From my Oly Club office ...

We made it back! After a series of scans and tests we got the OK to go home. It was a long and challenging time but successful. I want to thank all who have sent their best wishes for our boy. He still has years of tests to go to make certain the cancer stays clear, but we are very optimistic.

I am sitting at my table in the Olympic Club for the first time in almost eight months - it is very cathartic. The work of the pub goes on all around me and I get to dissolve into its familiarity. Occasionally I even get a coffee poured ... by someone else! I was warned not to get used to that. It is good to be back. The Oly Club is recreated in my books as Le Cafe Reuban Vert (a real cafe) in Paris.

Now, to business. The Madonna Rosa went live on July 1 as planned and was included along with the rest of The Juno Letters series in the SMASHWORDS July Summer/Winter sale - the annual event which is the only time I offer production versions of my books for free. To celebrate going home I put the entire series up and the response has been great this first few days. I'll be connecting back with my publisher (California Times) and audio narrator (Gary Regal) to let them know I am now back in the game.

I am working on book 7 - and tossing ideas around to see how they interplay. Still no working title, but I have some great ideas to exploit. Something about stone age caves and "Die Glocke" - look it up and figure that one out!

For those of you who use the iPhone, the new iOS 8.4 supports the iBook version of ebooks through the iBooks app on the iPad, iMac, and iPhone. I make a version with iBooks Author and just tested it. Without a doubt it is the best ebook experience out there. If you have purchased (or downloaded) any copy in The Juno Letters series and want the iBook version, just drop me an email at junoletters@icloud.com and I'll send you a link to get a free upgrade.

I'm going to play with book 7 and just try to get adjusted to normal life. Stay tuned to the blog and have a wonderful summer.

Just around the corner

Book 6 is done. The Madonna Rosa will be released July 1 through the SMASHWORDS Summer Sale event. It was conceived, written, edited, and published from this kitchen table at Ronald McDonald House and the cafeteria at Seattle Children's Hospital.

This week we undergo our last in-patient chemo therapy. Our remarkable little boy has grown into a young man here at Seattle Children's Hospital and RMCH. He has known almost nothing of America since he arrived last September except this bubble that extends from Ronald McDonald House on NE 40th Street across Sand Point Way to the hospital. Yet at the same time he has experienced the very best of what we all stand for. The commitment of the people who have cared for our boy these past eight months, the generosity of the volunteers here who have welcomed him into their hearts, and the friends we have made here at "the house" show just who we all can be when times are difficult.

I saw that Peter Chung who was here from Korea left me a comment a while back - January, actually. Time kinda flows in its own space right now, and I am sorry I did not see it earlier. Peter - I wish you and your family good health. They specifically selected Children's Hospital from among a list of hospitals around the world to care for their child. I enjoyed our talks in the kitchen.

The odd thing about living here is that people just disappear. You come back from clinic or an in-patient stay and things have changed. People are gone. New families are here. Children you have seen with feeding tubes, scars from heart transplants, bald heads from the effects of chemo - they have gone home to restart their lives. The reality is when you get the OK to go, you go.

That day is approaching for us. We hope to be home by July 4, but planning is at best precarious. So today the tasks are the same - scrub the bathroom for the weekly room check, mix the high-calorie shake in the morning to try and keep the weight up, blood draw at 10:00, monthly visit from the case worker. Our friends from Symmetra are fixing dinner. Just another day to keep our boy cold- and infection-free before this last chemo, fretting over every cough you hear, every sneeze, wondering when the person who just offered you their hand last washed them.

We found out that little "Dallas" who was moved to House B - the seclusion apartments - was just pronounced cancer free and will get to go home soon. What a joy! Another family who was on what they call comfort care also left. That makes number four since we have been here.

I want to go home.

Seclusion is Inspirational ... whoever said that ...

Many of you already know that I have spent the last several weeks, since before Thanksgiving, in relative seclusion in Seattle living for the most part at Children's Hospital. We are the guests of Monsieur R. McDonald and House, just across the street from the hospital, and will be here until at least July. One of my foster boys is fighting cancer, and I have taken on the role as his in-home caregiver. My wife Rhonda has our other four foster boys at home, and is taking on the duties of that monstrous house by herself. Plus holding down her new job. She is amazing.

I am keeping up my writing schedule as best I can. Most of book 6 is being composed in the cafeteria at Children's and the communal kitchen at Ronald McDonald House at odd hours of the day. I suspect this book will be a little late, but that cannot be helped.

This forced seclusion is an interesting conundrum. There are times when the sheer amount of unoccupied time is more overwhelming than inspiring; while the chaos of the doctor visits, labs, chemo, and surgery rooms inspires me with new ideas. Getting them down amidst all that is a challenge.

What is even more challenging is the realization that there are people here - children and their parents, some not much more than children themselves - who are facing some of the most horrendous difficulties you can imagine. I have been moved by their courage and resilience, and humbled by their generosity.

When at some point in your life you may find yourself wondering who to donate funds to, where to create an endowment, or where to volunteer your time, please consider one of the many cancer-care alliances throughout the country or the Ronald McDonald Charities. Something as simple as volunteering your company to prepare dinner for the families does more to fight the void than you can possibly imagine.

Thanks for reading ...

A Sad Day ...

The Paris neighborhood that inspired me to write The Juno Letters came under a heinous attack yesterday. To my friends join Paris and throughout France I extend my hand in sadness and in hope that you will stand tall and not be afraid. To the victims, their families and friends, the American people will stand beside you, and share your sorrow. I cry today for my beloved Paris.

The Ethical Authors Pledge

All self-pubished authors are encouraged to endorse the Ethical Authors pledge from the Alliance of Independent Authors. Follow them on Twitter at #ethicalauthor.

The Juno Letters was recently featured on DBR Book News Weekly - the review from Susan Keefe of Audiobook Monthly. Good to see Juno in print across the globe! A special thanks to Susan for all her hard work promoting The Juno Letters.

I will be spending the next seven months at Children's Hospital in Seattle with one of my foster boys who will be undergoing cancer treatment. I will try to keep up with everything, including publishing book 5 - The Scavengers of Graveny Marsh, now in pre-release at SMASHWORDS for free. I want to thank everyone who has already sent good wishes - sorry, I have to keep the boy's name private. We are all praying for a complete recovery.

Mobile Reading Trends: How solid is the Kindle's position?

The title of this blog is actually an article that came out of the Frankfurt book fair - Mobile Reading Trends: How solid is the Kindle's position? (http://personanondata.blogspot.co.uk) by Michael Cairns. He makes an interesting point. The rise of the iPhone as an eBook reading device and iBooks as the default reader of choice threatens Amazon's hegemony - already slipping in percentage share and topping out in total sales and profits.

Coming from a technical background I have always kept up with the important readings of my industry. Publishing is no different. Too often we get stuck in the trenches and fail to see the business world around us changing. This may be one of those moments.

I have posted in previous blogs about my distaste for the eBook format - frankly, it makes books ugly. The lack of satisfaction in the reading experience is not going away just because Amazon built an early lead in its sales. Quite the opposite - Amazon is being challenged daily, and I am not talking about the lame excuses of Hatchett in trying to defend its antiquated power position eroded by the new technology.

I don't have the answers, but I encourage you to read this article. One thing is certain - look at where we are in the eBook market today - tomorrow will be different.

Thank God.

The State(lessness) of the eBook Market

Books used to be works of art. Typesetting was to the printed page what good lighting and backgrounds were to photography. You learned the craft from the masters, and the writer seldom if ever violated that sacred space. Not any more. The e-book has destroyed the art of book-making, at least temporarily.

The e-book is an oddity. It is a child of a general technology revolution that attacks the pillars of traditionalism with nary a plan to follow its invasion. Back when the “point and click” interface first turned the computing world upside down, the first victim was design in the revolution called desktop publishing. It turned that world inside out, and the result was a surge of very bad product - stuff that your middle school child would produce in their first newsletter class.

Other traditional markets soon felt the assault. Video production, music production, music retailing ... these and others fell victim to the emerging prowess of the software and hardware armies marching through complacent corporations on their way to world domination.

Then came the e-book. (If this were a video blog, you could hear the sigh ... just use your imagination - heresy in the tech world, I know, but there you go). Easy to create, easy to publish, easy to price cheaply. A revolution - followed by a surge of poorly written works masquerading as books. That is not necessarily a bad thing. I am a believer in the leveling effects of the marketplace to weed out bad writers. Like any product, to remain a writer and prosper, you need to write well. Bad product will disappear by itself. But that is not the entire issue.

E-book readers are at once helping establish the new market and contributing to its failure to embrace the art of the book. Scholarly studies are now being published that study e-book reader behavior relative to product and electronic reading devices. Shin (2010) describes the relationships between perceptions of quality both in terms of product and delivery on a function he calls confirmation - a key to gratification and therefore continued purchasing of e-books and e-book devices (274). While not specifically calling out the current state of the mobi or epub file formats, Shin acknowledges that users “continue to favour [sic] some characteristics of paper books” and that “some emotional factors are missing from the e-book experience” (261).

Quality of product is one of the core components of the gratification process (274). It is here that e-books fall way short of their potential even within the ability of current technology. The rudimentary appearance of the typical e-book lacks the aesthetic qualities of print that enhance a reader’s experience. Proprietary approaches to e-books and their reading devices contribute to this problem - both in terms of delivery and quality.

Amazon’s Kindle gives the appearance it can only read files purchased from Amazon’s e-book retail store - which is not entirely true technically, but from a user’s perspective true enough. The mobi file format is a poor representation of the art of a book while at the same time makes vast amounts of electronic books available. Amazon’s market clout means that to many users, the Kindle and its rudimentary product appearance represents the state of the e-book product. Once comfortable with this marginal level of product, few readers will show a willingness to explore other options (Shin, 261).

Apple has their own proprietary response in the iBookAuthor program and what I call an “enhanced e-book.” A producer can format a book exactly as a print publisher would, with strict control over typography, format, media, and interaction when displayed in landscape mode. It then allows for free-flowing text and font resizing in portrait mode. The product, however, can only be read on an iBook platform - iMac, iPad, and iPhone. In addition, if you plan to sell the enhanced product, it can only be sold through iTunes. Given that the software and its processing back end is available for free, I cannot fault Apple for wanting to control sales to recoup its investment, but limiting a product to a single sales channel is somewhat self-defeating.

Smashwords takes a broader approach to distribution by acting as a distributor to an ever-growing array of retailers, including iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Nook, Sony, and the new subscription services. At the same time, the product is the low-end epub format - less restrictive than Amazon’s mobi file but no more of a platform for producing a quality artistic product.

In the push to gain market share and become key players in the e-book marketplace, companies have taken fairly short-sighted approaches to the e-book product itself. At the same time, production and delivery capabilities have improved - further facilitating the proliferation of a sellable but substandard product that fails to satisfy what e-book readers are seeking.

Apple has shown that a quality artistic e-book is technically possible given the current state of technology. Smashwords has shown that expanding distribution is a viable business model. Amazon has shown that large volumes of sales are possible. Yet none of these major players get it right - at least for now.

The questions facing the e-book community are daunting. How can we make e-books ubiquitous without destroying the artistic quality of a book users still demand? How can we expand distribution opportunities to facilitate readers’ buying patterns and make e-reader devices capable over a broad spectrum of product offerings? How can we avoid domination by a single player, thus destroying competition and innovation?

Graphic design/desktop publishing is no longer the ugly ducking it once was - professionals embraced the technology and an entire industry was rejuvenated. Your middle school newsletter may still look like it was created by middle school students - go figure - but the design industry was taken back and improved upon by professionals armed with the new technology.

As writers and publishers, we need to demand that same dynamic. We need to demand that e-books become a quality artistic product, not just a free-flow of ugly text. The book as an art form can survive in an electronic world. We have to demand it, and show our readers we understand they are dissatisfied with the current product. It can happen.

......

Shin, D-H. (2010). Understanding e-book users: Uses and gratification expectancy model New Media and Society. Retrieved from http://nms.sagepub.com/content/13/2/260