Meet The Annas: A Musical Novel...

Jul 6, 2012 by

Meet The Annas: A Musical Novel

Today’s free Nook book brings up an interesting question: What do we expect from e-books today? When I saw the title, my mind instantly assumed there was some kind of media associated with the book, and I found myself a bit disappointed when I read the description and it turned out to be a simple title twist. I was excited about the idea of a musical novel, without even having known what to expect. So what would that have meant? Would it have been like a musical, with random pages playing songs instead of showing text? Would it have been like a pop-up book, with music or video you could play when reaching the end of each page, or the start of each chapter? Would there simply have been a musical interlude in the middle of...

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Distractions

Jul 3, 2012 by

Distractions

I have mentioned that I’m a gamer. So let’s get this straight right off the bat: you should never be self-employed if you’re a gamer. It does not work well. Because no matter where you are, whether you work at home or have a separate office, you’re on your own. No one monitors your work activity, or checks to see that you’re staying on task. You’re not responsible to anyone but your clients, and they’re miles away most times. Actually, I don’t have issues getting client work done. Client work always comes first. But then I finish the client work and send it off, and I need to wait to hear back. There are now other things I should be moving on to. Other things that need to get done. For example, updating my website more...

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E-Book Conversions, vol 2

Jun 28, 2012 by

E-Book Conversions, vol 2

As it turns out, I can’t just convert a book to epub format and be done. No, no, no, that’d be too easy. And if I use InDesign the cover art won’t work correctly with the Nook or iPad bookshelves, though the Kindle seems to read it just fine and the cover shows up, but the pagination doesn’t work correctly and everything’s skip-lined like I’d forwarded an email eighty times and it was still 1998. This really is more of a rant than an article. The fact is, this is my own fault. If I’d been smart, I’d have simply hired someone to do this. We did in fact discuss that idea, and we rejected it for the simple reasons that we wanted to keep our hands on the project from start to finish....

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“Don’t cry but I’m dying”...

Jun 25, 2012 by

“Don’t cry but I’m dying”

Over in the U.K, there’s a bit of an uproar over a school assignment – specifically, a “creative writing” project that could have doubled as a suicide note. Apparently the students were told to “imagine they had a terminal illness and express thanks to loved ones.” As a ghostwriter, I understand both sides of this particular issue – on the side of the school, it does indeed teach creativity and helps the student think outside the box and in ways they have likely not actually, seriously thought before. On the parent’s side, it’s scary as hell. You can read the entire article...

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The iWorld

Jun 19, 2012 by

The iWorld

So I just posted about how I’m not getting a Kindle, despite my overall love for Amazon and all it’s lovely features. This leads me to confessing that I do already own an e-reader-like device. I own an iPad. Now, this is very recent. Until April, I used a Sony E-Reader, and I loved it. I still have it, and as far as basic portability and carrying around dozens of books all at once and reading them anywhere I am, it’s awesome. It really is. But the world, she is a-changin’. And I don’t just need to carry books. For years I’ve carried a briefcase full of contracts in various forms, client examples, my one-pager, business cards, note-taking materials, thumb-drives and a netbook, and an Android phone. I’m on T-mobile, and I’m grandfathered into...

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Kindle?

Jun 14, 2012 by

Kindle?

I love Amazon.com. I really do. I’m a Prime member, and I probably buy a lot more there than I should. With Prime free shipping and my hatred of leaving my desk because I know when I come back I’ll have completely lost my place and will have no idea what I was doing when I left, I do quite a bit of Amazon shopping. I like their DRM-Free MP3s, I like their streaming service, I like their cloud storage, I use their wish list plugin for my browser kind of constantly. But I will never own a Kindle. The thing about Amazon’s Kindle system is that you never actually own your books. You don’t download them, you can’t really back them up – I’ve heard rumors that they’ve basically/mostly fixed that problem, but it’s...

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