Next up, chronologically, in the Honorverse are a pair of short stories. Although they have nothing to do with each other, they both cover events that become important in the next book. And they both involve events of great change to their respective worlds—one not violently, but the other very much so. Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy A Beautiful Friendship Young Honor and Elizabeth Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances On Basilisk Station The Honor of the Queen...

Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy Young Honor and Elizabeth Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances On Basilisk Station The Honor of the Queen The Short Victorious War Irresponsible captain, itinerant noble Field of Dishonor Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order: A Beautiful Friendship by David Weber For this book, we actually jump back to the beginning of the chronology, because this novel is an expanded version of the novella of the same name, which I reviewed as part of the “Treecat Trilogy”. In fact, it also serves as a partial sequel to the second story in that group, “The Stray”, as well. Unlike most books in the...

FutureBook’s Robin Harvie has a post speculating on whether e-books will soon be more widely adopted to send review copies. The costs for sending review copies of physical books can run into the hundreds of pounds for just a single book, and this would seem to be an area where e-review copies could save publishers a bundle. However, there isn’t a system in place yet to allow this. At the moment there is no structure in place that allows review copies to be delivered directly to the reviewer as an eBook. Publishers rightly furrow their brow...

Today until 8pm ET, self-published authors who are using Barnes & Noble's PubIt! digital publishing platform can visit the PubIt! Facebook page and pitch their novels to participating book review bloggers. Here are the details: On Friday from 9am EST-8pmEST, stop by the PubIt! Facebook page. We'll post as status updates the blogger's call for submissions. Under each blogger that's a good fit for your work, post 2 sentences describing your book. Be sure to include your genre, length of work, and your pen name if it is different from your Facebook identity. Please note that you can only pitch books already...

We've featured several stories about the web-connected print-on-demand Espresso Book Machine (EBM), which can access millions of digital books and create print versions in minutes. Most of those stories, however, are light on actual user reviews, so I was happy to stumble across this detailed summary of "the good, the bad, and the sexy" qualities of the EBM from librarian Rick Anderson at The Scholarly Kitchen. His library at the University of Utah has had an EBM for two years now, and he's put together an insightful list of what works and what still needs work. You should read the full...

Andrew Liszewski at the gadget blog OhGizmo! has published a long review of the new Kobo Touch, and in it he concludes that it's the first ereader device he'd actually consider buying. He doesn't mention Barnes & Noble's competing Nook Touch, so I don't know if he'd still feel so strongly about Kobo after a side-by-side comparison. Still, if you want to see lots of great detail photos of the new Kobo device then head over and check it out. Liszewski also explains how you can access the hidden sudoku game: If you go into the 'About Kobo Touch' section of the...

Long has my inbox-on both LinkedIN and Facebook-been filled with inquiries on various ePub creation software, especially regarding two specific platforms: Sigil and Calibre. Both are free, open-source creations of unselfish and brilliant folks that saw the eBook industry coming a long time ago. I've fiddled around happily with Calibre for over a year and been fairly happy, but only just this week did I pay heed to the various forum posts praising Sigil. After watching a few video tutorials and scrolling through the basic crash course I downloaded the open source system in less than a minute. The pros of...

Earlier this week we posted Andrys Basten's overview of current iriver Story HD reviews from various sources, which together provided a good look at what the device is capable of and how it stacks up to the Kindle, its closest competitor in design. Now Ars Technica has published its own detailed review, along with several close-up photos. Among the good things Ars Technica found: The keyboard is easier to type on than the Kindle's, because the "Symbols menu recasts each letter key as one of the symbols, meaning you don't have to scroll around to include a period, comma, or exclamation...

Occasional TeleRead contributor Robert Nagle passed me a link to a review he lately posted of our founder David Rothman’s small-press-published novel, The Solomon Scandals, which recounts a journalist’s investigation of a scandal in 1970s Washington. Nagle quite liked the book, giving it four stars, though noting that the tone could get a little preachy at times. Ars Technica reports that Google will release the first e-ink reader optimized for Google Books in about a week. The iRiver Story HD, apparently a revision of iRiver’s 2009 Story e-reader, will include wifi and a qwerty keyboard, and cost $139.99 suggested retail when...

Within a week after Amazon ended its Affiliates Program here in California, I received this rather disquieting email from one of my freelance employers, 1776 Productions (they run online reputable book review websites and some of the last book review paper publications in the country): Amazon.com has decided that Sacramento Book Review and San Francisco Book Review can no long post reviews books in the customer review section of Amazon.com and have removed three years of book reviews we’ve provided to authors. They feel it is a violation of their terms of service. We’re sorry for the inconvenience this causes you. We’ve...

Lately, I have been working my way through the works of science fiction writer H. Beam Piper. Piper was one of the great science fiction writers of the fifties and early sixties, and, tragically, he committed suicide right before his works' popularity really took off. Perhaps as a result of the disorder brought about by his untimely demise, the copyrights on many of Piper's works were never renewed. They now reside in the public domain, where they can be read for free on sites like Project Gutenberg, or the Baen Best Of Gutenberg Science Fiction CD. Recently, writer...

One of the biggest events in computer gaming last month was the long anticipated launch of Valve’s puzzle game Portal 2. After several months of promotion, including an alternate reality game, Valve's Portal sequel was exactly what's a lot of gamers had been waiting for. And after they finished beating the game—which, like its predecessor, did not take very long—some of them might have been curious exactly how the game came about. Enter game journalist Geoff Keighley. Keighley had written a series of articles called "Final Hours” about the production of various other computer games in the ‘90s and...