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Hi all, I wasted a bit of time last week on a pointless ebook debate with a writer who just wanted to argue semantics and not facts. His original blog post said that he was against changing the parallel importation book laws in Australian, and had recently launched a book in a bookstore, but felt guilty because he purchased most of his books on Amazon. I had a look at his website which had icons to buy his books directly from him or from Amazon. At Amazon, one of his books was half the price he charged directly, but I am sure he would earn more from a direct sale. If he, as an author, is not prepared to pay extra to support Australian authors and bookstores, why should other consumers? He also had an ebook of the first book in a series for 99cents. The consumer in me keeps on warning that if ebooks are ridiculously cheap than, like many cheap DVDs, they are probably crap. I have had a lot more enlightening debates about ebooks with other writers, like Graham Storrs...

Hi all, I spent a lot of time fiddling with a new Kindle last week. It arrived on Tuesday, three working days after I had ordered it. It took a couple of hours to charge, connected to the USB port of my computer (the power adapter was yet to arrive). I couldn’t figure out how to transfer another copy of Graham Storr’s ebook Timesplash from my Amazon account, Kindle for PC or from Lyric Press, so I purchased another copy for $4.40 from Amazon. It took a long time to download, probably because the battery hadn’t completely charged. I enlarged the font size up, finding it a lot easier to read then the tiny print in the paperback I had been reading. I tried out the text to speech function. The voice reading the text was more natural than I expected. But I immediately heard one of the problems with text to speech software when it mispronounced a word. The sentence went something like this: Graham read the ebook. Instead of pronouncing read as red, it pronounced it as reed. ...

Hi all, I attended two sessions on editing at Aussiecon4. Editing the Novel. Panellists were: Simon Spanton editor at Gollancz; Zoe Walton a publisher at Random House; science fiction author and freelance editor Jean Johnson; and Ace editor Ginjer Buchanan. They started the discussion by answering the question of how long a book should be. Simon said that a novel should be as long as the story takes to tell. Ginjer said that for a large novel, Ace used different formats to fit the words in or they just charged more for the novel. Young adults like chunkier books. Fantasy readers like more padding, description. Simon said editors are not there to be creative and that he never came up with a solution to an editing problem that was better than what the author thought up. He said it was increasingly difficult to get good copy editors. They said that an author can refuse all the changes an editor makes, but then the reader might spot all those problems. Editors don’...

Hi all, I'm a paid writer. I received a payment for the first two articles I wrote for Divine. I immediately used some of my writer's earnings to go over to the darkside : I ordered a Kindle. It's supposed to turn up this week. Then I can rush onto the Kindle store and fill it with free ebooks . I will never have to pay for a book again. Just joking. Anyone who has read this blog knows I am no fan of free or stupidly cheap ebooks . I will pay what I think is fair and just because it only costs $2.99 won't make me any more likely to buy it. I have just checked the Kindle top 100 bestseller list for the first time in about five weeks. Last time, you might remember, 51 were free. This time there were 44. An upward trend? Not really, as there were 14 ebooks from $0.01 to $2.00 with just about all of these being 99c. I noticed that someone has decided to charge 99c for some of the classics that dominate the free ebooks . Last time there were about ten ebooks ...

Hi all, Surprisingly, the neighbours have been quiet for most of the past week. Their teenage son, who lives in the garage, has not had his doff doff doff music on since last Wednesday night, and then it was only on at level low enough to be drowned out by a fan. I find it hard to believe, after our history with the neighbours, that he stopped due to me asking his mother to get him to turn it down last Tuesday. Perhaps other neighbours have complained, like the one I spoke to them last Tuesday too. They would have been most affected. It is so good to get some sleep. I reckon I need at least eight hours a night, especially on swimming days. With more sleep I found myself doing some writing, critiquing and reading last week. In my last writing week update, I forgot to mention that I had another article published on Divine. This one was about the Wangaratta Jazz Festival. It was the first straight news item I had written for the magazine and I wrongly tried to personalise...

Hi all, I am feeling really tired today. Lack of sleep and stress has got to me as we engage in preliminary skirmishes in what looks likely to be a long war with the neighbours. Surprisingly, their dogs have not been the problem, they have been drowned out by the mindless thud thud thud of dance music. The teenage son who moved into the garage got a stereo, and knowing his musical tastes are so fabulous decided to ensure all his neighbours could hear it. I went over at 10 last night and asked his mother to get him to turn it down. He did. But the noise has been back up today, so it looks like it will be a nightly event, until we get nasty. We have form with the neighbours , so I don't expect them to do the right thing without numerous actions. I talked to another of their neighbours last night, just before I went and complained, and their history of the people living next door is full of drama. I'm not going to risk slander by restating it here. The neighbour s...