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Click on any cover to sample these and other delightful reads. All are well written
by established authors.
Instant bookshop brings you bestsellers, top authors, free samples and the lowest prices.
Our expert articles on the changing world of books may be recycled provided source is acknowledged as booktaste.com. Our parent is the independent publisher Darling
Newspaper Press. We welcome feedback comments by email to danpress@optusnet.com.au
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Cosmos High Court accuses Earth
 EMBRACE the absurd, all ye who ride this diverting romp. Mother Earth is battered and shattered by the humans she has nurtured for ages. In celestial
hospital, she convalesces while the planet gods of Olympus consider the earthly chaos. She receives a summons to be tried before their High Court.
Found guilty of disobedience, she is exiled to The Void. Compare this nonsense to world news and you might spot similarity. We live in crazy
times. Elsewhere in outer Space . . . well, hopefully we’ll never know.
Peter Sleigh’s weird universe exists at http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.asp?bookid=1222
Author: petesleigh@hotmail.com
Time goes haywire
Moody and misty on the cover, Big Ben marks a London where time has lost confident progress. Splash! You’re into the past, bearing your super-uzi
weapon of 2047. Watch out the backwash doesn’t get you. And there’s an even worse danger, the master terrorist named Sniper. In a sci-fi thriller the
unusual heroine willingly risks a few splashes because she aims to kill Sniper, her ex-boyfriend. She has the help of a bloke from British
Intelligence. This page-turner gets into action from the start: a girl in fear, the baddy supreme. Author Graham Storrs expertly paints a future world with problems even worse
than at present, such as nuclear armed warlords. Beijing crumbles, London quakes (in 1902). Sniper is not particular in which era he applies his psychotic malice. The very
fabric of the universe is threatened.
Publisher: Lyrical Press, New York. http://www.lyricalpress.com Author: graham@cantalibre.com
Great Kobo reads on Android devices
Booktaste has joined Kobo to promote and sell its ebooks. With fiction titles already
listed on Sony, Kindle, Barnes&Noble, Smashwords and others, the publishers at Booktaste welcomed this extra outlet on Android-enabled smartphones.
According to BusinessWire late June: “Just like other Kobo applications, Kobo for Android is designed to provide the best eReading experience to customers around the world.”
It is Kobo’s announced intention to deliver any book on any device. The Darling Newspaper Press, which has its homebase at www.booktaste.com is a small independent
publisher in Australia with a range of good stories. These are now available in many different formats, and they include novels, novellas, memoirs and short-stories.
Their Kobo access is at http://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=Darlingnewspaperpress&
Meanwhile Android has been hailed as the fastest-growing mobile platform, with millions of users. It includes several devices designed for reading ebooks.
Mr Michael Serbinis, the Kobo chief, commented: “We've adapted the features our customers love and expect from Kobo to ensure that we provide the best reading
experience for Android-enabled smartphones. In the near future, Kobo will support other Android-enabled devices such as tablets, netbooks and eReaders.”
He said Kobo was available free on Android smartphones through the Android Market. Kobo supports the ePub standard including rich text and images, offering a top-quality reading experience.
Mr Serbinis added that existing Kobo users could log-in to their Kobo account and start reading their books right away.
The Booktaste listings are among two million titles now available for download at the Kobo store, where content has been made an important factor.
In additioin to the ebooks offered for sale, there are many thousands of free titles to attract customers. Kobo gives free apps for the iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Android, as well as the Kobo eReader.
For more information or to download Kobo, visit www.kobobooks.com.
The Kobo business structure includes majority shareholder Indigo Books & Music, Borders Group, REDgroup Retail, and Cheung Kong Holdings.
Where are the beacons in The Great Ebook Fog?
Cathy Macleod, 2 June 2010. THERE ARE 6420 “ebook reviewers” according to a
Google blog, and there are 48,700 “e-book reviewers” (with hyphen). No book critic is infallible. Most cannot be trusted. At least, not until you have assured yourself that you
hold similar tastes. But try finding a crit who informs about readable new digital releases and you’ll be disappointed.
The search is swamped by sites selling hardware, software, free ebooks to download, or reviewers demanding a fee. Or, if you are lucky to find an ebook site keen to serve
fellow readers, the doleful message is “Ebook reviewers wanted”. You see, one person can handle only so much reading and reviewing, and unbiased critics are a rare species.
The Great Ebook Fog is frustrating. I find the newspapers that still carry book reviews do the print titles only, and not many of those either. Books that are exclusively digital get
no mention. One can of course search for an ebook version of any print title but that’s a chore where success is not guaranteed.
There is a solution. Go to an ebook retailer, or the ebook section of an online seller of hardprint books. Some include reviews from readers. Believe these if you like, but
remember there have been notable deceivers. The only real judge of any book for you to read has to be yourself. Fortunately, the internet makes this easier than ever before.
Not only can you speedily browse covers, you can in most instances download a free sample (usually the first chapter) and read it at leisure.
Websites vary in buttons, layouts, formats and navigation ease. My favourite is Smashwords. Originally created for small independents and self-published authors, it
now attracts the global giants. Its samples are available in all formats, and there is no DRM, the Digital Rights Maintenance that prevents copying from one device to another
after you have downloaded a book. While DRM counters piracy, it also frustrates readers who have paid for a book and want to transfer it to different reading hardware.
With so many new reading devices appearing now with enticing “free ebooks” ready installed, the need to browse the Internet for titles has lessened. But that remains the path
most rewarded if you hope to discover reads that really satisfy.
The Hunted of 2060 by Ami Blackwelder.
Createspace Publishing. www.amiblackwelder.blogspot.com
There’s a beast in all of us!
SWEET young love and hey nonny-nonny ─ it’s the Shakespeare touch, but . . . Like the bard of old, author Blackwelder ambushes romance  with dark pit-traps.
She’s good at this and easy to read, because her fantasy hangs close to our real world.
In The Hunted of 2060, as in her other books, she makes weird
events totally credible. I’d say she can claim as her own a new genre, Reality Fantasy. Or you can read this as an allegory, set in Alaska, on
our changing world. Mostly, however, it is a rattling good story about a lovable girl called April who is not quite human.
She doesn’t know it to begin with, and her guy is normal. This is a
good original take on forbidden love. It’s Planet Earth in 2060 complete with hover trains, skycars, robot waiters and hologram books. We have defeated an Alien
invasion, yet traces remain of a strange species whose DNA can blend to the form of any earthly creature.
The Hunted of the title are hybrid aliens, resulting from mixed mating with
humans. There is a hit squad seeking them out and exterminating them. To her horror, April discovers she is one of these halfcastes, with peculiar relatives. I won’t
spoil the story by divulging more, but think polarbear, deer, bird, wolf. Such a family menagerie may seem a bit daft but Ami Blackwelder’s controlled skill carries
this plot convincingly. Could be movie material too. ─ Cathy Macleod, April 2010.
Squabble flares for Shakespeare’s birthday
http://sony-ebook-samples.com/sample/7014/the-killing-of-hamlet
WITH Shakespeare’s birthday celebrations April 23, Sony gives you this delightful ebook link. To read on other devices, google “The Killing of Hamlet”.
It is both amazing and amusing that 400 years after his death the world still debates whether the Bard of Avon ever existed. Read and quoted by everybody, William Shakespeare remains an enigma.
Oh yes the plays exist, the poems enthral but who really wrote them? This year the argument is fiercer than ever after a Declaration of Reasonable Doubt by experts.
Other experts leap to defend the smalltown hick from Stratford who is reputed to have created England’s richest literature.
In the midst of this storm, author Ann Morven has crafted a modern whodunit novel around the Shakespeare authorship debate. Her fiction could be closer to the
truth than all the learned assertions! The Sony link at the top gives a free sample.
Always a puzzle to me is why the bloke from Stratford apparently wrote nothing
before the age of 29, after which he was instantly brilliant and prolific. There is a lot more troubling the doubters however. Insults fly, historical papers are
flourished like battle flags, poets sigh, actors denounce, language gurus gag and lawyers gabble from either fort. No matter which camp you believe, it all adds up to
a sturdy noise for readers to enjoy on the Web.
Here are just a few of the claims debunking the playwright’s traditional identity:
1. If a man from Stratford was widely known as William "Shakespeare", why spell his name Shakspere in his will?
2. Nobody, including literary contemporaries, ever recognised Mr Shakspere of
Stratford as a writer during his lifetime. When he died in 1616, no one seemed to notice.
3. There is no contemporaneous evidence that William Shakspere of Stratford was
even a professional writer, much less that he was the great William Shakespeare.
4. Mr Shakspere of Stratford grew up in an illiterate rural household. Both his parents witnessed documents with a mark.
5. Books were expensive and difficult to obtain. No book that Mr Shakspere owned, or that is known to have been in his possession, has ever been found.
6. Not one play, not one poem, not one letter in Mr Shakspere's own hand has ever been found. And yet, he divided his time between London and Stratford, a situation conducive to correspondence.
7. His detailed will, in which he famously left his wife "my second best bed”, contains no clearly Shakespearean turn of phrase and mentions no books, plays, poems, or literary effects.
8. Almost uniquely among Elizabethan poets, Shakespeare remained silent following the death of Queen Elizabeth.
9. There is no record he ever staged a play in Stratford, or that any of its residents
viewed him as a poet.
10. While pouring out his heart in the Sonnets, why did he not once mention the death of his 11-year-old son?
Over the years, for diverse reasons, names suggested as the real Shakespeare include Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford, Sir Walter
Raleigh, the Earl of Derby, Ben Jonson; Thomas Middleton and even Queen Elizabeth herself!
Whoever created the literary magic, I simply say Happy Birthday mate, and thanks
for all the entertainment. - Cathy Macleod, 6 April 2010.
Book lovers love the Spring
IT is not just the new titles. Book buying budgets are fat with gift tokens bestowed at Christmas, and now the joy of spendng awaits.
Furthermore, publishers and retailers have sugared their most promising releases with enticing discounts. Here at Booktaste, the Spirit of Spring has blossomed into ebook
coupons galore. There is no better time to download the delights to your electronic reading device. And if you are new to the magic of digital reads, this is the place to sample them.
The samples come free, the content is varied in genre and length. DarlingNewspaperPress has short stories, novellas or lengthy novels. All are by worthy experienced authors.
To access the most format options for smartphone, ereader or PC, go to the DarlingNewspaperPress catalogue at Smashwords.
Simply quote a price-slash coupon as listed below (only until 31 March) to get quality titles at the lowest prices:
Amateur Rebel JU52E, Murder Piping Hot FW73V, The Killing of Hamlet TP55Z, Wee Charlie’s World GZ94T, Captain Striver TX74A, Eden’s Deadly Shore CN99U, Java’s
Dream KS86C, No Kiss For A Killer PG88Y, Run Maggie Run AN54X, Mousedeer BH68E.
Posted by Cathy Macleod 25 February 2010. Happy reading!
Shakespeare mystery tops Spring list
IN a book jungle that is overrun by vampires, wizards and cosmic weirdos, Shakespeare
still prevails. The Bard tops the Spring list as most popular novel in the early 2010 catalogue at Darling Newspaper Press.
“Response to our Internet launch was overwhelming,” said principal Charles Bryce. “It’s reassuring that this great author can continue to grip readers after 400 years. Mind you,
he gets some help from Ann Morven and the literary intrigues suggested by Academia.
“The Killing of Hamlet is probably Ann Morven’s most cunning whodunit yet. It is a present day mystery linked to Shakespeare’s youth, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and English folklore.”
The Darling Newspaper Press, or Danpress in txt-write, has been wowing readers since 1971. Beginning as a smalltown newspaper in Western Australia, it later blossomed into
book publishing. While still small and independent, its titles have spread globally in the past two years, thanks to the Internet and the advent of ebooks.
“We still print,” said Mr Bryce, “and supply to schools and libraries. For selling fiction at low cost, however, nothing beats direct download to a digital device. Worldwide, this
procedure is now a habit that Shakespeare, doubtless, would have welcomed in his day. The magic of technology has elevated literature to fresh verve and new markets.”
Ann Morven’s murder tales are the traditional kind. She plants clues (and an occasional
red herring) as the story progresses. Most of her plots involve a country gal who is a dunce at deduction yet well up on dodgy human behaviour. In “The Killing of Hamlet”,
set in an English village, she pits her intuition against hi-tech British policing.
The murders occur to a background of Shakespeare legend. An old saddlebag is
crammed with handwritten plays, allegedly by the maestro, all of them unknown. A visiting singer of Australian bush ballads, heroine Sheil B Wright, is held as the homicide
suspect. She has to outwit the police and then the killer who wants her dead. It is a thrilling brainteaser. There is a free sample at smashwords.com and, for a limited period,
a price slash to buyers who quote Coupon QU88R at the checkout.
Ann Morven’s Shakespeare mystery follows close on her popular whodunit last year
featuring the poems of Rabbie Burns. Again, in “Murder Piping Hot” she links happenings of old to a steaming modern puzzle. This, too, carries a temporary discount coupon, JA25N.
Happy reading! from Cathy Macleod, 12 February 2010.
Rising Sun puts heat on Kindle
Cathy Macleod, 24 Jan, 2010. IN THE Land Of The Rising Sun they’re putting the heat
on Kindle. Twenty-one Japanese publishers confer in the month ahead, February, on how to stop threats to their earnings by Amazon’s global ebooks domain.
Eavesdropping on this vital meeting, and analysing its outcome, will be the major publishers of Europe and America, who suffer their own panic alert. The world’s biggest
online bookseller is giving them heaps of strife. The problem, or anyway the biggest one, is that Amazon releases a cheap ebook version while publishers are still pushing the
first-edition hardback at premium price.
Amazon also slashes, at will, the price of the physical books it handles, On top of this,
recently, it has even announced reduction in delivery by post. The mantra becomes “Go Amazon for a cheap read” and this has affected physical bookshops as well as any
publisher who retails via the online king.
Without viewing contracts that global publishers have with Amazon, I cannot know how
badly the system cuts their profitability. But they are squealing, so it must hurt. Control of their market is again being gripped by the bookseller, only this time (as physical
bookchains go broke) the ogre dominates online.
Traditional publishing overheads are enormous. They include printing, binding,
warehousing, promotion, distribution, payment to authors, and inhouse overheads. All these costs, for many years, were supposed to be covered by 40 percent of a book’s retail
price. Only mass-market bestsellers sold in sufficient quantity to suffice and, hopefully, to help finance less popular works of literature. There was also the invisible profit killer
of “sale or return”, whereby a bookseller low on cashflow could simply return unsold stock to the publisher. This silly system broke many of the smaller publishers. Now a
new market pattern, online retail, is beginning to dislocate larger ones.
Once typed into a computer, the digital version of a book costs little to distribute. Direct
to the reader, in any format, needs just a keytap. On price and availability there is no way paper-and-ink can compete. Which is why Amazon, disdainful of feeding a book
progressively from hardback through paperback to eventual audio and digital, is giving the book trade such a headache.
To counter the problem, my last blog before Christmas suggested the obvious: let the publishers sell their books through one worldwide collective controlled by themselves, After all, they own the books.
Is this what the Japanese book trade will decide to do? Without publishers, Amazon and its monopolistic Kindle have no content to satisfy readers. Realising the danger, Amazon
has recently edged into publishing. A few major authors have signed to sell future work through Amazon exclusively. Millions more, unknown or unsuccessful in the traditional
bookmarket, are invited to self-publish on Kindle. Where is this heading?
I fear the result will be a mountain of digital slush, where finding a good book becomes a
marathon of clicking and sampling. Traditional publishers, alas, give us many a stinker too, but at least your chance of a good read is better when a book is vetted, groomed and
presented by professional editors.
To protect their trade and their quality content, publishers should themselves control the
reading revolution. After all, they did it before when paperbacks swept the world. While diminishing hardback sales, the paperback multiplied overall profits. The same strategy
applies to ebooks – an additional market.
The ebook is a wonderful medium that takes literature to new places and people. It won’t
kill printed books any more than audio books have done. Traditional publishers must get together if they are to continue control of their trade. In Japan this fact is acknowledged.
In coming weeks the nation’s publishers will discuss how to keep hold of their readers in a digital world. Instead of growling individually at Amazon which, like themselves, seeks
maximum profit, this is action the world’s biggest publishers should be applying too.
The Emperor Amazon has no clothes!
WHILE big publishers swoon in awe of Amazon and its ebook glitz, Little Cathy (that’s
me) ridicules the pricing skirmish to declare: “Look Daddy, the Emperor has no clothes.”
And no books, either, that don’t come from a publisher or an author. Really, who needs
Amazon? Why can’t these worried publishers get together to market their own stuff on a slick cooperative website?
Most of them already have an individual online bookshop, yet these sites lack ease of navigation and purchase. The same fault plagues most of the online booksellers, including Amazon.
Browse, Sample, Buy. That is a simple procedure made difficult by booksellers and publishers who fail to grasp a customer’s needs.
Once, long ago, I bought printed books from Amazon and was astounded by the postage charges. Invariably, mailing costs swallowed the discount. Nowadays with my electronic
reading device (Eco Reader), I buy ebooks ─ but not from Amazon. This largest of all the online booksellers has shot itself in the foot, or let’s call it the efoot. Here is what I
sadly discovered . . .
I tried to buy a title from Amazon’s Kindle Store, and was badgered to buy the Kindle handheld reading device. No thank you, my non-kindle device reads the mobi format
perfectly. Escaping from the Kindle pop-up, I persevered to the desired ebook and a hopeful invitation that said “Deliver to Kindle or other device”. This required registration
and a download of free, but unwanted, special software. But the real purchase killer was a daunting message on each of the digital titles I might have bought. This told me,
“Kindle price not available”.
Come on, Your Highness, online buying is supposed to be easier and faster than trudging to my high-street bookshop.
Ironically, after browsing the large ebook publishers and retailers, I find the best is a site exclusive to self-published authors and mini publishers. It is called Smashwords. The global brandnames are not included there but the browsing is easy, the formats
numerous, and the titles good as most offered these days by major publishers.
“Try before you buy” is the rule, and prices are low. Principal Mark Coker has shown
what can be achieved by sensible site design. Authors and small publishers who recognise this have clothed the all-formats prince in sturdy ebook apparel. Happy reading!
Posted by Cathy Macleod 18 December 2009 at www.booktaste.com.
Murder at a click
Cathy Macleod, 10 December 2009. CHRISTMAS brings peace on Earth and goodwill to all , plus merry murder for whodunit fans. A chilling crime, located in a large hospital, is
author Ann Morven’s festive gift to mystery enthusiasts. A gift? Well, actually,you pay 99c to receive this digital text in the format of your choice,
but that’s less than one pays to mail a Christmas card from Australia where she writes her brain teasers.
Kill Him Sweetly
, 3240 words, features folksinger Sheil B Wright, the heavyweight chump of crime fiction. The bumbling balladeer, deft at spotting human
frailty, sets out to unmask the killer and thereby qualifies as next candidate for the morgue.
Another Christmas goody from Ann Morven is her latest whodunit novel, The Killing of Hamlet, released as an ebook this week. Furthermore, Booktaste has negotiated a whopping  discount exclusive to readers of this blog. Instead of paying $7.95 at the online
checkout, quote coupon FE98G and the price drops to $4.95. The discount is short term, ending on January 30.
Set in a modern English village, the murders involve newly found
Shakespeare plays such as Adam and Eve. Also a sequel to Hamlet. And a clever plot twist that rests on Shakespeare’s factual link to The Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
Still in the gift season, until January 30, Booktaste readers can claim a similar $3 discount (that’s nearly 40%) for the novel Murder Piping Hot
. A haggis pudding explodes as Scots celebrate Burns Night. Get it for $4.95 by quoting our exclusive coupon number ZF46E. Happy reading!
Lovers in a turbulent Europe.
Ami Blackwelder paints with words. Her special talent is creating scene and atmosphere populated by credible characters. The Day The Flowers Died
is a love story, gently narrated, that recreates prewar Germany during the 1930s, and the German government’s menacing swing to the Nazis. The girl’s sweetheart is Jewish, her parents point out the
brutal dangers, but innocent ecstasy ignores the politics and the racial hatred that are sweeping the nation.
As fascist ideology becomes law, the lovers encounter the harsh reality of life and death. Released as an ebook, this novel has quickly gained an unusually large number of
downloads. Can there be a trend (much welcomed) away from vampires and back to realistic human passion? This author’s books vary in genre and can be sampled here. Happy reading! Posted by Cathy, 9 December 2009.
Story tradition heads holiday surge
Cathy Macleod, 8 December 2009. CHRISTMAS tradition requires a good story, and
booktaste.com has lots of them this festive season. Heading its holiday surge are short stories that can be downloaded in most of the digital formats.
These stories, all top quality by established authors, are newly published with covers that attract and content to delight. The categories range from mystery to romance, comedy to
thriller, fantasy or memoir.
Although full length novels are offered too, Booktaste says that shorts sell the best and
cost the least, from 99c. It’s because readers new to onscreen fiction seem to prefer their goodies in short takes. This is why Booktaste has patterned its marketing on light reads.
Most ebook buyers have a device they have only recently acquired. It is either a smartphone or a handheld ereader, and Christmas will add a few thousand more of these to the worldwide trend.
Booktaste chief Charles Bryce commented: “Until bookreaders become familiar with their new cyber chum, our short stories help them to adjust. The handheld digital read is like
holding a paperback but not quite. Like love, fishing or gourmet dining, you’ve got to do it to realise the full magic.”
The Booktaste shorts for the festive weeks ahead are all cracking good reads from the opening sentence, according to Mr Bryce. “There is no creative writing crap,” he said.
“We simply look for a good tale. Samples are free, of course, and ours are generous in length.”
Above all, a fact obvious on visiting the website, is extremely attractive pricing. There is
one novel (Wee Charlie’s World) priced $7.95 by Booktaste that Amazon is offering at $54! Furthermore, should visitors quote discount coupon YU72K, the Booktaste price
drops by 25 percent to $5.95. But only until December 18. Happy reading from Cathy.
Romantic fantasy saves the elves
Cathy Macleod, 7 December 2009. Maybe not quite saved but they’re given some
breathing space, because ahead are seven further books and more fearful threats in the Guardians of the Gate series by Ami Blackwelder. “Enter a world of elfin romance,”
she invites and takes us there via a normal high school. Not all the scholars are totally human, however, and a  beautiful new girl displays mysterious qualities and a close link
to a nearby forest. The lad who falls for her finds himself battling nasties on the other side of the Gate that separates our world from that of the wee folk.
Author Ami skilfully captures atmosphere and emotions and deftly includes some great poetry too. She is prolific and talented.
Check out some of her titles.
Brat versus Raj is jewel in Amazon crown
WOW! It's gotta be good when Amazon, the discount king, lists a fiction title at $54. The book in question is Wee Charlie's World
by Bryce McBryce. Seems that the brat who is the bane of the British Raj has become rare and valuable literature. Are good humorous stories that hard to find these days? Apparently yes.
"Delightfully amusing and nostalgic - a literary gem" was the praise on first publication in 2006. Seemingly that gem is now a jewel in King Amazon's crown. At amazon.com a used copy of
Wee Charlie's World is $52.09 + 3.99 delivery from International Books ("In very good condition. Thousands of satisfied customers!"). Bargain hunters might
care for the lower-priced AwesomeBooksUSA at $43.98 delivered (condition good).
British readers are better served. On Amazon.co.uk, the book new is £11.70 ($19), plus
delivery. It is costlier than the Man Booker prizewinner Wolf Hall (£8.54 plus delivery), but Amy's Books can send you a used cheapie (condition "very good") for £10.74 ($17.56) all-up.
Such regard is regal indeed for a slim paperback (196 pages of small type). The treasure lies in its content.
Charlie, you see, is a British boy in the twilight of Empire. Innocently striving to make sense of adult behaviour, he confounds top-brass buffoons. As the jacket says, he is a
bigger problem than militant Japan. "The Colonel trembles in his rage, the nuns pray, while Wee Charlie ponders that the hardest thing to learn is People".
Author Bryce McBryce explained his creation: “It’s a spoof with serious undertones. The background is one I grew up with, the British Raj at its
peak in the Far East, where pompous protocol plagued Imperialism. My narrative involves the 1930s into the 40s, but when you isolate human factors the world since then hasn’t really changed at all.”
The book’s humour carries a sober dedication “to brats then and now, the children history forgets”.
Confronted about the scarcity of such a popular title, the publisher, Darling Newspaper
Press, cited production and distribution costs. They still list Wee Charlie's World at $24.25 plus postage ("a couple of copies left."). However, a digital edition has just been
released to meet Christmas demand. One online retailer, Smashwords.com, gives a coupon discount (YU72K) that cuts two dollars off the $7.95 ebook until December 17.
Happy reading!
On your marks, get set: Christmmmas!
Cathy Macleod, 4 October, 2009. Publishers and booksellers are off at a sprint for
Christmas, striving for a place up front, if not actually first, in the till tally.
Top seller for this year’s final quarter, says Booktaste, is obviously going to be Dan
Brown’s The Lost Symbol. This thriller is so over-marketed that its momentum will continue well into the new year. Yet thrillers are not to every reader’s taste, and Man
Booker nominees – quite apart from the winner – have had great recent publicity. Take your pick.
In the shortlist alone were A.S. Byatt (The Children’s Book), Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall, the winner), Adam Foulds (The Quickening Maze), J.M. Coetzee (Summertime), Sarah
Waters (The Little Stranger), and Simon Mawer (The Glass Room).
Mystery, sci-fi and fantasy addicts get slim pickings in the Man Booker contest, but each
of these genres has its own top-raters.
For Scots the world over, however, the kinghit title has just gone paperback. Murder Piping Hot by Ann Morven is a whodunit linking present-day killings to the poetry of
Robert Burns. Read a sample at Booktaste, or buy publisher direct.
The paperback edition follows the novel’s first release as an ebook.
“We found this idea a big success,” said publishing executive Charles
Bryce, “and I recommend the strategy to any publisher whose promotional kitty is miniscule. Of course, the online version retails at a price ($7.95)
well below the paperback ($29.95), but that way we were able to gauge worldwide interest. We released this murder mystery to coincide with the 250th anniversary of Rabbie’s birth. I’ll just add that you don’t need to be Scottish to
enjoy this story.” (Read Cathy’s review below).
Since I am a Macleod spruiking a north-of-the-border offering, I now hasten to assure readers that I am not racially biased. There’s a very English title I’m recommending for Christmas too. This is Rebels and Traitors by Lindsey Davis. Her tale of England’s Civil
War has all the charm and readability familiar to her Falco ancient Rome series.
And for a marvellous Irish novel, the best in many years is Brooklyn by Colm Toibin.
Too bad the title is so off-putting. It should have been The Irish Girl or something similar.
In the splurge of Christmas goodies, mind you, each of us has a personal preference. My
advice is to browse the web for titles and samples. There’s no scarcity of good reads with booksellers and publishers pushing their wares this Christmas. Happy hunting!
Man Booker browsers open their purses
Cathy Macleod, 12 September 2009. THE thing about this year's Man Booker Prize is that
promoting the shortlisted half-dozen relies on digital versions as never before. Publishers, it seems, and their marketing managers too, have accepted the magic of the
Internet. We're just a step away from the bookworld's unconditional surrender to ebooks!
I love extracts, and this is the medium now pushing sales of the Man Booker candidates.
It's bringing healthy response from the reading public right now, and this will continue after the winner is announced on October 6. Booklovers worldwide are googling like mad to read the extracts.
It is the best way to judge a book. Personally, once I'm hooked by a good opening I just have to read the whole thing, either online or in hardprint. With the cost of books what it
is, and so many must-read titles, the online edition of a novel is my choice for a lower price.
Browsing the online book retailers is a joy. I wonder how many will be allowed to offer
the Man Booker talent? Some publishers now prefer to sell their books direct to online customers. Some deny them to online book retailers. This is like publishing to a limited
market, a policy that's commercially crazy.
The more folk who read an extract, the more become ready to buy. Speaking of which, here's an extract from a title never nominated for Man Booker. It's a pacey romantic adventure. Hope you like it.
Digital fiction gets new genre
Cathy Macleod, 18 August 2009. A new fiction genre entered the ebook world this week,
the Granny Tale. Introduced by Darling Newspaper Press, it is a calculated response to trade statistics.
These show, surprisingly that people aged 50 or more are the biggest users of electronic
readers. Link this to an industry report that 57% of book buyers are women and you get the genre’s inspiration.
The publisher’s initial granny tale is “The Widow’s Golden Weeds”. It joins popular
short-story favourites such as Mystery and Romance, and the publisher’s other short-story genres. These are Women’s Interest, Historical, Humour, Inspirational and Memoir.
“Readers of digital fiction are leading a worldwide return to short-stories,” said publishing chief Charles Bryce. “It is simply because they prefer short reads onscreen to
long ones. That’s why we offer so many short stories.
“All of them sell readily, in contrast to the slower sale of our digital novels” Mr Bryce added.
“Significantly, a serialised novel that can be downloaded in short takes, sells better than the full text of the same novel in a single download. This happens even when the
accumulated cost of all the serial chapters exceeds that of the total one-piece novel. When people pay extra for a preference like this, you can be sure that’s what they want!”
Fifty years to germinate!
Cathy Macleod, 17 August 2009. A treat is in store for historical fiction fans next month,
or maybe into October, and I am not referring to Man Booker heavies. After 19 novels about Falco, a detective in ancient Rome, Lindsey Davis turns her charm and humour to England’s Civil War.
Rebels and Traitors brings fresh appeal to the battles and politics that (eventually) moulded parliamentary democracy. “It’s really what I always wanted to write,” says this
English author. “Some of my friends have been hearing about this for nearly fifty years! I was in my teens when I first started caring about the English Civil War, which has always
appealed to my libertarian ideals.”
More details at Lindsey’s website, http://www.lindseydavis.co.uk/
Adam and Eve by Shakespeare
Cathy Macleod, 14 July, 2009. William Shakespeare wrote a play called “Adam and Eve” and he also wrote a sequel to “Hamlet”.
You doubt? Ann Morven, diva of the whodunit, thought you might. She therefore works this doubt, and the stunning claims, into her latest mystery novel, “The Killing of Hamlet”.
Just completed, it factually links the Bard of Avon to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, then takes an inventive plunge into some modern repercussions.
Entertaining and informative, the story plants clues and teases with character clash until a final end-twist.
Ann Morven’s Shakespeare pageturner follows her Robert Burns puzzle earlier this year,
when “Murder Piping Hot” was released to coincide with the Scottish poet’s 250th anniversary. In digital format only, it gained fast worldwide acclaim.
Both books feature Sheil B Wright, the heavyweight chump of crime fiction. This bumbling female folksinger encounters weird and gruesome happenings wherever she
goes. Her short stories in The Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and other publications have captured regular fans.
Corrosive humour scuttles British myths
Cathy Macleod, 29 June, 2009. Like many others, I use and love the English language.
Today it is the world language, predominant in science, trade and politics. And maybe it always was predominant. At least in Europe.
This mind-blowing idea presents itself in an outrageous book first published in 2002 by a small London publisher, Nathan Carmody, and only now making big global waves.
“
The History of Britain Revealed” by Michael John Harper Ph.D is funny to read, insulting to Academia, and logical in its main argument. This is stated as:
1.The present British population has no Anglo-Saxon content (save for some insignificant inbreeding).
2.The English language has no Anglo-Saxon content (save for some similarly
insignificant loanwords).
Delightfully corrosive in demolishing accepted historical and linguistic beliefs, the author
dismisses fellow scholars as “highly-educated fools”. Equally perplexing for men (or women) of letters, he writes: “A prerequisite for working on the Oxford English
Dictionary is a degree in English Literature, which might explain why most of its several million entries are wrong.”
The author describes himself as an Applied Epistemologist, i.e. a philosopher who specialises in the methods, validity and scope of human knowledge. But is Harper
himself wrong in his history and his linguistics? Not according to the common sense he applies. The cherished national myths of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France
take a battering that could eventually prove terminal.
“Historians have got it completely wrong,” he says.
The original small publisher, Nathan Carmody, has been reinforced by Icon Books of
Cambridge, with an expanded hardback in 2006 and a paperback in 2007. Since then, sellers have grown to include Allen&Unwin, Penguin, Faber&Faber and others. The acorn has grown to a huge oaktree.
I could not find this title in ebook format, but the Web is buzzing with its audacity.
I did discover a related website, www.applied-epistemology.org, where enthusiasts
debate new theories, and where “rudeness is permitted so long as it's funny”.
Who’s reading efiction?
asks Cathy Macleod, 28 April, 2009. IN the vast sea of digital fiction, one recently voiced
trade perception is that there are more authors than there are readers. Whoopee for readers! The choice of titles has never been greater, yet are these books worth reading?
As an avid reader, I welcome the comment that an established epublisher gets from 50 to 500 submissions per week. How this will evolve into published fiction is a statistic still to
be discovered. Individual publishers, so far, have been wary of issuing any sales figures.
Statistics for ebooks as a whole (which includes non-fiction) confirm rate of growth
similar to past years. Sales have doubled annually since records began. But what’s the breakdown between fiction and non-fiction? Business and academic texts obviously
claim the major slice of sales. How fares fiction? Who’s reading it?
Well, for a start, I am. Printed books from my public library are a lifelong habit, as are
purchased titles from a bookshop. Free downloads to my laptop have so far been limited to classic works that I never bothered to read before. Here I confess they are no more
attractive onscreen and usually get dumped after a chapter or two. With few exceptions their language is dated, their time long past.
Other free fiction downloads are so numerous, and so awful, that I don’t bother with them anymore.
But what about the BUYING of ebooks? Yes, I purchase them, mostly fiction, and
delight in the big array on offer. These are the genuine titles. Their publishers have confidence in their worth. What’s more, free samples allow fairly accurate judgment by a
digital shopper before proceeding to the checkout.
Sifting through these samples is a pleasant chore. The unappealing are simply deleted.
The great advantage over physical bookshop browsing is this: discovery of a good unfamiliar author is quicker. So is the capture of a current bestseller.
My favourite browsing is at Mobipocket, for reasons that need no mention here. Just visit
and see for yourself.
At Booktaste we display some of the best finds. One click on a cover takes you to them.
Happy reading!
The beasts of Eden bite, tickle and soar.
Cathy Macleod, 31 March, 2009. People seek peace, and yet instinct to prosper
contaminates this prize. So it was when Britain created an Eden for enlightened gentryfolk in 1830s Western Australia.
Far from the turmoils of Europe, settlers moulded the Swan River Colony in a wilderness where class barriers would prevail amid firm, fair masters and loyal servants.
They found it possible to endure conflicting individual ambitions, but failed to allow for a Native Class, the Aborigines.
Author John Ivor exploits this setting for a story that bites, tickles and soars through eight entertaining episodes. “Eden’s Deadly Shore” has more than one serpent, and all
take human shape as the clash of cultures proceeds.
In digital format only, this serial is extracted from Ivor’s novel “Great Land of Dreams”,
published by Darling Newspaper Press in hardback 2000 and paperback 2005 (isbn 9781419609299).
The heroine is Maggie, 17, grown up from the innocent waif wanted for murder in Ivor’s
previous serial “Run Maggie Run”.
Settled in the Eden for gentry, her adventures start anew after a dashing aristocrat invites
her to the Governor’s Ball. The rest is calamity, both the funny and the fearful kind.
“John Ivor entertains readers, that’s his style,” said publishing chief Charles Bryce on
releasing the serial worldwide via Booktaste. “The novel was perfect for short-take presentation, which ebook readers seem to prefer.
“Our short stories and novellas sell in electronic format at a fraction of hardprint prices. This is because there are no overheads for printing, binding, warehousing, distribution or postage.”
“Eden’s Deadly Shore” is available online from leading ebook retailers, with free samples of every chapter.
Darling Newspaper Press is a small independent publisher in Perth, Australia, where the strifetorn Swan River Colony began in 1829.
John Ivor blends humour and thrills in a style that is refreshing. His research involved diaries, letters, newspapers and government reports of the period. His publisher has also
produced an authentic fictional trilogy in hardback and, for schools, a factual history of Britain’s first Free Settlement in Australia.
Elementary, my dear Rab
Cathy Macleod, 24 March 2009: The poet Robert Burns inspires a murder tale released to coincide with his 250th anniversary year. “Murder Piping Hot” by whodunit diva Ann
Morven scatters clues for the shrewd after an exploding haggis pudding poses the first puzzle. Can dynamite be boiled? Aha! Send for Inspector Sheryl Holmes, pedantic descendant of you-know-who.
The smarter sleuthing, however, comes from an amateur, familiar to Ann Morven fans, none other than the heavyweight chump of crime fiction, Sheil B. Wright. She’s a dunce
at deduction but well versed in human frailty. Overweight on the scales, overdrawn at the bank and nudging forty, the trouble-prone folksinger is hired to play bagpipes at a
millionaire’s Burns Night. Sole survivor, she herself becomes a suspect and, later, prey to the killer.
Bonnie Jean, an old Burns lovesong, holds a vital clue. So does a long lost manuscript of
lewd poems by the passionate poet.
Bumbling along this modern murder trail, Sheil also discovers the truth about the
317-year-old Glencoe Massacre. She’s a busy lass for sure, aye, yet still finds time, between murders, to warble her ballads. Would you like a sample read? Click the bookshop link at top of this page.
Serials capture online readers.
Cathy Macleod, 19 February, 2009. The Daily Telegraph newspaper in London, boosting
circulation with serial fiction, has also caused its online hits to soar. Top-selling author Alexander McCall Smith provided the bait, which finally reached 100 daily chapters.
In the process, his feel-good stories about quirky characters promoted the cause of ebooks. Online readers captured by "Corduroy Mansions" included many a digital novice
who will now find it easier to embrace the ebook era.
The serial isn't done with yet. The newspaper's daily delight will be gathered into a
printed Polygon book in August, while more Corduroy happenings are planned for the future.
This formula of online chapters, followed by printed hardback and paperback, worked
well for the "Scotland Street" series by McCall Smith in The Scotsman newspaper. It simply illustrates the wide appeal of good fiction, with sufficient readership to score in every format.
There is another gripping serial, not available in any newspaper, that gets pleasing attention from web browsers. Readers have to download it from the Darling Newspaper Press. With free samples, "Run Maggie Run" by John Ivor goes to 14 chapters online.
The publisher believes short takes are the best way to deliver digital fiction. That is, until the world gets used to the various electronic devices wooing bookreaders. Entertaining
short stories and novellas are also prolific (and low cost) from this source.
Leave a comment.
CLICK! Easy as that.
Cathy Macleod, 10 Feb, 2009: Simply click. And here’s where to click. The link takes
you to a bookshop stacked with well written novels, novellas and short stories. Browse at will. For more information on any book, just click its cover. To read inside the book,
click “Free Sample” and follow the prompts.
Okay, you’re into ebooks, the biggest thing in reading since Penguin introduced the paperback in 1932.
Got a favourite author? Enter the name and click “search”.
A particular title? Ditto.
Specific genre? Do likewise.
It’s fast and delightful. Digital texts have sped, in recent years, to embrace schools, business and fiction. If you have yet to unclutch your spine-bound comfort and venture
into cyberspace, there’s never been a better time.
Leave a comment
Obama Tells Me All.
Cathy Macleod, 29 January 2009: I met Barack Obama on my back verandah early morning, while sitting with a pot of tea at my elbow and honeybirds crooning. Such is
the start to my day in the southern hemisphere.
The President was a few thousand miles away, because our meeting came from the pages
of his book "The Audacity of Hope", published in 2006. This recounts his early struggles in a race-conscious community.
He's a good writer, with skill that directs his thoughts to one's inner psyche. I felt he was chatting beside me. In fact I was reading, on my laptop, the digital version of his
book, downloaded from mobipocket.com. Mr Obama convinces me he shares the same dream that rests in most people, the desire to live without stress and relish family joys.
Dedicated to Grandmother Tutu and to his mother, it relates his striving to achieve. It also confesses frankly his motivations. And his despair when things seemed impossible.
"It's been almost ten years since I first ran for political office," he begins. "I was thirty-five at the time, four years out of law school, recently married, and generally
impatient with life."
As a human-rights lawyer, he found himself nudged into politics. “Where’d you get that funny name?” people asked, and then queried why a nice guy would choose to take part
in something dirty and nasty like politics. He gives his answer in this memoir, namely that there is another tradition in politics, stretching back to the founding of America. "We
have a stake in one another." I reckon you could apply identical philosophy to the world and its many woes.
Campaigning for a seat in the US Senate was tough for Barack Obama. I like his
anecdote about the annual St Patrick's Day Parade in Chicago, which his team saw as a promotion opportunity. "We were assigned the parade’s very last slot, so my ten
volunteers and I found ourselves marching just a few paces ahead of the city’s sanitation trucks, waving to the few stragglers who remained on the route while workers swept up
garbage and peeled green shamrock stickers off the lampposts."
There were other campaign hurdles. Sometimes, after driving several hours, he found
only two or three people waiting to hear his credo. There were also press conferences to which nobody came.
As we know, the big successes came at last, and now greater challenges loom ahead. I for one look forward to more writings by author Obama.
Audacity of Hope is not his first book. The initial effort was in the 1990s during law school. "Dreams From My Father, a story of race and religion" gives interesting personal
background and an insight into what makes Obama tick. Sales were underwhelming then but will certainly soar now.
This first book answers a puzzle many people ask. Being of mixed race - mother white,
father black - why is Obama portrayed as black? He tells us.
"I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to
suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites."
There are more revelations here and in the more recent book "Change We Can Believe
In". What he calls "the American idea" (I suspect non-Yanks have it too) is a chance to progress if you really try.
Says the new president: "It’s the promise that led my father, who grew up herding goats in Kenya, to cross the ocean just for the chance to study in America. It allowed my
mother, who raised my sister and me as a single parent without much money, to send us to some of the best schools in the country with the help of scholarships."
So good luck to America's new boss. All his writings are available as ebooks, including his inspiring inaugural address.
Happy reading from Cathy!
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Tralala, it has got me going lyrical . . .
Cathy Macleod, January 2009. Surging, flooding, books galore, sweeping over Reading's
shore. Where to dip and find a winner? How to tell a saint from sinner? Easy done, I promise you - here is all you have to do: Browse the millions on the Net, download
samples (free to get). There's never been such low-cost deals. Buy an ebook that appeals.
My apologies to Shakespeare's ghost, who nevertheless must concede that the reading
public has never had it so good. In addition to crazy high-street discounts, the current digital offerings number millions of titles. These are sold, or should be, at a fraction of the hardprint price.
Side by side with bestsellers can be spotted unfamiliar authors, peculiar covers and an ocean of self-published flotsam. Sure, there's lotsa crap, but also gems to pick up for a
pen'orth. As long as free samples are given, the Net today is a no-risk buyers' heaven.
Free titles abound too, usually Classics you've been ignoring for years at your local library.
Nor do readers have to wait any longer for someone to invent the ideal handheld device. Use what you've got already! I am achieving happy reading on my laptop. To overcome
my chronic screen phobia, I simply downloaded the free Mobipocket Reader software that is available to everybody at mobipocket.com.
For ebookers who prefer short texts, Amazon has set its short-story standard at 0.49
cents, but I have found better tales elsewhere, and glad to pay $1 or even more. Happy reading! Return to top. Leave a comment.
Fiction Heavyweights Go Digital.
Cathy Macleod, January 2009: Agatha Christie, Fay Weldon and Ann Morven have all
embraced electronic publication as the ebook revolution gushes into the new year of 2009.
For evergreen Christie characters, such as Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, it entails a
reformat from the hardprint titles. But new Weldon and Morven titles, exclusively digital, can be read only on an electronic device. These may be handheld, laptop or desktop, the
worldwide appliances that have changed reading habits.
Ann Morven, diva of the short whodunit, said her publishers had decided to issue her
latest mystery in digital style only. It is a short story, “Birthday Snakes”, featuring the
heavyweight chump of crime fiction, a female sleuth with bumbling instinct for human frailty.
“My publishers have attracted on-screen readers for the past year by means of texts
below 6000 words,” Ann Morven said. “This means short stories and serials. The reason is simple. Booktrade watchers believe that to absorb a long digital novel needs practice
when we are all used to paperbacks. People are still just bonding with their megabyte machines, whether mobile phone or a book-friendly computer.”
She revealed her own preference remained a hardprint paperback, but said she achieved “something of the same intimacy” reading a laptop loaded with the free Mobipocket Reader software.
Fay Weldon’s efiction is also being introduced in short takes. It appears in serialized episodes at YouGov.com, under the title “Woodworm”.
Fay Weldon says she welcomes feedback and is writing the chapters in a continuing plot that can be influenced by what followers of the serial suggest to her.
She is not the first to follow this course. Alexander McCall Smith began the interactive formula with “44 Scotland Street”, a serial in The Scotsman newspaper. Later, it was
published as a hardprint book, and several more Scotland Street titles have followed involving the same characters.
McCall Smith is currently writing a similar serial for London’s Daily Telegraph. It features London dwellers and appears under the title of “Corduroy Mansions”. The
chapters are available for digital download at the newspaper’s website.
Books by the late Agatha Christie that will appear in digital format are, of course, already
popular in hardprint. The digital publisher, Penguin in the United States, believes there is a new market in the electronic field.
Initially, ten digital titles will be published by this publisher, one of the global giants to recognize that ebooks are here to stay.
Up until 2008, it was small publishers who led the trend into ebooks. This was mainly an economic choice to avoid the crippling overheads of printing, binding, warehousing
thousands of books, distributing them to bookshops, and receiving just 40% percent of the cover price. That 40% had to pay for all those things plus advances and royalties to
authors and, perhaps, leave a small profit for the publisher.
Such an impossible business formula encouraged small publishers to try the alternative
digital market, selling direct to readers. Their pioneering endeavour has shown the way to the global giants who now suffer in the world recession.
The year 2009, therefore, is going to mark out fresh focus on ebooks following dismal earnings from traditionally printed titles. The business world is well into electronic
documents, so is the world of education, where text books now come on a screen.
Fiction will enjoy its best digital year yet, because what was once a trickle has become a torrent. Happy reading!
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The world market is open to all.
Cathy Macleod, December 2008: With ebooks pushing into the book trade, all publishers
enjoy the miracle of worldwide marketing without costly warehousing, distribution and the tyranny of the bookshop chains. For Christmas 2008, for instance, readers were able
to download a serial hailed as “the best since Dickens”. Run Maggie Run, a digital title,
continues to wear its publisher’s audacious boast with optimism, and success.
It coincides with rivalry between several electronic reading devices that are competing
for a place in the global markets. In this sales skirmish, content is a vital ingredient and Maggie’s spicy adventures are available in all, or most, of the appliances.
The serial joins digital-format bestselling novels, and could outsell them if a trend favouring short texts continues. The Scots-Australian author, John Ivor, holds star rating
for historical fiction from Darling Newspaper Press.
Ivor’s digital serial, following successful hardbacks and paperbacks, blends thrills, humour and outrageous characters.
“That is why we liken it to Charles Dickens,” said publishing executive Charles Bryce in Perth,Australia. “It is also interesting to recall that the Victorian novelist used serial form
to popularise his novels.
“We have found that ebooks (electronic books) are particularly suited to short-span scrutiny, say text up to 6000 words. People are still coming to terms with reading on a
screen even if it is hand-held. Our short-stories sell well in digital format, mostly mystery and romance. We offer lengthy novels too, but these tend to lag compared to our
traditional hardback and paperback sales.
“Thanks to the Internet, the essay has also made a comeback, although nowadays people call them blogs.”
Run Maggie Run begins with a heroine aged 9 sentenced to hang for murder in the 1830s. Her odyssey to womanhood begins in Scotland and culminates in The Great Southland, as Australia was then known.
The serial was one of the goodies nudging readers towards ebooks in the weeks to Christmas 2008. Enthusiasm for onscreen reads is almost certain to grow in the tight economic months of 2009.
An ebook can be read on any computer screen, or on most hand-held designs. There are several appliances, such as Iliad (British), Cybook (French), Sony (Japanese), Bebook
(Dutch), and others. All have small individual differences. A launch in Britain of Amazon's Kindle, after success in the United States, is expected in 2009.
Internet retailers heavily into ebooks, and easy to access and search, include Mobipocket, Cyber Read, Ebook Crescent, Books on Board, and many more that can be found via Google. Happy reading!
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