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Hi all, I thought it was about time that I checked what was happening with the price of ebooks on Amazon. While there, I discovered the Kindle Lending Library which could be a total game changer in the publishing industry. Earlier in the week I read a blog post by an anonymous traditional publisher that said most of his colleagues are in denial about the effect Amazon with have on their businesses Ebooks Getting Cheaper . I just checked the top 100 bestselling ebooks on Amazon. 34 were 99c, seven were $1.99, 32 were $2.99, four were $3.99, 5 were $4.99 and four were $8.99. No other price had more than two ebooks. There were only six priced above $8. In August, the last time I checked, 41 of the top selling ebooks were 99c and only four were $2.99. Four were also $1.99, and 22 were more than $8. So the overall downward trend in prices continues. The increase in the number of bestsellers at $2.99 from four to 32 is interesting. Amazon, the last I heard, only gives aut...

Hi all, Communication problems was my theme last week. Byline Missing From Divine Article I had a new article posted on Divine last week. The article was about hiding my ulcerative colitis from the world. I failed to notice the article lacked a by-line. Some readers might have thought that I wanted to remain anonymous and still hid my disease. I was notified of the problem the next day and the article is now attributed to me. I have received a number of comments on the article on the Divine site and on facebook. As a result, if I wrote the article again I would include another reason for not telling the world I had ulcerative colitis: people offering dietary and medical advice. Over the years I have come across lots of natural therapies and dietary changes that supposedly cure ulcerative colitis, none of them have worked. A big problem with ulcerative colitis is that it comes and goes. So say it is active and I decide to try one of the various “cures”. I choose...

Hi all, Best Place to Self-Publish a Book For the past year or so I have followed a thread on LinkedIn that asked the question: What is the best place to self-publish a book? Here are a few things I have learnt: Createspace (Amazon) comes up as the best self-publishing platform. It is relatively easy to use compared to other platforms and not many authors seem to have problems with it. Smashwords rarely has a bad comment posted about it. Until recently, I had not noted any references to Apple’s ibooks. This is probably due to writers having to use Smashwords or Lulu to prepare their ebook before it can be sold in the ibookstore. Never use Publish America . It is a total rip off. The fact that it still exists means many writers do very little publishing research. Authors accuse Publish America of doing things like charging $350 for the placement of 15 copies of their book in Barnes and Noble. Many authors say they know the...

Hi all, As a personal stand against the ebook price race to the bottom, I made a resolution at the start of last year to only purchase ebooks priced over $5. Here is what I ended up downloading: WTF , an anthology by Pink Narcissus Press, $8.99 Marketing for Authors by Anita Revel, $4.97 The Last Albatross by Ian Irvine, $6.99 Oxygen by John Olson and Randy Ingermanson, 0.99 Turing Evolved by Dave Kitson, free My Name in Lights by Patty Jansen, $1.99 Creating an ebook by Paul Hurst, free Ah-huh, Graham was not very good at keeping his resolution you think, but wait until you read my rationalisations. I sent Dave Kitson an $8 donation when I finished reading Turing Evolved . Patty Jansen’s ebook was a 33 page novella. I think $1.99 is a fair price for a novella. I read Randy Ingermanson’s newsletter, sometimes hurriedly, and mistakenly thought Oxygen was a novella with some writing tips at its end. Creating an ebook , by Paul Hurst is on...

Hi all, This is my annual best of the previous years science fiction and new year’s resolutions post. 2011’s Science Fiction Books. The best science fiction book I read last year was The Year of the Flood , by Margaret Atwood, a prequel to her equally as good Oryx and Crake . It’s not about global warming, the flood is a genetically engineered plague. I also enjoyed Stephen King’s Under the Dome – which did sag a bit in the middle - and Dave Kitson’s self-published ebook Turing Evolved , which had a great story, it just needed a good edit. Overall, I made very good choices for reading in 2011, except for the very much overrated Perdido Street Station , by China Mieville. Its story took way too long to develop into anything interesting. It should have been cut to half its 600 pages.  2011’s Science Fiction Movies. Apart from the excellent Rise of the Apes , was any other science fiction movie released in 2011? At least that’s the question I asked myself....