digital media

“The Weight of Reason” now available on KDP

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weight of reason 2

Yes, at long last I have bitten the bullet, given it one final edit for typos and to tweak the text and finally listed it for sale on Amazon.

You can now buy The Weight of Reason on your local Amazon website. Unfortunately, it is available only on Kindle at the moment due to the exclusivity terms and conditions of being in the Kindle Select programme. This gives extra benefits such as royalties from the lending programme, promotion on the Kindle store and higher royalty rates from Amazon Brazil and Amazon India. Continue reading →

Self-Publishing Dilemmas: My Attempt at Artwork for “The Weight of Reason”

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Feel free to mock my poor effort but this is the sort of thing I was going for. I used Paint.Net, took a photograph of Toronto skyline (to which I own the copyright), moved around some buildings, blurred the skyine, inverted the colours and added some clouds. I like the smoke effect: It wasn’t intentional but if you know the context of the story it fits perfectly. I’m not sure about the ocean yet and I want to play around with that aspect of it a little more. I may not use this cover at all, I still may end up cold-calling a few potential artists on Deviant Art and show them that as an idea. It is quite a striking image but would you be curious to read a book with such a cover? What draws you in? What don’t you like? Suggestions please! Continue reading →

Writers and the Piracy Debate

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I know this is an issue that is never going to end but I am looking for people’s thoughts (specifically my blogging author buddies here) on the issue of unauthorised digital downloading (Piracy if you like). This article at The Guardian. It seems that the authors within the genre of science fiction are divided on this issue. Doctorow, Stross and Gaiman are not challenging or are actually embracing the dissemination of their work through these methods. Stross argued against DRM and had one publishing else remove it altogether.

I am with these guys on this one. Though I do not qualify as a successful writer (and hope to some day), I would see dissemination of my work as complimentary to its growing popularity. I used to sit on the fence where web piracy was concerned, wishing to be given a straight answer. Continue reading →

Nook to enter UK market

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US book seller Barnes & Noble are entering their rival Nook device into the UK market and it will be sold exclusively through chain store John Lewis Partnership. There isn’t much competition here at the moment in the ebook reader market. Amazon has the majority share and the Kobo, which sells exclusively through WHSmith, has not fared as well in the UK as it has done in North America. The Guardian suggests that Amazon Kindle sales represents a wapping 90% of the market share. Continue reading →

Where is Arc 1.3?

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By my reckoning it is late.

Arc 1.1 was released on 15th Feb 2012.
Arc 1.2 was released on 24th May 2012.

It is a quarterly magazine so surely Arc 1.3 should be out by now? I have received no communication on this, there is nothing on the Arcfinity tumblr and I’ve not received a single update about upcoming content. The competition link is still on the tumblr page and that closed sometime in July.

There is also nothing on The Tomorrow Project website.

Anybody know anything?

Amazon say Kindle sales outstripping those of physical books

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They said it was coming but now, online retail giant Amazon have claimed that Kindle ebook sales have overtaken those of printed books. Combining all hardback and paperback sales, digital downloads for Kindle devices is winning the war. But is it? Is there more to this story than meets the eye?

I’d like to go all “2012 and all that” on this post (my secondary blog where I challenge publicly believed nonsense and misinformation) and try to explain my understanding of how this is panning out in real terms. My alarm bells started to ring when I read this excerpt:

Much to the consternation of the publishing industry, Amazon has refused to release audited figures for its digital book sales, something it does for printed books. It told The Guardian that the company would not discuss future policy on the matter.

Continue reading →

Third story complete – ebook

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I said that A New Age Exodus would be a tougher nut to crack and it was. You may remember I said that I had mercilessly (read stupidly) hacked between 600-1000 words off of this when I wrote it about ten years ago. I felt that it was too long at 8000 words and wanted to limit it to 7500 words or fewer.

In the process of that, I cut out what – looking back – was the best part of the story. Kirsten’s revelation and the public reading of the journal. I apologise for those of you that do not know what I’m talking about. There are a handful of people who read this blog that followed my work on Elfwood and as it is no longer up, I cannot draw your attention to the story. Continue reading →

Arc 1.2 Review

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The theme of this, the second volume of the Arcfinity ezine, is about the future of humanity, subtitled Post human conditions. Intriguing concept to deal with how humans will change in relation to technological advances of the future. I mentioned in my “first impressions” post that I had not heard of most of the contributors so this was a whole new ball game for me.

This volume is just as slick and professionally made. The only difference from volume 1.1 is that it has more images. It also has far more links which, if like me you have the basic Kindle, you will not be able to follow. This is unfortunate and will give a better experience if you have a tablet such as an ipad. For a magazine dedicated to Futurism, it is a shame that these things were not taken into account.

Continue reading →

Arc 1.2 – First impressions

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For those of you who didn’t already know, the second volume of Arcfinity was released yesterday. Like volume 1.1, Arc 1.2 comes in at a price of £4.99 and is a digital download only (presumably as before with a handful of print edition copies available that come with a hefty price tag).

Volume 1.2 is on a theme of humanity and the human condition in futurism and subtitled Post Human Conditions. Looking through the contents I’m afraid to say that this list of contributors is far less familiar to me than in Arc 1.1. Where I knew most of the names in the first volume, here I recogmise only Frederik Pohl and Jeff VanderMeer. Anne Galloway, Nick Harkaway, Sonja Vesterholt (who contributes Prometheus art), Paul McAuley, Regina Peldszus, T.D. Edge, Gord Sellar, P.D. Smith, Holly Gramazio and Kyle Munkittrick are completely alien to me. Feel free to berate me if I’m clearly not geeky enough in that respect. Continue reading →