In a move that is sure to make traditional publishers even more nervous than they currently are, Book View Cafe has just gone live. The Cafe is a self publishing group of 26 award-winning and best-selling authors who have decided to bring out their latest work directly on the Kindle and the Sony Reader.
This is from their press release issued today:
All professionally published, and many currently under contract with traditional New York firms such as Random House, Tor Books and Simon & Schuster, the Book View Cafe authors first came together in 2008 to create bookviewcafe.com, a destination website for online fiction. Armed with a century’s worth of experience in all aspects of publishing, members include multiple-award-winning authors like Ursula K. Le Guin and Vonda N. McIntyre, bestsellers like Sarah Smith and Laura Anne Gilman, and new talents like Seanan McGuire.
Once the main site was established, the authors formed Book View Press to take their titles out onto the wider Internet world.
“The e-publishing infrastructure is now firmly in place,” says Project Manager Sarah Zettel. “BVC authors have both content and the experience to take full advantage of it.”
Book View Press titles will be created and edited by the BVC’s members, and made available through the Kindle and Sony eReader stores, as well as at bookviewcafe.com. No outside publishing house will be involved and the profits go directly to the authors.
Book View Press’s first project is an anthology of science fiction titles, ROCKET BOY AND THE GEEK GIRLS, which will include work by SF mega-star Vonda N. McIntyre, best-seller Katherine Kerr, and a host of other notables including Amy Sterling Casil, Irene Radford, Maya Bohnhoff, and C.L. Anderson.
The next project from Book View Press is more ambitious. An entirely original anthology of linked short stories titled THE SHADOW CONSPIRACY. With a release date of December 15, 2009, SHADOW CONSPIRACY is set in an alternate Victorian age filled with airships, and automata where a human’s soul can be stolen and a machine’s soul can be born. As with ROCKET BOY, the project will go straight to the Kindle, the eReader and the iPhone.
“Ebooks give us a fantastic opportunity to bring our best work straight to the readers,” says Zettel. “It’s truly an exciting time to be an author.
Nice Blog
Writers often face problems like entering same matter again and again because it may not necessary have be handy. However you can convert your scanned pages (jpeg/tiff/pdf) on http://www.onlinedocumentconversion.com and convert online. No need to re-enter or repeat text matter again.
I feel even if you have to pay a little bit it’s worth it, because paid sites are definitely better then unpaid sites.
Caution!
Avoid free sites or sites with no after sales support is a NO NO.
Caution, indeed. There are a plethora of websites out there aiming to take the money from writers who want to see their work published.
The above comment would seem to be an ad for a for pay document conversion service which may or may not be one of those sites. The members of the Book View Cafe do not endorse this.
What we do endorse is writers taking charge of their art and finding ways to make their work available for readers starved for real choice. And we endorse READING! Reading is knowledge — knowledge is power.
So, to all: Go read a book!
Are the books from your website free of DRM and geographical restrictions? If so, your upcoming project sounds like just my thing and I would definitely buy it. If I am understanding correctly, it seems you are setting all of the stories in some kind of shared universe, which is fascinating. I would love to see how different authors interpret the same scenario.
Congratulations. A wonderful idea. All the best luck with it.
Ficbot, see http://www.bookviewcafe.com/index.php/FAQs
“We don’t want to have to mess with DRM (copy protection), which none of us like, so we’re choosing to trust our readers. However, if any of the above happens too much, we are not going to be able to afford to continue this service.”
“All of our ebooks are in PDF format, which is readable by Amazon Kindle, Sony eReader and B&N Nook. Most of our titles are also available in: EPUB, MOBI, .lrf, .lit, .prc and are readable by most e-readers and cell phone apps.”