eBook Notes For Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Digital books are coming on strong at the Apple App Store!

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Under New & Noteworthy there are four alone!

That only one of them is listed under Book again highlights the dire need for Apple to hire some librarians for the App Store!

That gluten-free one also highlights an important issue: When is a book an application and not a book? As far as I’m concerned, anything that is a collection of information that could have been rendered mostly in print is a book.

Under What’s Hot there’s one:

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And under Staff Favorites there’s one:

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And there are more digital books:

MoM launches its first iPhone app

Michael O’Mara has today launched its first iPhone app – The Little Book of Twitter – which is available from iTunes for £1.79.

News at MoM
iTunes App Store link
Mobikats developer site (but their blog is fallow since August!)

It’s pretty!

And there’s another one:

Haynes: Car Tips

Haynes, publisher of the famous Haynes Owners Workshop Manuals for cars and motorcycles, and leading publisher of general practical books has released the first Haynes iPhone App under a licensing agreement with technology company, Gourmet Pixel.

I can’t show screensnaps from this one. When I went to look for it, I was given a notice it’s not available in the U.S. App Store. Apparently it’s for the U.K. only. Hit the link to go to the website to see some screensnaps.

And there’s Electric Literature, as seen above under Staff Favorites:

Electric Literature App Store link

Some congratulations to iVerse Media, which tweeted:

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And a gorgeous screensnap:

App Store link for iVerse Media

A very interesting blog post by the people at Vook: Vook Pricing

A digital price point more than $9.99 is not scaring people away. As our readers have found, the integrated videos in the vook don’t just augment the text, they bring entirely new value to the reader[.]

Digital books are worth more than ePub because they can do more and contain more.

Now I turn to writers:

Writer Richard K. Morgan, who wrote Altered Carbon (and others) …

has some news:

About a year ago, and out of the blue, I got an e-mail from one John Miles, an enforcer (okay, not really) for the British arm of EA Games. He had a proposition for me, was I interested?

Writer Gregory Maguire at McNally Jackson bookstore in New York City
Thursday, November 12, 2009, 7:00-8:00PM

This Thursday we have in Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Son of a Witch among other bestselling novels, to read from his latest book The Next Queen of Heaven.

Concord Free Press
Writer Stona Fitch on Twitter

Writer Moriah Jovan with: Everything is still biased against the lone artist.

In a lot of ways, I like being a lone artist. When I go to authors’ websites and read about the difficulties they have working with a publisher, I’m glad. When I go to readers’ websites and read about how sad they are when a favorite author gets cut off mid-series, I’m glad. When I sit down to write and realize that I can do anything I want without having to account to a sales staff, I’m glad.

And immediately related is this: For Writers: Get Off Your Ass (Whether You Want To Get Paid or Not)

If it takes an hour to write 1000 good, solid words, at let’s say, $35 per hour, and we’re talking about a 75,000 word novel, that novel should net you $2625. It’s valued at a literal price of $2625. Ok, you can bump it up, what with revisions and all.

Right?

Or is $35 per hour too low? You think your writing is worth more?

Partners at major New York law firms list their hourly rates at $750-1100 per hour. Paralegals, though they don’t get paid this much, are billed to clients at about $200 per hour. You think a good novelist is worth more than $35 per hour?

Every writer must go read the rest.