It's not censorship but it sure stinks

Holly Lisle recently posted about trying to get a book published for Apple's iBooks, but was rebuffed because she mentions Amazon in one of her teaching methods.  I don't know about you but that just ain't right.  While it may not be censorship by definition, it's not cool, and Apple is using its power to block any mention of a rival.  Holly pulled all of her self-pubbed books out of iBooks.  I have never been all-in with Apple, but I like most of their products.  I have an iPod, and iPhone and an iPad, and they work pretty damned well, but this behavior stinks and I wanted anyone who reads this blog to know about it.


Clear Ether!




Image attribution Beachblogger42 via creative commons license

What is the right amount to give away?

      One of my writer friends put up a large portion of her first novel up for preview. I know a lot of authors will put entire books up for free. While this may work great for an established author, what is the right amount for someone starting out? I have zero experience here and don't recall ever reading much about the subject so I need your input here so we can all help each other. I did a google search for book samples and got over 64 million hits, so there is a lot of free stuff out there. I did a sampling of the samples just to get an idea and they ranged anywhere from 985 words to 4700 words. They were all one chapter or less averaging just over 2500 words. It was by no means a valid poll. I used a fairly small sample size, but I just wanted to get an idea what others are putting out there. I'm giving away a lot on my website here actually, but it is far from being ready for actual publishing.

      Whether you are published via the traditional method or via the self-publishing route if you have any advice or experience doing this sort of thing to share it would be greatly appreciated.

The Publishing Landscape Has Changed

The publishing landscape has changed dramatically in the last two years and continues to change.  Distribution was always tough for a small publishing house and forget it if you were trying to self-publish.  But that's all changed now.  Dean Wesley Smith has a section on his website devoted to debunking the myths of writing and publishing a book.  Here is one gem I found in the comments section below his post about self-publishing:

More on the future of publishing

          Just after I finished my last post Jane Fancher posted that she had run into Patty Briggs this weekend and mentioned that she was releasing a new book and posted a link to it.  In that post Mike Briggs, Patty’s husband who runs her website, linked to another post by Kristine Kathryn Roush about the very subject I had posted on earlier.  Her blog is usually focused on the business end.  She knows the publishing industry from the inside and from the writer’s perspective and she is in the middle of a series of articles trying to define where the industry is heading and what it means to writers.  I am linking all the posts below that she has already published as of today.  They are lengthy and very well researched and very informative.

The future of book publishing

     I don’t know where everyone gets the idea that the costs of publishing eBooks are zero.   I see that comment all the time.


     If you want someone to edit the book or prepare it for the zillion formats that eReaders use it comes with a price tag.  That stuff doesn’t happen all by itself.  If you expect the author to do that stuff you are going to see a lot fewer books coming out or coming out in limited formats.  The biggest complaint most people have about eBooks is the poor quality of editing, so if you think you are going to selfpublish without the proper number of rounds of the editing process you are setting yourself up for failure.