books

Amazon employees demand book banning

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged Amazon books censorship on by

Some employees of a huge corporation demanded it should decide which books are acceptable for customers. They engaged in what’s called a “die-in,” which consists of lying on the ground while issuing demands. They demanded that Amazon decide which books it approves of and not make others available to customers.

This is small stuff, but it’s weird that anyone would demand that a mega-corporation which is the world’s largest bookseller should have an Index of Prohibited Books that it won’t sell. The protesters fantasize that they’ll get to call the shots. They imagine that they’ll decide what’s on the Index; probably they all think they’ll be promoted to the new position that compiles the Index.
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Book discussion: To Kill a Mockingbird 1

This entry was posted in Book discussion and tagged books fiction history on by

I thought I had read To Kill a Mockingbird before, but I must have been mistaken. I couldn’t have forgotten so much of so powerful a book.

It must have been the movie that confused my memory. It’s an excellent adaptation of the book, but it focuses more on the Tom Robinson trial. The trial is an important part of Harper Lee’s novel, but the canvas is broader.Cover, old paperback edition of To Kill a Mockingbird

The novel presents the experiences of a girl growing up in a small Alabama town in the 1930s. Her father is Atticus Finch, an attorney of impeccable integrity. It presents what seems to me like an honest picture of people’s attitudes in that place and time.
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A new review of Spells of War

This entry was posted in My writing Reviews and tagged books Spells of War on by

Monica Cellio has posted a review of Spells of War.

Spells of War tells an interesting story with characters I cared about. In both books, the author made me care about, and understand the inner struggles of, people who are on the “other side” — the inquisitor in the first book and Petros and his peers in the second. Spells of War shows the devastation that war causes on all involved.

As she notes, Monica was a beta reader and got a free copy in return for her useful advice. There was no quid pro quo beyond that.

Here’s the information on ordering Spells of War.

Be kind to obscure novelists week

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged books on by

It’s safe to say I’m an obscure novelist. I know lots of other obscure novelists and even a few you’ve likely heard of. When they’re friends, I try to make them a little less obscure. It doesn’t take a lot of effort. Authors love reviews, but a full review isn’t necessary. Any mention helps if it isn’t too negative.

If you have a blog or use social media, mentioning the books you’ve read lately helps the authors. Dan Brown may not care, but it can make a significant difference to someone who’s hoping to hit a thousand sales. If you use sites like LibraryThing and Goodreads, follow the authors you know and rate their books. If they run a promotion, let your friends know about it.

You might even learn something about your friends’ interests and knowledge from the books they’ve written.

To put my keyboard where my mouth is, here are some novels by authors I know who are less than famous:
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Working with the Smashwords Meatgrinder

This entry was posted in My writing Techniques and tagged books smashwords software on by

Smashwords was once a leading distributor of e-books. I still use it, since I don’t care to give Amazon an exclusive on my work and Smashwords offers a good deal. Smashwords lets me distribute to several other outlets. It’s become obvious, though, that it’s fallen behind technologically.

Compare the process of uploading books. When I uploaded Spells of War to Amazon KDP, I was asked for a DOCX file. There was little trouble exporting one from LibreOffice and uploading it. The one issue was that even though the file had its own table of contents, KDP wanted to generate its own. I deleted the existing table of contents and let the server generate one. It wasn’t immediately obvious how to position it after the title page (you drag it in the list of elements), but I figured it out pretty quickly.

Smashwords has an old piece of software, called “Meatgrinder,” to turn a DOC (not DOCX) file into various e-book formats. When I uploaded my file, it gave me several cryptic error messages. They all pertained to indented quotations in the book, and they all referred to the intermediate HTML which Meatgrinder created. Specifically, they told me that HTML tags, such as blockquote, weren’t properly nested. I didn’t create those tags; Meatgrinder did. It was telling me about its own errors and expecting me to fix them!

Something similar had happened with The Magic Battery, but I couldn’t remember how I solved the problem then. This time, I changed the style of all the quotes to Text Body and then applied styling to adjust their indentation. This is the wrong way to style a book robustly, but it got Meatgrinder to accept the file. Soon Smashwords should let me distribute the book to other channels. At the moment it’s pending review.

I’d like Smashwords to stay around so that Amazon has competition, but I can see problems like this discouraging self-publishing authors.

Update: I just came across an announcement that Draft2Digital is acquiring Smashwords. Mergers always raise questions and concerns, but the announcement says Smashwords authors and publishers will get access to “simpler publishing tools,” so there’s reason for optimism. I’ll try to keep up with the news on this development.