Ray Bradbury is famous for among other things, hating the idea of ebooks, and indeed the entire internet as well.

As has been remarked upon by other commentators, the idea that Fahrenheit 451 will appear as an ebook has a certain charm, given that the subject of the book is the demise of books as a result of the rise of a faster and more universal form of information spreading.

So, Bradbury has long held out against any of his books being issued as ebooks, saying that ebooks “smell like burned fuel” and calling the Internet nothing but “a big distraction.”

Hmmmmmm…………….

Money talks….. It seems.

As far as I can gather, perhaps the main factor in changing Ray Bradbury’s mind is the fact that this book will shortly come out of copyright, and as Ray Bradbury’s agent, Michael Congdon, explained  the rights for Bradbury’s book were expiring and that the growing digital market, estimated at 20 percent or higher of overall sales, made a deal for e-books inevitable.

“We explained the situation to him (Bradbury) that a new contract wouldn’t be possible without e-book rights,” said Congdon, who added that six publishers had been interested. “He understood and gave us the right to go ahead.”

So, in the end it seems that straight forward business considerations caused Ray Bradbury to change his mind on this subject.

“Fahrenheit 451″ published by Simon & Schuster, price of $9.99.

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Is Bradbury right to apparently dump his feelings about the internet and ebooks for purely commercial reasons?

Ebooks, paper books, books for African kids, all in the one place.

They have come up with an intriguing way of letting others decide if a book is worth publishing or not, a sort of Peer review system, which they explain as follows:

The process is simple. Just as it’s done in the publishing world, we ask authors to submit ten pages and a summary of their book. We then let you browse the submissions based on your preferences. You read a brief overview, and if it strikes your fancy, you click through to read a more in depth description. If you’re still interested, you read an excerpt. And if that leaves you wanting more, you support it (which is essentially like preordering the book)! You don’t get charged unless the book is published, so there’s no risk.

So that is their plan, simple but rather neat I think you will agree, and certainly opens publishing up and gives aspiring authors a good chance of seeing their work actually printed, if it is any good at least.  I like it.

All books that get published will be published as paper books, but also as ebooks, which will be available  in Kindle, Nook and Sony formats. In other words, the books -  both ebook and paper book – will be available at most of the normal outlets and for almost all ereaders, which is great news.

On top of that,they also have a forum on their site, which in their words (again):

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Life in the American countryside, a bitter sweet ebook about human relationships

I have just finished reading Tom’s Wife, an ebook available from Amazon (see below for link) written by Alana Cash, and it turned out to be one of the best books I have read for quite some time.

You may have read her account of the problems she went through to publish this ebook, if not, follow the link to it below.

Set in the American countryside in an unspecified time, it is the story of Annie, a young woman married to a brutal miner/farmer, the Tom in the title, whose relationship is based on male supremacy and female servitude.   On the face of it, not a subject that makes for happy reading, but in this book Alana has made her main characters so real that the complexities of human relationships bring it all into balance.

All the characters in this ebook are complex layered humans, no one is simply good or bad or in between, they are real, and show all those aspects in their personalities and actions.   Annie, who on the face of it is the “good” one in the story, is basically a very honest young woman, yet she is prepared to cheat and lie if it helps her survive in her very difficult life, so she has a “bad” side too.    Even Tom, who for the greater part is a brutal slob, has his moments of tenderness and uncertainty.   It is this that appeals to me about this ebook, the people in it are all multilayered, and thus real, and interesting, as their reactions to events are not automatically defined by a two dimensional character, as is so often the case in books.

Another thing I liked about this book was that Alana didn’t waste time on setting the scene.  We are never told which part of the USA, or even what period this book is set in.  I guess it is in the 1930’s from internal evidence, but I am probably wrong, and it really isn’t important, as this is a book about people, and their lives, which are much the same whether it is 1936 Kansas or 2011 Kashkar.

In fact the entire ebook is really made up of conversations; there are very few descriptive passages in this ebook, which is a bit complicated for the first few pages, but once you are into the book it all flows very naturally and is perfectly understandable.

Alana has a nice way with words, and comes up with some wonderfully evocative phrases in this ebook, such as the following which I particularly liked. Annie is contemplating her cockerel mating with one of her hens, when the following thought occurred to her: Read full story »

Post written by Guest Writer Lizzy Ford:

From Rejection to Sales: This Guerrilla Writer’s Tale

Like many indie writers, I tried on and off for about ten years to gain the attention and interest of an agent or publisher.  I had a few false starts and a whole lot of ignored query letters after years of grueling work.  Thoroughly depressed, I almost gave up on writing and began to doubt I ever had an ounce of talent in me.  My husband is the I.T. brawn of the family who had been following technological development in the book arena, and suggested I try e-publishing this past December.  Going in, I wasn’t really sure how things would turn out, because I’d been programmed to believe that writers forced to invest in themselves are writers who weren’t good enough for a publisher to invest in them.

We studied what most successful writers have in common, identified two common themes (multiple titles and an extensive fan base) and used those to tailor a marketing plan that I’ve been told multiple times was nothing short of madness.  The plan had two goals:

1.  Focus on exposure – not sales – for 2011.
2.  Make December 2011 the month when it all comes together.

I’m a fanatic writer, and I can write 30-60,000 words a month.  I also had a list of about 65 projects I wanted to write, of which about 3 were completed and about 30 were in various stages of writing.  So we decided to do what no one else had done yet: write as many books as I could this year and release them all for free in order to build a back list and fan base in the shortest amount of time possible.  By the end of December, we’ll have released 10 books this year.  We’ve been operating under the assumption that any sales we get before December are luck – they’re not part of the plan!  In December, we monetize our operations.

My December target: sell 10,000 books.

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Rich Adin mulls over my post on the dangers for authors in a world dominated by ebooks.

Rich Adin who runs an interesting blog (An American Editor) read my post about the problems that the advent of ebooks have brought to authors who want to make a living writing and left a comment there, which finished with these words:

“Hmmm. I think I will stop here and use this comment as a basis for a post at my blog. Writing for you has freely inspired me to write for me; the consequent cost to you is that the balance of my thoughts are not currently available. Sounds like the publishing industry in decline, doesn’t it?”

Well, he has now written that post for his blog, and it seemed to me that I should repost it here as it is a reaction to things I wrote in that post on my blog.  And in passing make those thoughts he referred to available to us all here as well as on his blog!  Ha!

So, here is that post for your interest and enjoyment:

Clashing Perspectives: Coming Home to Roost

Ewan Morrison wrote about the future of publishing from the publisher’s and author’s perspectives. I somewhat share his bleak, perhaps apocalyptic, outlook for the future of the publishing industry (see “Are Books Dead, and Can Authors Survive?“; for “outsider’s” perspective, see Tony Cole’s discussion of Morrison’s article, ”Can Authors Survive in the Age of eReaders and eBooks?“).

The mistake being made in publishing is, I think, one of clashing perspectives. People in the industry look at a book, regardless of its form, as simultaneously a commodity and something unique. The mistake is that it has to be one or the other; it cannot be both. It cannot be both because each perspective demands a different approach to the book and the two approaches are incompatible.

As a result of this clash, each step in the production of the book is degraded. The result is that, for too many authors, the only thing that matters is getting “published,” with the consequence of “free” being the optimal way to get noticed. With the growth of free, there has to be a decline in “not free.” Misbalance of free and not free is, in the end, the death knell of “traditional” publishing.

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At the Edinburgh International Book Festival this weekend, Ewan Morrison set out his bleak vision of a publishing industry in terminal decline and the equally bleak future for writers.

In a long article in the Guardian Newspaper yesterday, (link below) Ewan Morrison’s very depressing vision of what we are heading for in the world of writing and publishing was reported in some detail, and very depressing reading it makes too for all of those who love books and certainly depressing for those who want to write books as well.

Basically his contention is that the advent of ebooks and the drive to free or almost free ebooks being available online at sites such as Smashwords, Amazon and so on has removed the financial underpinning of the publishing and writing world, and thus the profession of writing will soon become a thing of the past.

He puts it thus:

Within 25 years the digital revolution will bring about the end of paper books. But more importantly, ebooks and e-publishing will mean the end of “the writer” as a profession. Ebooks, in the future, will be written by first-timers, by teams, by specialty subject enthusiasts and by those who were already established in the era of the paper book. The digital revolution will not emancipate writers or open up a new era of creativity, it will mean that writers offer up their work for next to nothing or for free. Writing, as a profession, will cease to exist.

He supports this contention with a most impressive analysis of various other digital industries that have been established for longer than ebooks, and shows that all of them have found themselves in a downwards spiral of lower and lower earnings as people move away from traditional forms of music, film and so on in favour of the much cheaper (or free) digital forms of these arts.

Amusingly, and unusually he includes the porn industry in this list, stating that the income from all manner of pornography has dropped by almost 60% since the advent of free streaming video on line, quoting two sources for this:

According to the LA Times “Industry insiders estimate that since 2007, revenue for most adult production and distribution companies has declined from 30% to 50% and the number of new films made has fallen sharply”. One top porn star, Savannah Stern, has cited that, on par with most of her colleagues, her earnings fell in 2010, from $150K a year to $50K. As Bill Asher, co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment, states: “We always said that once the internet took off, we’d be OK … It never crossed our minds that we’d be competing with people who just give it away for free.”

Curious, no?   And I had always thought that porn was an industry that had guaranteed high income.

Author’s advances:

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