New Digital Journal Of Fiction Launched: Aoife Walsh, who worked as an assistant editor with Four Courts Press and is now Information Officer with Ireland Literature Exchange, has launched a new quarterly ejournal of new fiction, The South Circular. Walsh said that she had ‘been watching the irresistible way in which digital is changing the consumption of content’ and that ‘rather than fear[ing] these developments, THE SOUTH CIRCULAR is committed to being an active participant in this continuing conversation on the communal reinvention of the publishing process.’ The journal has started accepting submissions from unpublished writers, from Ireland and abroad, of short stories...

From Quill & Quire, here's a snippet of a fascinating article: “People always talk about books changing us. Could we actually measure that?” he says. As a grad student at U of T, Raymond Mar, now an assistant professor of psychology at York University and associate editor of Scientific Study of Literature, worked with Oatley on doing just that. Mar sums up the central assumption Oatley developed to frame their research: “When people are reading literary fiction, they’re creating in their mind a simulation of experience. It’s a simulation that’s cognitive as well as emotional, and has all these different components.” From there, Mar...

According to Publishers Weekly: Fiction is the leading sales driver of e-books, and just how dominant that segment has been is clearly seen in a new market study just released by Bowker. According to "2010–2011 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics & Buying Behaviors Annual Review," fiction accounted for 61% of unit sales in 2010 and 51% of revenue, putting it far ahead of other segments. The children's segment generated 12% of unit sales in 2010, placing it second behind fiction, while nonfiction accounted for the second highest amount of e-book revenue in 2010, with the segment representing 14% of sales.Another indication of...

Fiction eBooks have by and large come a long way from being merely viewed as cheap imitations of ‘real’ novels to an entirely new industry, and yet the best-selling genres seem to have remained the same as their paper counterparts. After browsing the top ten eBook-purveying websites–including the Kindle Store–I sifted through the most popular titles being sold on each and compiled the following Top Ten Best-Selling eBook Genres list for 2011 Thus Far: 1. Romance Fiction 2. Thriller Fiction 3. Fiction stories with/about Weddings (Romance Fiction) 4. Paranormal Fiction 5. Fantasy Fiction 6. Historical Fiction 7. Detective/Spy Fiction 8. Techno Guides/ Manuals/ ____ for Dummies 9. Historical/ Biographical 10....

From a Wattpad press release: Wattpad has released an advance look at the 2011 Q1 metrics report which, in addition to examining broader eReading consumption habits, reveals new trends and popular genres. Over 150,000 new stories are uploaded to Wattpad every month, providing insight into readers’ preferences and habits across over 1,000 different mobile devices, tablets and PCs. Trends in Genres & Categories -Wattpad saw incredible growth in Short Stories (with ~20,000 titles total), as readers look for shorter titles to read quickly without investing in full‐length novels. ‐ The most substantial genre growth was in Humor which now has over 51,000 titles and surpassed the growth in Vampire (44%) and Paranormal (62%),...

I posted some earlier comments from Patricia Ryan (pictured at the left), who is part of a wave of emerging self-publishers who are releasing not new books, but rather, their own print backlists. Patricia was kind enough to answer some further questions on how she went from published category romance author to self-publishing indie e-author. Enjoy! THE EXPERIENCE OF PRINT PUBLISHING Patricia began writing category romances in the early 90's. As she explains: "I had read a bunch of category romances that didn't do much for me, a few that were really pretty good, and one--The Black Sheep, a Silhouette Desire...

Every week it seems something new is happening in eBookland to set the ebook cause back a decade or two. Always at the forefront of the reversal of fortune is greed. This week’s menace to eBookland is literary agent Andrew Wylie and his new publishing venture Odyssey. Wylie could have summed up his actions in simple terms: to disserve both his clients and the ebook-buying public. What, you ask, did he do? He agreed to give Amazon exclusive rights for 2 years to his authors’ backlist titles; Wylie will publish the books and exclusively sell them through Amazon. The backlist includes...

Total first-week ebook sales for Steig Larsson's instant bestseller The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest amounted to nearly 30% of all units sold, according to a report today from Publisher's Marketplace. The popular subscription-based book industry website's mid-day newsletter is reporting that "Knopf Doubleday spokesman Paul Bogaards says their internal figures show an approximate first week sell-through of 425,000 units--which includes 125,000 ebook editions." If we do the math for ourselves, this translates into a 29.4 percent ebook share of the title's total sell-through, which would be by far the largest percentage yet reported for ebook sales of a major trade...

Received the following email from reader John Hagewood. Anyone got any insight into this? I purchased many many books from ereader.com from 2000 until 2009, going way back to the palm digital media and peanut press days. For years, they were my favorite seller...loved the format, the reader, and the social DRM. A lot of what I purchased were Star Trek books. I was just revisiting my library there today via the PC and the iPhone, updating my expired CC and trying to reset my unlock codes. Then I started clicking through from my bookshelf to...

I received a press release from Amazon announcing this. This is the first time the books are available as ebooks and they include: An Enemy of the State, Wheels Within Wheels, The Tery, Dydeetown World and Healer. According to the press release the author said: "I'm thrilled that I'm able to make all five novels of the LaNague Federation series - including an additional five bonus short stories - available for the first time in digital, and for the first time all together as a series," said F. Paul Wilson. "The result is a giant roman à thèse exclusively...

Earlier this month, as a guest writer on Charlie Stross’s blog, Elizabeth Bear wrote an essay about “the future of web publishing,” centering around the “hyperfiction environment” called Shadow Unit in which she takes part. I couldn’t help but be amused by the subject of the post. You see, history repeats itself. Bear et al may very well be right about being part of the “future” of Internet publishing—but in the format in which they are writing, they have also stumbled squarely onto its past. To note, I do not mean this in any derogatory sense. Though I have not read...

From Rita Toews: Read an E-Book Week is gearing up for the 2010 event - March 7 - 13th. An impressive list of participants includes Kobo, PocketBook E-Reader and BookGlutton. Also joining in the celebration of e-books is Smashwords, as well as Badosa.com, with a selection of e-books in Spanish, Catalan, English and French. The Wright State University Libraries of Ohio will also recognize the week. They have created a special template that librarians can download from the Read an E-Book Week website to produce lapel buttons for library staff. This year a section containing resource articles has been added to the site....