Apple | Multiple Enthusiasms

Category: Apple

September 9, 2013

Today begins the final free promotion ever of my time travel novel The Prodigal Hour. This week, you can get it free from Amazon for its Kindle platform (which you can read on anything–iPhone, iPad, Android phone, Android tablet, Barnes and Noble’s Nook et al.), and with no DRM, which means you can convert the Kindle file you download to an ePub or html file or whatever you’d like, really. As always, you can find it right here.

And if you’d prefer the print version, you can purchase the paperback at that same link, and you’ll get a copy of the ebook free with Amazon’s brilliant new Matchbook program. Same goes for Meets Girl.

This is the last time you’ll be able to get The Prodigal Hour free, because at the end of October, it–along with all other Exciting Press titles–will move away from Amazon’s KDP Select program, at least for the foreseeable future. If you’re wondering why, head past the break to read some more publishing/Amazon/free discussion. If you just want the books, follow those links and have at them, and please enjoy.

February 29, 2012

On March 1^st, 2007, five years ago tomorrow, I published Entrekin, a self-titled debut collection of short stories, essays, and poetry. If you’ve ever been interested but put off picking up a copy, now’s the time to do so, as it’s your very final chance. I said that once, back when I pulled it from Lulu, but then Kindle made it more viable. And now, Kindle’s made a lot of other things more viable, too, which is why I’m pulling it from there, as well, finally. As of a few hours from now, Entrekin will no longer exist.

The stories and words, however, will. In new form.

January 30, 2012

Over the weekend, The New York Times ran a long article on the current state and possible future of Barnes & Noble.

It’s an interesting article with a strange, near-defeated tone. It goes out of its way not to lament the current state of affairs that is the bookselling business and the late-twentieth century distribution model of the corporate publishing industry, but it holds an undercurrent of resignation from paragraph to paragraph, as if its author isn’t quite certain whom she is trying to convince but knows she can convince herself least of all. It portrays Barnes & Noble as a compelling candidate for its own adjective: an honorable enterprise begun by one man selling used books in a great city that grew humbly until the late-1970s, when a young entrepreneur bought it and fueled growth and revenue.

It doesn’t mention the scores of independent bookstores that collapsed based on Barnes & Noble’s discount practices and corporate publishers support of them. It doesn’t mention the once-quaint shops who shuttered their windows because selling a book for list price could no longer attract foot traffic from anyone but the most dedicated of shop patrons; most readers were happy to spend the money the saved buying inexpensive hardcovers on coffee or cheap tchotchkes like bookmarks or novelty pens or sparkling journals. It doesn’t mention predators and their prey, and the collateral damage experienced by those caught between the two.

January 25, 2012

Last week, in an event specified as education-related, Apple announced new software that enables authors to more easily create and publish media-rich digital content. They’re calling the sales app iBooks 2 and the creation app iBooks Author, but they seem to be making a very marked distinction that what has generally become known as an e-book is not what Apple has in mind when it talks about iBooks.

A lot of authors—especially independent authors—and other people in the publishing industry have been writing about the agreement that comes with the software, and complaining about how restrictive and evil it is. I’ve read the agreement in question, and I think that all the discussion around it is based on simple misunderstanding.

Multiple Enthusiasms

Infinite jest. Excellent fancy. Flashes of merriment.

Category: Apple