Jared Sandman

Just wanted to share this with you all, two of my favorite speakers on one stage.  It’s a bit long, nearly an hour and a half, but very entertaining and well worth your time.  Comedian Stephen Colbert interviews astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City.

My novels are now available for the Sony Reader, straight from the e-bookstore.  Check ’em out.  I’ve also updated the individual titles under the Books section of the site.

Two posts in one day?  No, you’re not seeing double.  I thought this deserved its own post, considering how this will change the face of publishing.  Read the press release about Espresso Book Machine teaming up with Kodak.

Now I’ve raved about the Espresso Book Machine before.  Last summer I guest posted at Lindsay Buroker’s blog about this very topic.  Instead of libraries benefiting (which is still my preference), your local Walgreens, CVS or Rite-Aid will be equipped to print and sell books.  I cannot overstate how monumental that’s going to be, to have a backlist of more than seven million titles available to print and purchase in about five minutes.  I thought something like this might take at least 10-15 years to occur.  Once again, events are happening much more quickly than anyone could have anticipated.  The partnership with Kodak is a brilliant move for both companies, and I hope Amazon moves fast to ensure their CreateSpace titles (yes, including mine) will be available at the new printing kiosks.

Here’s an interesting read from Mental Floss about early rejections for bestselling writers.  Anyone who can finish this sentence — “Dear Author:  Due to the volume of submissions we receive, we are unable to . . . ” — understands that same frustration.

And a related article at PW about unfinished or unpublished manuscripts from bestsellers.  The only one on that list I’ve read is Billy Budd; I can see why it wasn’t published during Melville’s lifetime.

I recently learned about BookStub, a marketing tactic from AuthorHouse (recently purchased by Penguin Books).  Here’s a short clip that tells about it:

I think this is a neat idea.  I utilize something similar with my own books, marketing postcards that have the book cover on the front as well as the synopsis and purchase info on the back.  They seem to be a hit with readers, and they’re inexpensive ($50 for 1,000 cards).  I keep them in my car, take them to booksignings, pop them in goodie bags at writing conventions.  It’s a cheap and easy way to spread the word about your novels. 

In other news, attorney Bob Kohn submitted an entertaining legal brief — in comic book form, no less — about the ongoing case between the Department of Justice and the Big Six publishers (most of whom have already settled out of court).  It takes a very complicated issue and strikes at the heart of what I think was a misstep on the government’s part.  Personally, I support agency pricing; without it, I’d have to raise the price of my books.

Reminder that new Doctor Who episodes start tomorrow.  If you’re a fantasy/sci-fi/horror fan, this is the one show you need to be watching.  It’s been off the air for awhile (since last April, give or take), and it’ll only be on for one month.  The BBC released a short prologue to whet the appetite of fans.  Enjoy.

As of this week, all my novels are in the Apple bookstore.  Before they’d been available only via the Kindle app; now they’re properly on sale through iBooks.  Snag a copy today for your iPad, iMac or iWhatever.

No news yet about Kobo.  My books should be appearing there in the very near future, and I’ll make a separate announcement for that when the time comes.

I also saw today that A&E is putting together a new television series about Norman Bates, called Bates Motel.  Vera Farmiga has been cast as Mother Bates.  No word yet who will play Norman.  This might be interesting, in the right hands; since Carlton Cuse has been tapped as showrunner, I have some reservations.

Fourteen science fiction writers in 1987 were asked to write predictions of what the world would be like a quarter-century thence.  Their answers were collected and placed inside a time capsule, to be opened IN THE FUTURE.  Well, that future has arrived.  Some of their results are surprisingly accurate (especially for Dave Wolverton and Sheldon Glashow).  Others?  Not so much.  Only five of the authors have passed away since:  Asimov, Budrys, Feinberg, Williamson and Zelazny.  The rest are still alive and kickin’.

In more science news, researchers at Harvard were recently able to break down a book, transfer and store it on a single strand of DNA.  Technology like this will be able to encode so much more information in the future than we’re capable of storing today.  Reminds me a bit of Fahrenheit 451, except people won’t have to remember a book by rote; it will be coded directly into every cell of their bodies.

Couple of interesting articles, one from the New York Times and another from Forbes.

The New York Times has a report for authors thinking about getting into digital publishing.  It’s pretty straightforward, not too meaty but good for readers who don’t generally follow these things.

The Forbes article is more in-depth and makes several good points, even going so far as to include a few predictions for the near future.  Well worth a read.

I signed up for GoodReads a long time ago and never did much with my profile.  In the past week, however, I’ve been learning how to navigate the site and I’m warming up to it.  Social media has never been a strong point for me, though it’s an essential part of publishing in the digital age.  I don’t do much on Facebook; despite myself, I can see the charms of Twitter.  Anyway, today GoodReads announced it signed up its 10,000,000th (that’s ten million) member.  If you’re also on GoodReads, consider adding me as a friend, or become a fan of my work at my author page. 

In other news, I learned about a new company called Togather.  Right now it’s in the beta stage.  As it matures, I hope it flourishes into a successful venture.  Sounds like a great idea to foster community outreach.  Book tours are generally more of a hassle than they’re worth (except for bestselling authors, of course, and the Catch-22 is that they’re famous enough that they don’t need to go on tour).  This idea simplfies the the whole process of booking speaking engagements, which gets a thumbs-up from me.