Streaming Digital Books by Jennifer Hudson Taylor

First, we streamed music. Then we streamed movies. And soon, we'll stream digital books. It's the next logical step in the new process of transforming and redefining the publishing/book industry.

Publishers have clung to tradition in how to produce books for as long as possible. Likewise, book distributors and bookstores have hung onto tradition in how to sell books since their business and livelihood depended upon it. Our library systems did the same. 

Since the beginning of the printing industry, as far back as Gutenberg's printing press in the late medieval period, books were sold on a per book basis--per unit/item. In our traditional thought process, we think of books as items--things. In the new digital world, books are content, whether it is through streaming words in a visual context or words through an audio context.

Now we have Audiobooks.com where you pay for unlimited streaming of books through the cloud--a flat membership fee of $25 a month. It's the same concept as Netflix's business of streaming movies and Spotify for streaming music. The price is constant regardless of which books you download, regardless of whether you read 5 books or 20 per month, or how many minutes or hours you spend reading.

As one writer pointed out in The Atlantic article, The Future of the Book is the Stream, that streaming books reframes book-buying so that it is less about purchasing a book and more about purchasing an experience.

What are YOUR thoughts about streaming books? How do you think it will affect publishers, authors, and bookstores?

Some good news by Terry Burns

I love it when things are happening.Three clients have debut novels with Oak Tara and have now signed with them for two more books each to make their books into three series. Congratulations to Pam Meyers, Lynda Schab and Suzanne Hartmann. On the left is a picture of Pam signing her contract with Ramona Tucker of Oak Tara.

 On the left is the cover for "Path of Promise," a book in the new Stitches of Time quilting Series from Abingdon Press, to release in February 2013.

Bonnie Calhoun also has a book in the same series at Abingdon set to release in April entitled "Pieces of the Heart."

New Client Sharon Srock just signed with Harbourlight Press for the first two books in her Women of Valley View series. The first book is entitled Callie and the second one is Terri.

Max Elliott Anderson has two books coming out from Comfort Publishing and plans a special 'wolf' promotion for the two of them at once.  The books are "Terror at Wolf Lake" and "Legend of the White Wolf." Should be fun.

Dee Yoder has a new contract from Kregel for her Amish book, "The Miting."

I love it when a plan comes together.

Would You Read On? hosted by Diana Flegal

Welcome to First Page Wednesday. This is a fun way to get 'over the hump' in our week and learn a thing or two in the process.
Please let us know if you would read on in the comment section below:

Scottish Highlands

July, 1599

“Will you stand there all day, Ronan?” she teased, flipping her long red tail of hair behind her shoulder. “Or will you fight me?”

Triona McAllister, the only daughter of Laird Douglas McAllister, and the most stunningly perfect creature that ever lived, faced Ronan over her little silver dagger. It was bad enough this had been his idea, but did he have to freeze up now that he had her there, in the garden, awaiting her daily lesson?

Ronan didn’t always loose his wits before her, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth like a callow lad. He was a full score, for pities sake; and McAllister Clan Champion. But today was different.

“Are you ill?” Triona questioned. Her heavy lashes narrowed over moss green eyes.

“Nay,” Ronan managed, strangled.

She stepped up to him in her plum gown and bare feet, her boots having been discarded under a rose bush as if they annoyed her. Creamy lace peeked from under a bodice that curved gently across the middle of her breastbone.

Triona’s head came to his shoulder, and she rose up on the balls of her dirty feet to reach his forehead. She fingered his long hair away, placing her free hand over his skin. Ronan brushed her aside. He hated being coddled.

“I am not feverish,” he retorted.

“Hmm . . .” She cocked her head to one side and pursed her lips. “Perhaps you dinna want to do this today, Ronan of the Raven Locks?” Triona used her favorite nick name for him.

“’Tis not that,” he grouched. Sakes, not that. Her lessons meant he had her undivided attention. It was the best part of his day.

Ronan reached for her arm with a calloused, sword-scarred hand, then pulled away again. “There is something I need to tell you,” he said seriously.

Triona’s full lips turned down into a scowl too fierce for such a pretty face. She sheathed her dagger with a flourish and crossed her arms over her ribcage. “What?”

Ronan took a deep breath. She was going to make this difficult for him. Of course she was.

Last weeks First page for children of the age 7-11 was shared by brave author Diane Estrella. You can find out more about Diane and her writing at www.dianeestrella.com

Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your comments.

Potentially Tense Canaries by Andy Scheer

Perhaps their experience with spell-check had made the canaries tense. They flew at me off the page, daring me to discover their sentence’s original meaning, before spell-check and its minion, “suggest word replacement,” had their way.

The sentence taunted me; what could it mean? Nothing in the manuscript I’d been editing hinted at the problems posed by Question 5:

5. What potential tensions canaries from a transition in mower, authority, responsibility and promise as we see with Abraham and Isaac?

I poured over the sentence, my curiosity peaked.* What had spell-check wrought?

I started with the easier word, “mower.” My mind recalled, then rejected the old joke:

Q: What do you get if you run over a canary with a mower?

A: Shredded tweet.

The context suggested the author had meant “power.” But canaries? What potentially could make them tense? I noted the problem in my “questions for author” document and moved on, hoping my subconscious would solve a problem that could only be computer induced.

Spell-check is wonderful. I use it—but I don’t trust it, especially if I’ve not given the document a line-by-line, word-by-word reading. Otherwise you end up with a paragraph like this, from a nonfiction proposal that once came my way:

I remember at the age of twenty-one thinking surly marriage was eminent and my prince charming was right around the corner. With each passing birthday I would try to quite the ache in my heart with the thought “maybe this year.”

Perhaps if she didn’t want a marriage that stood out so much, she wouldn’t be feeling surly. But I decided to quite my objections. Maybe I was the one being surly, condemning a writer for three correctly spelled typos in one short paragraph, not counting the lack of capitalization.

Then I turned the page and saw this:

I was like many eighteen year old girls when I graduated from high school. When I walked down the isle with my diploma in hand, my sights were set on the next exciting chapter of my life, college.

Aisle not be reading further, I thought. It’s no good atoll.

A half-hour later, my subconscious did its job and I returned to the canaries. With my editing knife, I cut them in two, then switched the order of two letters. Canaries = can arise.

5. What potential tensions can arise from a transition in power, authority, responsibility, and promise, as we see with Abraham and Isaac?

The sentence made sense, even if spell-check didn’t care.

* Yes, they’re intentional.

WRITING WITH THE STARS by Linda S. Glaz

Original post Sept. 28,2010

Wow, great idea for a reality show.
Stephen King steps up, writes a couple paragraphs and then the“guest” writer fills in the rest. When done, the winning“guest” gets a publishing contract with Harper Collins,Simon and Schuster, Zondervans or any other publisher of his/her choice.

HEAVEN HELP US! SIGN ME UP!

Now, that’s the way it should come to us.Wrapped in a bow and filled with all the goodies the literary world has to offer, but . . .

REALITY REARS ITS UGLY HEAD
and here we are, plugging away at the keyboard, not with Stephen King, but with the cat,or the dog, or the ferret or (fill in your own helper). Chris Harrison isn’t holding a rose, waiting for us to finish the next great American novel.
“Will you accept this publishing contract?” And he hands us the rose.

WAKE UP, STUPID! WRONG SHOW!
Jeff Probst might be closer to reality. After all, to make it in writing, you need to persevere and be . . . A Survivor!

The Truth About "Featured" Ads on Facebook

It was expected, and now it has happened. Facebook is displaying "paid" ads in people's News Feeds. If you haven't noticed them yet, Facebook is gradually rolling them out, so you'll soon see them.

In the past, Facebook has always labeled a paid ad as "Sponsored", but these new ads will be labeled as "Featured", which has a level of confusion for many users. At first, Facebook said that they would show only one "Sponsored" story in a person's News Feed per day, but once again that has changed. If you visit your News Feed often throughout the day, you may notice several "Featured" ads.

One of the reasons, Facebook chose to label these ads as “Featured” instead of “Sponsored” is because all of them must be related to friends and/or Pages you've "Liked." Advertisers can't just pay for an ad and have it display in your News Feed unless you have either interacted with them or their page in the past or one of your friends have done so. To make it even more confusing, you're written story can also be "Featured" as an ad, but only shown to people whom you originally shared it.

So what about YOU? Have you seen any of these "Featured" ads and/or stories in your News Feed? Would you pay for a "Featured" ad on Facebook?

The blind leading the blind by Terry Burns

 I used to have the time to be very active in our local writing group, to the point that I was a two time President of the organization. Unfortunately these days I nearly always have a place to be working conferences and events when their meetings occur. But that’s beside the point.

I sat in so many classes and crit groups and talked constantly with other writers and amassed a level of knowledge that I was so confident in that I began to teach in the group. The information that I handed out was eagerly received.

Then came the fateful day that we had a bestselling author there to present. He also sat in on my session for beginners. After it was over he quietly said, “You don’t really believe all that garbage you were handing out, do you?”

Well, yeah . . . I did.

I was stunned. I took him out to eat that evening and we talked for a long time. I came to understand two things, first that I had ceased to learn and started to teach, and second that I was getting all of my input from writers who didn’t know any more about it than I did. We shared opinions with each other until we came to accept it as truth.  I gave up teaching until I could reach the point where I could be sure of my subject matter and have a strong level of confidence that I could believe what I was saying was accurate.

Nobody has a handle on exactly how things work in this business. Every time I tell a group that in my experience something works a certain way, someone is sure to point out that some highly successful person did it just the opposite with phenomenal results. Absolutely, there is always the exception that proves the rule.

I’m not a gambler, but I understand playing the odds. If most of the time certain actions are going to produce certain results, I feel no need to try and buck the trend and do the opposite hoping that I can be successful where others are not.

Everyone has something to teach, and I try to be open minded to it all. But am I more likely to learn from someone who has had significant success, or someone who has studied and possesses a lot of information but has not been able to prove that information with results? That was me, I knew a lot, but much of it turned out to be a collection of opinions rather than someone sharing what had proven successful for them.

I was the blind leading the blind.

I teach again now, with many years of experience under my belt, but I don’t JUST teach, I try to constantly learn. I try to learn because teaching without learning means I am soon passing on stagnant information as fast as this business changes. And I constantly tell people in classes and workshops that while I am confident information I pass on is accurate, there is always another way to do everything.

We have to learn to filter and assign weight to people we are learning from based on how likely they are to know the truth of what they are saying, I know these days I sure try to do that.