eBook Notes For Thursday, October 15, 2009

Shadowmancer author Graham Taylor stops writing to care for sick daughter

Here are the two bits important to writers:

Mr Taylor, who writes under the name GP Taylor, became a leading light in the literary world when he sold the rights to his first book, Shadowmancer, for £314,000 – three times the advance JK Rowling got for the first Harry Potter story.

And:

Mr Taylor sold his motorbike to self-publish his first novel Shadowmancer, a parable about Christianity and black magic set in the 18th century.

It was snapped up by publishers Faber & Faber and went on to top the best-seller lists for 15 weeks.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Best wishes to his unfortunate daughter.

Walmart.com cuts prices on yet-to-be-released books

Walmart.com is cutting the prices of popular books even before they hit store shelves.

The online division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc said on Thursday that it is pricing the top 10 pre-selling books on its website at $10 each, including free shipping.

The $10 price represent a 66 percent cut on the $28.99 listing price for Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue: An American Life”, or a 64 percent cut on the $27.99 price for Michael Crichton’s “Pirate Latitudes.”

The titles will not ship until November, but eager consumers can now place orders for the books online — representing “pre-sales.”

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

More evidence that desperation rules the print book industry and is feeling pressure from the eBook Bubble.

TVGuide.com Launches TV Listings and Entertainment News Application for iPhone and iPod Touch

TVGuide.com, now reaching 20 million unique users per month, today announced that it is launching a TV listings and entertainment news application exclusively for iPhone and iPod Touch. Developed in collaboration with Roundbox Inc., TV Guide Mobile will allow users to quickly and easily find out when their favorite TV shows are on and where to watch them. Users will also receive TVGuide.com’s breaking entertainment news, scoops, episode recaps and daily TV hot lists.

I’m of the generation when printed TV Guide cost only fifteen cents for the longest time. Getting it each week was an event — probably like those in the boonies getting the Sears Catalog (except TV Guide was weekly). I’d grab a red pen and mark up all the stuff I wanted to watch on the rabbit-eared black-and-white TV. Paradoxically, with all the hundreds of cable TV channels there are today, there is much less to actually watch. There’s a lesson in that for eBooks too, I think.

Zensify visualizes news with Cloud-based iPhone app

Zensify has launched a free news analysis application for the iPhone and iPhone touch. According to Zensify CTO Tom Campbell, ZenNews generates a visual “tag cloud” based on news trending topics that allows users to track “hidden patterns” in real-time.

Go to the Zensify website. These apps are displaying metadata.

JD Supra’s Legal Edge iPhone App Targets Lawyers

“Legal Edge” is the first iPhone application to be powered by the legal community at large. The app allows users to browse the latest legal articles, news of interest, blog posts, and court filings uploaded to JD Supra by lawyers and legal professionals, and to read the content in iPhone’s Safari browser or the PDF reader. Users can also connect directly with document authors via a “Contact Contributor” feature within the app.

NME launches iPhone application

NME has launched a dedicated iPhone/iPod application via the iTunes store.

The app takes NME’s iconic rock photography to iPhones for the first time, allowing music fans to view and own some of the best exclusive photos to have appeared in the pages of NME on their mobile.

Ah, how I’m sure they wish they had this when The Smiths and Morrissey were coming up! Speaking of … is there a Morrissey app yet?

Libraries and Readers Wade Into Digital Lending

Kate Lambert recalls using her library card just once or twice throughout her childhood. Now, she uses it several times a month.

The lure? Electronic books she can download to her laptop. Beginning earlier this year, Ms. Lambert, a 19-year-old community college student in New Port Richey, Fla., borrowed volumes in the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series, “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold and a vampire novel by Laurell K. Hamilton, without ever visiting an actual branch.

“I can just go online and type my library card number in and look through all the books that they have,” said Ms. Lambert, who usually downloads from the comfort of her bedroom. And, she added, “It’s all for free.”

I regret to inform the New York Public Library that when I submit my latest subsidy — massive library fines — that will be the end of them from me. Should I want to read print, I will restrict myself to one book that I will read immediately. No more building a To Be Read stack of print. That’s over for me.

Android Market Sales, Are Those Tears or is it Raining in Here?

My favourite Android apps
— not exactly eBook or even book-related, but Android is moving more onto my radar screen these days, with the Archos 5 Internet Tablet and that just-announced Acer Liquid phone.