Would You Step on Your Neighbor's Head Over a Book?

Though books are among the noblest expressions of civilization, like other art forms they can be dangerous. Authors have been imprisoned and even executed because of them. Libraries have been sacked and books destroyed in bonfires because of the ideas they contained. Of recent memory, a fatwah was issued against Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses, and the Turks prosecuted an author under Law 301 forbidding "Unturkishness" in books published in their country.

There is little risk, however, that bookstore employees will be trampled to death by customers rampaging through their shop aisles on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that customarily initiates the holiday shopping season. Unlike stampeding shoppers who fatally ran over a Wal-Mart employee on Black Friday this year, bookstore shopping was conducted with the decorum one expects from well bred ladies, gentlemen and children, as I personally observed in a Barnes & Noble store in New York's Lincoln Center area.

Books are worth fighting for and even dying for. But they're not worth killing your neighbor over. Supplies are abundant, and if your store runs out of stock, it will be replenished soon enough, or you can buy it online.

Let people beat each other's brains in over 32-inch flat-screen TV. Book shoppers, the cultured guardians of civilization, browse bookstore shelves, quietly make their selections and queue up patiently to pay for their purchases. Dignity and order prevail. They leave the shop clutching their books like talismen against the barbarism that would crush a living soul to death for a bargain on an X-Box at a discount store.

We are not animals. We are people of peace, we book people.

RC

Reduced to a Cinder, a Hostile World Smolders with Vengeance

Greg Bear calls George Zebrowski “one of those rare speculators who bases his dreams on science as well as inspiration.” Zebrowski has published more than seventy works of short fiction and more than a hundred and forty articles and essays in every major fantasy and science fiction publication. E-Reads carries a number of his books, and we're happy to say that some of his most visionary works are in production. We'll be announcing them soon. Until we do, The Omega Point Trilogy will keep you well absorbed.

6599 A.D. The war between the Earth Federation and the Herculean Empire has been over for more than three centuries. The planet in the Hercules Globular Cluster is a cinder; the few descendants of the surviving Empire live half a galaxy away in what seems to be a religious commune. But on an unnamed planet deep within the Hercules Cluster, two survivors, father and son, gather their resources and plan a reign of terror against Federation worlds.

Rising to one of the most unusual climaxes in recent fantastic literature, this novel of chase and vengeance depicts a colorful, poetic future struggling to overcome its past. Filled with striking twists and vivid ideas, Omega Point Trilogy is space adventure at its most modern.

When you finish it, check out Sunspacers Trilogy. Then watch this space for news of E-Reads Zebrowski releases.

RC

Talk About Print on Demand - This One Is Definitely Not Your Quickie Paperback

You can try calling your bookmaker about placing a bet on La Dotta Mano, but after checking the entries at Pimlico he will tell you there's no such nag. That's because it's not the name of a horse. It's the name of a book.

Oops - wrong bookmaker. The makers of this particular book are skilled Old World craftsmen hand-sculpting a Carrara marble-bound edition of plates of Michaelangelo drawings and sculptures. A copy of the extremely limited edition goes on exhibit today at the New York Public Library, as reported by David Carr in the New York Times. "La Dotta Mano" means “The Wise Hand” and the work is arguably il piu bello libro nel mondo.

It may also be il piu pesante - the world's heaviest. We thought Phaidon's 800 page Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture was heavy at fifteen pounds. La Dotta Mano weighs in at about sixty-two. Around the size of a Siberian Husky, except you don't wear white gloves to shlep a Siberian Husky. You'd better wear them to protect your investment if you browse La Dotta Mano, however - the book sells for 100,000 Euros. Despite the price, some twenty bibliophiles have purchased it. They are undoubtedly reinforcing their bookshelves as we speak.

For more about the genesis of this remarkable book, click here. And check out this video of the cover being produced.

RC

Random Going All-In With E-Books?

Random House's CEO Markus Dohle wants to expand the company's e-book list by a serious multiple, taking the inventory from 8000 to something approaching 15,000. Matt Shatz, Random's VP for digital operations, says sales of e-books have been soaring.

They certainly have been, as we have reported here. But E-book sales have a long way to go before matching the size or profitability of good old fashioned printed books. For that reason, and because any bold investment in today's economic climate is worth cheering for, Random's commitment to a dramatic increase in e-content is a very good sign.

RC

Thanksgiving Greetings from E-Reads

Though our mouths were full of song as the sea,
and our tongues of exultation as the multitude of its waves,
and our lips of praise as the wide-extended firmament;
though our eyes shone with light like the sun and the moon,
and our hands were spread forth like the eagles of heaven,
and our feet were swift as hinds,
we should still be unable to thank thee and bless thy name,
O Lord our God and God of our fathers,
for one thousandth or one ten thousandth part of the bounties which thou has bestowed upon our fathers and upon us.

- from the Hebrew Prayer Book

Music Biz Tipping From Tangible to Digi

Tim Arango reports in the New York Times that Digital Sales Surpass CDs at Atlantic. This should come as no surprise to fifteen-year-olds. In fact, it should come as a surprise to no one of any age. But it's still another sign that the media is undergoing one of the profoundest transformations in the history of human communications.

Does that mean that dollars have also tipped from the hard copy side to the virtual? Not according to John Rose, a former music business executive quoted by Arango. “It’s not at all clear that digital economics can make up for the drop in physical,” Rose observed.

"With the milestone comes a sobering reality already familiar to newspapers and television producers," writes Arango. "While digital delivery is becoming a bigger slice of the pie, the overall pie is shrinking fast."

This too is no surprise to any business person caught in that terminator line where the fading light of the old media meets the rising sun of the new.

Where is the money disappearing to? Once you recite the motto of the new generation - "Information wants to be free" - it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

RC

End of World is at Hand! Agents Buying Lunch for Editors

Has it come to this? According to the New York Observer's Leon Neyfakh, editors and publishing company executives are being asked to cut back on lunches. Neyfakh's headline says it all: Publishing Bigshots Told to Open Canned Tuna, Eat at Desk

But it gets worse: some agents are splitting lunch bills with editors or - ohmigod! - treating entirely.

ICM co-head Esther Newberg suggested that maybe agents and editors could start splitting bills instead of saddling publishers with the whole thing as per tradition. “We’re all part of this economic crisis,” says Newberg. “I think that we can alternate. I think that would certainly be fair.”

I dunno. Most agencies are far from behemoths, and even paying the tip for the coat check attendant is likely to trigger cardiac infarction in any agent who as little as six months ago didn't hesitate to order the three pound lobster without checking the menu for the price per pound. Another agent mentioned in Neyfakh's article, Ira Silverberg, can see the handwriting on Le Bernardin's wall. "We can get together and have a shawarma and sit in the park and talk about writers. The social time is really important, but what is not important is how expensive the food is.”

Shawarma? In the park? If an agent is asking $2500 for a cowboy novel, maybe. But soliciting a $5 million pre-empt for the hottest novel since Fear of Flying with shawarma grease dripping into your lap?

I don't think so.

Nefakh debriefed some other execs about The New Frugality. Check out his article and learn who's eating in the company cafeteria.

And if you're feeling sentimental about the Golden Age of Publishing Lunches, when asking an agent to contribute a penny was a flagrant breach of courtesy spelling the irrevocable rupture of the relationship, I invite you to read "Let's Have Lunch" from my book How to Be Your Own Literary Agent.

Richard Curtis

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Part III: Parent Company Owes $7 Bil

Motoko Rich in the New York Times reports that Education Media and Publishing Group, the Irish owner of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, "borrowed heavily to finance the acquisitions of Houghton Mifflin in 2006 and, last year, Harcourt." How much, exactly? Jeremy Dickens, the private-equity company's president who this week announced a temporary halt of acquisitions, put it at "about $7 billion in debt outstanding, on which it was paying about $500 million in debt service annually," says Rich, who makes it clear that the purchase freeze was directed at the company's consumer book business, not the textbooks. The former comprises less than 6 percent of total revenues.

Yesterday we speculated on the possibility the company or some part of it might have to be sold to relieve debt pressure. Dickens denied it - sort of. “If there’s a transaction that makes sense for all of our stakeholders, we’ll consider it,” he stated, admitting that some trade publishers had been sounding the company out.

We thought one of them could be Hachette. Interestingly, Hachette and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt were paired in Rich's article for another reason. Contrasting the bleak news from HMH, Hachette announced a holiday bonus for all its employees amounting to one week's salary.

RC

The Knight and Knave of Swords, Volume 7 of Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar Saga, Now Available in Paperback

The Dark Horse paperback edition of The Knight and Knave of Swords, the seventh novel in Fritz Leiber's classic Lankhmar fantasy adventure series, which Publishers Weekly described as "One of the great works of fantasy of this century," is now on sale. Or you may wish to buy E-Reads' e-book edition. (Pictured on the left is the Dark Horse cover and on the right, the E-Reads cover.)

Ramsey Campbell, the highly regarded British horror author called him, "the greatest living writer of supernatural horror fiction". Drawing many of his own themes from Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and H.P Lovecraft, master manipulator Fritz Leiber is a worldwide legend within the Fantasy genre, actually having coined the term "Sword and Sorcery" that would describe the sub-genre he would more than help create.

While THE LORD OF THE RINGS took the world by storm, Leiber’s fantastic but thoroughly flawed anti-heroes, Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, adventured and stumbled deep within the caves of Inner Earth as well, albeit a different one than Tolkien's. They wondered and wandered to the edges of the Outer Sea, across the Land of Nehwon and throughout every nook and cranny of gothic Lankhmar, Nehwon’s grandest and most mystically corrupt city. Lankhmar is Leiber’s fully realized, vivid, incarnation of urban decay and civilization’s corroding effect on the human psyche. Fafhrd and Mouse are not innocents; their world is no land of honor and righteousness. It is a world of human complexities and violent action, of discovery and mystery, of swords and sorcery.

"Fritz Leiber's tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are virtually a genre unto themselves. Urbane, idiosyncratic, comic, erotic and human, spiked with believable action of a master fantasist!"
--William Gibson

"After too long a wait, the master story teller of us all returns with a huge, anecdotal adventure in the magic-drenched lives of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Glowing imagination melds with gorgeous language to make this one of Leiber's very best...which is a better best than this poor world usually has to offer. Leiber's back: rejoice!"
-Harlan Ellison

"It's all Fritz Leiber's fault. If he weren't such a deadly fine fantasist I wouldn't be stopping everything to read his tales. And if he weren't such a master I wouldn't occasionally look out of the window and wish he'd interrupt my routine again, as he doesn't do it often enough. THE KNIGHT AND KNAVE OF SWORDS came into my life and took over an otherwise fully programmed afternoon. I stop everything when a new Fafhrd and Grey Mouser story comes into my hands."
--Roger Zelazny

Visit Leiber's page on E-Reads to see the complete Lankhmar series and some other great Leiber novels as well.

RC

Kindle 2 Rumors On Again: Where There's Kindling There's Fire

If Oprah nearly lost it over v. 1 of the Kindle, it's hard to imagine what she'll do when she holds v. 2 in her hands. Though Amazon has thrown cold water on rumors, they just don't go away. TechCrunch.com quotes "Our sources" to confirm that the long awaited, long debated second version of the Kindle will be released early in the coming year.

"Our sources" is not exactly the kind of collateral you can take to the bank to borrow against your mortgage. But it actually does make sense. We've reported on serious development and actual announcements of competitors, especially in the area of tablet-sized handhelds suitable for students. Jeff Bezos may be hearing those footsteps

So, for what it's worth, TechCrunch.com's somewhat ethereal sources say Kindle 2 is tentatively scheduled to go on sale in “early next quarter.”

RC

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Part II: More About Leveraging in Publisher Acquisitions

After I ran an item yesterday about the acquisition freeze at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, in which Publishers Weekly used the term "leveraged", a related news item was brought to my attention. At a panel panel conducted at last October's Frankfurt Book Fair, Lagardere Publishing's Arnaud Nourry observed, "within the last two or three years some major publishing companies, particularly in education, have been acquired by highly-leveraged private equity funds.... I'm sure that within the next months some of these companies will have to sell some of the assets back..."

In light of yesterday's news, Nourry's prescience is quite remarkable.

Or is it more than prescience? Nourry, Chairman and CEO of Hachette Book Group, which owns Little, Brown and Grand Central among other holdings, finished the above sentence thus: "...and we'll be there...to make these acquisitions." If he, and we, are talking about the same highly leveraged major educational publishing company, he may have been hinting that he's got his eye on Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Is there a white knight in the offing? Watch this page...

Incidentally, Nourry also had this to say on that same panel: "I don't see the banks pushing Borders into bankruptcy in the short term, and I'm rather confident about the next six or nine months for these big accounts."

From his lips to God's ear.

RC

Wired's Kevin Kelly on The Overthrow of the Book

The Sunday New York Times Magazine of November 23, 2008 is called "The Screens Issue" and carries a number of brilliantly insightful articles about the media revolution of which we are all both active participants and hapless victims. The most arresting piece of all is Becoming Screen Literate by Wired's Kevin Kelly and I can't commend highly enough.

After more than five hundred years of domination by printed text, Kelly says, "Now invention is again overthrowing the dominant media. A new distribution-and-display technology is nudging the book aside and catapulting images, and especially moving images, to the center of the culture. We are becoming people of the screen."

The collective mentality of today's social networking generation - what Kelly calls the "hive mind" - is utilizing cheap and ingenious digital tools to produce movies, videos, anime, 3D computer models and other wonders. The "author" of these works is not an individual but, rather, a cultural community. It is even bigger than what the French call the auteur, the unifying human vision that infuses a motion picture. The hive's human components do not necessarily know each other but contribute anonymously and selflessly to the creation of a media event that is not only greater than the sum of its part but possesses immense global reach and impact.

'After all," writes Kelly,

"this is how authors work. We dip into a finite set of established words, called a dictionary, and reassemble these found words into articles, novels and poems that no one has ever seen before. The joy is recombining them. Indeed it is a rare author who is forced to invent new words. Even the greatest writers do their magic primarily by rearranging formerly used, commonly shared ones. What we do now with words, we’ll soon do with images."

RC

Never the Twain: How Books Get Sold to the Movies

Most authors have a simplistic notion about how books are marketed and sold to the movies. Their impression is that it their literary agent, operating alone or with a Hollywood co-agent, submits a book to producers until he finds one who likes it enough to make an offer, the same way that book agents submit manuscripts to publishers. In truth the process is maddeningly complicated and confused and can daunt many otherwise sophisticated New York literary agents. And while some agents have better movie and television track records than others, none has formulated a single and satisfying solution to the challenge of efficiently finding the right producer for movie or television adaptations of books.

For a discussion, click here.

Behind Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Moratorium

A breaking news story in Publishers Weekly reports that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced a temporary suspension of acquisitions, fueling lots of speculation about the health of major publishing companies in the current toxic economic climate.

In its report, PW used the word "leveraged" in describing a possible underlying reason for HMH's extraordinary action. A news report in WeeklyTelegraph.co.uk may shed some light on the underlying deal that that brought Harcourt into the arms of Houghton:

Publishing giant Reed Elsevier has sold the remaining parts of its Harcourt publishing division to Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group, the publishing and software group chaired by Irish entrepreneur Barry O'Callaghan, for $4bn (£1.96bn).

Mr O'Callaghan's HM Riverdeep Group completed the deal to buy the US-based Harcourt schools education publishing business yesterday evening, after the stock market closed. It is paying $3.7bn in cash and the remainder in shares.

Investment banks Credit Suisse, Lehman Brothers and Citi advised on and financed the deal for HM Riverdeep, which is expected to complete in the first half of 2008.

The acquisition will make HM Riverdeep one of the largest US educational textbook publishers alongside McGraw-Hill and Pearson's Simon & Schuster.

Mr O'Callaghan's interest in the remainder of Reed's educational business comes just months after his Dublin-based company completed a $5bn reverse takeover of Houghton Mifflin, the fourth largest textbook publisher in the US.

That deal was one of the biggest in Irish corporate history, exceeding the $3.9bn (£2.66bn) leveraged buyout of Jefferson Smurfit, the family-controlled paper and packaging company, by Madison Dearborn, the private equity company, in 2002.

Riverdeep originally floated on Nasdaq in 2000 with a value of $140m, but was then taken private in 2003 with a valuation of $400m.

Reed Elsevier bought the Harcourt Education division in July 2001 as part of its acquisition of Harcourt General. The Anglo-Dutch business information, medical and academic publisher put its education arm up for sale in February, after errors and contract losses in its exam-testing business damaged revenues and profits.

In April, Pearson, owner of the Financial Times, agreed a $950m bid for Reed's assessment and international education assets, continuing a spate of big deals in the educational publishing sector.

Though other major trade publishers have troubles of their own right now, they are of a more conventional kind -- possible slowdown of holiday sales, returns, and the like. Alarmed authors and agents can take comfort, however cold, that the HMH situation is not representative or predictive.

RC

Just Tell the Mailman to Deliver to You c/o Googleplex

David Carr enumerates some, but by no means all, of Google features, services and programs he uses and concludes that for all intents and purposes he lives in Googleplex, as the media octopus's headquarters are nicknamed. Google, he confesses, "is my ever-present wingman."

But because everything Google designs is so good, Carr obviously doesn't feel like a victim. More like a kept man, as it were, which is why the title of his New York Times think-piece is, Google Seduces With Utility. "If Google owns me, it’s probably because I am in favor of what works."

Among the instruments of his willing, happy captivity, he lists Gmail, the calendar, the map, voice and video chat, and YouTube. I'm sure he could have added dozens more but he ran out of space.

The secret of Google is, simply, its excellence. “The most powerful form of advertising is to be exceptional,” Carr quotes blogger Ranjit Mathoda. “Google has created an ecosystem that perpetuates itself by being useful.”

RC

Prize of Gor, Volume 27 of John Norman's Gorean Saga, Now Available in Paperback

The 27th volume of John Norman's Gorean Saga is now available for purchase as a paperback. The e-book version has been available for several weeks.

Ellen is a beautiful young slave girl on the planet Gor. Yet she was not always thus. For nearly sixty years she was a woman of Earth, but life had largely passed her by. Then, following an apparently chance encounter at the opera with a strangely familiar young man, an echo from her past, she finds herself transported from Earth to Gor. Here she discovers the true identity of her kidnapper and his sinister motives.

Her fate is decided in this latest thrilling installment of John Norman's best selling Gorean Saga.

Treat yourself to a holiday gift and fill in the gaps in your collection of Gor. For a complete list, click here.

Richard

The Screens Issue: The Screening of America

"As we head toward a way of life organized around the diversity of screens — I’m looking over my laptop at the television, while my iPod charges on the desk until I take it with me to my next screening, where I’ll be sure to shut off my cellphone — there will be at least an equal diversity of art forms and ways of appreciating them, alone or in groups. And they will continue to cross-pollinate."

That is the conclusion reached by A. O. Scott in his important essay, The Screening of America, in the November 23, 2008 special issue of the New York Times's Sunday Magazine.

Scott foresees the death of cinema as we know it, but at the same time projects its transformation into new avatars fed by dazzling advances in high-definition and screen technology. "The digital age may well turn out to be a golden age of cinephilia," Scott suggests, "with a wider variety of movies available for viewing in better conditions than ever."

RC

A Robin Hood Hacker Navigates Wikipedia

The New York Times Sunday Magazine of November 23, 2008, called "The Screens Issue", is dedicated to the ubiquity of screens in every aspect of our daily life. If you can get through a typical day without once viewing a screen - cell phone or Blackberry, TV or computer monitor, gas station pump display or automobile GPS, DVD or Kindle -- then skip this important publication. It's okay. You're probably dead anyway.

In a fascinating profile by Virginia Heffernan, a benevolent hacker named Virgil Griffith describes his motives for developing WikiScanner. The tool
"makes it possible to figure out which organization made which edits to a Wikipedia entry by cross-referencing IP addresses with a database of IP address owners."

"You can imagine how much fun this tool is to deploy," writes Heffernan, " — to see how someone with a senate.gov address tinkers with the Jeremiah Wright entry, or how Diebold apparently protects its reputation by deleting criticism of its voting machines and political connections. The promise of WikiScanner is to help free Wikipedia from both propaganda and sabotage."

It also help Griffith get girls, according to the author of the Times article.

RC

Lining Up in the Cold to Buy the New Blackberry Storm

The first thing I thought when I saw people lined up in front of the Verizon store around the corner from my office was, They're hiring temps for Christmas sales jobs. Why else would people stand twenty deep in near-freezing temperature?

Then I remembered: today was release day for the Blackberry Storm, and Verizon is the designated exclusive retail sales outlet. (Okay, so the photo isn't a Verizon store, but it got your attention.)

So, what's to line up for? Well, the Storm comes with a touch screen like the iPhone's but there the resemblance ends. The screen feels, "clickable," says Jeff Rauschert, interactive media manager for the Flint Journal. Among the other things Rauschert likes are,

• Beautiful screen resolution
• Full-size headphone jack
• Addition of "To Go" software
• Speaker sound, clarity
• 3.2 megapixel camera with video
• Robust email and messaging
• Copy and paste out of the box

Al Sacco of CIO offers eight reasons to select the Storm over the iPhone:

•Stereo Bluetooth
•Removable battery
•Expandable memory
•Digital camera, video recording
•Storm works as a tethered modem
•Touch screen provides tactile feedback
•Cut-and-paste
•Multitasking champ

Is the Storm worth losing three fingers to frostbite? Read Sacco's analysis and decide for yourself. And check out this video.

RC

Random House Puts the Brakes on Employee Pension

As cash-hungry bookstores return slow-moving inventory to publishers to free up bucks to buy new books, and as the industry anxiously monitors the health of the Borders bookstore chain, there are signs that publishing is hunkering down like every other business enterprise these days.

Publishers Lunch Deluxe cites an Associated Press report that Random House is pulling in its horns on employee benefits. First, it's freezing pensions at current levels; and second, new hires will not be offered pension participation. The company will continue to match employee contributions to 401k plans, however. Deluxe, publishing's online trade newsletter, also mentions a Quill and Quire news item that Random's Canadian division will not be exhibiting at the Canadian Book Expo.

Random House is a bellweather; whatever it does, the rest of the trade book business often follows.

However...

Before everyone starts running on fear itself, we should remind ourselves that books are still the most cost-effective, personal and meaningful holiday gift of all, and the pleasure of reading one can stretch over months.

I've never agreed with anything President Bush has said, but, my fellow Amuricans, maybe this is a good time for Americans to go shopping -- for books. In fact, a wonderful initiative has been offered by a major publisher to promote books as gifts. It's called Books=Gifts. Check it out. And when you do, notice who's sponsoring it: Random House!

Richard Curtis

Increasingly, It's a Download World

Two seemingly unrelated stories in today's news actually do carry a thread in common. The first is that the New York Times Company, parent of the newspaper, has sharply cut its dividends as a result of a drop in earnings. The other reports a decline in DVD sales ranging from 4% to 22% depending on how much data the number-crunchers throw into their calculations.

In both news items combined, the word "download" appears just once, but anyone under the age of 25 knows that that's the key to understanding both stories. The "Gray Lady", as the Times is appropriately called, has been hammered by a loss of advertising and circulation revenue, and though some of it can be attributable to recent economic upheavals, in fact the trend down can be laid at the feet of readers turning to the Internet for their news. Though many of them are getting it from the Times's online service nytimes.com, online advertising is not by any means on a par with ads printed on paper. In any case print circulation for both weekdays and weekends is down around 4% for the newspaper industry in general, and there's no sign of a reversal. I report all this with great sorrow. No one likes to see the Gray Lady down.

Though there are other factors pulling DVD sales down, Brooks Barnes' analysis in the New York Times alleges, " There are signs that digital downloads are cutting into sales." He offers no elaboration, but for a growing population of clickers no elaboration is necessary. In fact for them it's a big Duh.

RC

Please Don't Android the Merchandise

"Androiding" may join "Googling" as the latest noun-to-verb linguistic conversion.

The other day we reported on the use of Google's Android search system to view book bar codes in bookstores. If there's a Search-Inside-The-Book feature connected with the book you scan, it will pop up and you'll be able to sample the book and decide if you want to buy it.

Now comes news of a website called Shop Savvy. It not only features books but clothing, footwear, appliances, gifts, and even travel and entertainment as well. According to Publishers Lunch, the online trade newsletter of the publishing industry, by looking at the barcode through the camera, "up pops the cheapest price on the product as well as reviews from people who have purchased the product."

It's easy to imagine consumers trying on clothing, Androiding it, and walking out to purchase it cheaper at a competitor down the street. Or online. This already happens in bookstores, Android or no Android. Shoppers browse books, then go home and buy them cheaper on Amazon.

Got ideas for Android applications of your own? Jump right in - it's a free, open source. And check out this video of Android founders (and their dog).

Oh - the photo? That's Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt doing some shopping of their own. No Android is evident. Can't imagine why it was selected.

RC
Photo via People Magazine

Mismatched by Fate and Destined for Love

When pampered Faith Linden's father and her titled fiancé, Viscount Dewhurst, die, she suddenly finds herself in a desperately precarious position. The only way she can hold on to her beloved family home is to convince her late fiancé's younger brother, the new Viscount Dewhurst, to marry her in his stead. Yet when she finally encounters Lord Griffin Sainthill, she is in for a surprise: this brooding and ruggedly handsome adventurer is not so easily bent to her will...and may be the man who can capture her unsuspecting heart. A sea captain and owner of a profitable shipping company, Griffin Sainthill was quite happy with his life in the American colonies. So when the news of his inheritance finally reaches him, the sun-bronzed seafarer is less than pleased. His mood only darkens when he returns to England to discover a brazen beauty intent on becoming his bride. But when a twinge of conscience and a stolen kiss give him pause, Griffin finds himself embarking on the riskiest venture of all--marriage to a woman who will tempt him, torment him, and turn his whole life upside down.

Against the glittering backdrop of Regency England, in To Wed a Viscount Adrienne Basso weaves an enchanting tale of a mismatched couple joined by fate…and destined for love.

RC

Auditing Your Publisher

Most book publishers' contracts have provisions granting authors the right to examine the books and records of their publishers under certain conditions: for example, the examination must take place on the premises of the publisher during normal business hours; no more than two audits may be conducted in any given year; an audit must be commenced within a reasonable time after the issuance of the royalty statement in question; the records on any given book shall not be examined more than once; the publisher is not required to keep records on a book for more than a certain period of time, etc.

Examinations of publishers' accounts are not a daily phenomenon and when they do occur, they are invariably conducted by authors with lucrative contracts. But the vast majority of authors has only the vaguest notion of what is involved in an audit.

Prize of Gor Released for E-Book Download

Prize of Gor, the long-heralded 27th novel in John Norman's Gorean saga, is now on sale as an e-book.

"What man, in his deepest heart," asks John Norman, "does not want to own a female, to have her for his own, utterly, as a devoted, passionate, vulnerable, mastered slave, and what woman, in her deepest heart, does not want to be so intensely desired, so unqualifiedly and fiercely desired, that nothing less than her absolute ownership will satisfy a male, her master?"

To learn the answer to the author's question, and to buy the book, click here.

And watch this page for news of Prize of Gor's release in paperback.

RC

Billions Ride on Intel's New Microprocessor Chip

It's never a good thing for a major manufacturer to recall a flawed chip, especially if the manufacturer is named Intel. But that's just what happened in 1994 when the discovery of a miscalculation caused Intel to call back its Pentium chip at a cost to the company of some $420 million. The flaw was infinitesimal but multiplied by the factors that scientists need to send satellites to Jupiter or rockets to huts containing terrorists, the error was intolerable.

With billions of dollars at stake, it's no wonder that Pentium has tested the hell out of the Nehalem, the chip it's releasing today, according to John Markoff in the New York Times. To visualize the 731 million transistors packed into roughly the same space as the current generation of chips, an Intel executive used the simile of shrinking the land mass and complexity of Europe to something the size of Ithaca, New York. And I once got lost in Ithaca, New York.

What does Nehalem mean? For one thing it's a town in Oregon 73.54 miles from Hillsboro, Oregon where Intel's labs have been putting the new chip through its paces. Why do I suspect an Intel executive lives in Nehalem?

Or the word is simply Melahen spelled backwards.

At any rate, if the chip is all it's hyped to be it would be a huge boost for American technology, which could use a good boost right about now. So good luck to Intel.

RC

Will Tech Sector Woes Clip the Wings of the Soaring E-Book Industry?

The one sector of the US economy that has managed to keep its head above the waters swirling down the drain is technology - at least until now. But - what made Silicon Valley think that the slowdown affecting every other business would not eventually seep down to the consumers of expensive cameras, flat screen TVs, and home computers?

An article by Ashlee Vance in the New York Times plays up just how dire things are, citing warnings from such major players as Intel and Cisco Systems that revenues are not just retreating, but "plummeting at rates last seen in 2001." “We have never seen anything like this in history,” Vance quotes software manufacturer William T. Coleman III. Even Google, the industry's flagship, has recently experienced a 16% drop in its shares and is acknowledging there may be some belt-tightening ahead.

One segment of the technology sector that has performed brilliantly is e-books. A glance at the industry's bar chart for the last three or four years shows a dizzying double-digit annual growth rate. Can we hope that e-books might escape the gravitational pull of recession that is bringing everyone else down to earth with a thud? Or are we too in denial?

I vote for denial. Or call it wishful thinking.

The dynamics and economics of e-books have a different feel to them. The technology required to support e-books is modest compared to, say, video games. You don't have to buy new equipment or even update the old. The desktop, laptop, PDA or cell phone you already own are fine for downloading e-books. They're priced reasonably, and the pleasure of a book can last for weeks. You don't have to buy a Kindle or Sony EReader, but if a certain someone wants to buy one for you for the holidays, that certainly won't bust your family's budget.

Experience in prior recessions and even The Great Depression is that books are one of the most modestly priced of pastimes. Indeed, a number of today's great publishing companies were launched during the Depression. Though it's true that in bad times discretionary purchases suffer, compared to dinner out and a movie a book is a bargain, and an e-book an even bigger one.

Let's hope I'm right.

- Richard Curtis

When the Only Viable Strategy is Denial

Susan Shwartz - Doctor Susan Shwartz if you please, for she received a Ph.D. in medieval English from Harvard University - has been nominated for both the World Fantasy and Nebula Awards. In Heritage of Flight, humanity is inextricably torn by an interplanetary war that could lead to the death of human society. Project Seedcorn is probably the last and best hope for the human race. A small group of refugees, scraping out an existence on the edge of human-occupied territory, has been given orders to live as though everything were ordinary and there were no war. Now, everyone's lives depend on the children.

RC

A Portable Reading Device Weighing Fifteen Pounds

Elaine Louie In the New York Times reports on Phaidon's 800 page Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture. It's such a whopper it comes with its own carrying case.

Let me get this straight: you can't can't play a video game on it. You can't call your office with it. You can't upload documents on it. It has no Find and Replace function. You can't watch YouTube on it. You can't text your friends on it.

So, this book -- what, exactly, does it do?

RC

Can You Recommend a Good Ring Tone for My Mitten?

You can talk through your hat but no one will hear you. But if you talk to Swany's g.cell GX-1 performance gloves, you can reach anyone in the world. And you won't have to take them off to key in the number, a good thing if it's ten below zero.

According to Azadeh Ensha in the New York Times, "When someone calls, the glove’s LED display blinks and a built-in “vibra alarm” at your wrist starts vibrating. To take the call, press the black button located on one of the gloves, hold the loudspeaker (located on the glove’s thumb) near your ear and start talking into your hand. The GX-1 also offers a voice command system for hands-free phone calls, which should come as good news for anyone who has tried (and failed) to access their phone’s touchpad through a pair of heavy, wet gloves."

RC

Google Earth Zooms Through Time as Well as Space to Reconstruct Ancient Rome

Elisabetta Povoledo, in the New York Times, reports that Google Earth has zoomed in on a virtual reconstruction of Rome as it was in 320 A.D., the reign of Constantine. The eye-popping techno-archeological feat, bringing back to life some 7000 buildings, has been the driving passion of Bernard Frischer, director of the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. It's called Rome Reborn, a three dimensional re-creation that Dr. Frischer has been developing for three decades. As computer tools enabled him to realize his dream, work began in earnest in 1996 at a number of venues. Read about it in the New York Times and see a demo on Google.

Visitors to the ancient city can now carry their iPhone instead of guidebooks, stand on a ruin and zoom in on that very place to understand just what they're looking at.

RC

Yankees Are Wired for '09 Season

Richard Sandomir of the New York Times tells us that, thanks to Cisco Systems, the new Yankee Stadium, scheduled to open in spring of 2009, Will have "the most advanced technology ever embedded in a North American stadium." The new baseball shrine will feature "1,100 flat-panel, high-definition TV monitors with live game coverage, archival and highlight video, statistics, promotional messages and weather and traffic updates," Sandomir writes. There'll be monitors everywhere, from the bars to the bathrooms. He goes on:

"The luxury suites will be outfitted with special touch-screen phones that will let better-heeled fans order food and merchandise. And Cisco’s video-conferencing technology will be installed in the stadium’s business conference center, which will let it connect to a library in the Bronx (for students and community groups) and eventually to other locations in the city like hospitals, to let players and executives talk to fans."

I'm not sure how this report jibes with an April 2008 article in Twice, a consumer electronics publication, reporting that, "The New York Yankees have selected Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision to provide the main center field, high-definition video-scoreboard display for the new Yankee Stadium, which is scheduled to open at the start of the 2009 season..."

In any event, Yankee fans hope that players and executives will be able to communicate some good baseball news through this brave new network. The team finished third, and out of the money, in the American League East in 2008.

RC

Don't Forget to Take Your Android to the Bookstore

Google has announced a book-text search tool called the Barcode Scanner that works with an Android-powered cellphone. According to Google Book Search engineer Jeff Breidenbach, when you download the software into your Android and point your phone camera at a book's barcode, "it will automatically zoom, focus and scan the ISBN - without you even needing to click the shutter...You'll then have the option to search the full text of the book on Google Book Search right away"

It works only on books published in the last ten or fifteen years, when barcode technology was perfected. And of course, not all books published since the mid-90s can be found in Google Book Search. But it's a start.

Read about it here

RC

The Book Stops Here - All About Bookstore Buyers

Bookstore buyers are the last link in the chain connecting author to reader. Or perhaps we should say they are the last obstacle between them, for as we track the life of a book from the time the author turns it in, we may well be put in mind of the upstream battle of a salmon against rapids, waterfalls, submerged rocks and trees, and a host of predators. Many perish before they reach the quiet headwaters, and most that make it are doomed as well. A book must struggle against all manner of challenges: the hazards of editorial judgment, the treacheries of corporate politics, the uncertainties of the economy, a host of human failings, and a congeries of unlucky or providential events.

The final, and perhaps most brutal, stretch in the obstacle course occurs when the publisher's sales representatives attempt to interest bookstore buyers in their forthcoming lists. For an idea of how it works, click here.

Just How Free Does Information Want to Be?

I sometimes wonder if I singlehandedly delayed the progress of the e-book industry by about five years.

The attendees of the first e-book conference, held in Washington DC in 1998 were almost all from the technological sector. I was one of the few from traditional publishing. The atmosphere was evangelical to say the least. A lot of young geeks, who had grown up under the banner "Information Wants to Be Free," stood up and proclaimed, "Oh wow, now we'll be able to upload all our favorite books as fast as we can scan them!"

After listening to a half hour of wild-eyed witness-bearing, I stood up and said, "I don't mean to rain on your parade, but...has anybody here ever heard of copyright?" A lot of heads whipped around to identify the ghost at the banquet.

A year later the conference began to focus on the pesky question, Does information actually want to be owned? Out of the ensuing debate came the term "Digital Rights Management" and since then, the e-book business has been as much about DRM as it has been about information wanting to be free. Sorry, everybody. It was a nasty question but someone had to ask it.

The debate has never been resolved, and, after almost a decade of copyright protectionism the issue is hotter than ever and this time it has moved from the fringe to center stage.

All this by way of preface to the provocative interview with Seth Godin featured on the web page of HarperStudio, the new and forward-looking publishing imprint created by Bob Miller. The biggest takeaway? Godin reminds publishers that they are in the business of disseminating ideas. You mean it's not about selling books?

And, citing the example of Napster, Godin asserts, "I'm a pessimist that the book industry will learn from music."

Read the interview in full at Seth Godin discusses free content and the publishing industry.

Richard Curtis

He Didn't Just Write a Book About a Sunken Treasure Galleon, He Went Out and Found It

Dave Horner is the author of several books of sea adventure. He has also conducted charter trips to sunken ships in the mid-Atlantic U.S. In Shipwreck: A Saga of Sea Tragedy and Sunken Treasure he chronicles the story of a padre whose prayers obviously didn't reach Heaven. In fact, having sailed on two galleons that sank bearing a total of 15 million pesos, it can safely be said he was about as ill favored by Divine Providence as a man of the cloth can get.

He survived both calamities and managed to leave a treasure of his own behind in the form of a diary. And it told author Horner where one of the ships went down.

Here's the story:

In 1654, Padre Diego Rivadeneira sets out to Spain from Peru in a small armada led by the immense galleon La Capitana, “Queen of South Sea”, carrying 10 million pesos in silver coin and bullion. Late one night, off the coast of Ecuador, the Capitana hits a reef and begins to sink. Aboard his own ship Padre Rivadeneira watches in horror. A year later, still attempting to travel to Spain, he boards the 900-ton galleon Maravillas at Cartagena. In a freak collision the ship is lost on the wild shoals of Los Mimbres, Bahamas. Lost also are 600 people and five million pesos in treasure. Unable to swim, the padre clings for his life to a floating hatch cover. He is one of only 45 survivors. 300 years later, Dave Horner discovers Padre Rivadeneira’s diary. In 1996 and 1997, Horner and his colleagues discover and salvage the much sought-after treasure of the Capitana.

Shipwreck is an authentic retelling of the padre’s story and the modern-day exploration of shipwrecks' sites.

RC

When Google Blows Out the Birthday Candles, What Does It Wish For?

What other businesses call austerity, Google calls Business as Usual. In the current economic downturn, the behemoth has slowed hiring down to a mere "tens of offers" a week. Nor does it have any plans to cut back on the lavish perks it rewards its employees. And while executives of other businesses are climbing out on ledges, at least one Google leader says that reining in expenditures "is actually more fun." And, after Google was pressured to back away from its advertising pact with Yahoo under threat of antitrust action by the Justice Department, that same executive had this to say:

Q. Will Google think differently about deals after this incident?

A. Probably not. I think that this was a unique situation.

The person answering the question is Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive. In short, if he and his company are worried about the economy, you wouldn't know it from the interview conducted by New York Times reporter Miguel Helft in Google at 10: Searching Its Own Soul on the occasion of the company's tenth birthday.

Read the interview in full.

RC

Recession? E-Book Biz Doesn't Know the Meaning of the Word

E-Book sales reported another huge leap in the latest stats released by the American Association of American Publishers and International Digital Publishing Forum. Trade eBook sales were $5,100,000 for September 2008, a 77.8% increase over the same month last year. And calendar year to date is up over 55% over 2007. "Q3 of 2008 is the first quarter to top $12,000,000 and final number was in fact $13,900,000," IDPF's bulletin reports.

The numbers may actually be higher, as the above figures are culled from only 13 participating trade publishers. Also, Michael Smith, IDPF's Executive Director reminds us,

* This data represents United States revenues only
* This data represents only trade eBook sales via wholesale channels. Retail numbers may be as much as double the above figures due to industry wholesale discounts.
* This data does not include library, educational or professional electronic sales
* The numbers reflect the wholesale revenues of publishers
* The definition used for reporting electronic book sales is "All books delivered electronically over the Internet OR to hand-held reading devices"
* The IDPF and AAP began collecting data together starting in Q1 2006

RC

Killing Off Your Hero in the First Book of a Series is Not Such a Hot Idea, Unless You're Warren Murphy

When ex-New Jersey cop Remo Williams is electrocuted for the murder of a dope-dealing goon, CURE, a super-secret government agency that doesn't really exist, schemes to resurrect Remo as the ultimate killing machine that will carry out most of its dirty plans. Under the direction of expert assassin Master Chiun, Remo is transformed into the Destroyer and launches a series of secret plots to dissolve the underworld.

That's how the incredibly successful Destroyer series by writing partners Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir is launched, and as there are over one hundred adventures in print, Murphy (who took the series over solo after Sapir died in 1987) has obviously found a way to keep his protagonist in action despite executing him in Volume #1, Created: The Destroyer. So, beginning writers, don't try this fictional technique at home.

E-Reads has reissued fifty titles in the series in both print and downloadable formats and there are more books on the way. Check out the selection and fill in the gaps in your collection.

And just to reassure you that any given Destroyer is as compelling as any other, check out Volume #50 and you'll see that Remo and Master Chiun are still going strong. In typical Murphy fashion, Killing Time is about a fad diet with the potential to destroy Western civilization.

RC

Norton Goes Straight to E-Galleys for Nobel Prizewinner's Rush-Rush Book

Lynn Andriani in Publishers Weekly reports that W.W Norton & Company, a traditional publisher, is making available "e-galleys" this week for an important book it will publish early in December, Nobel Prizewinning economist Paul Krugman's The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008. Owing to the publisher's rush to get the book out while America's economic crisis is still boiling, there was no time to produce traditional proofs, which are used to solicit reviews. To keep the public from accessing the text without paying for it, Norton created a special media-only link on its website for viewing the work.

This is the second time in a few weeks that a conventional publisher has ventured e-wards with a traditional book. We recently reported that St. Martins issued a book originally in e-format.

RC

Proud to Be an American

Yesterday my wife and I rose at 5:30 in the morning to vote in the presidential election. We reasoned that we'd beat voters lining up before they went to work. When we arrived the line was already some sixty people deep, and within ten minutes of our arrival at least that many had fallen into line behind us. Here's a picture I snapped, with the polling place, a community senior center in Manhattan, in the background.

As I stood in the cool predawn darkness with my neighbors and fellow citizens waiting for the doors to open, I felt a ripple of patriotic joy like none I'd known in decades.

RC

While You Wait for the 6:10, Browse a Book on an eKiosk?

Eric Pfanner in the New York Times describes an experiment to display ads on big, sometimes huge, digital screens in a British shopping center. Traditional billboards have been banished and replaced by electronic billboard and streamlined kiosks. "The screens allow advertisers to display still images, as with posters," writes Pfanner, "but also let them show television-style video ads." Many of the ads are pitched at luxury buyers. Tiffany has signed up, for instance.

Hints of this new approach to advertising can be seen everywhere; London's Underground carry Dunhill and Dolce & Gabbana ads on some 2000 digital display screens, Pfanner points out, "including some that project the images across the tracks onto the walls of the tunnels." New Yorkers waiting for buses can gaze at rolling displays of still ads on the panels of bus shelters.

It doesn't take a big leap of imagination to foresee e-Kiosks in airports, bus and train stations displaying the opening pages of a romance or thriller. Just enough to make you wonder what will happen after the hero takes the heroine in his arms and murmurs... Oops, they just announced your train. Do you have time to duck into the bookshop?

RC

B&N Chair Foresees Xmas Gloom But Not Doom

Publishers Weekly's online bulletin reports that Len Riggio, chairman of Barnes & Noble, says the 2008 holiday season, traditionally the most brisk and profitable on the book trade's calendar, is shaping up to be a terrible one. In fact, it's the worst he's seen in three decades. This came in a memo circulated to employees. No pink slips were attached but Riggio vowed to rigidly control spending including curtailing openings of new stores.

Nor does he see much light on the 2009 horizon, though the company will nevertheless report a profit for 2008.

RC

All About Book Clubs

Book clubs are such solid fixtures in the lives of authors, agents, and publishers that we take them for granted, like enormous monuments that we no longer notice on our way to work every day. How impoverished our literary environment would be without book clubs can easily be grasped when you realize that millions of Americans subscribe to them. And because changes in pricing, reader tastes, distribution, marketing, and other trends have drawn new attention to the functions of book clubs, this is a particularly good time to examine this phenomenon.

Greg Bear's City at the End of Time Selected One of Seven Best F&SF Books of 2008

Publishers Weekly, the official trade magazine of the publishing industry, released its list of of "the very best of what American publishing had to offer in fiction, poetry,nonfiction, comics, religion, lifestyle and children's. In the Fantasy and Science Fiction category, Greg Bear's City at the End of Time (Del Rey) was named among the best, sharing honors with six other titles. Writes PW's Louisa Ermelino, "Bear returns triumphantly to large-scale science fiction with this complex, difficult tale of Seattle drifters sent on a mission to preserve the universe's last vestiges of consciousness."

E-Reads carries nine classic Greg Bear titles with more on the way.

RC

Amazon Attacks Wrap Rage

I've been suffering from Wrap Rage for years but didn't know there was a name for it, or how large the community of sufferers is. I do have a tool box filled with shears, box cutters, awls, pliers, protective gloves and other gear I commonly engage to remove the plastic bubble from any one of a thousand consumer products, especially electronic appliances. I also have scars, stitches, bloodstained clothing and other evidence of those tools' failure to open clamshell packages. Finally, over years of struggling with modern packaging I have developed a repertoire of oaths that would impress the most hard-bitten Marine.

Thus it was with a huge sigh of relief that I opened my Amazon.com page today to discover that the company has launched an initiative to combat Wrap Rage and provide "Frustration-Free Packaging." Amazon has furnished a video and a page devoted to stories submitted by Wrap Rage victims.

All hail Amazon for identifying a huge, wasteful, dangerous practice and taking proactive measures to reverse it. If there's a Nobel Price for a practical solution whose time has come, Amazon gets my vote.

RC

Will That Be ePaper or ePlastic? Another E-Book Candidate Plans Launch in Spring '09

Plastic Logic, founded in 2000 by researchers out of the Cambridge University Cavendish Laboratory, was cited by the Plastic Electronics Foundation as ‘Best Technology Developer 2008’ for the most innovative development in organic electronics.

The award, presented at the 4th Global Plastic Electronics Conference and Showcase held in Berlin, was for the company's new electronic reading device, which will hit the market in spring of 2009.

The slim Plastic Logic Reader display is the size of a standard 8.5 x 11-inch piece of paper and employs high-resolution transistor arrays on flexible plastic substrates. Leading international technology firms and investors have funded Plastic Logic for more than $200 million.

To view a video visit Plastic Logic's website.

RC

Rekindling Love of Reading With the Kindle

Virginia Hefferman writes a paean to her Kindle in today's New York Times Sunday Magazine Section, describing the epiphany she had when she used Amazon's e-reading device on an airplane. It certainly wasn't the Kindle's technical features that won her over - indeed, she writes, "As an electronic device, it should be said, the Kindle is a complete bust." She cites such design issues as, "...the bumpable buttons that constantly flip your pages and lose your place, the pointy and cruel keyboard that is stiff and ineffective, the lily-white casing that is ugly when new and dingy and gross when used."

What was it, then, that made her fall in love with her Kindle? True book lovers will immediately identify with her experience. Read here.

RC