I joined The Authors Guild today
Saturday, February 14th, 2009I figured I should put my money where my mouth is. The Authors Guild The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Archive for the 'ebooks' Category
But it’s mine!
Friday, February 13th, 2009In the discussion of whether the ways in which an ebook document may be used (for instance, whether the person who has licensed that document can be restricted from printing it out or having text-to-speech software read it aloud), one commenter on this post of mine wrote, “You actually DON’T have the right to tell […]
The Kindle 2 reads books aloud …
Thursday, February 12th, 2009… and the Authors Guild is objecting to this. It’s a very interesting point. Traditionally, print rights and audiobook rights are separate. Audible.com and others have done audiobooks of my novels, and those deals are with me, not the print publisher (in fact, today I just got a nice check from my agent for part-two […]
Amazon and ebooks
Monday, January 26th, 2009My friend Virginia O’Dine just drew this to my attenion: Amazon.com has notified its publisher and author clients that it plans to cease offering e-books in the Microsoft Reader and Adobe e-book formats. They’re only going to be selling Kindle ebooks (for the hardware device they make) and Mobipocket — and Amazon.com owns Mobipocket. Man, […]
Smart quotations marks, em dashes, and e-books
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009Over at the fascinating Teleread.org blog, David Rothman asks: Many and perhaps most e-books use straight, typewriter-style quotes rather than smart quotes—the directional kind. At least one major e-book company wants publishers to avoid smart quotes, at least when offering certain formats, to reduce the technical challenges. But would you be more likely to recommend […]
Sony Reader showstoppers
Monday, June 23rd, 2008On my way to my signing in Rochester yesterday, I stopped at a Borders store to play with the PRS-505, the latest model of eBook reader from Sony. It’s a nice, attractive, solid-feeling unit, and, at $299, not badly priced as these things go. But it had several showstoppers for me. Number one (and huge): […]
OMG, I have the best fans ever!
Monday, May 5th, 2008So, I was at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal this past weekend. After my event on Friday night, I ended up going out for dinner with a couple of my local fans there, a man named Peter and a woman named Vanessa (neither of whom I’d ever met before). The panel I’d been […]
eBooks that hard code flush-right margins
Saturday, February 16th, 2008A note I sent to the fine folks at Fictionwise.com: Might you have a word with your vendors about the fact that it’s wrong to force full justification of text in ebooks? The last two secure Mobipocket ebooks I’ve bought from you have flush-right margins regardless of what setting is chosen in Mobipocket reader. On […]
A great site for free ebooks
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007Over at manybooks.net, you’ll find 19,000 ebooks available in all popular reader formats, including my own favorite, eReader, plus Kindle, Mobipocket, Rocket, Palm DOC, HTML, and many more — the site will even produce a custom PDF to your exact specifications (font, type size margins, line spacing). Included are almost all the Project Gutenberg offerings […]
eBooks that really aren’t properly hyperlinked
Saturday, December 22nd, 2007I’m getting tired of ebooks that aren’t properly formatted, and so I posted the following on the Fictionwise discussion forum, in response to Fictionwise’s founder Steve Pendergrast saying it only costs $20 or $25 to convert a title to an ebook, and they can convert 50 or so a week, with just one staffer doing […]
Amazon introduces Kindle ebook reader
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007I got to play with one of the beta-test units a while ago, and immediately fell in love. Sadly, they’re only available in the US right now — can’t wait for them to come to Canada! The e-ink display is gorgeous, the ergonomics (especially the big page-changing buttons) are much better than the Sony eBook […]