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

Free copy - As Angels Weep, v2

The SMASHWORDS sale is over, and because of the late posting I had only a week of the month-long sale to put the new Juno Letters book - As Angels Weep - out for review. So I have decided to offer an ebook version for the months of August on my website and through this blog as I do the final revisions and edits.

If you are interested, go to: As Angels Weep - Bookcard and simply follow the directions.

The ebook is available in all popular formats - but only through August.

Book 5 is in full swing and I am developing a whole new spate of characters I think you will enjoy, as well as a twisting plot. You can read a teaser of The Scavengers of Graveny Marsh at this link.

Good reading this summer!

As Angels Weep - at SMASHWORDS

"As Angels Weep" is now available at SMASHWORDS in all popular ebook formats. It will be FREE as a part of the SMASHWORDS SUMMER-WINTER SALE (don't ask my what the name is about - I never could figure it out) until July 31. The Print-on-Demand version through CreateSpace is in review, and barring any missteps on my part should be ready in a few days.

Finally publishing a new novel is one of the great joys of writing. It takes over four months to create one of these masterpieces (my review - might not be supported by peer review). I will be passing the completed manuscript to California Times Publishing next week for inclusion in the Amazon catalog.

In the meantime, Kindle users can download a version for their reader from SMASHWORDS, as well as iBook users (the epub version). The enhanced iBook version will be ready by the end of August.

For you audiobook fanatics - my most favorite readers - Gary Regal has promised me he can start working on "As Angels Weep" right after school starts.

In the meantime, I have started Book 5 of The Juno Letters series - The Scavengers of Graveny Marsh. You can read a teaser online at THIS LINK.