Going Alien, by Jeffrey A. Carver

Starstream Publications, August 2012

I don't read many short story collections, but this is a good one by a favorite author. There are six short stories here, from a wrestling competition between a human and a shape-shifting alien, two very different stories of alien invasion, and early stories in the Star Rigger universe. Convincing world building and solid characterization are always features of Carver's work, and the plotting here is tight and focused. The unifying theme of the collection is human/alien interaction, not always to the benefit of the humans.

All in all, this is a very pleasant way to while away a few evenings, or a few summer afternoons out the sun and the heat.

Recommended.

I bought this book.

The Falling Woman, by Pat Murphy

Open Road Integrated Media, ISBN 9781480483149, April 2014 (original publication November 1986)

Elizabeth Butler is an archaeologist working a dig at a Mayan site in the Yucatan. In her mid-fifties now, she has a painful personal history of a failed marriage, a failed suicide attempt, and lost custody of and limited contact with her daughter, Diane.

Diane Butler has lost her father, her boyfriend, and her job over the course of a couple of weeks, and for reasons she doesn't herself entirely understand, seeks out her famous and long-absent mother.

Diane has been having disturbing dreams, in which she is falling from a great height into a dark void.

Barbara has always seen shadows of the past, watched the long-dead inhabitants of the sites she studies going about their daily lives. It has given her a reputation for remarkably accurate and valuable hunches, but also a reputation for being very eccentric. Now one of the shadows, a priestess of the Mayan moon goddess from just before the disappearance of Maya civilization, has started speaking to her.

The Iggy Chronicles, Volume One (A Chet & Bernie Mystery eShort Story), by Spencer Quinn

Atria Books, ISBN 9781476703602, August 2013

Iggy is Chet's best canine friend, the little white dog that lives across the road with Mr. and Mrs. Parsons. Iggy doesn't get out much, because he's far too clever at eluding the fence, and the elderly Parsons aren't up to chasing him anymore--especially with Mrs. Parsons in ill health.

So it's a big surprise when Mr. Parsons comes over early one morning, awakening Chet and Bernie with the news that Iggy is missing.

Even more disturbing, at least to Chet, is that he can't pick up any scent trail for Iggy outside. He was in his house, and then he wasn't.

Mrs. Parsons had just been sent home from the hospital, and in the shock of Iggy's disappearance, she collapses and returns to the hospital. And while paying a visit to Mrs. Parsons there, Bernie discovers there's a new head of hospital security, and there has been a rash of thefts of patient property. He also learns that Iggy was one of Mrs. Parsons' visitors during her previous hospital stay, and did have one exciting run through the hospital during the last visit.

Can the two cases possibly be connected?

This is another entertaining short visit with Chet and Bernie.

Recommended.

I bought this story.

APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur (How to Publish a Book), by Guy Kawasaki, Shawn Welch

Nononina Press, ISBN 9780988523, December 2012

Do you have a book you want to write, something that would add value to the world for the people who would read it? An exciting story, a history of something most people don't know about, an instructional book on your area of expertise? A cookbook? Whatever the subject or the nature of the book, at one time your only option was to interest an established publisher in buying it. That's still the most obvious course, and for many reasons, it's often the best course. Established publishers have editors, copy-editors, art directors, contracts with printers, marketing departments, distribution networks. That's a lot of work that gets done for you, while you "only" have to write the book and collect your advance and, if you're fortunate, your royalty payments as they come in.

Dead on Ice (A Lovers in Crime Mystery), by Lauren Carr

Acorn Book Services, ISBN 9780985726737, September 2012

This is the third mystery involving Hancock County (WV) Prosecuting Attorney Joshua Thornton and Pennsylvania State Police homicide detective Cameron Gates, though the first that I've found and read. They are also a couple. When crime spills over the border between their states, sometimes that helps them work together, and sometimes it creates an uncomfortable conflict of interest. They're both widowed; Cameron's husband, also a PA state cop, was killed in a traffic stop gone bad, and Joshua's wife died after many years of marriage and several children, only the youngest of whom, Donny, is still at home.

The President's Brain Is Missing? by John Scalzi

Tor Books, February 2011

This is an ebook-only short, barely a novella. It's also vintage Scalzi, funny and irreverent and insightful.

A senior staffer for an unnamed president gradually comes to the shocking realization that the president's brain is missing. He's walking, he's talking, he's functioning normally--but his brain is missing! (Yes, insert jokes here; Scalzi is careful to ensure you can't peg this president as being either Bush or Obama. He's not doing contemporary political commentary, here.)

The senior staffer starts digging for an answer to what's happened, and solution to the problem. But is it a problem? Who is responsible? Does this need to be fixed? And what's going to happen to the nosy staffer?

It's wickedly funny, and well worth the time you'll spend reading it. Recommended.

I bought this story.

E-Books, readers, and publishers--some thoughts on a Raging Controversy

 Some rights reserved by STML

I've blogged before about libraries and the problem of e-books and publishers' attitudes; this is about Us, the Readers. There is a Heated Discussion taking place, at Dear Author and at Whatever. Robin L thinks it's reasonable and not mean to bitch at authors about the prices of their e-books; John Scalzi thinks only a massive sense of entitlement would cause people to bitch about the prices of e-books, and that it's somehow especially ignorant of readers to think that they're not really the customers publishers think about.

Competition for OverDrive? 3M Cloud Library in Beta with Kansas Libraries

Kansas State Librarian Can Transfer Thousands of Titles from OverDrive to 3M at No Charge:

'via Blog this'

This is a fascinating story from Library Journal. The Kansas State Librarian, Jo Budler, is attempting to move the state's e-books platform from OverDrive to 3M's Cloud Library, which is currently in beta. This isn't a random or capricious choice; staying with OverDrive would mean a 700% increase in the platform licensing fee by 2013. (Any content licensed is in addition to the platform licensing fee.)

What's the Bigger Threat, Piracy, Distribution Monopolies--or Refusal to Give Customers What They Want?

Miramax CEO: our biggest threat is online distribution monopolies, not piracy – Boing Boing:

'via Blog this'

Mike Lang, the Miramax CEO, says piracy isn't really any big deal, but distribution monopolies are, because they create chokepoints that limit the consumer's ability to get the product, thus limiting potential sales. He's got a valid point, but where it breaks down a bit is that he cites Apple's iTunes as an example. iTunes has too much control of the music market, so music companies can't influence pricing, packaging, merchandising.

But the reason iTunes has such control is because the music companies clung to their image of themselves as "record companies," drastically overpriced CDs, and bitterly resisted  digital distribution of music in forms consumers wanted and found useful and worth paying for. Had they been able to do so, they would have permanently blocked any digital distribution of music, allowing fear of piracy to override the far more central consideration of how to make money by selling their customers what they wanted to buy. They decided what they wanted to sell us, and tried to make us like it--and it didn't work. Apple controls the distribution of music because Apple created a way to give customers what they wanted and make a profit at it, while the music companies were still fighting digital distribution.

Kindle Library Lending Goes Live

Kindle Library Lending Goes Live:

 Some rights reserved by jimmiehomeschoolmom

In April, Amazon announced that they would change their long-standing policy and e-nable library borrowing on the Kindle. This feature has now gone live. Using your Kindle to borrow library ebooks will apparently be even easier than with other e-book readers. Your checked-out book will be downloaded to your Kindle via Whispernet, just as with the books you buy from Amazon.

This will enable many more people to borrow library e-books, and should greatly increase the demand for e-books in libraries. This is all good news.

The new "Kindle with Special Offers" is a terrible "bargain"

Amazon is offering a Wonderful New Bargain in Kindle e-readers: the lower-end, $139 wi-fi-enabled Kindle for  $114, a $25 price break, in exchange for ads and special offers popping up while you're reading, as well as "sponsored" screensavers--more ads.

Until now, the promise of e-ink e-readers has been a reading experience as close as possible to the experience of reading a print book, with some "improvements" only possible with digital technology: adjustable font size, the ability to carry dozens of books as easily as one (or more easily than one good-sized hardcover), and the ability to download a new book in moments. The "Kindle with Special Offers" is a departure from that: treating the e-reader like the net, where we have long accepted ads as the price of reading sites for "free." Except, of course, that the "Kindle with Special Offers" isn't "free" in any sense. There's a $25 saving on the purchase of the device itself. Books purchased from Amazon will cost the same--except perhaps where some of those "special offers" apply.

There might be an argument for this if it were truly making the Kindle more accessible to a much wider audience. But realistically, for how many people will a $25 savings on a device that will still cost over $100 really be the difference in affordability? Some, surely, but many? I'm skeptical. And in exchange, the reading experience itself is compromised. Whether you're reading the latest light romance or the latest literary masterpiece, a rousing adventure, an intriguing mystery, or an enlightening work of popular science, ads will be popping up, intruding on your immersion in the world of the book. And unlike the ads that used to be bound into the middle of cheaper paperbacks in my younger days, you won't even be able to rip them out and dump them in the trash.

This is not a good development.

E-Books, Libraries, and HarperCollins' Anti-Library Announcement

Today the word spread through the library community that HarperCollins has declared war on library lending of e-books. Initially librarians had a letter from Overdrive, cast in relentlessly positive terms, that nevertheless contained the shocking information that "some publishers" had demanded a new restriction on e-book lending: In addition to treating each e-book as a single physical copy, that can be loaned to only one person at a time, e-books will now also "wear out"; after twenty-six loans, the copy goes poof, and if the library wishes to continue to lend that book, they must buy it again.

Physical copies don't wear out and fall apart after only twenty-six lendings. When they do start to wear out, libraries can repair them. When the library does decide to deaccession those books, they can put them in the book sale. And libraries normally purchase physical copies at a small discount, or they pay extra for library binding, which means the book will be more physically durable.

Libraries don't get that discount on e-books. They pay more for them than the individual buyer does. And when they decide they no longer need a particular title, they can't resell it in the library book sale. The one advantage is that it's not going to wear out, that it can keep circulating, without repair, for as long as the library needs it to.

Now HarperCollins is saying no, that e-book is going to "wear out" faster and more catastrophically than any normal physical copy. It's no longer selling e-books to libraries; it's renting them, and it's a very expensive rental. One has to wonder what the Powers That Be at HarperCollins think about all those physical copies circulating for as long as they physically last, or used book stores, buying and selling physical copies after the original purchaser no longer wants them.

I believe that the fundamental problem here is that the publishing industry has largely been swallowed up by the entertainment industry. Publishing has never had the profit margins that the movies and television consider normal, and the entertainment conglomerates are frustrated by this. They're also deeply committed to achieving, as far as possible, a pay-per-view world. Everyone expects to pay to see a movie every time they go to the theater to see it, even if they do that a hundred times. You can't legally record it for your own use. TV is still mostly free-to-watch; even if you pay for cable, you mostly don't pay extra for each show--but that's because the advertisers are paying for it. And with pay-per-view movies and specials, you do pay for one or a limited number of viewings or a limited time period of access; you don't get to "keep" that show forever, for the most part. Movies and television bitterly resisted the VCR; they've made their peace with it and its descendants now, but remember they get a kickback for each blank media you purchase.

The entertainment conglomerates now own most of the publishing industry, and they're attempting to impose this model on publishing. In this frame, libraries look like an outrage. The experiences of publishers (as different as National Academies Press and Baen Books) that free or cheap access to e-books actually boosts the sales of print copies is irrelevant, in fact incomprehensible to them.

Libraries, as they always have, are moving forward with the new technology, attempting to make all kinds and formats of information and reading material available to the users despite terrible budget crunches. HarperCollins, with the rest of the publishing industry likely following close behind, is choosing to make that harder, and cripple libraries' ability to serve the needs of their users. But libraries are where young readers and new readers, who don't yet have the money and the commitment to reading to go out and buy their books, develop that taste and that need. Write off the young readers and the new readers, and the publishers will lose them not for a few years, but forever, as they take themselves off to other kinds of entertainment.

This unfortunate development is going to affect my willingness to review or purchase HarperCollins titles. I hope and trust it will also affect the willingness of libraries to purchase HarperCollins titles. This is an anti-library and anti-reader stance, and it deserves to be punished in the marketplace.

Update: A message from OverDrive on HarperCollins' new eBook licensing terms

Some links for further reading on the subject:
HarperCollins Puts 26 Loan Cap on Ebook Circulations
Publishing Industry Forces OverDrive and Other Library eBook Vendors to Take a Giant Step Back
The Publisher of Tolkien Has Taken a Business Lesson From Sauron
Let's Play Rent-A-Book!
Friday Alert: HarperCollins in cagematch with Macmillan to see who can alienate readers better

E-Books and Libraries

On Friday, Chronicle (on WCVB-TV) focused on ebooks, ereaders, and the future of libraries, in an episode entitled What's the Word. The initial presentation was quite apocalyptic--you can download anything you want to read from the internet, so who needs libraries, right? How can boring old dead tree books compete with the shiny new electronic kind? And if we don't need print books, what use do we have for libraries?

The reality, of course, is rather more complicated, and eventually, so was the Chronicle story. After oohing and aahing over the wonders of the Kindle and the Nook, with very little attention to the problems (for instance, Amazon deleting an edition of Animal Farm that they did not have the rights to, without notifying users, and in the process trashing a high school student's English research paper), eventually they visited several actual libraries, including the new Cambridge library.

And what did they find? Libraries are busy. Circulation is up, participation in library programs is up, and the main obstacle to libraries continuing to grow and expand in services is the inconvenient fact that their budgets are being cut. Partly, of course, because state and municipal budgets are under incredible pressure, but also because of the perception that libraries are "old-fashioned" and not really necessary in this modern age.

But libraries provide something that bookstores, including online bookstores, never can. It's not just a wider range of reading material than any individual can afford to buy. It's not even the fact that all that material is free. What they offer is librarians and their services--knowledgeable guides through both the fiction and non-fiction resources. Someone who's always glad to help you navigate both the print and the electronic resources--whether for recreational reading, or because you want more information on something the doctor said, or because you're looking for a job after twenty years with the same company, and have no idea where to start in making a resume, finding job openings, writing good cover letters.

Online resources offer information. Libraries, and librarians, offer the opportunity to turn that information into knowledge.