“Pirate” booksellers

There are a number of websites out there that have been selling digital versions of my self-published book, Castle Falcon.

I discover these because I have a general Google tracker set up for the book title, in the fond hope that some review or other reader response will someday show up. What usually shows up is some obscure website that is selling my book in PDF or ebook form.

The most recent one is a site called KissLibrary, which is more sophisticated than most. My book, nicely presented, was for sale for five bucks. I did a quick check to make sure it wasn’t one of the Smashwords channels (it’s not).

I dithered over how to deal with it. The site has a DMCA form available, which at least shows a willingness to be corrected on their placement. I wondered: should I leave the book site up? It’s no real skin off my nose since the book hasn’t been selling anyway, and if someone buys it, at least it might get read.

I finally decided to file the DMCA form. I’m no legal expert, but it seems to me that if you let too many of these “bootleggers” go, it might actually put a legal crimp in your own copyright. Kind of like brand names that aren’t aggressive enough about other people using them generically, and then wake up one morning to find out that their brand actually has become legally generic.

I’m not sure how these books get into the “wild.” Smashwords is the only distributor I use that routinely offers a PDF format for books sold by them. I suspect it would be easy for someone to buy it legally from Smashwords and then reproduce it at will.

Ebooks from the library

Just checked out my first Kindle book from my local library!

It works through a site called Overdrive.com, and you link your public library account to it so you can borrow e-books. It works on many devices, and was easier to set up than I thought.

I plan on using this a lot, and it’s embarrassing that it took me this long.

E-book cover issues, continued

I complained in an earlier post how Ray Bradbury’s e-books were, in my opinion, badly treated as far as covers went.

I’m a fan of Jim Butcher’s “Dresden Files” series. His latest book (Skin Game) just came out, so I picked up a new Dresden book in Kindle format for the first time. At the same time, there was an Amazon deal for the first seven Kindle books for $1.99 each, and what the heck, I snapped those up too.

Just for fun, before checking out the new book I started re-reading the series from the beginning, purchasing the remainder of the books as I went (not $1.99 each, unfortunately).

As with Bradbury’s books, most of the Kindle books had no cover at the beginning at all, just the title text and author. This was disappointing, as the Dresden series has some really nice covers on their hardbacks.

Oddly, three of the books did have actual illustrated covers. Blood Rites and Cold Days had the hardcover illustrations. Summer Knight had an illustration (not the standard hardcover one), but it was about the size of a postage stamp on my screen. This is a common Kindle graphic formatting error, but with a cover illustration it’s one you almost have to work at to screw up during the Kindle publishing process.

Come on, publishers! Your e-book designs reflect on your authors as much as the hardcovers in the store windows.

(For an example of a publisher that seems to have really worked hard on their e-books, check out the Harry Potter series, which you can only buy directly at the Pottermore website.)

 

Nook Press

Barnes and Noble has updated its Nook e-book publication program, now called Nook Press.

I haven’t explored the new interface yet, but it’s intended to be more user-friendly and more like the Amazon Kindle publishing program. Authors already published through the original Nook PubIt program can easily convert to the new interface.

The world in a grain of silicon

I mentioned looking up books on Kindle last time. I’ve got one of the older electronic-ink versions, the one with the keyboard at the bottom.

I love it. I write books for children, and while I like the idea of seeing my work published on shelves in hardcover and paperback, I want electronic versions out there too.

My kids gave me the Kindle for Father’s Day a while back, and I wondered what I was going to do with it at the time. But as I started loading my favorites on board, and realized that I could read any of them anywhere I went, it really grew on me. Having accidentally squished the screen once (and gotten a replacement from Amazon), I got a nice metal-reinforced case from Proporta in England (“aluminium”) and it’s held up under a lot of handling since.

I like to read when I eat. I can turn pages by just tapping the side key, and I don’t have to hold a book open with a weight. I can eat spare ribs, and hit the button with my elbow. The Kindle fits nicely in the inside pocket of my jeans jacket, and I can read in a park, in a waiting room, or anywhere else. The electronic ink screen shows up in full sunlight. I can’t read in the dark, but I hear the newer “Paperwhites” have a screen light.

I like electronic ink. I don’t want my Kindle to be anything except a book. I have no desire to get anything more powerful. No movies, no games, no apps, no “Fire.” I also like that the battery lasts for a couple of weeks. If somebody ever comes up with full-color electronic ink, maybe I’d consider that.

My Kindle has wireless, so I can download new books any time I’m in a wi-fi zone. For a bit more money, you can get one that has cell phone access. You can get at Amazon’s library anywhere you have a signal. There’s no charge, and you don’t even need your own cell phone account. You can get a Kindle cheaper if you’re willing to put up with ads on it (no thanks).

I would have killed for this kind of literary access when I was 10. Say what you will about there being nothing like holding a real book, cracking it open for the first time, smelling that great new book smell, and turning the pages. I’d even agree with you. But there’s a lot to be said about carrying a little leather-covered pad in my coat pocket that contains enough books to fill a large room, with many classics available for less money than a fancy coffee drink. Or even free.

My Dad has one, and loves it. I got my wife a free Kindle app for the IPod she carries around (it contains reference books for her pharmacy work). She took to it like a duck to water. One reason I generate e-books of my work is because she likes to proof it that way. She’s reading an old classic now that weighs about three pounds in paperback. I can buy books and send them to anyone I know who has a Kindle (with permission). I just shot a copy of Half Magic to my wife.

There are other e-readers, of course. This is just the one I own.

So what have I got on my Kindle so far?

All of Nero Wolfe. All of Pratchett’s Discworld books. Six Dune books. A bunch of Heinlein. The Narnia books, and a bit more C.S. Lewis. The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series. The Garrett Files. Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. The Complete George MacDonald, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Sherlock Holmes, H.P. Lovecraft, and Jules Verne. Moby Dick. Heidi. Wind in the Willows. Some Gaiman novels. And a few other odds and ends, including Kindle versions of my own books (only one of which is actually on the market).

I’m just getting started. I don’t have H. G. Wells in there yet, or Shakespeare, the Lewis Space Trilogy, or the Oz books, among many others. I only have the first Harry Potter book. I wish all the favorite books of my childhood were available in this format, but a lot of them are. I’m a kid in a candy store with a shopping cart the size of a dump truck. I tell my family to get me Amazon gift certificates for every holiday.

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His grip on my shoulder tightened. “We have books here bound in the hides of echidnes, krakens, and beasts so long extinct that those whose studies they are, are for the most part of the opinion that no trace of them survives unfossilized. We have books bound wholly in metals of unknown alloy, and books whose bindings are covered with thickset gems. We have books cased in perfumed woods shipped across inconceivable gulf between creations–books doubly precious because no one on Urth can read them. 

“We have books whose papers are matted of plants from which spring curious alkaloids, so that the reader, in turning their pages, is taken unaware by bizarre fantasies and chimeric dreams. Books whose pages are not paper at all, but delicate wafers of white jade, ivory, and shell; books too whose leaves are the desiccated leaves of unknown plants. Books we have also that are not books at all to the eye: scrolls and tablets and recordings on a hundred different substances. 

“There is a cube of crystal here–though I can no longer tell you where–no larger than the ball of your thumb that contains more books than the library itself does. Though a harlot might dangle it from one ear for an ornament, there are not volumes enough in the world to counterweight the other. All these I came to know, and I made safeguarding them my life’s devotion.” 

– Master Ulton, the Curator, from Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer.