, super-sized Kindle, with a larger reading screen and more memory. Scott Hanselman, a technologist whom I follow on Twitter and whose blog and podcast I read and listen to regularly, has a nice post up about the differences between the Kindle and the Kindle DX if you'd like to read more on that.

Given this most recent price reduction, I'd like to dig up an older post of mine, How much does the Kindle 2 really cost?, where I cited an article where the author ran through a cost-justification of the Kindle 2. The author makes a comparison between buying a Kindle and accompanying e-books (at a rate of 2 per month) vs... buying the same number of traditional paperbacks.

So, buying paperbacks:

I could get free shipping if I ordered two paperbacks at a time and didn't mind waiting five to nine business days for them to ship. If I chose standard shipping (three business days) instead, I'd pay about $4.88 for two paperbacks mailed together. I wouldn't be charged tax. (I live in San Francisco. How much you pay in shipping or taxes depends on where you live.) The $4.88 shipping for two books a month would equal $58.56 a year. That brings my two-paperback-a-month habit (books + shipping) to $447.12 per year.

Versus buying the Kindle (remember, the cited price of the reader does not include the recent price cut, nor does it include the price cut of $60 from three months ago):

My Kindle 2 order totaled $365.98, which includes $359 for the e-book reader and $6.98 for three-business-day shipping. The average price of the top 10 Amazon Kindle nonfiction bestsellers is $9.78. If I bought two e-books per month, I'd spend $19.56 per month or $234.72 a year (shipping isn't necessary). My grand total for the year: $600.70, which includes the Kindle 2 and 24 e-books.

That gives us $447 vs.. $600. A $153 difference. If you extrapolate this out to 2 years as the author of the article does (excluding the cost of the Kindle on the second year, of course), those figures go to $894 and $835. By buying the Kindle (at yesterday's prices) you wind up saving $59.

Now, let's look at that in light of the recent Kindle price reduction.

The first scenario obviously doesn't change, so our annual price of buying 2 paperbacks/month remains at $447.

The first year Kindle price plus e-books, however, goes down to $500 (Kindle: $259; s/h: $6.98; e-books: $234.72) from $600.

That makes for a 1 year difference of $53 in favor of buying traditional books (much better than the initial figure of $153). Over 2 years, however, we have $894 for traditional books and $734, a difference in favor of the Kindle of $160. Before the price reduction, that savings for 2 years of Kindle ownership was $59.

Given all of that, the question is this: Is now the time to buy a Kindle?

I think not.

While I think the long term cost savings begin to warrant the cost of the device, I'm willing to wait just a little bit longer to see what holiday price reductions Amazon institutes. Competition in the digital reader space is increasing, driving prices down. I'd like to see how much further they fall before I pull the trigger.

2009-10-09 Update: No sooner do I publish this post when word gets around Twitter that Barnes & Noble is planning a color e-book reader, to be released next year. A reason to put off buying a monochrome reader, or does this have further potential to drive prices of existing readers down? Guess we'll wait and see.

E-Book File Formats

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0500

I've been thinking a lot lately of e-books, the many file formats they come in, and how one might convert from one format to another.

I say "many e-book file formats" because there are a lot: TXT, HTML, AZW, DOC/DOCX, OPF, TR2/3, ARG, DTB, FB2, XML, CHM, PDF, PS, DJVU, LIT, PDB, DNL… ok, I think I'll stop now. It's obvious that while one file format might be a nice ideal, it is anything but reality. Not everyone uses the same software, and there's no such thing as a universal e-book file format that all market players have adopted.

At its simplest form, e-books are just text files. But text files are too simple. They don't contain the characteristics necessary for an e-book to rival a printed book in appearance. Also, TXT files do not support DRM.

E-book readers—both software and hardware—are a topic unto itself. For this post, I therefore want to focus just on the file formats that these (software or hardware-based) readers support. Also, I'll only focus on those formats I feel are the most relevant. It's not very realistic, IMO, for someone to read an e-book of any length in TXT format or even HTML. Other formats, such as PKG (which was a file format for reading e-books on an Apple Newton), are outdated enough to not garner further attention.

So, here are the formats and a bit of information about each.

AZW

AZW is the file format used by the Amazon Kindle device. It is proprietary to Amazon and is DRM protected. The best way to both convert a file to this format and publish on Amazon's Kindle store is to use their Digital Text Platform site.

Their recommendation for having a successful conversion:

The preferred format for uploading content is as a single HTML file. To include images, provide a ZIP file that includes the images as well as the HTML file that refers to them (check the formatting guides to find out how to link to images from HTML). The HTML and image files all have to be in the same folder inside the zip file.

I've gone through this process to publish my novel, The Hall of the Wood, on the Kindle store; it is a pretty painless process.

PDF

PDF stands for Portable Document File. It was established by Adobe in hopes of creating a universal file format to promote the ready exchange of data, specifically document files. DRM-free PDF's can be read by the free Adobe Reader. PDF's protected by DRM can be read by Adobe Digital Editions, which has the ability to allow or deny access to a downloaded PDF depending on the conditions under which the file was obtained.

If an e-book was outright purchased, you should be good to go, though you will have to read the PDF using Digital Editions and will be further restricted from saving or printing the e-book. On the other hand, if you checked an e-book out from an online library and that e-book contains DRM, chances are the e-book will "expire" after the loan period is up, at which time you will no longer be able to view the e-book.

PDF documents can be created by any number of freely available software converters. My preferred method of conversion is to use the Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS add-in for Microsoft Word 2007. Of course, there's always Adobe Acrobat Professional, too.

ODF

OpenDocument Format is an XML-based file format used to represent spreadsheets, presentations, word processing documents, and more. While ODF has emerged as an industry standard, the specification having been ratified by over 600 technology companies (including Microsoft and Adobe), it is of some note that while applications such as Microsoft Office support ODF, that suite also still defaults to its own proprietary file formats. ODF is, however, the default file format for OpenOffice, a popular open source alternative to Microsoft Office.

ODT, or OpenDocument Text, is the word processing specific version of the ODF file format standard. Similarly, there are presentation (ODP), spreadsheet (ODS), and other formats.

RTF

The Rich Text Format was developed by Microsoft in the 1980's. Not surprising, it is an 8-bit based format, and while it can address larger character sets, it is through means that relegate the format to mostly a legacy role. Still, the format is quite prolific; converting to RTF is supported by most word processing and other applications.

DOC/DOCX

The default file format supported by Microsoft Word. With Word 2007, Microsoft introduced the DOCX format, which is billed as an open, XML format that, unfortunately, has not been as widely adopted as Microsoft might have hoped. One of the nice things about the DOCX format is that it results in much leaner files. However, it is not backward compatible with previous versions of Word.

EPUB

EPUB is an e-book specific format engineered by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) and intended to replace the Open eBook (OEB) standard. EPUB includes optional support for DRM. The standard is supported by the Sony Reader and Apple's iPhone, as well as other devices.

As far as converting a document to the EPUB format, it looks like there are several options: BookGlutton hosts an HTML-to-EPUB file converter, Google Code contains a software library called epub-tools which looks suitable for batch style conversion of files, and LexCycle has something called Stanza which looks to be a desktop application. I'll have to give each of them a whirl to see which is the best option.

PRC/MOBI

The PRC/MOBI file format is based on the Open eBook (OEB) standard (which I discovered was superseded by the EPUB standard; see above), and is considered one of the most prolific e-book file formats for mobile devices. The biggest proponent of this format is Mobipocket.

Mobipocket offers both reader and publisher software, both free. Mobipocket Reader will run on PC's as well as a number of handheld devices. There are two ways to use Mobipocket Creator to author e-books: use the application to create the e-book and then add content and design from there or, the more practical approach, import Word, text, or PDF documents.

The PRC/MOBI format does, of course, support DRM.

BBeB

(LRX/LRF)

BBeB, or Broadband eBook, is Sony's proprietary file format for e-books, as if we needed yet another one. It comes in two varieties: LRX for encrypted (DRM) e-books and LRF for unencrypted e-books.

Sony has their own e-book store where one can download e-books in these formats. The newest version of the Sony Reader is a device widely expected to give Amazon's Kindle a run for the money. In order to read books in the BBeB format, you will need a Sony Reader, much like the AZW format is married to the Kindle.

However, Sony opened the Reader up so that it also supports the EPUB format. This is a good thing, and leaves the Kindle as virtually the only device that locks its users into a proprietary format.

~~I haven't yet found a viable method by which to publish e-books in this format.~~

Two options have come to light for converting from a more standard format to BBeB:

1.) As ZenEngineer points out in the comments below, there is a freeware program called Calibre that will perform the conversion.

2.) Also, there is the bbebinder open-source project hosted on Google Code which converts HTML and TXT files to the BBeB format.

LIT

This is a Microsoft-specific file format whose time I can't help but wonder may be at an end. LIT files are readable only on Microsoft Reader, and while there are versions of the software for PC's and handhelds, the major players in those areas (Amazon, Sony, Apple) have their own proprietary formats).

Creation of LIT files seems a bit problematic as well. There is a Read in Microsoft Reader add-in for Microsoft Word 2000 and higher, but "higher" here does not include Word 2007. That kind of tells me the format is being abandoned by Microsoft.

References

Libraries Going Digital

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:21:00 -0500

Accessing the full text of books online is nothing new. One can peruse the digital shelves of such sites as the World Digital Library, the International Children's Digital Library, the University of Pennsylvania's Online Books Pages, or even The New York Public Library, which is working with Google Books to offer a searchable subset of their collection online.

Therein, though, lies the kicker: these so-called digital libraries are incomplete. Though a somewhat quick perusal of the NYPL's online catalog was impressive, the fact that they maintain an "e" catalog separate from the main one tells me their digital collection differs from what you might find by walking into the actual library.

That might be true of the NYPL, but not so for the library of Cushing Academy. You see, Cushing is going digital, all-the-way:

This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks - the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital.

The school's headmaster, Dr. James Tracy, is leading this effort. Dr. Tracy believes that printed books are "outdated technology, like scrolls before books".

In place of their traditional library, they are spending $500,000 to create an all-new "learning center". Upon entering this new facility, students will no longer see rows and rows of books, but instead will find:

three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet (at a cost of $42,000 these are obviously Dallas Cowboys-sized screens)
special laptop-friendly study carrels (at a cost of $20,000)
a coffee shop ($50,000) that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine
18 electronic readers ($10,000) made by Amazon.com and Sony

(No, I did not make those dollar figures up)

I'll put aside the discussion of why they're turning hallowed reading ground into a social mecca with televisions and coffee shops to instead focus on the switchover of their printed material to an all digital library. There's no doubt the world is going digital more and more, so it's not surprising to see this happen. Convenience, accessibility, sheer breadth of titles are all good reasons for this. Also, as technology for digital readers continues to evolve, and as the readers themselves become more affordable, we'll continue to see growth in the e-book space. But will we ever reach the point where physical libraries either do not exist or exist exclusively as meeting places for people who share a common desire to learn (while sipping coffee made by a $12,000 cappuccino machine, of course)?

I have to say that personally I really have nothing against an all-digital world. While I continue to read printed books daily, I haven't set foot in a library since I graduated college. In fact, as I was performing some research for this post, I became impressed enough with the NYPL's digital catalog that I might sign up for a library card (or is it library e-card?) as soon as I'm done here. One of the most amazing aspects of this is that I don't live anywhere near New York, nor will I ever have to set foot into their library to take advantage of their catalog.

At some point, I plan to buy a Kindle or similar e-book reader. At that time, I may very well never buy another printed book again. You can bet that as successive generations become more familiar with e-Ink than the kind that comes from a printing press, that the perception of what a book is will change.

So, too, then will libraries.

Is this the last word on Kindlegate?

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 09:16:00 -0500

Amazon's Kindle digital e-book reader has had its share of controversy. The latest, and perhaps biggest misstep, came when they remotely deleted e-books legally purchased by consumers, but which had been illegally made available for sale by an unscrupulous vendor who ignored certain copyright laws.

Ever since Amazon performed that act of deletion, removing such works as 1984 and Animal Farm right from under readers' noses, they have been playing make-up with consumers who, in some cases, have resorted to lawsuits to "ease their pain". Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, even issued an apology.

Now, we've come full circle. Amazon has offered to replace copies of 1984 and Animal Farm at no charge to Kindle consumers. The message was sent in an email, and reads (source here):

"As you were one of the customers impacted by the removal of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" from your Kindle device in July of this year, we would like to offer you the option to have us re-deliver this book to your Kindle along with any annotations you made. You will not be charged for the book."

"This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission."

Also,

Amazon said in an e-mail message to those customers that if they chose to have their digital copies restored, they would be able to see any digital annotations they had made. Those who do not want the books are eligible for an Amazon gift certificate or a check for $30, the company said.

It would seem they're pulling out all the stops, giving consumers enough options that how could anyone not wind up satisfied?

If only it were that simple…

Amazon violated a fundamental right of people who live in a free society when they deleted those e-books. Yobie Benjamin says it best:

In most cases, it would require a government subpoena, grand jury summons or court order to require you to reveal the contents of your device, turn over the contents of your device and/or to delete the contents in the device.

Yet Amazon did so without any of those things. Clearly, they overstepped their bounds. Their attempts to make amends is proof enough of that. But did they go so far as to make the act unredeemable? Have they single-handedly crushed any potential for mass adoption of their Kindle and other similar devices that make use of DRM?

I think if anything good is to come of this it will be the shortening of the lifespan of digital rights management technology. We've already seen this in the music industry, where Amazon—and even Apple now—sell DRM-free MP3's. Amazon has laid bare the true evil of DRM for all to see. 'All', in this case, is the wider audience they are still trying to sell their device to. Sure, the Kindle is doing well, but there's a lot more people without the device than with it. If the device—and e-books as a whole—is to succeed, it needs this mass adoption.

Amazon, I'm afraid, may have cooked this goose a bit too long. It's past done.

As an aside, this post marks my 200th on this blog. It's not my 200th post overall, because I was blogging on another platform before I made the switch to scottmarlowe.com, but I did move over the "best of the best" of those posts onto here, so maybe we can call it my 200th 'good' post. Anyway, thought it was worth mentioning.

Revisiting My New Year's Goals

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 19:02:00 -0500

I'm usually not real big on New Year's Resolutions. I am, however, a goal-oriented person, and in that spirit I thought that this year I would actually write down via this blog some resolutions. Consider this a mid-year check-in, despite the fact that I missed the mid-point of the year by just a bit.

Let's see how I'm doing.

Writing

1.) Finish my current WIP

More on this in a future post, but suffice to say while I stopped doing weekly writing progress updates, I have been working on my current novel-in-progress. I still have the goal of completing it this year.

2.) Start a new project—short story or novel

This is contingent on #1, of course, but I have no progress to report on this one. Fortunately, there's still time…

3.) Finish/submit a short story

See #2.

Reading

1.) Read 10 novels

I'm going to append this goal to "Read 10 novels or periodicals". To date, I have read:

Heldenhammer
Perdido Street Station
The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl
SF&F Magazine: January 2009
SF&F Magazine: December 2008
SF&F Magazine: November 2008
SF&F Magazine: October 2008

Almost there on this one.

Book Reviews

1.) Review 3 novels

In 2008, I reviewed 12 books. I purposely lowered the bar on this one to allow for more time to write. Also, I started something new: micro(u)-book reviews, which I define as:

A micro-book review, like micro-blogging, is a review containing as few words as possible. In the spirit of Twitter, mine will be less than 140 characters.

Thus far in 2009 I have done one "normal" review and three micro-reviews:

Heldenhammer (u)
Perdido Street Station (u)
The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl (u)
Horizon

By my conservative goal, consider this one done, though I'm sure I'll fit in another review or two before the year is out.

Blogging/Social Networking

1.) ~~Investigate way to automate~~ ~~Weekend Links~~ ~~series (potentially through~~ ~~Tweetlater~~ or ~~Delicious~~)

This is a non-goal as I discontinued my Weekend Links series.

2.) Be more active on other blogs

I defined this one as simply making an effort to comment more on the blogs I spend time reading day-to-day. I think I've made an effort on this one, with comments appearing on the writing blogs of JA Konrath, Tobias Buckell, and Natania Barron. Also, given my love of history (and especially Medieval History), I read and occasionally comment on the most excellent medieval-oriented blogs of Got Medieval and Steven Till.

Amazon CEO apologizes over deleted Kindle books

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 21:11:00 -0500

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, has released a formal apology for his company's act of deleting illegal copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from people's Kindle devices.

I don't want to turn this blog into a news service, but this at least brings some closure to my previous post.

It does not appear the works were restored, though the money paid for them was refunded at the time of deletion.

Here is the full text of the apology:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.
With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

Amazon's Kindle in the News: Remote Deletion

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:06:00 -0500

Amazon's Kindle digital book reader is in the news. No surprise there. But in a moment of ultimate irony, Amazon has taken the egregious step of remotely deleting works by none other than George Orwell. One of the books… why, 1984, of course.

Is Jeff Bezos, in fact, Big Brother?

David Pogue says,

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

Rest assured, those who were affected by this did have their money refunded. But they also learned the hard way what digital ownership really means: that e-book is yours until someone decides it isn't.

You have to give Amazon some credit: they were pulling copies of such works as 1984 and Animal Farm because a third-party, using Amazon's Digital Text Platform, uploaded the books when they did not have the rights to them. And, before you ask—no, it wasn't me. Amazon also said they would not remove works from customer Kindles should this happen again in the future.

While this incident doesn't lessen my desire to purchase a Kindle, it does serve as a remainder that DRM does, in fact, suck.

Micro-book Review: The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:25:00 -0500

A micro-book review, like micro-blogging, is a review containing as few words as possible. In the spirit of Twitter, mine will be 140 characters or less (not including this intro).

Pratt's bizarre Old West meets comic heroine, with the real world at stake. Entertaining, but I wanted more Rangergirl, less Marzi.

How much do you make selling through Amazon's Kindle store?

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:25:00 -0500

I recently uploaded my first fantasy novel to Amazon's Kindle Store. You can still download it here for free, but the idea behind making it available on Amazon's site is (1) to hopefully gain more exposure and (2) maybe make a buck or two in the process. I'd like to take a moment to look at the latter of those reasons by asking the following question: How much, really, can one make selling an e-book in the Kindle store?

First, there's what Amazon calls the "Suggested Retail Price", or SRP. This is set by the author at the time the e-book is uploaded:

The price you charge can range from a minimum of $0.99 to a max only Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or Bernie Madoff (before he admitted to his Ponzi scheme and was locked up for 150 years) could hope to afford. Amazon, however, discourages price points above $9.99; you'll find many bestsellers featured prominently on the Kindle store-front selling at this price due to discounts Amazon has applied.

That brings us to our next point of discussion: Amazon's discount. We've all seen it, where Amazon takes a product that normally retails for $129.99 and discounts it to $69.99. The same principle applies here, though the discount in no way impacts an author's royalty. From my extensive research (which consisted of reading through a handful of posts on the Amazon DTP Forums until I found this one), I discovered this statement from Customer Service:

"...please know that as per our terms and conditions, our decision to discount products is based on a number of considerations which can vary over time. You will continue to receive the set percentage of the list price you set for every sale, even if Amazon changes the retail price for your content."

What this basically means is that while there may not be a method to their madness concerning what gets discounted and by how much, if and when they do discount your e-book, it will not negatively affect your royalties.

So now we come to the royalty itself, or how much we actually make per sale. The simple answer is 35% of the SRP. For a longer answer one can look to Amazon's DIGITAL PUBLICATION DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT:

5. Royalties. Provided you are not in breach of your obligations under this Agreement, we will pay you, for each Digital Book we sell, a royalty equal to thirty-five percent (35%) of the applicable Suggested Retail Price for such Digital Book, net of refunds, bad debt, and any taxes charged to a customer (including without limitation sales taxes) (a “Royalty”).

That means for every e-copy of The Hall of the Wood sold, currently priced at $0.99, I'll make $0.35. Amazon gets the remaining $0.64. As above, should Amazon choose to discount my e-book, I'll still make the 35% royalty on the original SRP, so still $0.35. I can adjust my price point up a bit and make a little more per unit sold, but of course can't drop it below the minimum $0.99 threshold.

So, that might be more information than you cared to know, but there it is.

Sell Your E-books in the Amazon Kindle Store

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:02:00 -0500

I've been interested in Amazon's Kindle digital book reader since its inception (though, admittedly, I didn't start blogging about it until the second version came out). I haven't bought one yet because I'm waiting for the inevitable price reduction, but that doesn't mean I haven't been exploring its features and some of the content for the device.

The biggest source of content for the Kindle is, of course, Amazon's Kindle Store. The store features a lot of e-books. A quick run down of some of the categories:

Fantasy	5,267 e-books
Science Fiction	7,299 e-books
Mystery & Thrillers	13,570 e-books

Total, there's over 300,000 titles available for download to your Kindle. That's a lot of books.

I recently discovered one of the best things about the Kindle store: anyone can post products there. JA Konrath clued me into the possibility, and he does a nice job of breaking down some of his own sales numbers. You can see that he's had no small success at it thus far. Granted, Konrath is a published author, so his name is out there via other, more traditional channels, but he also puts forth a lot of effort online as well. Nonetheless, is the possibility of an unpublished writer posting his or her work to the Kindle store gold waiting to be mined? I plan to find out.

As of a couple of days ago, my novel, The Hall of the Wood, is available for purchase via the Kindle store:

I wanted to make the price $0.25, but $0.99 is the minimum allowed price. The one catch is that, of course, you must have a Kindle to which to download the e-book to. So, if you've already spent $300 for the device, what's another $0.99? ;-)

The concept of an unpublished author finding success in this channel is a challenge. As noted above, there are over 5,000 fantasy titles available for purchase in the Kindle store. How to make my novel stand out amongst those? For one, I created a book cover. Nothing fancy, but it gives the potential buyer something to look at other than "No image available". Second, I gave it a product description, which is the standard blurb taken from my web site:

Jed's wife and unborn child are dead, killed by a legacy he dare share with no one. Seeking a reprieve from his guilt, he sets out for his former home, the Ranger Hall of the Wood. Along the way, he discovers all is not well. Aliah Starbough, a friend from Jed's past, sends him a chilling warning: the rangers are dead, the Simarron Forest, thrown into peril. Nearby Homewood has issued a plea for help, a summonings which Kayra Weslin, knight errant, and her chronicler, Holly, answer. Along with Murik Alon Rin'kres, an Eslar sorcerer who harbors a secret purpose all his own, the four attempt to unravel the mystery of the missing rangers. They soon find tales of their disappearance frighteningly untrue.

The third way to gain attention is through customer reviews. This one is huge, and the one that in my mind will allow us as writers to break free of the traditional agent/publisher dependency. It's a stamp of approval, a guarantee of quality, a statement saying that your book is not crap. Customer reviews, to a point, validate a book's worth. In general, low reviews indicate a lack of quality. High reviews, the opposite. This is not to say that every review should be taken as gospel. But given enough reviews and a trend should emerge.

I often read of the struggle authors undergo in finding an agent or publisher. There's really no rhyme or reason to it: the decision-making is subjective, and how often have you come across a published novel that, to be frank, sucks? I've begun to doubt the vindication that supposedly comes with having your work blessed by a "real" publisher, and let's face it: business models change. We might be witnessing the beginning of the end for traditional publishers here. If not that, certainly a sea change in the way we purchase and read books.

The Hall of the Wood has been available as a free pdf download for a long time now. As Konrath points out, Amazon's web site gets a lot more traffic than his own. That volume has a lot of potential to increase sales. Selling on the Kindle store seems like a real no-brainer to me.

Micro-book Review: Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Tue, 19 May 2009 10:21:00 -0500

A micro-book review, like micro-blogging, is a review containing as few words as possible. In the spirit of Twitter, mine will be less than 140 characters (not including this intro).

Beautifully written and wholly engaging, Perdido Street Station ultimately left too many threads unwound for my taste.

How much does the Kindle 2 really cost?

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:48:00 -0500

iSuppli, which makes a business out of tearing down electronics products to see what's inside and then publishing their cost findings, released a report stating that Amazon's Kindle 2 costs $185.49 in components. The Kindle 2 retails for $359. That's a difference of $173.51.

Engadget shows the component breakdown:

I don't mind Amazon making a profit, but I'm still not sold enough on the Kindle to fork over $359 for it. James Martin of PC World did a cost-justification analysis comparing the purchase of a Kindle 2 and associated e-books vs. going the traditional route and it didn't work out so well:

"...my number crunching reveals that even a loyal reader of paperbacks would only have saved $58.82 by the end of the second year of Kindle 2 ownership."

That's a whopping savings of $60 after two years. In his analysis, he assumes 2 paperbacks per month; that's a lot of reading. I know I couldn't maintain that pace for 2 years.

He goes on to say:

"Amazon is sure to introduce a third-generation Kindle during that period, which you may decide you can't live without. There goes your $58.82 savings, and then some."

Therein lies the crux of technology, my friends. There's always something bigger and better right around the corner. However, I'd love to own a Kindle 2, and maybe that "next gen" version will help drive down the price of the current model.

Generating Names

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 08:56:00 -0500

Sometimes I need a little help coming up with the name of a character or place. I'm compiling a list here of the name generators I find most useful. Note that they have a decidedly fantasy genre bend to them; that is what I write, after all. Also, I rarely take a random name literally. Rather I'll tweak it a bit. But I've found these sites good starting places when the mind is stuck.

People

Places

Yes, I'm still here… and still writing

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:24:31 -0500

Rumors of my death are false. I'm still alive and kicking and trying to squeeze in some writing whenever and however I can. I'm relying more and more on Office Live Workspace for those days when I don't have my laptop with me. It's working out pretty well; I'd like to do another blog post on the topic as a follow-up. Stay tuned for that.

Now, however, I've slowed the blogging, including doing weekly writing updates because I've been finding it harder and harder of late to make any significant progress. I hate to just post that I didn't make any progress week in and week out—of course, here I am doing just that.

On writing… I did take a couple of weeks off. I needed the time to step away from my current project (the one I'd been posting weekly about). I like the characters. I like the story. But still, it was missing something. To that end, I've started over on the editing. Page 1. With a mind towards adding another layer to the story and, in particular, to one character. The end result is that I hopefully end up with a better story. Whether I accomplish that or not… we'll have to see.

So, it's back to writing for me. Blogging will likely be kept to a minimum while I concentrate on wrapping up this novel. But I'll be around and back on the blogging thing in time.

Juggling, or a brief Writing Update

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:00:51 -0500

Juggling two balls really isn't that hard. Three takes some practice. Four—I've never been able to juggle four balls without dropping one real quick. That's pretty much what happened to me these past few weeks, with my writing being the fourth ball.

That's not to say I did nothing, but it's been a few weeks since I've actually sat down and wrote or edited anything. Things are clearing a bit, though, and I hope to get back to it this weekend if not sometime during the week.

I'll leave it at that so I can get down to refreshing my mind as to where I last left off…

Writing Update #32.1

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:01:12 -0500

I was allowing myself some time to make a leap. That leap has to do with my current fantasy novel. Specifically, how to make it rise above the rest, so to speak. I think I've re-stumbled upon an idea I'd had way back when I started this venture. I'd steered away from this particular idea for reasons I'm not entirely sure of anymore. But, with the majority of the novel laid out, I think it's time to go back and add some additional layering. Sorry to speak in such abstracts, and because of that this post will conclude post-haste.

The end result of this shift into re-discovered territory is that I'm going to spend some time doing some research. I plan to post that research here as somewhat of an experiment. On my technology blog, I sometimes post information that hopefully is of some use to someone, but more importantly it's simply out there so I can find it again the next time I run into a similar or identical problem. I'm going to carry that idea over to this blog. We'll have to see how it goes.

Writing Update #32

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:51:36 -0500

A weekly progress report as I work through the (second pass) editing of my current fantasy novel.

Alright, so I made absolutely no progress this past week. Actually, that's not true. I advanced my edit page by 1 to 307 out of 367. It's a bit frustrating, especially given that I'm so close to finishing this edit, and, to tell you the truth, I'm not even sure how the week got away from me. One thing came up, and another, and another, and so on, and I just never quite sat down to get any writing done.

OK, even that's not entirely true. I hit upon a climatic part of the story and I did spend some time thinking it out, mostly because I'm not so sure I nailed it as it stands right now, but the silver bullet never came to me. It's going to take some more thought, and hopefully I'll get it sooner rather than later.

Also, I have to admit my mind has been wandering a bit to my next project. In many ways I have to wonder if my current novel is really breaking any new ground (enter yea old foe of the writer, Doubt). I think my next will, so it's hard to not think ahead to it. Plus it's just going to be a little… different. Still fantasy, but it all takes place in one city, and is going to be a bit of a mystery/thriller. At least that's the plan.

For now, though, I've got a conundrum to figure out so I can wrap up The Five Elements.

Tor Free E-book: Spirit Walk by Charles de Lint

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:57:39 -0500

It's been long enough since I last reported a free e-book out of Tor that I can't help but think I missed one (or two).

Anyway, Tor's got another one out there. This time we get to take a look at Charles de Lint's Spirit Walk. From the post:

Charles de Lint’s Spiritwalk (1992) is the sequel to Moonheart, his groundbreaking novel about the people in and around a house in modern Ottawa that straddles this world and another one. Here is the same cast of characters, as they deal with a pair of very different threats to the ancient house. As in Moonheart, de Lint skillfully combines a contemporary sensibility, a great sensitivity to the rhythms and patterns of myth and folktale, and a set of simply likeable characters whose lives you find yourself wanting to hang out in.

From the post's comments it appears while this is a continuation of a pervious novel, it does stand enough on its own that it is not required you read Moonheart. I imagine like any pseudo-series, where at least the world and some of the characters appear in both works, having read the previous novel will enhance the experience but not having read won't necessarily ruin it.