It’s no news that magazine publishers have begun to focus extensively on tablets such as the iPad, coming out with pricey tablet editions that cost the same as single print issues and usually do not have the same flexibility of use as viewing the same content on the web. (Though it is worth mentioning that Wired has dropped the price of its iPad magazine from $5 to $4 with the latest issue—a small improvement, at least.) However, some magazine publishers are passing up both tablet and web and releasing direct e-magazine editions for the PC. Folio has a...

Last month, I mentioned a “Storyteller’s Bowl”-funded short story project by Greg Stolze, “Two Things She Does With Her Body”. Last night, the story’s funding drive completed, and the story was posted as a 7-page PDF for all to read. It’s a decent little slice-of-life story, with good, very descriptive writing. As Stolze says, “There's no twist ending, no elaborate plot, no dramatic reversal of character. It's just this woman, doing these two things, two acts that contrast.” According to the KickStarter project page, Stolze earned $345 gross, surpassing his $300 goal by 15%. For a 3,000-word...

George Santayana said “Those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.” Certainly e-book history has been repeating—the iPhone/iPod Touch and the Kindle are standing in for the Palm PDA and the RocketBook as a new generation discovers e-books just as the early adopters did ten years ago (only a bit more successfully this time). But the history that people have been forgetting (or perhaps not knowing to begin with) is that there was a thriving electronic fiction community years before even the earliest commercial e-books were around to be adopted. Over the last four columns, I have...