Will books disappear?

It seems the book reading world is evolving. Will we see a time when paper books finally disappear?

Barnes & Noble have purchased e-book seller Fictionwise.com for $15.7 million, in an effort at running an e-book store. The transaction, broadcast on 5th March, is part of Barnes & Noble's strategy to introduce its own e-book store later this year.

Last month, competitor Amazon, released Kindle 2, the second edition of its e-book reader. And this week, Amazon revealed its Kindle application for iPhone and iPod Touch.

So will books disappear?

Fictionwise, from Barnes & Noble will present its own eReader application for handheld devices, desktop computers, and laptops. Likewise, opponents Lexcycle have its Stanza application for e-book reading. So someone somewhere certainly thinks books have competition.

While customer awareness in e-books has improved over the years, they have yet to attract a majority market. Analysts ascribe cost as the stumbling block to the widespread adoption of e-books.

However, as with all things electronic, prices will eventually tumble – and then we shall see.
Maybe it’s time for me to take a serious look at getting some of my work into e-format…. Maybe books will disappear.

Will books disappear **** Will books disappear **** Will books disappear ****

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Pride and Prejudice - or not!

Apparantly Jane Austen's timeless novel, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, is being rewritten as a zombie horror book and film.

Pride and Prejudice - Zombies - Now I’ve heard everything.



A travesty of the novel will be available in April called ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’, with Hollywood film studios looking to turn the new book into a movie.

• .Shit! Why don’t they look for something original like ‘Without Reproach’?

The book has been written Seth Grahame-Smith, who has been sanctioned to update Austen's imaginative romance because it is out of copyright.

Devotees of Jane Austen are in for a surprise, when female protagonist Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters becoming zombie assassins trained to fight like Japanese ninjas by the demanding Mr Darcy.

"It quickly became obvious that Jane (Austen) had laid down the blueprint for a zombie novel," Grahame-Smith said. "Why else in the original should a regiment arrive on Lizzie Bennet's doorstep when they should have been off fighting Napoleon? it was to protect the family from an invasion of brain-eaters, obviously."

Grahame-Smith said about 85 per cent of his novel is Austen's original text. "I hated her when I was forced to read Austen in school, but when I started re-reading I realised she was a brutal, but very funny, satirist," he said. "I can only aspire to be as mean-spirited as she could be."

All I can say is, what a load of cobblers – but he’ll probably make millions from it – why didn’t I think of it first…..

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To Write A Story - 20 Ways To Write A Story Better
How To Describe - Mastering Descriptive Writing
7 Cool Ways To Jump-Start The Story Characters In Your Writing

End of post - Pride and Prejudice - or not!

Author, Neale Donald Walsch, steals writer's work

Conversations With God

Spiritual writer, Neale Donald Walsch, author of the best-selling series “Conversations With God,” posted a Christmas 2008 message on the religious site, Beliefnet.com claiming it concerned his son’s nursery school play.

Whilst watching a dry run, apparantly a group of children spelled out the title of a song, “Christmas Love,” with each youngster holding up a letter. One girl held the “m” upside down, so that it appeared as a “w,” and it read as if the children were spelling “Christ Was Love.”

Uplifting

It was an uplifting Christmas story from a writer celebrated for his religious teachings. The only problem is it never happened to him. It was all lies.

Mr. Walsch’s story is identical to a story from a writer named Candy Chand, originally published 10 years ago in Clarity, a spiritual magazine, and has been circulating on the Web ever since.

Mr. Walsch now says he made a mistake in believing the story was something that had actually come from his personal experience.

Mystified

When confronted with the news, he claimed, “All I can say now — because I am truly mystified and taken aback by this — is that someone must have sent it to me over the Internet ten years or so ago. I must have clipped and pasted it into my file of stories to tell that have a message I want to share.”

And all I can say, Mr. Walsch is - bullshit. Go write your own stuff.

Writers have a hard enough time, without people like you stealing their work.

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To Write A Story - 20 Ways To Write A Story Better
How To Describe - Mastering Descriptive Writing
7 Cool Ways To Jump-Start The Story Characters In Your Writing
End of post - Author, Neale Donald Walsch, steals writer's work

Is the publishing industry dead?

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The Prospects.
The condition of the publishing industry seems to be dire. It’s said publishers are laying-off staff. Bookstores are reported to be having a hard time, and closures are everywhere.

Traditionally, recession has barely affected book sales - people have sought escape from reality within the written word .... but this time it is different.

Publishing industry dead?
Readers, authors, those in self publishing, those of us who’re actually concerned with the business, have to be the ones to come up with new and different ways to get our work in the hands of readers.

Imagine what would happen if every publisher in the world went out of business. What would happen if every bookstore died?

Will it be lamentable that publishers go out of business? Perhaps - or perhaps this is an opportunity for something really ground-breaking.

Exhilaration
Innovation is coming from the hands of authors themselves, after all, isn’t that what authors are – creative? We are already seeing an exhilaration the book business has not seen for years.

Okay, I admit it, I'm sanguine, I know I always think of my cup as half-full, not half-empty. But new know-how has come along, and is already changing the economics of books. There are ebooks, print-on-demand, the web, and perhaps more to come that we don’t yet know about.

A different paradigm
Readers are still there, maybe fewer, but no less passionate. Authors are certainly there - I’ve never seen so many new writers struggling to get a foot in the market. If the soothsayers are right, whatever paradigm these conglomerate corporations were working hasn't worked very well, so a new concept can hardly be worse.

As I see it, it's up to us – the ones who care about books -- to fathom what the book business needs be like in the next few years. The answer might just lie with us.

My publisher went to the wall a while ago. I now publish my work solely as ebooks and sell many times more than I ever did traditionally. It seems that many more traditionally published authors are volunteering to go ebook as well.

There could be electrifying times ahead!!!

• Next post on Tell Me a Story - Nina Klokset.

End of post - Is the publishing industry dead?
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Book Review, Azincourt.

Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell.

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In his latest book, Cornwell focuses interest on Henry V's almost unbelievable triumph over the French.

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It must have been quite a quandary for him, deciding how to turn such a well-known story into something new and exhilarating.

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Thankfully, Cornwell is a master of words.

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The novel concentrates on individuals instead of the history-book version we’ve probably had stuffed down our throats. This creates impact and believability.

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Ordinary medieval men and women

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The tale follows Nick Hook, an English longbow man, and successfully places the victory at Agincourt into social perspective. We take a peep behind the lives of ordinary medieval men and women, at their faith, and the battle between the heretical Lollard beliefs and the Church.

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Corwell weaves all of these convincingly into the fabric of the story. Taking his past performance into account, it will come as no surprise that the battle scenes are strongly and persuasively portrayed.

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All in all this is a masterpiece well worth the read.

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• My other blog - Bedlam

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End of - Book Review, Azincourt.

Making a living from writing

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Anthony, I’m about to leave school and have always wanted to be a writer - I think I can make a living from writing fiction. Mum wants me to continue with higher education. Can you say something to help me change her mind?

• Wow, Izzy. I simply can’t do that. I’ve touched on this before. The problem is, the majority of writers make very little money and most of them don’t make a living, certainly not enough from writing to live in a comfortable manner.
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• Not Good Earnings
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• I pointed out in an earlier post, that Steve Weber in his book on book promotion and writing, tells us out of approximately 150,000 books published each year, 100,000 will sell less than 100 copies. These aren’t good figures I'm afraid.
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• Not Evenhanded.
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• I wouldn’t advise it as a career unless you have an independent source of money, or have been writing for years and already built up a following. Further data shows that 5% of authors earn 95% of all money from books. Not exactly evenhanded, is it? Yet it's little different to the music industry, where lots of good musicians get paid peanuts.
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• Please don’t stop writing, but treat it as a hobby until you’re certain that your earnings will support you. Not many people actually make a living from writing fiction - you could be the odd one out, but don't bank on it. Maybe look to journalism, or online writing, but fiction.....
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• Next post, Nino Ricci.