An Unconvincing Narrative

The eBook edition of Wildside went live on Amazon about three days ago and will go up on iBooks within the week.  The Wildside Crowdsource Proofreading project was a HUGE success, finding not only all the new OCR artifacts but lots of errors that had persisted in the print editions for years.  The eBook edition is now the definitive text and I put all those helpful guys in a new acknoledgements section for the eBook edition.

A bunch of them are also working on the next project, bless their hearts.

But, if you’re interested, you too can get in on the free eBook action if you’re willing to email those pesky errors back to me so I can clean this version up, too.  There don’t seem to be as many transformations of words into different words (I’m looking at YOU Mr. fmgers and Ms. tum, but there are still a lot of paragraphs that were improperly joined or split.)

So, if you want to get in on the Proofreading action, just shoot me an email at stevengould at digitalnoir dot com.

In the pipeline, but not ready for proofing yet:

I’m not an artist but I actually like my cover for this one better than the print edition.

I haven’t found out the artist yet but I will post as soon as I know.  Kudos, though to editor Beth Meacham and art director Irene Gallo.  Apparently there will be metal foil involved, too.

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Ah ha!  Irene tells me the Artist is Viktor Koen.  See more of his work at his website.

I now have eBook editions of Jumper and Reflex up at iBooks and Amazon.  I’ve just finished working on the next book to be released under my digitalNoir publishing imprint, Wildside. Here’s a draft of the cover.

As with the previous two editions, it will be drm free.  But, unlike the previous editions, I no longer had source files for the book so I had to go the OCR route, greatly increasing the work, and, greatly increasing the possibility that I have errors in the text.  One of the many annoying things was the combination of ‘i’ and ‘r’ (like in fire) being combined into one letter, producing ‘m.’  Also, sentences terminating in ‘l’ (lower case L) combining with a trailing period (l.) to produce and upper-case ‘L’.

I had a lot of airplane travel over the last three days, so I caught an awful lot of these, but I’m afraid there are more buried in the text.  So, here’s the deal:

FREE eBOOK!

If you’re willing to read the book in the immediate future and report typos as you come across them

OR/AND

If you’re willing to talk up the new eBook edition of Wildside in your blog, live journal, etc, I’ll send you the current ePub or Mobi file for your favorite reader.

email me at stevengould (at) digitalnoir (dot) com if you’re interested.

How do these look?

The word cloud was generated with wordle using text from chapters of each book. I added multiple repetitions of the title and my byline so they would be scaled appropriately. Noble Girl created the outline of the figure. Additional composting and effects were applied with gimp.

There was a time (and it hasn’t really passed) when the common wisdom was that writers shouldn’t publish short story collections.

It’s related to the tracking of an author’s sales through the chain book stores.  It’s a fact that the audience for short fiction is smaller than the audience for novels.  Has been for a long time, but when a chain  buyer goes to order a writer’s next book from the publisher, they look at how the previous book did.  If that book was a collection and the book before that was a novel, there’s going to be drop.  A big drop.  As a result, the buyer will base his order on this reduced number, not the last novel sale.

Now, I’ve been told that the chains are not as simplistic about this as they used to be, but it is still a problem.  People try to solve it in various ways, some not so successful.  Least favorite?  The publisher packages the collection in such a way that it looks like a novel.  Boy, that will win you friends.  Other solutions are to separate your collections from your novels by only publishing them through small presses.  Hopefully this doesn’t come back to bite you.  The chain could still compare apples to oranges if they look superficially enough.  Other novelists have simply avoided collections completely.  A writer also can self-publish physical copies through good services like Lulu or awful vanity presses like Publish America, but this violates Yog’s Law.

Now there’s a new route–eBook publications.  A few years ago, I would’ve considered this a fringe method at best, but now eBooks, while still a small percentage of overall publication, are growing at a geometric, if not exponential rate as different readers (both hardware and software) take off like a rocket.

I’ve been trading tweets, emails, and even video conferencing with people who are striking out into this territory.  In SF, Nebula and Campbell nominated author Tobias Buckell is trying it with his previously published collection Tides From the New Worlds (Wyrm Publishing, April 2009).

You can get it for Kindle (hardware or software) or through the iBooks store. (In iBooks you’ll have to search but Tides or Buckell will bring it right up.)  In the iBooks store you can also download a free sample that includes the entire first story, but as he’s only selling it for $2.99, don’t stint yourself.  Reviews available on Toby’s site here and here is a brand new third-party review of the eBook edition.

It’s a very favorable review but it does complain about some typos which brings up an interesting thing about eBook editions.  They can be FIXED.  In the case of Amazon and, I believe, iBooks, after the author fixes the typos the reader can download the corrected edition with no further cost.  This will probably be an iterative process as the typos become fewer and fewer.

I’ve been discussing this subject with Toby and others prior to bringing out eBook editions of Jumper, Reflex, Wildside, Helm, Blind Waves, and Greenwar. Out of curiosity, could you let me know what your favorite eBook platform is either in the comments or email?

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I have deliberately avoided discussing the evils of DRM in this post.  I will talk about DRM versus distribution in a later post.

Over at BoingBoing, Rob Beschizza reviews an iPad stand that costs $ 130.   He notes that a business card holder would do the same job for $1 though it’s a bit crappy.  He also notes that this really expensive stand won’t let you charge the ipad while you’re using it but he’s wrong.  Simply invert the puppy or use it in landscape mode.  But, that doesn’t look as good with the cord sticking up in the air.

Here’s my solution–cost Zero.

This is two pieces of cardboard with a tape hinge.  It folds completely flat and I put it in the same neoprene case I use for my iPad.

Continue Reading »

I’m doing my annual visit to Berkeley (for Aikido reasons) but I’m there a day early so I’m also doing a meet and chat hosted by Borderlands Bookstore Cafe along with Madeleine Robins, author of the New York Times Notable book STONE WAR as well as the wonderful hard-boiled Sarah Tolerance regency mysteries POINT OF HONOR and PETTY TREASON.

This will occur at 7:00 pm, Thursday, June 3rd. Borderlands Books is at 866 Valencia Street, San Francisco 94110.

Besides any of my readers I would love to see any Viable Paradise alums as well as anyone who knows me from TWITTER.

(I’m the one on the bottom.)

A very nice review of a book that was published six years ago over at G-Pop.

The intertwitterblobosphere is all awash with people remembering Robert Culp who died yesterday, but they’re all remembering him as Bill Maxwell in The Greatest American Hero. Well, all those people are TOO DAMN YOUNG!

Robert Culp was Kelly Robinson, who, with Bill Cosby (who played Alexander Scott,) were the stars of I Spy. When the series first ran I was 10 to 13 yrs old.  I’d sit and watch them with my Mom, often in Bangkok where they were dubbed into Thai, but we could tune into the Armed Forces Radio Station for the English version.

One of the cool things about Robert Culp is, like Bruce Lee, he was a martial artist–Kenpo Karate in Culp’s case.  His fight scenes reflected that.  He also fought (verbally) like the dickens to have Bill Crosby be the Oxford-educated multi-linguist that he is in the series (in 1965!) He also tutored Cosby in acting, something Cosby has talked about many times. Cosby won 3 Emmy awards for that work, each time competing with Culp himself.

I don’t know if it will survive rewatching but some of the series is available on YouTube with updated commercials. I’m going to give it a shot if I can carve out some time.

I bought this jacket in 1992, the day we moved into Greenwhich Village (147 Sullivan Street apartment 2b.) We joked with our buddy Bruce Coville (who was also living in the Village back then) that a black leather jacket was required for residents BY LAW.  Also that the style police would come get you if you didn’t have one.

Not only did it keep me warm (and STYLIN’) it was the jacket I carried my daughter Emma around in.  I’d wear a sling and she would sit in it, cross legged, facing forwards, and I would zip up the jacket around the whole thing until only her face appeared.  I freaked out several people walking around as if this head was growing out of my chest.

Emma met lots of people that way.  I was the dad-at-home for much of that time and it would disconcert Laura when total strangers would walk up to her and Emma on the weekends and say “Hi, Emma.”

Anyway, this jacket has been worn to death.  The pocket linings went, and there were great gaping holes in the main lining and, worst of all, the brass zipper was gap-toothed and non-functional.

But no longer.  My sweet, sweet wife just brought it in to me wrapped in plastic.  It’s been completely re-lined and a brand new zipper installed.  I’m sitting here, wearing it in the house, the scent of leather rising up.  Warm and STYLIN’!

This is a Wordle (generated over at http://www.wordle.net.)  You specify a body of text (either pasting it in or pointing to something out on the web) and it generates a word map where the size of words is indicative of the number of times its used in the text.

In this particular case, the source text is a short story I’ve written called “Tameshigiri” which will be published in the forthcoming anthology The Living Dead 2, edited by John Joseph Adams.  I could tell you what the story is about but just looking at the word map above should give you a pretty good idea.

Your results:
You are Will Riker

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Quiz

I like them, I do, Sam I Am.

All found one day after we got back from AggieCon.  Quite a bit of work for only five chickens.

Laura made a souffle.

As they say, “You can’t play the blues without breaking a few eggs.”

There were a few comments recently that have caused me to explicitly state my comment policy.

The specific comments seem to be from the sort of person who would walk up to someone they don’t know and ask them “Why on earth are you wearing that hideous blouse?”  When the blouse-wearer is offended, the critic seems genuinely surprised and baffled at the reaction.  After all, they’re right.  That is, not only are they convinced of their opinion, they’re convinced everyone must share it, even the wearer of the blouse.

If you want to read the comments in question, they are 21,  22, 24, and 25 on the Contact Me page.  If you want to read them with their vowels intact, browse through the RSS Feed for Comments to find the appropriate ones–the Disemvoweller does not effect the feed.  Do not be confused by the different names. The gentleman in question posted as Sean first, then as Greg, but his IP and email addresses were the same.

(Mr. “Noam Chomsky” seems to be a different poster who thinks I only want “Ass-kissing” at this site.)

Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s YA reprint anthologies New Magics and New Skies (published in the US in 2005 and 2004) are coming out in Korea. I think it’s cool because my Hugo and Nebula nominated novelette, “Peaches For Mad Molly” is in the New Skies part.

I’m waiting for the exciting royalty check that will ensue. Well, mostly I’m just chuffed to appear in Korean in short fiction. I’ve already been published in Korea with editions of Jumper and Jumper: Griffin’s Story.

I’ve heard that SFWA Grandmaster James Gunn will give a keynote speech for the Cushing Library’s Exhibit above.  I wish I could be there.  After all, for the last 35 years I’ve witnessed some of that “SF & Fantasy” at TAMU.  I remember the first time I ever met Jim Gunn–he came down for something and Dr. Kroiter brought him to the SF as Literature class to talk to us.  I hadn’t read much of his work at that time but I was a big fan of the TV series The Immortal.

Since then I’ve learned usual lesson.  The source material is almost always better.

Brad Denton was a graduate student under him, writing some of his early short fiction in the program.  Read his post about meeting Dr. Gunn back in college, “First Contact with a Grand Master.”

I owe a long post on what a great time I had at AggieCon but for now let me say that my piece from last May’s Analog, “A Story With Beans” is on the 2009 Locus Recommended Reading List.  It’s also been picked up for three best-of-the-year anthologies.

That’s nice.