I know I'm coming a bit late to this party, but I was out of town while everyone was discussing James Patterson's ad. And I'm kind of glad I was. It gave me time to digest what other people were saying and form my own opinions. I wasn't in favor of the government bailout of the automobile and banking industry, for exactly this reason. We set a precedent. Now people can say, "Well you bailed them out; what about us?" Which is exactly what Patterson alluded to in his ad. That genie's out of the bottle. We're going to see lots more...

Joe Konrath published a thoughtful piece yesterday on fair use and copyright. I thought he was spot on and made some excellent points. He started by talking about copyright as it applied to authors, not to the industry. Not surprisingly, the publishing industry (print, video and music) all focus on copyright as it applies to them and their needs and wants. Konrath points out that copyright doesn't belong to an industry. It belongs to the creator of the work, and that industries often exist to exploit the artists that the work creates. [caption id="attachment_83294" align="alignright" width="180"] Joe Konrath[/caption] You can agree or disagree...

When I wrote last week about the implications of the Goodreads/Amazon merger, I missed one particularly important reason Amazon may have decided to purchase the social reading site. But before I mention it, let me step back for a moment. I've been seeing some good quality books coming out of Amazon's publishing imprints, Thomas & Mercer and AmazonCrossing. I'm finding them from the ads on my Kindle Touch because, not surprisingly, Amazon is heavily promoting their own books through Kindle ads. So far this year, I've borrowed and read Alan Russell's Burning Man, Rachel Abbott's Only the Innocent, and Rosa Montero's Tears in Rain (which...

I'm always skeptical of articles and posts I read on April 1, for obvious reasons. Sometimes they look plausible enough to pull you in, and this year I decided to share some of the April Fool's posts I've particularly enjoyed this morning. Google, of course, had to have some fun with us by introducing Google Nose. Really, "Photo, auditory, olfactory sensory convergence?" Try saying that three times fast! Ron Charles, from The Washington Post, gives us "Apple Letters," Apple's latest patent. After patenting the page turn, there wasn't much left. Joe Konrath is tired of making too much money and is pulling all...

I'm a bit behind on reading Rusch's blog on the business of being a writer, but one of her recent articles on binge reading (which also touched on Hydra) was excellent food for thought. Note that her article didn't cover Hydra's recent changes in its royalty and payment structure, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth reading, both as readers and as writers. Rusch discusses reader habits, and how there's no such things as "too many books" for a popular author. She also talks about why traditional publishers limit the number of books an author can release in a year. (Hint, it's...

Children's eBooks Up 89% in July, Adults up 48% (Digital Book World) Amazon Removes Reviews (Joe Konrath) Why eBook Distribution is Completely Broken and How to Fix it (The Scholarly Kitchen) Just How Much do the Big 6 Hate Library Books? (The Digital Reader)  Kindle Daily Deal: The Gathering Dead by Stephen Knight & Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally * * * Follow us @TeleRead  Join us on Facebook    ...

UK's Tesco Takes on Amazon (Good E-Reader) How Much Do Average Indie Authors Know About Their Pricing Options? (TDR) Why I have a Love/Hate Relationship with Twitter (GigaOM) Writer's Code of Ethics (Joe Konrath) Kindle Daily Deal: All God's Creatures {and} Zoe Sophia's Scrapbook...

Joe Konrath put up a neat little Q&A with two librarians from the Harris County Public Library who are bypassing the usual OverDrive-based library system and setting up their own internal check-out, seeking to buy books directly from publishers and manage them internally. The librarians talk about issues such as accessibility, public experience, collection decisions and library benefits. It's a great read; well worth checking out for those who are interested in learning more about the challenges libraries are facing in managing their digital collections. But what most caught my attention was this bit, near the end: * * * Joe sez:I like...

Joe Konrath has a long article in A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, with the above title.  He marvels that authors are defending the agency model even though it is hurting their pocketbooks: I won't point fingers, but a Google or Twitter search will show how many authors seem to think Amazon is bad, the agency model is good, and the poor Big 6 are getting the shaft. Uh, no. That's just plain wrong. I'm going to explain why the agency model in this particular case is indeed bad for authors. But first go read April L. Hamilton's terrific breakdown of arguments and statements...

I just posted about how Amazon, via self-publishing and agent-based publishing, poses a threat to publishers who still haven’t updated their business model to compete. Here’s a post from self-publishing booster J.A. Konrath’s blog that points out one of the reasons why Amazon is such a threat. Responding to one bookstore calling for a boycott of Stirred, the book he’s publishing under Amazon’s new Thomas & Mercer imprint (and which will consequently be placed as printed editions in bookstores as well as published electronically), Konrath points out that he has done a lot for bookstores over the years, and...

On Techdirt, Mike Masnick discusses a post by J.A. Konrath proposing turning each e-book into its own social network. The idea is to give an e-book a form of “interactivity” that is more interactive than the audiovisual bells and whistles most publishers seem to associate with interactivity these days. Konrath’s post discusses the possibility of friends inviting other friends to buy a particular book, and then meet together in interactive on-line “book clubs” to talk about it as they read it. It also talks about ways authors can interact with their readers through it, through such means as Skype...

E-self-publishing evangelist Joe Konrath has posted again to his blog about his sales figures for last month and his predictions for e-books in 2011. He sold 266 self-published print books in November (though as he notes, most of them weren’t available until the middle of the month) for total royalties of $1,000, but he sold 300 e-books per day for royalties of over $26,000. And his new title Shaken, published by Amazon Encore, reportedly “puts my self-pubbed sales for November to shame,” though he isn’t allowed to go into specifics by his contract. Konrath expects sales to increase in...