Richard Gavin, the highly regarded “master of numinous horror fiction in the tradition of Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and H.P. Lovecraft,” recently announced that his story collection, The Darkly Splendid Realm (also available on Kindle) was about to go out of print—on paper, at least. I took the chance to ask him a few questions about the whole notion of going out of print in these days of permanent e-book availability, and how he sees print and digital relating to each other. --- TeleRead: What's it like to have a print version go out of print nowadays, especially a limited edition? How do you...

The nice gentlemen over at eBook Ninjas invited me to appear as a guest on their year-end podcast, and since I was on vacation, I only caught the release just now. Chris and the guys recap the top stories of each month, with commentary from yours truly. If I had to pick my favorite story of the year—the theme that kept coming up for me over and over again—it would be the rise of the non-American. [caption id="attachment_76143" align="alignright" width="123"] Joshua Tallent, eBook Architects founder and eBook Ninja[/caption] Amazon has Canadian and Japanese storefronts now! Kobo establishes a development team in Dublin, Ireland!...

Fanfic and other original Internet fiction were some of the very first “e-books”, but ever since copyright owners have started paying more attention to the Internet the relationship with fans has sometimes been a thorny one. Reason TV has a 7.5-minute interview with Rebecca Tushnet, Georgetown University law professor and long-time legal advocate for fanfiction. (She wrote an article for a law journal back in the ‘90s that I believe is one of the first places fanfic was mentioned positively in a legal context.) At the moment, Professor Tushnet is a member of the Organization for Transformative Works, a...

While perusing the ConQuesT dealer room, I stopped to talk to Tyree Campbell, managing editor of small press publisher Sam’s Dot Publishing. He was kind enough to consent to a five-minute interview, in which he discussed how his small press operates: Me: How long has Sam’s Dot Publishing been in operation? Tyree Campbell: As Sam’s Dot it's been operating since 2002. My predecessor was on-line mostly; we're in print. My predecessor was mostly on-line since 1986. So we've been around for a while. Me: So you were formerly an on-line publisher? Tyree Campbell:...

Here is the third ten minutes of the thirty-minute discussion I had with Michael Stackpole at GenCon a few months ago. I’m a little embarrassed that it took this long for me to sit down and type it all up. The first part can be found here, and the second here. Stackpole is best known for his extensive work in writing BattleTech and Star Wars tie-in novels, and he also wrote the novelization of the recent Conan movie. We have covered Stackpole’s blog posts on self-publishing fairly extensively over the last few months, as well as his GenCon panel...

Here is the second ten minutes of the thirty-minute discussion I had with Michael Stackpole at GenCon last month. I will be posting the final part in days to come. The first part can be found here. Stackpole is best known for his extensive work in writing BattleTech and Star Wars tie-in novels, and he also wrote the novelization of the recent Conanmovie. We have covered Stackpole’s blog posts on self-publishing fairly extensively over the last few months, as well as his GenCon panel seminar. In this segment, we discuss piracy, e-book pricing, editing, and the “Storyteller’s Bowl”...

Here is the first ten minutes of the thirty-minute discussion I had with Michael Stackpole at GenCon last month. I will be posting the other two parts in days to come. Stackpole is best known for his extensive work in writing BattleTech and Star Wars tie-in novels, and he also wrote the novelization of the recent Conan movie. We have covered Stackpole’s blog posts on self-publishing fairly extensively over the last few months, as well as his GenCon panel seminar. In this first part of the interview, we largely discussed the early history of e-books and e-publishing, with a diversion into how...

When I was wandering around GenCon, I quite unexpectedly came across a booth where Howard Tayler of the ten-years-old-and-still-going Schlock Mercenary webcomic was selling books, sighing autographs, and personalizing the books he sold with requested character doodles. I hadn’t even known he was going to be there, but naturally, I bought a book and had a doodle made. (Which sort of ties into a point that Michael Stackpole made in the interview with him that I have yet to transcribe—that people don’t buy books at cons as books, they buy them as souvenirs.) And then I asked Tayler...

From an Interview by Buzz Poole (via Imprint) I first learned about The Institute for the Future of the Book while working on a magazine assignment that eventually became this piece for The Millions. In getting to know Bob Stein, his colleagues and the projects they championed I became convinced that concerns about the death of reading and writing were deeply misplaced. What readers, writers, publishers and retailers really needed to worry about, and catch up with, was the increasing potential of what a book’s content could be, the delivery of the content and how we could interact with the content....

In this third portion of the interview, I asked about the plotting process, plans for the future, and whether Pete had been inspired by particular sources. Previously: Part One, Part Two Me: You talked in the past about how the huge plot that you've woven together in Sluggy over the years has drawn toward a close. You said you didn't want to start any new plot arcs until that was finished. What happens when it's finished? Do you start another decade-long story arc? Pete: That's the thing, I have the freedom to make the...

In this second portion of the interview, I asked about the ways Pete earns money from the comic, including Amazon and other referrals and his premium subscriber program, “Defenders of the Nifty.” I also asked about his feelings about or experience with e-books. Previously: Part One Me: How did you decide to start the Defenders of the Nifty program? Pete: There again, that's been going on so long I can't remember exactly how it started. I guess it just came from the idea of, instead of just offering donations, kind of giving a little...

It has taken me a while to get around to transcribing this, but better late than never. On May 28th, I sat down with Pete Abrams at the ConQuesT SF convention in Kansas City for an interview about his webcomic, Sluggy Freelance. Sluggy is a rarity in that it is one of relatively few webcomics that provides its artist’s entire living, and it has also been in operation for over 14 years (13 as of the interview). Abrams has been interviewed in a number of places already, and I tried to avoid covering the same territory...