Parallel Lines by Ken Hartis
Story:
A naturally occuring time portal enables a young man to go back forty years in time. He decides to live a double life, one in his own time and one as Gene Starnes forty years ago. These two lives are always seperated by those fourty years, which of course means that time will still catch up with him as soon as fourty years have passed in both time lines. In the end he needs to make an important decision and his choice holds the dilemma of either risking losing everything or risking the destruction of the entire universe as we know it - and then some.
Review:
A book must be well written for me to really like it
It must also have a good story
Parallel Lines is a very good example on how these two elements should be prioritized: the book is very well written and as a romantic tale, the story is okay. But that's it. The author doesn't exploit the SF genre nearly as much as he could and the message drowns in over telling a tale that could've been told in half the number of pages.
That said, I'm quite impressed by the descriptions of roads, buildings and scenaries as they supposedly looked 50+ years ago. They appear to be grounded in the author vastly researching the premises of his book, though I haven't checked any of these details (I'm sure someone out there will...)
Finally, this book does hold one of the things that makes any book worth the reading time: it's not finished when you finish it, it makes you think...
Showing posts with label Kindle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kindle. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Newly Published: Skrymers Glove
Newly Published Science Fiction and Norse Mythology blend!
Note: A special offer for you at the buttom of the post!
Skrymers Glove
Why I wrote the story:
I´m a big fan of Science Fiction and one of my favorite shows is "Star Gate" including all of its spin-offs (and yes, that includes the SGU-series, which I found to be much more of a brainy series than than the others)
What I particularly like about these series is the way they integrate mythology from all parts of the world: Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology and Norse mythology. The very idea that all of these mythologies originate from visits on planet Earth from various races of the universe is both intriguing and intertextual consistent.
However, as I watched the ongoing stories of these series, I found it increasingly annoying that the Norse Mythology was so badly presented, as in 'flawed.'
For one thing, Thor and co. are called 'Asgards,' which is a funny way (not funny as in 'rofl,' but funny as in 'hmmm... strange...') of using the name of their home as a noun. The correct name of the Norse gods is 'Aser' in Danish (plural) and in English it would be 'Aseir'
But even worse, Loki is depicted as a renegade Aseir, when in fact he´s a renegade Yetten, who has joined the Aseir and more often than not is on the Aseir side fighting against the Yetten.
I wanted to write a story, where these things were corrected and began writing the story "The Legend of Hjarne´s Island," but after some time I got stuck as I began feeling that there was a story before "Legend."
Then one day, when I was surfing the internet and watching Youtube-videos, I stumbled on this video made by Hauke Vagt, a German illustrator and his brother (who´s name I am sorry to admit I don´t know)
The video tells the story of a Swedish diving team, who found a strange object in the Baltic Sea in 2011 and last year they went back to investigate further. Hauke Vagt has produced this video suggesting that maybe the anomaly was an ancient space ship crashing millenia ago.
I was intrigued at this idea and found it to fit very well with my upcoming novel and decided to integrate it in my story.
So, there you have it: Skrymers Glove is the story about how Tjalfe and his sister, Roeskva, were abducted by Yetten aliens, (maybe) rescued by Thor, Sif, Freya, Baldur and Loki and their story started the Norse Mythology!
Skrymers Glove is available at:
Kindle only:
Amazon - UK
Amazon - US
Amazon - DE
Amazon - FR
Amazon - ES
Amazon - IT
Amazon - JP
Amazon - CA
Amazon - BR
Various formats, including Kindle, PDF and EPUB (readable on most devices)
Smashwords - all countries
A gift for you!
If you want the book at half price, there´s a 'new publishing discount' right now, which means that you can get the book for only $2.50! All you have to do is go to Smashwords.com and use this discount code: CL97Z
Note: A special offer for you at the buttom of the post!
Skrymers Glove
War in the Milky Way!Two races, Aseir and Vanes, have allied against the brutal Yetten forces bent on dominating the entire galaxy. During experimentation with the Fyrkat device on planet Earth, two human children, Tjalfe and Roeskva, are abducted by the Yetten and now it´s up to Thor, Loki, Balder, Freya and Sif to rescue them. Unfortunately there is a traitor among them and evidence does point to Loki, Thor´s best friend and Thor struggles with the questions burning inside: could Loki really be the traitor or is something else going on? And will they succeed in saving the children´s lives?
Why I wrote the story:
I´m a big fan of Science Fiction and one of my favorite shows is "Star Gate" including all of its spin-offs (and yes, that includes the SGU-series, which I found to be much more of a brainy series than than the others)
What I particularly like about these series is the way they integrate mythology from all parts of the world: Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology and Norse mythology. The very idea that all of these mythologies originate from visits on planet Earth from various races of the universe is both intriguing and intertextual consistent.
However, as I watched the ongoing stories of these series, I found it increasingly annoying that the Norse Mythology was so badly presented, as in 'flawed.'
For one thing, Thor and co. are called 'Asgards,' which is a funny way (not funny as in 'rofl,' but funny as in 'hmmm... strange...') of using the name of their home as a noun. The correct name of the Norse gods is 'Aser' in Danish (plural) and in English it would be 'Aseir'
But even worse, Loki is depicted as a renegade Aseir, when in fact he´s a renegade Yetten, who has joined the Aseir and more often than not is on the Aseir side fighting against the Yetten.
I wanted to write a story, where these things were corrected and began writing the story "The Legend of Hjarne´s Island," but after some time I got stuck as I began feeling that there was a story before "Legend."
Then one day, when I was surfing the internet and watching Youtube-videos, I stumbled on this video made by Hauke Vagt, a German illustrator and his brother (who´s name I am sorry to admit I don´t know)
The video tells the story of a Swedish diving team, who found a strange object in the Baltic Sea in 2011 and last year they went back to investigate further. Hauke Vagt has produced this video suggesting that maybe the anomaly was an ancient space ship crashing millenia ago.
I was intrigued at this idea and found it to fit very well with my upcoming novel and decided to integrate it in my story.
So, there you have it: Skrymers Glove is the story about how Tjalfe and his sister, Roeskva, were abducted by Yetten aliens, (maybe) rescued by Thor, Sif, Freya, Baldur and Loki and their story started the Norse Mythology!
Skrymers Glove is available at:
Kindle only:
Amazon - UK
Amazon - US
Amazon - DE
Amazon - FR
Amazon - ES
Amazon - IT
Amazon - JP
Amazon - CA
Amazon - BR
Various formats, including Kindle, PDF and EPUB (readable on most devices)
Smashwords - all countries
A gift for you!
If you want the book at half price, there´s a 'new publishing discount' right now, which means that you can get the book for only $2.50! All you have to do is go to Smashwords.com and use this discount code: CL97Z
Enjoy the book! And if you´d like to review it, I´ll really be looking forward to it!
Monday, April 2, 2012
Norse myth narrative
Writing the Asgard Saga is no less than a real treat to me. Not only do I love the stories, but working with them in a more modern narrative form is very rewarding. These stories have been handed down from generation to generation and were not written down before some time in the early 13th century after the chance from Heathen religion to Christianity. This brings a challenge differing from, say the Christian or Jewish texts.
The Jewish tradition is different from the Viking tradition, because the storytelling of the latter wasn´t a "to-the-letter" handing down. The base line was more important than telling the stories exactly in the same way, whereas the Jewish tradition demanded the handing down of myth and stories to be told word for word. This means that the stories from the Bible are very accurate. They are told in the original languages almost exactly as they were told 500, 1000 or even 5000 years ago.
The Norse myths aren´t this accurate and in time some of the stories have changed some of their meaning. For instance, there is some doubt as to weither Odin and Frey were married or not.
The most important thing, however, is that I want to make as good a balance as possible between telling the stories in such a way that the characters come alive, but still honors the original stories. This is a difficult task, mostly due to the narrative tradition of Norse Mythology, where the characters are flat, meaning that they lean towards action rather than the characters´ mindsets and characteristics behind the action.
This is their strength, but it also makes it difficult to describe who these characters really are. For instance, the stories do not reveal Odin as having a devious mind, but his actions are either devious or he is not aware of the results of his actions. Of course, the stories tell little by little that he IS devious, but you have to read quite a few of the myths to catch that.
That´s why I really enjoy writing my interpretation of these myths. It´s a challenge to bring the stories to life and give my readers a good reading experience without being unfaithful to the messages of the myths.
I am very much looking forward to getting feedback from all you people out there, just waiting for the first volume to come out and as a treat, I want to share with you the cover for the book. It´s not entirely finished yet and it may look somewhat different when I publish, but this is what I´ve got so far:
I hope, you´ve enjoyed reading my blog posts on the Norse Mythology and I can assure you, that I´m not even close to being finished with it yet. There will be more to come.
The Jewish tradition is different from the Viking tradition, because the storytelling of the latter wasn´t a "to-the-letter" handing down. The base line was more important than telling the stories exactly in the same way, whereas the Jewish tradition demanded the handing down of myth and stories to be told word for word. This means that the stories from the Bible are very accurate. They are told in the original languages almost exactly as they were told 500, 1000 or even 5000 years ago.
The Norse myths aren´t this accurate and in time some of the stories have changed some of their meaning. For instance, there is some doubt as to weither Odin and Frey were married or not.
The most important thing, however, is that I want to make as good a balance as possible between telling the stories in such a way that the characters come alive, but still honors the original stories. This is a difficult task, mostly due to the narrative tradition of Norse Mythology, where the characters are flat, meaning that they lean towards action rather than the characters´ mindsets and characteristics behind the action.
This is their strength, but it also makes it difficult to describe who these characters really are. For instance, the stories do not reveal Odin as having a devious mind, but his actions are either devious or he is not aware of the results of his actions. Of course, the stories tell little by little that he IS devious, but you have to read quite a few of the myths to catch that.
That´s why I really enjoy writing my interpretation of these myths. It´s a challenge to bring the stories to life and give my readers a good reading experience without being unfaithful to the messages of the myths.
I am very much looking forward to getting feedback from all you people out there, just waiting for the first volume to come out and as a treat, I want to share with you the cover for the book. It´s not entirely finished yet and it may look somewhat different when I publish, but this is what I´ve got so far:
I hope, you´ve enjoyed reading my blog posts on the Norse Mythology and I can assure you, that I´m not even close to being finished with it yet. There will be more to come.
Do you like the cover?
Feel free to comment, even if you really, really hate the cover!
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Where do socks disappear to when they vanish?
Where do sock disappear to?
If you ever wondered where socks disappear to, when they suddenly vanish from your laundry, help is on the way:
This is what happens: Inside your washing machine there is a portal transporting your socks to Sock Island, where they have a well deserved vacation after weeks and weeks of staying in a dark drawer, being walked inside of smelly and air tight shoes and boots and being washed round and round and round till they get dizzy and want to puke.
In Sebastian on Sock Island we meet the boy Sebastian who gets sucked through this portal and lands on Sock Island, where he has a marvellous time with the two socks, Sokkey and Stockey. But something is terribly wrong on Sock Island. The nasty Woolley is out for power and wants Sock Island to be his personal kingdom. He has stolen the key to the portal and Sebastian can´t get home to his family, before he has found the key through many dangerous adventures.
The story is still under way and we expect it to be published in Danish this fall and then it should be translated and adapted into English spring 2013.
Looking forward to publish, it would be magnificent to hear your comments on the idea...
Per Holbo, Author of "Princess Lila and the Knight in Shouting Armor," available on amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Princess-Knight-Shouting-Armor-ebook/dp/B006WIHI5Y/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1327839157&sr=8-3
Thursday, January 19, 2012
The Fish Model: Element (a) Starters!
The first element of the fish model
As promised, I will go through the fish model in making a good reading experience for your readers and today I will guide you through the first element: The Starter!
But first I need to clear something up
As these posts are a work in progress I will from time to time have to revise some of my definitions and explanations as needed. In my first post I claimed that the starter is the first 2-3 words in your work, but as I was writing the present post I realized that this definition is a bit off. The starter CAN be broader than those first words. It can be the title of your work, the first few sentences or even the image on the cover.
Let us begin
The Starter is, beside the obvious that it´s what starts your work, a teaser. It´s something you use to get the readers attention. In a commercial, the first few miliseconds are vital to getting out the message. To get an idea, think of a commercial you remember. How did it begin? What was it that got your attention? Was it the clothes the people in the commercial wore? Was it some text on the screen? Sounds maybe? Whatever it was, the thing that made you want to see more was an example of a good starter.
Three starter tactics
There are many ways to make a good starter and though it is impossible to set a complete guideline to cover every possible effective starter, there are a few tactics you can use to make a good starter.
The surprise tactic is when you - yes, you guessed it - surprise your readers, catch them off guard to open up their minds as to what comes next. The surprise tactic has it´s strength in being unique, ´cause otherwise it really wouldn´t be a surprise, would it? If someone else has already used what you may think is a good surprise tactic starter, then you may want to rethink it.
Examples
In my first English fairy tale I use this tactic in the title of the book: "Princess Lila and The Knight in Shouting Armor." It´s simple and effective, because you would expect a Knight in SHINING armor and instead you get a Knight in SHOUTING Armor. The reader´s interest is already on heels and I can begin to tell the story.
In fact, when I published this book on Smashwords.com the number of sample downloads sent it straight to the top of my own book list passing books on it´s way that had been there for several weeks and I must admit, that the cover I had at the time was the worst cover I´ve ever had on any book!
Another example where the title is the starter is a Danish novel published fall 2011. It had the quite extensive title: "The 100-year-old, who climbed out the window and disappeared." This title makes you wonder, because it seems to be self-contradicting. Just to imagine someone that old climbing out the window is strange and we want to know more.
Yet another example is chapter 2 in my upcoming novel, "Hickory Street Changing," where the beginning says "Couple´s Therapy? How can cheating on your wife be Couple´s Therapy?" Indeed! How can it? I want to read more to find out and thus it´s a good starter.
The sounds tactic is a tactic rarely used, but when applied it can make a world of difference. Using a sound in the beginning of your work instead of words brings your story to a high paste level even before your reader has any clue as to what the story is all about.
Example
I´ve used this tactic in some of my Flash Fiction and this is an area where it is most called for, because Flash Fiction being so short, you really need something to get things going right away. A sound will do that. I wrote a flash fiction a few months ago (in Danish, so I´m sorry, but you can´t read it) where the beginning is a car crash. It started with "Crriiiisjang!" being the sound of a car crashing.
The quoting tactic is a peculiar one to describe, but as you have already guessed this tactic is when you start with a quote. The quote can be one of your characters saying something interesting or it could be a quote from a paper, a book or a magazine, those being either from the real world or from the world of your story. This tactic is one of my favorites, but since it is usually harder to do well than the other tactics mentioned here, I try to not use so often.
This tactic is widely used in Science Fiction and Fantasy. The reason is probably because in these two genres you need more description of the story´s world than in most other stories. So, why not do two things at the same time: peek the readers interest with a good starter AND at the same time explain a bit of the story world?
Examples
An example could be Isaac Asimov´s trilogy "Foundation" It starts of with a quote from the galactic encyclopedia presenting one of the main characters, Hari Seldon and at the same time presenting a bit of the story world. This example is even better than most, because in addition Asimov uses this quote to presetn another main character, Gaal Dornick AND it leads us into the story by letting the encyclopedia tell of a meeting between these two people which then is the beginning of the story itself. Brilliant use of the quoting tactic!
The Peculiarity tactic is the last one I will present at this point. There will of course be dosen´s of other tactics, but not on this blog and certainly not today.
This tactic is quite simple to explain, but hard to master. The tactic is to use words in such a way, that it makes the reader puzzled enough to read on but, and this is the hard part, not so puzzled that your work is tossed and replaced!
How to do this is a matter of training and getting someone to read your peculiar start. Did I say "someone?" What I meant was as many different people on your target group as you can possibly gather! The challenge with this tactic is that you can never know how people will react to your starter. You never know when it´s going to keep them reading and when it´s a tosser starter, so the only way to get an idea is to let numerous people read it and give you some feed back.
Warning!
My advise: stay away from this starter, unless you have the base for experimenting with it. If you fail with this starter you may even throw off potential costumers from ever reading another book of yours!
Final statement
Now, that´s it for today. I will get back to the other elements of a good reading experience as soon as I can, hopefully next week, though I cannot make any promises.
Was the above helpful? Do you agree with what I just said? Do you have any revising statements?
As promised, I will go through the fish model in making a good reading experience for your readers and today I will guide you through the first element: The Starter!
But first I need to clear something up
As these posts are a work in progress I will from time to time have to revise some of my definitions and explanations as needed. In my first post I claimed that the starter is the first 2-3 words in your work, but as I was writing the present post I realized that this definition is a bit off. The starter CAN be broader than those first words. It can be the title of your work, the first few sentences or even the image on the cover.
Let us begin
The Starter is, beside the obvious that it´s what starts your work, a teaser. It´s something you use to get the readers attention. In a commercial, the first few miliseconds are vital to getting out the message. To get an idea, think of a commercial you remember. How did it begin? What was it that got your attention? Was it the clothes the people in the commercial wore? Was it some text on the screen? Sounds maybe? Whatever it was, the thing that made you want to see more was an example of a good starter.
Three starter tactics
There are many ways to make a good starter and though it is impossible to set a complete guideline to cover every possible effective starter, there are a few tactics you can use to make a good starter.
The surprise tactic is when you - yes, you guessed it - surprise your readers, catch them off guard to open up their minds as to what comes next. The surprise tactic has it´s strength in being unique, ´cause otherwise it really wouldn´t be a surprise, would it? If someone else has already used what you may think is a good surprise tactic starter, then you may want to rethink it.
Examples
In my first English fairy tale I use this tactic in the title of the book: "Princess Lila and The Knight in Shouting Armor." It´s simple and effective, because you would expect a Knight in SHINING armor and instead you get a Knight in SHOUTING Armor. The reader´s interest is already on heels and I can begin to tell the story.
In fact, when I published this book on Smashwords.com the number of sample downloads sent it straight to the top of my own book list passing books on it´s way that had been there for several weeks and I must admit, that the cover I had at the time was the worst cover I´ve ever had on any book!
Another example where the title is the starter is a Danish novel published fall 2011. It had the quite extensive title: "The 100-year-old, who climbed out the window and disappeared." This title makes you wonder, because it seems to be self-contradicting. Just to imagine someone that old climbing out the window is strange and we want to know more.
Yet another example is chapter 2 in my upcoming novel, "Hickory Street Changing," where the beginning says "Couple´s Therapy? How can cheating on your wife be Couple´s Therapy?" Indeed! How can it? I want to read more to find out and thus it´s a good starter.
The sounds tactic is a tactic rarely used, but when applied it can make a world of difference. Using a sound in the beginning of your work instead of words brings your story to a high paste level even before your reader has any clue as to what the story is all about.
Example
I´ve used this tactic in some of my Flash Fiction and this is an area where it is most called for, because Flash Fiction being so short, you really need something to get things going right away. A sound will do that. I wrote a flash fiction a few months ago (in Danish, so I´m sorry, but you can´t read it) where the beginning is a car crash. It started with "Crriiiisjang!" being the sound of a car crashing.
The quoting tactic is a peculiar one to describe, but as you have already guessed this tactic is when you start with a quote. The quote can be one of your characters saying something interesting or it could be a quote from a paper, a book or a magazine, those being either from the real world or from the world of your story. This tactic is one of my favorites, but since it is usually harder to do well than the other tactics mentioned here, I try to not use so often.
This tactic is widely used in Science Fiction and Fantasy. The reason is probably because in these two genres you need more description of the story´s world than in most other stories. So, why not do two things at the same time: peek the readers interest with a good starter AND at the same time explain a bit of the story world?
Examples
An example could be Isaac Asimov´s trilogy "Foundation" It starts of with a quote from the galactic encyclopedia presenting one of the main characters, Hari Seldon and at the same time presenting a bit of the story world. This example is even better than most, because in addition Asimov uses this quote to presetn another main character, Gaal Dornick AND it leads us into the story by letting the encyclopedia tell of a meeting between these two people which then is the beginning of the story itself. Brilliant use of the quoting tactic!
The Peculiarity tactic is the last one I will present at this point. There will of course be dosen´s of other tactics, but not on this blog and certainly not today.
This tactic is quite simple to explain, but hard to master. The tactic is to use words in such a way, that it makes the reader puzzled enough to read on but, and this is the hard part, not so puzzled that your work is tossed and replaced!
How to do this is a matter of training and getting someone to read your peculiar start. Did I say "someone?" What I meant was as many different people on your target group as you can possibly gather! The challenge with this tactic is that you can never know how people will react to your starter. You never know when it´s going to keep them reading and when it´s a tosser starter, so the only way to get an idea is to let numerous people read it and give you some feed back.
Warning!
My advise: stay away from this starter, unless you have the base for experimenting with it. If you fail with this starter you may even throw off potential costumers from ever reading another book of yours!
Final statement
Now, that´s it for today. I will get back to the other elements of a good reading experience as soon as I can, hopefully next week, though I cannot make any promises.
Was the above helpful? Do you agree with what I just said? Do you have any revising statements?
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Platform Wars! - helpful or destructive?
Apple Hypin´ Announcement!
Apple has announced that they will have an announcement by the end of the month. Not very surprising in itself. Apple has had much success using this form of advertising in the past to create speculation and rumurs and thus hyping the effect of their announcements when they actually announce their announcements... Confused? Don´t be!
Just understand it like this: Apple will tell us something that may or may not be of interest, but to be sure we are listening, they tell us that they are about to tell us something so that we will keep a close eye on them and be open minded when they finally come around to telling us what they want to tell us.
Ehm... I can see that didn´t help much... Well, let´s just say that Apple wants to tell us something by the end of this month...
What are they planning?
According to Good Ereader Apple is about to launch a self-publishing platform for ebook authors making it easier to publish your ebook through iBook.
So far, so good...
Amazon has had such a platform (DTP) for some time now and this will be Apple´s response.
Is it a good development?
I suppose that for Apple, Amazon and some of the other retailers in ebooks this is a natural course of action and though I agree that competition between companies is usually good for the consumer and for the international economy one thing pokes me right in the eye: they all have a catch! You have to give up your right to publish elsewhere!
See, when you are an indie author you are by definition concerned about your freedom to write, publish and earn your way as you see fit. Some may think this is a sort of arrogance towards the publishing industry, but understand that the publishing industry has flushed out the very ground base of it´s right to exist: Author Servicing!
In the old days, when you planned to publish a book you would send your manuscript to a publisher who would read it through and decide weither it was worth their effort to go further with it. If they found your manuscript worthy of publishing they would help you edit it, proof read it, create a cover for it, print it, advertise it and distribute it. All in some variation of cooperation.
Today, when you want to publish, the first step of getting a publisher to move on with your manuscript is still the same, but as soon as you get approved for publishing, you´re on your own! You edit it yourself, you proof read it yourself or ask a friend to help you with it, you get someone to create a cover for you (if you´re really lucky the publisher may do this for a certain fee) and if you want people to know about your book the entire marketing departement sits about 15 inches behind your laptop.
Considering all of this, the only advantage you have as an author publishing through the big dogs is the distribution process. No wonder more and more authors decide to become independent!
In comes Smashwords.com in 2008 making it both easier and more effective to publish your work and the market changed. Now you can publish via Smashwords who will proof read your book before shipping it to other retailers among which are Barnes and Nobles, Kobo and.... well, whaddayounow: Amazon Kindle and Apple iBooks!
Amazon´s DTP requires you to publish exclusively through Amazon and Apple´s new publishing platform? Surprise, surprise..... Exclusive Publishing!
Thank you, but no thank you!
Sorry guys, but I simply fail to see any reason whatsoever why I should renounce my freedom as an Indie Author to publish through those platforms as long as I can keep my freedom using Smashwords.com
Smashwords does have a rule that resembles exclusiveness: you are not allowed to use the ebook formats created with Smashwords´ Meatgrinder automated tech. - but that seems only fair, since they are the ones providing that option. But you fellas at Apple and Amazon demands me to renounce my rights to my own work and that´s a whole different story!
The platform wars
This platform war is about to be derailed and from history we can learn that in the end only one platform survives - and in many cases the winning platform isn´t even the best.
Mainly two examples come to mind: the qwerty vs. Dvorak Keyboard Layouts and the VHS vs. BetaMax videotape war!
The qwerty keyboard was patented for type writers by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and the first to use it was Remington in 1873. At the time it made good sense, since it combined effective type writing with as little jamming of the keys as possible, but when the electric typewriter was invented in the 1930´s the jamming problem disappeared. Then Dvorak invented the Dvorak Keyboard Layout based on studies of physiologi and typing speed. It never was any real success because the cost of replacing a well proven type writer layout with a new one was just too risky.
The war between BetaMax and VHS was won by VHS even though almost every expert claimed the latter to be of poorer quality. The main reason was that the porn industry decided to use VHS.... food for thought in itself...
What´s the best ebook platform?
Honestly: I don´t know! But what I do know is that if I was asked to point out the one thing most important to an author, my answer would be simple:
The freedom to write and get read!
I believe I am not the only Author with this as my highest priority, but don´t take my word for it... Instead, comment on it, if you´re an author yourself and tell the world:
Your turn!
For you as an Author, what is the most important thing when it comes to publishing?
Apple has announced that they will have an announcement by the end of the month. Not very surprising in itself. Apple has had much success using this form of advertising in the past to create speculation and rumurs and thus hyping the effect of their announcements when they actually announce their announcements... Confused? Don´t be!
Just understand it like this: Apple will tell us something that may or may not be of interest, but to be sure we are listening, they tell us that they are about to tell us something so that we will keep a close eye on them and be open minded when they finally come around to telling us what they want to tell us.
Ehm... I can see that didn´t help much... Well, let´s just say that Apple wants to tell us something by the end of this month...
What are they planning?
According to Good Ereader Apple is about to launch a self-publishing platform for ebook authors making it easier to publish your ebook through iBook.
So far, so good...
Amazon has had such a platform (DTP) for some time now and this will be Apple´s response.
Is it a good development?
I suppose that for Apple, Amazon and some of the other retailers in ebooks this is a natural course of action and though I agree that competition between companies is usually good for the consumer and for the international economy one thing pokes me right in the eye: they all have a catch! You have to give up your right to publish elsewhere!
See, when you are an indie author you are by definition concerned about your freedom to write, publish and earn your way as you see fit. Some may think this is a sort of arrogance towards the publishing industry, but understand that the publishing industry has flushed out the very ground base of it´s right to exist: Author Servicing!
In the old days, when you planned to publish a book you would send your manuscript to a publisher who would read it through and decide weither it was worth their effort to go further with it. If they found your manuscript worthy of publishing they would help you edit it, proof read it, create a cover for it, print it, advertise it and distribute it. All in some variation of cooperation.
Today, when you want to publish, the first step of getting a publisher to move on with your manuscript is still the same, but as soon as you get approved for publishing, you´re on your own! You edit it yourself, you proof read it yourself or ask a friend to help you with it, you get someone to create a cover for you (if you´re really lucky the publisher may do this for a certain fee) and if you want people to know about your book the entire marketing departement sits about 15 inches behind your laptop.
Considering all of this, the only advantage you have as an author publishing through the big dogs is the distribution process. No wonder more and more authors decide to become independent!
In comes Smashwords.com in 2008 making it both easier and more effective to publish your work and the market changed. Now you can publish via Smashwords who will proof read your book before shipping it to other retailers among which are Barnes and Nobles, Kobo and.... well, whaddayounow: Amazon Kindle and Apple iBooks!
Amazon´s DTP requires you to publish exclusively through Amazon and Apple´s new publishing platform? Surprise, surprise..... Exclusive Publishing!
Thank you, but no thank you!
Sorry guys, but I simply fail to see any reason whatsoever why I should renounce my freedom as an Indie Author to publish through those platforms as long as I can keep my freedom using Smashwords.com
Smashwords does have a rule that resembles exclusiveness: you are not allowed to use the ebook formats created with Smashwords´ Meatgrinder automated tech. - but that seems only fair, since they are the ones providing that option. But you fellas at Apple and Amazon demands me to renounce my rights to my own work and that´s a whole different story!
The platform wars
This platform war is about to be derailed and from history we can learn that in the end only one platform survives - and in many cases the winning platform isn´t even the best.
Mainly two examples come to mind: the qwerty vs. Dvorak Keyboard Layouts and the VHS vs. BetaMax videotape war!
The qwerty keyboard was patented for type writers by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and the first to use it was Remington in 1873. At the time it made good sense, since it combined effective type writing with as little jamming of the keys as possible, but when the electric typewriter was invented in the 1930´s the jamming problem disappeared. Then Dvorak invented the Dvorak Keyboard Layout based on studies of physiologi and typing speed. It never was any real success because the cost of replacing a well proven type writer layout with a new one was just too risky.
The war between BetaMax and VHS was won by VHS even though almost every expert claimed the latter to be of poorer quality. The main reason was that the porn industry decided to use VHS.... food for thought in itself...
What´s the best ebook platform?
Honestly: I don´t know! But what I do know is that if I was asked to point out the one thing most important to an author, my answer would be simple:
The freedom to write and get read!
I believe I am not the only Author with this as my highest priority, but don´t take my word for it... Instead, comment on it, if you´re an author yourself and tell the world:
Your turn!
For you as an Author, what is the most important thing when it comes to publishing?
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