It's My Birthday! Come Help Me Celebrate, and WIN!

"Local inventors create way to autograph eBooks "

ST. PETERSBURG --

A local company is changing the way readers get their coveted signatures on eBooks.

Local author and inventor T.J. Waters and his friend developed Autography, a place for the author's signature.

"Basically, what you do is pull up a copy of your book as the author, and it inserts a blank page behind the cover and you sign whatever you're going to personalize for somebody," Waters said.

Waters can sign from his iPad, and that message will show up on the eReader within a couple of minutes on a newly created page.

"What we've also been able to figure out is how to do this remotely," Waters said. "So an author could be sitting in his home or a facility like this and doing a book signing in Cleveland."

Pictures and even digital baseball cards can be personalized using Autography.

Some booklovers worry software like Autography could mean the end of bound books.

Experts in the publishing industry predict half of all books will be eBooks in just a couple of years.

"That's an incredible shift in the entire industry that everybody is still trying to get their arms around," Waters said. "How's that going to change bookstores, libraries? How's it going to change author tours, and how is that going to change how the consumers and the authors interact?"

The company is also expanding the technology to other digital mediums like comic books.

(To see the original article and the video, click here.)

(Thanks, Carol!)

Good Question: How Will Book Signings Fare?

I don’t see brighter days ahead for dead tree publishing at the moment.


I heart Teddy Pig.

Traditional publishing is changing, even though New York is fighting tooth and nail.  We saw this same battle occur when LPs, cassettes, and CDs had to make way for individual song purchases off iTunes.  Remember the olden days when you were forced to buy an LP for one song, only to discover the rest of the album was garbage?  Which meant you essentially paid all that $$ for one song.

But if print books are slowly fading in the west (I honestly don't think they'll fully disappear.), and brick and mortar bookstores are having difficulty remaining solvent, what will happen to book signings?

Since you can't sign an ebook, would people be happy with a signed postcard or bookmark? Doesn't seem the same, IMO.

Future Predictions, Take 4

Number Four: The Book.

You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.


**Although I personally didn't write these comments, I could have.  I really don't think print books will ever go away (she says, thinking of Jean-Luc Picard and his penchance for reading a volume while on shore leave -- see Star Trek.)  But I don't think it's too far in the future that ebook sales will outnumber print sales.**

Speaking of "Being Green"...

<-- See this little tree-like emblem? Recognize it? If you buy from Fictionwise, you might have if you've ever clicked on the NEW EBOOKS link. It's the logo for the MSReader. It's "green"! How cute is that? :D

It's READ AN EBOOK WEEK!

Let's all celebrate! :D

http://www.examiner.com/x-3098-Houston-Romance-Novels-Examiner~y2009m3d8-Read-an-Ebook-Week-starts-today

Go Green! Read an eBook!

March is being celebrated at All Romance eBooks (ARe) as "Save a tree. Preserve the planet. Go Green and read an ebook." month.

Won't you do your part? :D

This? Or This?

This?

Or this?

Lately I've noticed a lot of authors posting their flats. (A flat is the full cover a print book, which includes the spine and back.) In the ebook business, ebooks don't get flats because there's no need for a spine or back cover.

Personally, although I like to see what the whole book will look like, most of the time I prefer to show just my cover. It takes up less room, for one thing. And the front appears much more dramatic without the rest of it.

But curiosity prompts me to ask people if a flat makes any difference when they peruse a cover. Comments?

For the Love of Books - Formats and Fonts

I buy my ebooks in PDF because I can boost the font. Period.

I once had a friend comment that it was very hard for her to read the tiny font of one of my books. The 8 pt. font made her eyes water, as well as gave her a headache.

"Why don't you boost the font so it's easier to read?" I suggested.

"You can do that?"

Yes, you can if you're using Adobe (or any 0ther PDF reader, I would imagine.) Another neat trick I learned -- when it's time to scroll down, DON'T use the mouse. Put your cursor on the empty space ABOVE the bottom arrow, in that little "gutter" your scroll bar runs down. Then click once to advance the page down. The last line you finished will automatically become the first line at the top of the next page. :D

Ain't technology wonderful?

Runner's Moon MEGABOOK is Now Available!

If you have been putting off reading my RUNNER'S MOON series, now is your chance to get the first three books -- Jebaral, Tiron, and Simolif -- in one complete e-book edition!

Click here for details!

10 Reasons NOT to Buy an E-book

10. I have lots of room to store my print books.

9. I don't care for all the variety. It's too confusing.

8. It'll put used book stores out of business.

7. I paid good money for these reading glasses.

6. What would the authors sign if I went to their book signings?

5. Who wants to sit in front of a computer all day?

4. E-reader? Good grief! MORE technology?

3. I don't need it right now. I can wait for it to come in the mail.

2. What would I do with all my neat little bookmarks?

And the Number One reason NOT to buy an e-book?

1. Bargain? Feh!

Coming in the Back Door - My Take on E-Readers

Has anyone else noticed the phenomenon regarding e-readers? I mean, seriously, I'm not talking about the availability or types of e-readers. It's the fact that the READERS are having to comply with with the BOOK FORMATS already out there!

Think about it, folks! This is different!

For those of you who are old coots like me, NONcompatibility issues have been around since MAC programs and formatted disks couldn't be run on PC computers, and vice versa. Remember when VHS and Beta were fighting for the video recording market? A Beta tape wouldn't fit, much less run in a VHS machine. More recently there's been the battle of HiDef DVDs vs BluRay. If you bought one machine, you could use only their kind of product to use with/on that machine.

So why are there ebook formats like Mobi and HTML, you ask? It's due to the fact that ebooks can now be read on Blackberries and Palm Pilots, and the like. Those mini-computers/phones aren't specifically e-readers. They CAN allow you to read ebooks, but initially that's not their primary function.

So the next time you hear about a new kind of e-reader being introduced, take a good look at what it can do, and be happy you can download all your PDFs onto it without any trouble.

Ain't it great? :D