Market Fragments? February 4, 2012 Articles and Opinions, e-book

There have been a few interesting developments in the ebook market this week.New markets often have competing formats. As technology develops many different ways are found of doing the same thing, which eventually standardise to two or three, and as the market matures and new technologies emerge, before one standard emerges.With videos the VHS/Betamax rivalry eventually came to a head and resulted in the triumph of VHS. With Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD, Blu Ray eventually came out on top.

Is the same thing now happening to e-readers? Initially there were hosts of formats, many of which are now falling by the wayside, but the first signs of the industry really polarising happened around Christmas 2011. Amazon offered readers a chance to go into bookstores, scan books and then buy on Amazon at

Sequelitis February 1, 2012 Articles and Opinions

"DC plans Prequels to Watchmen Series"I'm serious: check the New York Times.

That wasn't a headline I expected in my newsfeed this morning, but it also isn't a surprise. In summary DC Comics are getting new writers to write prequels to the classic comic Watchmen. Alan Moore, the original writer and character creator isn't involved. As the original comics tells two stories, many years apart it would be easy for prequels to spoil it for new readers, but rather than focus on that, I found the Alan Moore Quote at the bottom of the article interesting.Moore states it is a blow to comics as a serious artform: “As far as I know,” he said, “there weren’t that many prequels or sequels to ‘Moby-Dick.’ ” NYTimes, 1st Feb 2012,This I disagree with. I inherited a collection of books from a

Taking a chance… January 23, 2012 Smashwords

Well, this blog is normally not the first with breaking news, but right now it is on the frontline of a test.Testing what, you ask? Well, go to the Fire Season page (on the menu above) and you'll see a new "Read Sample" button. It's a prototype of an embedded reader for Smashwords samples, and making its first (temporary) appearance away from the test server.If there's any takeup for it and no critical bugs, there is a Java app in the works which has more options, and which this version will eventually become the fallback for. Meanwhile here's v0.3 on temporary display. Since this blog is more likely to attract readers and authors than the coders' blogs, it's up here to gain a bit of feedback and some extra opinions. For background, this is all part of the Smashwords Tools project which

Conflict of Interest January 12, 2012 Uncategorized

Here's a surprising announcement for the New Year:Conflict of Interest, the Docks sequel, which I withdrew for re-editing after several critiques? It's back up on Amazon, it hasn't been re-edited and it's up in its original form. It sounds like an odd move, but while the editors suggested a lot of changes, the betas didn't like the edited versions. Since the beta readers are more representative of my audience, and I was going round in circles getting nothing else written because of the back and forth over COI, I've decided to take the decision to push it out the door and move on with something else.The other reason for that decision was the christmas sales figures - while I may have pulled it most of the third parties didn't and it's building a steady fanbase.I wrote it to deadline, I

The Twelth Night January 6, 2012 Uncategorized

In some traditions, the start of 2012 proper. In mine, time to take down the decorations since it is unlucky to leave them up longer. In both cases, it's the time to shift from holiday mood and face the year ahead. And there are a few changes coming up for 2012.You might notice the blog is back to Project Wonderful ads, this time installed properly. After a few ads for well-known publishing scams showed up through Adsense, I decided to shift across fully since I didn't want to be thought of as endorsing them. I actually prefer Project Wonderful as a service, but last time my blog went down for a few days and my average traffic level dropped too low. This time, using a networked ad that runs across multiple sites, it should avoid that.There are more unofficial Smashwords widgets in

Blog hop & bookstore January 3, 2012 Smashwords

Join the New Year's Blog Hop at http://bit.ly/vGhCzV to win your choice of five ebooks or grand prize of a Kindle Fire!Yes, my first post of the year is promotional, but then The Docks is one of the prizes for a rather large blog hop. I'm still working on COI and hopefully that will be back up and re-edited by tomorrow.The other thing that is coming soon is an embeddable bookstore widget for the blog. I'm helping test the alpha version now on the Bookstores page (and you can view the mini-site version here), since this blog uses a narrower template than most. The Smashwords tools in beta can be viewed here, for anyone who wants to help with the testing, or use one on the blog.http://www.raggedangel.net/smashwords-tools2012? Off to a good start, I think.

2011 round up December 30, 2011 Uncategorized

It's been a busy year. I've gone into ebook for the first time, released a book on Kindle and launched two paperbacks. Not bad for my first year of devoted writing/publishing. Other items include the blog, the website, finding a few boards to get advice on, finding a new ad provider and even going back to writing a few more articles. Overall, I'd have to say it has been a busy year.The last few days are not going to be any different. I think I've found a way to resolve my problems with the Project Wonderful ads. Part of the issue was that each of my sites had to have seperate ads, and on their own these subsites don't get enough traffic. After swapping a few emails, they actually have a way to link traffic from all the sites together under one, so this morning I've added it.If it works,

Merry Christmas! December 25, 2011 Uncategorized

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Widgets and websites and blogs December 16, 2011 Interviews

The ongoing saga of the missing books continues - we're now at three orders not filled that I know of. Please could you let me or the publisher know if you ordered a book and it has not arrived.Moving onto a brighter note, there's new Smashwords widget on the blog, which is part of a whole third-party set of marketing tools in development to help authors market their Smashwords books.Also, I have a blog interview up today with J E Taylor: Dishing it up With VH Folland.

An update on bookstores December 9, 2011 Smashwords

After some detective work, it turns out that the books have indeed not arrived with stores. The distributor lost the order.I've taken the practical approach. I've spoken to the shops, who were kind enough to resubmit the order. Author copies have been handed out where possible and, now the orders have been resent, with any luck at the distributor's end The Docks will be in bookstores for Christmas. Otherwise you can still order it online or over the counter.Hopefully at some point in the near future (read: next five minutes), I'll be able to get back to writing. On a brighter note, I have an interview on J.E.Taylor's blog coming up, so look out for that, and I'll link it here when it's up.

And finally, about another author. Nick Davis, formerly a White Dwarf feature writer and now a

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