Archive for the 'Rants' Category

Books should never go out of print

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

Here’s a statistic for you: “From 98 to 99 percent of all books ever published are now out-of-print, so they don’t show up in traditional bestseller lists.” That comes from Anirvan Chatterjee, founder of BookFinder.com founder. I pulled that from a post on The Book Standard if you want more information. But I don’t. I’m [...]

SFWA knee-jerk strikes again

Saturday, September 1st, 2007

Not long after outgoing SFWA vice president Howard Hendrix offended many with his ‘webscabs’ name-calling, current VP Andrew Burt is taking poor aim at Scribd: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to fraudulently remove numerous non-infringing works from Scribd, a site that allows the general public [...]

Negative feedback requested

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

It’s not often that organizations will ask for negative feedback, but no one has ever accused us of going along with the grain. We hear from many people quite frequently who tell us how great the site is, how they appreciate what we’re doing, and why they are nominating us for sainthood. Hundreds of people [...]

Why traditionally publish at all?

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

Michael Dunn follows the changing nature of media, specifically as relates to audio (hence the name of his blog). Seeing the success many authors are seeing by podcasting their work right here on Podiobooks.com, he asks the question: [W]hy do so many of them still want to attract traditional agents and publishers when they’ve been [...]

Copyright to infinity… and beyond!

Sunday, May 20th, 2007

Boing Boing has the scoop on SF author Mark Halprin rattling the chains very much Mark Twain style for not only an extension of copyright, but in fact perpetual copyright. To quote from his NYT opinion piece: Were I tomorrow to write the great American novel (again?), 70 years after my death the rights to [...]

Is reading out loud hard?

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

This post has been sitting in my “stewing” folder a while. Time to bring it out. So…I was reading Neil Gaiman’s blog this morning and apparently he has recorded a new and unabridged audiobook of Neverwhere… I am a little bit wary of this, as I am a little bit wary of all audiobooks-read-by-the-author because [...]

Ever heard of “book trailers”?

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

Toby Buckell points me to a service that creates “online book trailers” to help authors advertise and virally promote their books. Starting at $250, they make a video where the text of the description is fed on to the view pane while the pane pans over the cover of the book. Scaling up to the [...]

Do All “Stop Smoking” Authors Need a Cigarette?

Tuesday, March 13th, 2007

While the title of this post may be largely in jest, we’re currently 2 for 2 in this arena. Back in September, Matthew and I got involved in a strangely heated debate with an author who we’ll call Don (because that is his name) who wanted to release his SureFire Way to Stop Smoking™ book [...]

J.C. Hutchins wins Podcast Peer Award

Monday, March 5th, 2007

I’m peripherally aware of the Podcast Peer awards. I say peripherally because I’ve never actually heard any of the podcasts I listen to speak of this award in anything more than a passing mention. I’ve never been contacted by anyone administering the award or by any of the hundreds of voting members; hence peripherally. Yesterday, [...]

Audiobook fungus

Friday, February 23rd, 2007

What does fungus have to do with audiobooks? Plenty, if you pay close enough attention. I’m borrowing the term from my friend Steve Eley of Escape Pod. I’m also taking a little poetic license with his definition and applying it to this particular situation. I pay pretty close attention to the business of audiobooks as [...]