Battle of 9.99

Here's another interesting tidbit for all of you"

Publishers Weekly has also published the book The Battle of 9.99, a book about the now infamous price setting at Amazon. I know that some of you remember this. Some might even remember getting into an argument on either side. For those who don't immediately remember, here's the story in a nutshell:

Amazon wanted to set their ebook prices at $9.99 to entice readers to their then still newborn Kindle e-book reader. It meant that they were taking a deep price cut in their profits, but they were really pushing for these readers to succeed since let's face it: previous attempts by other companies to market e-readers had failed spectacularly. This didn't sit well with many of the big publishers, who threatened to pull their e-book contracts with Amazon if they didn't reset the prices to what the publisher specifically wanted. Now the messed up part is that the publishers supposedly didn't lose any money coming in, Amazon did. However according to this book, what really scared the pants off of the publishers was really the idea that Amazon would undermine the industry.

As many know, this sparked widespread condemnation of first Amazon (with people assuming that they changed it voluntarily) and then later the publishers themselves. People petitioned, posted negative reviews, and some even railed against the authors, many of whom were actually for the lower price setting. This price war brought a lot of attention to the ebook world and to the idea of ebook prices in general, regardless of how you stood on the matter.

So now Publishers Weekly has put out a 58 page book about the whole shebang from the viewpoint of Andrew Albanese. It's going for $1.99 on Amazon, if anyone's interested. I might give in and buy it myself so I can give it a whirl.

Further Reading:
*'The Battle of $9.99,' a PW Original E-book
*Amazon page
*ebooks: Apple is Guilty in The Battle of the $9.99

Awesome news! Macmillan to Offer Entire E-book Backlist to Libraries

I just saw this on Publishers Weekly and had to comment.

Apparently Macmillan is making about 11,000 books available to libraries, which is pretty spiffy. Ever since college started to royally kick my butt and demolish most of my spare time I've mostly spent my time listening to audiobooks, but getting more e-books is always a good thing. I can vouch that there is nothing more frustrating than trying to download a certain book and finding that the library doesn't have the ebook for that specific book. Sometimes they'll be part of series, which will really get someone flustered.

This is ebook only, but this is pretty great news that makes me fairly optimistic about this opening the door for more audiobooks to hit the library OverDrive systems. That's still a pretty underserved portion of the online library market where you have maybe about one audiobook to every ten e-books, but this gives me hope that eventually more publishers will make their audiobook catalogues more available.

Now this doesn't guarantee that your library will necessarily option the books for distribution, but it does mean that it makes it more likely that it'll happen. Of course you could look at this as another step towards libraries becoming obsolete (a reason why I'm going to get my library degree in information systems), but it's something that will greatly benefit a lot of people who have internet access but can't immediately access a library for whatever reason. (Distance, illness, disability, etc)

Mental Health: Not always a matter of will

A few days ago an author posted a tweet. This isn't really news, as many authors post tweets every day. This, however, was one that I kind of felt was harmful in several ways.

The post in question was from global bestselling author Laurell K Hamilton on the subject of mental illness and while I don't think she meant any true ill will, it's something that made me more than a little mad.

I've seen people overcome tremendous odds & others with all the help fail. Force of will makes the difference. @econoprof @darrincoe
— Laurell K. Hamilton (@LKHamilton) October 5, 2013

The gist of the tweet was that Hamilton was talking about her own battle with mental illness and how she felt like she was taking charge of the situation. However at the same time the tweet sends off a dangerous message: that what happens in the course of mental illness is all down to choice.

Don't get me wrong. To a degree choice does factor into how your mental illness unfolds. If someone knows that they are suffering from a mental illness, has the ability to access mental health care, and chooses to do so, then they are influencing their future. The same goes for someone in this situation who chooses not to get help.

However mental illness isn't as easy as getting help and telling yourself that you won't do something harmful. It doesn't work that way. If it did, then every clinic out there would have people who walk in and out of the doctor's office in perfect mental health.

Sometimes a person can have depression that sinks in so heavily that they can't stop themselves from doing or thinking things that are detrimental to themselves and the people around them. Even if a portion of their brain is screaming out that picking up that shotgun is not the answer, their mental illness is screaming at them even louder and makes it impossible for that part of their mind to be heard.

Sometimes people can really, really want to break a cycle of mental illness but have no access to health care. Yes, yes. I know that some will say that many places have free or nearly free health facilities or suicide hotline numbers to call to talk to people. Not everyone has the ability to access those and for some, the free or nearly free alternatives aren't enough. Despite this being a bright shiny world where people are supposed to have more access to health care options and support groups than ever before, not everyone has equal access to these things.

And sometimes a person's culture, environment, or upbringing can make an equally huge difference. Some people grow up being told that seeking a psychiatrist or therapist means that you're completely and utterly broken, that there's something so wrong with you that you deserve to be locked away from humanity. There was and in many places, still is a huge stigma associated with seeking professional help. Some cultures and religions still see this kind of therapy as "bad".

The problem with all of this, and I'm running into a rant here, is that it's not as easy as saying that someone's will will make all the difference in how their mental health unfolds. A person can have access to great health care, have a huge support network, and a wonderfully rational mind full of common sense... yet still be unable to will themselves healthy. For Hamilton to essentially make it seem like mental health is all about telling yourself you won't fail is a hugely dangerous message.

It tells people that if their minds are telling them that they're worthless, that they aren't "trying hard enough to be happy". Hyperbole and a Half did an excellent blog on how depression isn't always easily solved by you trying to will yourself into a happy state. A person can know that their line of thinking isn't "right" or "logical" and try so damn hard to turn everything around... yet it doesn't work. For someone to say that "Force of will makes the difference" can make people feel like they're even more useless and that they aren't doing things right.

The problem is that there's no right way to do things. Sometimes someone can go into things with an extremely strong will and the mindset that they will beat their depression... yet still end up losing the battle.

How do I know this?

A few years ago my uncle shot himself. He'd been battling depression for years and had a mind that was unbelievable. My uncle had an amazingly large circle of friends, family, and students. He made a huge impact on the people around him to where we couldn't have all of his mourners in the funeral home. We still have people stop by my grandparents' house on the anniversary of his death. My uncle was far from perfect, but he was what people call "a damn good person".

But he still shot himself. And yes, he reached out to people around him for help. But sometimes none of that is enough. Sometimes someone can get so overwhelmed with their depression and mental problems that all of the ideas of willpower, support networks, and professional help get washed away in the moment. Sometimes people can have that brief moment where they can call for help. Sometimes they have people around them that can call for help. But sometimes they don't. My uncle fought for a long time and he was one of thousands of people who lose the fight against depression every year.

Don't get me wrong. A mindset can have an impact on someone's mental health. It's just that so often people tend to assume that someone can will themselves out of depression. Sometimes they can. But not everyone. That's why it's very dangerous to make blanket statements like the one Hamilton did.

If she was some nobody then this might not be so bad, but she's someone with a large audience and her words get read by a lot of people. I don't think her intent was to make it sound like someone can will themselves better and that if they fail then it's because they "didn't try hard enough", but that's what it comes across like.

I haven't posted in a really long time due to school, but Hamilton's tweet pissed me off royally and I had to write something about it.

Further reading:

*Hyperbole and a Half: Adventures in Depression
*Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part 2

Book Review: The Angel Stone by Juliet Dark

Title: The Angel Stone (Fairwick Trilogy Book 3)
Author: Juliet Dark
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: 9/3/2013





You know those books, the ones that you eagerly await with baited breath? The ones that when you get them, you want to go run around the block screaming at the top of your lungs while holding your literary prize over your head like the Olympic Torch? This was one of those books and I was excited when I was approved for a copy. I can't say that this book really met those expectations, which were admittedly a little high.

For Callie McFay, a half-witch/half-fey professor of folklore and Gothic literature, the fight to save the enchanted town of Fairwick, New York, is far from over. After a hostile takeover by the Grove—a sinister group of witches and their cohorts—many of the local fey have been banished or killed, including Callie’s one true love. And in place of the spirit of tolerance and harmony, the new administration at Fairwick College has fostered an air of danger and distrust. 

With her unique magical abilities, Callie is the only one who can rescue her friends from exile and restore order to the school—a task that requires her to find the Angel Stone, a legendary talisman of immense power. Propelled on an extraordinary quest back to seventeenth-century Scotland, Callie risks her life to obtain the stone. Yet when she encounters a sexy incarnation of her lost love, she finds the greater risk is to her heart. As the fate of Fairwick hangs in the balance, Callie must make a wrenching choice: reclaim a chance for eternal passion or save everything she holds dear.

The story in this book didn't start off terribly. To the contrary, this actually wasn't half bad to start and I kept going through the pages at a feverish pace. There was still that element of magic that kept me mesmerized despite having some misgivings over how the book's prose felt in relation to its subject matter. The story so far has been fairly dark and the writing style felt slightly unsuited, as it felt pretty light and airy at times. That didn't overly bother me until it came time for Callie to travel back in time.

And that's about where the magic seemed to turn off for me as the reader.

The passages in the past aren't awful, but they seemed to lack the spark that the earlier pages of Angel Stone held. They almost felt a little forced and obligatory at times, especially when long stretches would pass and it just felt like things were going on forever. This kind of made this part of the story sag, which was unfortunate when you consider that once the story tries to return to its former pacing and setting, the plot rushes far too quickly and Dark tries to cram all of these various plot elements together and resolve them in the span of a few pages.

It just doesn't work and for people who were previously complaining that Dark tries too hard to mash too many plots into one area and ends up ping-ponging all over the place as a result, this will be a major issue. Some of the plot resolution just seems a little false, when you consider that some of these were built up to be awfully impossible to beat earlier in the book and they're resolved in about a page or so. It just rings a little hollow and I can't help but feel that while Dark is amazing at setting up a story and a great world, she doesn't seem to really have a handle on the endings. I can't help but feel that if maybe, just maybe she'd cut down on the long part in the middle about traveling to the past and/or used that to extend the ending and write it out a little more rather than resolving everything in about 30 pages, the book would have been that much stronger for it.

I liked the book for the most part, but ultimately I can't give this much more than three stars. This was a fizzle of an ending as opposed to the huge bang that I was hoping for. It's like expecting a Cherry Coke and someone gives you a Diet Pepsi. You might like Diet Pepsi, but it wasn't what you were expecting your server to supply. If you're eagerly awaiting the final book then I wouldn't say that you should avoid this book or only get it from the library. I would say that you should lower your expectations, as this doesn't really hold up to Demon Lover or Water Witch. I'd still check out Dark's other works, but with a little hesitation.

Three out of Five Stars


(ARC provided by Netgalley and Ballentine Books)

Amazon to launch fanfiction platform

Fan fic on the kindle? Critics of the idea of "pulled to publish" fanfiction will probably have a lot to say about this.

Recently Amazon announced that they're opening up a new publishing platform Kindle Worlds. The platform would enable fanfiction authors to publish their works for a profit without having to actually change anything in the works themselves, supposedly. All with the approval of the publisher/company that owns the rights to the books or shows in question. Of course the author won't get the lion's share of the money charged per book. Authors of longer works (10,000+ words) will receive 35% of the price for their books while ones who have written less than 10,000 words will only get 20%. According to Entertainment Weekly, the pricing will be between 99 cents and $3.99.

So far only one company has decided to play ball with this new format, Warner Bros, and only for three very  specific book turned television show series: Gossip Girls, The Vampire Diaries and Pretty Little Liars. This limits the amount of fanfiction that can be published, as not everyone wants to write fanfiction for these shows, but it'd be interesting to see if any other companies would come aboard if this does well.

There isn't a set time as to when this will drop, but I'm of mixed emotions about this. There's no doubt that some fanfiction authors work very, very hard at what they do and put a lot of time and effort into ensuring that their specific works stick to canon or if not, would read as believable to their audience. Part of me thinks that there's nothing wrong with rewarding them by giving them money in a format that has the approval of the official copyright holders.

Then again, part of me is a little antsy about this because for some reason this just seems a little well, wrong. One of the core things about fanfiction is that it's written by fans, for fans for free. Technically there's nothing against the law about charging for fanfiction if the publisher has signed up for fanfics to specifically be published for profit. I can't even say anything about the very real inevitability about someone putting out a work that's not even worth ten cents, because we already get this with both self-publishing and the mainstream publishing world.

So I can't quite put my finger on why this bothers me so much. Maybe there's just a worry about this going from someone exploring their love for a show/book/movie to where it turns solely into something they're doing for profit. Or maybe I'm just afraid that people will only publish fanfiction and not create their own worlds. Both are possibilities, but the second has always been a fear for fanfiction and the first is something that goes on in the publishing world already. How many times have we seen authors pump out garbage because they know it'd be a guaranteed sell because of name recognition? Neither are really feasible reasons to not publish fanfiction for profit because that'd be punishing a lot of authors who either aren't interested in putting out non-fanfiction work and/or have no interest in actually getting rich-rich off their work. (But don't mind getting a little money.)

Or perhaps I'm afraid that this might be a way for publishers and companies to start actively cracking down on fanfiction authors. I haven't heard of any whisper of censorship for the works, but it's a possibility. It's well within a publisher's right to request that certain things not be published under their banner, although I will admit that I doubt that they'd refuse to publish things such as slash fanfiction. I can't even say that the publishers can now go after people who aren't publishing under their banner, because that would probably take more money and time than it'd be worth- although it'd be interesting to see if Warner Bros would seek for Fanfiction.net to remove fanfiction for the three shows mentioned above.

I guess all we can do is just wait and see.

Further Reading:
*Amazon to launch fanfiction platform (Entertainment Weekly)
*Amazon to allow e-book fan fiction sales in US (BBC)

10 Biggest Book Adaptation Flops

I can't help but repost this. Publishers Weekly recently did a list of the biggest flops out there when it came to film adaptations of books. And yes, Battlefield Earth was on there. That was actually my litmus test. Travolta took what was a classic of science-fiction dystopian novels (at least in my opinion), took it home, got it drunk, filmed himself pulling a Deliverance on the book, and then left its beaten and half-dead body in a back alley. Then he subjected the movie-going public to whatever was left of the book and the film he got the night before. Yeah. Not a fan of the movie. I might have liked it more if I hadn't read the book almost religiously as a teen, I might have been a little more forgiving.

In any case, here are the ten biggest book adaptation flops per Publishers Weekly:

10. John Carter
9. Atlas Shrugged I, II, (and probably III)
8. Bonfire of the Vanities
7. Around the World in 80 Days
6. The Scarlet Letter (Demi Moore's version)
5. All the King's Men
4. Sphere
3. Gods and Generals
2. Pinnochio
1. Battlefield Earth

Further reading:

*10 Biggest Book Adaptation Flops

Book review: The Shift by Fiona Dodwell

Title: The Shift
Author: Fiona Dodwell
Publisher: Double Dragon Publishing
Release Date: 05/10/2013
ISBN: 1771150955




I've been a fan of Dodwell's for a while now, ever since I was able to read a copy of her first book The Banishing. Which, I might add, is a creepy little read that I wholly recommend. There's this wonderful creepiness about her work that reminds me of some of the better pulp horror novels I'd read as a teen. You know the type, the ones that tried to play more heavily on the most basic fears and leave you feeling fairly uneasy- the ones that aren't always guaranteed to end with the main character standing triumphantly over the bodies of their enemies while puppies, babies, and kittens scamper around happily. The Shift continues in that vein and while a little on the short side, Dodwell makes the most of her novella and gives a fast moving book that's sure to please.

Michael White is a man desperate to escape his past. After tragedy costs him his job and marriage, he finds himself abandoned in a world of depression, loneliness and unemployment – until a new start working at a luxurious care home is offered. 

But Hill Wood House isn’t like any other care home. What are the shadowy figures that follow Michael? What do they want? And beyond the paranormal, who is stalking Michael? Who is entering his home at night and leaving disturbing messages across his walls? 

Can anyone ever really escape their past? Michael is about to go on a dark journey to uncover the truth behind what is haunting him – a truth that will wreak death and destruction to those Michael cares about.

As you can tell from the opening paragraph, I really enjoyed this novella. A good portion of the book is set within the posh care home and I'll admit that I have a soft spot for any place that involves creepy and remote settings. It has this instant atmosphere and helps enhance any spook activity- and there is spook activity in this book. I'll warn readers that there might not be as much description of the care home as a whole. It's a place where people with various disabilities are dumped by their wealthy families, but we're not entirely given a huge amount of detail except for what's immediately needed for the plot. This doesn't handicap the book (no pun intended), but I'll admit that occasionally I wanted a bit more detail here and there. More information on the type of residents allowed there, as well as some back story on some of their families, would have made them seem a little more fleshed out and fully realized.

What also intrigued me is that so far I've noticed that there's this theme in Dodwell's books that surrounds an unhealthy/obsessive love of some sort. That is present in this book, although I can't entirely elaborate on it because it's ultimately the whole gist of the book. I was actually a little hesitant to reveal even that much, as it gives away quite a bit, but then again if you've read any of her other works then you'll probably have expected this from Shift like I did. This is ultimately what made the ending that much cooler, as love is a theme that almost all of us can identify with in some form or fashion. We might not all be the type that creates hair dolls or carves someone's name into our chest (neither of which happens in this book, just listing those as examples), but the concept of someone doing something out of a twisted sense of affection is one that can unsettle just about any reader.

I didn't really have that many quibbles about this as a whole, other than wishing that occasionally there was a little more fleshing out. This works well with its page length and to be honest, this is better served as a novella than a 300+ page tome. It won't take the place of The Banishing as her most uncomfortable/interesting work to date, though. That's a pretty hard story to top, but The Shift will definitely please Dodwell's fanbase.

4 out of 5 stars

(Reader copy provided by author)