Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Liaden series, now homed with Baen and producing new books, has experienced a number of fits and starts over the years, the first one being after the series’ original publisher decided it wasn’t interested in a fourth book. Upon joining the Internet and discovering a Liaden fandom had developed there, Lee and Miller began to issue a yearly chapbook publication as a gift to those fans. The chapbooks cost around $10 each, and contained one or two new Liaden stories or novellas. The first 16 of these chapbooks, along with one or two...

Yesterday, my local Borders kicked over into 50-70% off mode, and this morning I stopped by to see if they might possibly have anything I wanted. To my surprise, I found about $25 (which is to say, $50) worth of stuff I didn’t mind snagging in paper: the first two Kencyr omnibi (okay, “omnibuses” is more correct, but “omnibi” sounds neater) by P.C. Hodgell, Carousel Tides by Sharon Lee, Jumper by Stephen Gould, and Kitty Raises Hell by Carrie Vaughn. And buying them gave me some interesting insights into my reading habits. I had read all of these books...

Five years ago, David Rothman posted a link to Diane Duane’s Storyteller’s Bowl project, The Big Meow—a third book in the trilogy of Feline Wizardry novels whose first two hadn’t sold well enough for a publisher to be interested. The idea was that people would subscribe, and in return for the subscriptions Duane would write the book. In many ways, this was a forerunner of other such projects such as Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Fledgling and Saltation. (I even had all three of them on a podcast talk show together (Part 1, Part 2) to discuss the process of...

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, authors of the Liaden Universe stories (including the Storyteller’s-Bowl-financed drafts of Fledgling and Saltation that I mentioned here), are holding an e-book giveaway contest to give away 36 e-book copies of The Dragon Variation, the omnibus edition of the first three novels (chronologically) of the “main” Liaden Universe series. The contest is open only to people who have not read any of the Liaden Universe novels before. Contestants may enter by leaving a comment on the blog entry linked above, until midnight Friday, July 16th. After the entry period concludes, 36 commenters will...

And now it’s time to review an e-book app that does not have “Reader” in the name. Time to look at the big kahuna of iPad e-book readers, the one that was supposed to change the publishing industry forever: iBooks. There’s quite a lot to like in this free iPad e-reader, and only a few minor niggles. Given that it uses EPUB and is quite easy to load with content, I can use it as a replacement for Stanza on the big machine. In fact, I would say it’s as good as or even better than Stanza in...

A little over three years ago, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller began writing a Liaden Universe side-story novel, Fledgling—which soon expanded into a sequel book, Saltation. These books were written as crowdfunded “Storyteller’s Bowl” projects: The drafts were posted to the web one chapter per week in return for reader donations, with the promise of a professionally-edited-and-revised hardcover book sent to donors of a specific level at the end of the project. Subsequently, the novels were picked up by Baen along with the rest of the Liaden Universe series, with Lee & Miller to receive part of their...

Which is lighter, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead? I was put in mind of that old conundrum recently when I picked up a used paper book the other day. Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Partners in Necessity, an 848-page trade-paperback tree-killer comprising the first three novels in their Liaden Universe setting. This book is 8” x 5” x 2.5”. I do not have a scale, but if I use the rule of thumb of dividing cubic inches by 39 to get pounds, the book turns out to weigh a little more than two...

Given that Baen is frequently used as a counter-example whenever the matter of printing costs making up a small fraction a a hardcover’s total cost comes up, I thought it would be a good idea to hear from Baen about how it is able to keep its prices so low. Consequently, I arranged this e-mail interview with Toni Weisskopf, Baen’s publisher. Weisskopf has many interesting things to say about Baen’s overall strategy, pricing, and the question of e-books “cannibalizing” printed books. The interview begins below the jump. (Links added by me.) Many voices in the publishing...

Thirteen months ago I reviewed a self-published e-book series called Worlds Apart. Everything I said in that review remains true (go ahead and read it—I’ll wait right here!). I just wanted to talk a little further about it in light of recent events. With the uproar over the Amazon/Macmillan pricing feud, a number of people have spoken up claiming that writers don’t need the publishers—they can self-publish and find their own audience. And to an extent this is true. I’ve certainly covered enough of self-published writer Henry Melton’s work here to make it clear what I think of...

There is one last aspect of the Astak that I need to review before shipping it back in. That is one of the major ways it differs from the Sony, and one of the ways it is similar to the Kindle 2: text-to-speech read-aloud mode. Note that with the version of firmware with which the Astak shipped, only PDFs could be read aloud. However, a more recent firmware upgrade expanded speech-compatibility and now it works with ePub too. (And perhaps other formats; I did not check.) I connected the Astak to my computer and recorded a couple of minutes of the...

Fledgling, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, is a fun return to their Liaden universe, the first half of a bildungsroman for a character who has been the subject of Liaden fan curiosity for the longest time. That being said, it also makes a good jumping-on point for people new to the Liaden universe. I highly recommend it. The novel Fledgling, and its sequel Saltation, are two of the biggest success stories of the “Storyteller’s Bowl” e-publishing format. As we reported before, the idea behind this format is that the writer agrees to post one chapter per week as long...