Category Publishing

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

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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

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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.

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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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Thoughts on an Open Letter and its Responses

November 23, 2011 Articles and Opinions, Publishing

A few days ago an open letter from a writer to their publisher set Twitter on fire. Author Sebastian Marshall wrote to Carolyn Reidy the CEO of Simon and Schuster, his publisher, about what he thought was wrong with publishing.While I am not touching the actual argument between the author and their publisher, some of it highlights legitimate issues about the whole traditional publishing industry, or at least the mainstream big-business part of it.

Liar old and new covers:

Cover art? It is very rare for an author to get a say in their cover art. This is why we get issues of white-washing, like the furor over Liar or Magic Under Glass, both of whose authors were overriden until reader backlash caused a change of cover. In the Liar example, Justine Larbalestier, who is an established

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SampleSunday – Conflict of Interest Ch1

September 11, 2011 SampleSunday, Smashwords

I wasn't going to do Sample Sunday today, but since Conflict of Interest just got approved for distribution, and will be hitting Barnes & Noble, Amazon and more shortly, I thought I'd put up a link to a sample to celebrate. If you want the whole book now, it is available in all formats from Smashwords.Today's SampleSunday is the complete Chapter One of Conflict of Interest, available from the website for CoI.Read here: Chapter One: Conflict of InterestThere are a couple of Tweets going round, so please Retweet them if you like the sample: Mugging an armed robber isn't bright. Conflict of Interest: bit.ly/qzhbkX #samplesunday #ebookorHis robbery went as planned - until Harry was mugged. Conflict of Interest Ch.1: bit.ly/qzhbkX #Sample Sunday #action #ebook Pls RT

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An Amazon update

August 31, 2011 Amazon

A breakdown of last night: Amazon don't think there is anything wrong with the listing. So far their support people have all taken one look and escalated it, only for me to get a email back from the technical team this morning that the listing is "fine". My thoughts were unprintable.
Not shown as an ebook, not in the Kindle store, and you can't purchase it. That's not fine.
I phoned Amazon.com (£2 a minute - ouch). They could see the response, and the still-broken product page. The support operator was very helpful and is escalating it along with a note that the first response was wrong.
Unfortunately it will still be broken when the book is featured on 1st September, because the department that should have fixed it yesterday is closed. Republishing won't fix it because the problem is

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Good news and bad…

August 30, 2011 Amazon

The good news is that I got another review for "The Docks", a good four stars courtesy of the Gathering Leaves blog
"I definitely recommend The Docks for a fast, entertaining read!"
Gathering Leaves (full review)
My new author website is up: http://www.vhfolland.com/, leaving only Fire Season's site to be reskinned, and I have a lot of promotion set up for September, including a sequel to The Docks.
The bad news is really bad: There's a problem with the Amazon.com listing for The Docks and it can't currently be purchased from there. I have flagged this up with Amazon and am waiting to hear back.
Meanwhile, if you would like to get a copy, please use:
SmashwordsAmazon.co.ukUpdate (9.30pm): I raised this with Amazon at 16:00, who responded and unfortunately made the problem worse. They are

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Smashwords – an update

June 29, 2011 Smashwords, The Docks

After a brief email exchange, I got a note saying that Smashwords have updated meatgrinder. I retried my file (the same one I'd submitted already) and it went through, validating correctly in epub. No more added navigation links or NCX problems. This morning I was told it had gone into the premium distribution catalogue.The Docks is shortly going to be available in Apple, B&N, and multiple other places. For anyone who is impatient, it is already up at Smashwords in those formats (here). Even without premium distribution, it has over 100 downloads, so it can't be that bad. I just need the confidence to send it out for review.The sequel is coming nicely into shape, although it seems to be getting longer during editing which is a little unusual. Unfortunately I have one opinion on it

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A Smashwords problem, and a paperback question

June 21, 2011 Smashwords, The Docks

Three hours of problems with Smashwords.To boil this down to a summary: - I was notified by Smashwords that the epub file for the Docks was broken. - The epub navigation had an extra link on the end. - I checked.- The epub file passes epubcheck.Investigation results- The Word file did not contain hidden or malformed bookmarks.- The error only occurred in epub format.- The previous three file versions did not have the problem, and had identical bookmarks.- All epub files pass epubcheckResolution attempt: - I nuked the file - copied into Notepad, stripped the formatting and links and rebuilt them. - I checked the file: were no hidden bookmarks, malformed bookmarks etc. - I uploaded the new file.The same error occurred. The new epub file passes epubcheck.I think this one is at their end... I

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