Untreed Reads Publishing

I’ve never been much of a fashionista, but by the time I was a senior in high school, something became very clear to me. To survive in the hallowed hallways of Central Valley High School, I needed an edge. Not being a particularly edgy person, I discovered that what I wore was probably the easiest way to set myself apart from the rest of the crowd.

Most summers I took a trip to LA, hung with my cousins and soaked up the trends, the language and the styles. They were always a year or so ahead of us, so I’d come home with slang and clothing that hadn’t begun to seek up to the Great Right North of California.

For years, designers, musicians and other creative types look to the streets at non-mainstream communities to get a pulse on what direction our trends are going. I believe that in publishing, the e-publishing format is where the trends are emerging, in content, genre, and business model.

Initially, I discovered ebooks because I was doing a lot of writing for fun, and at some point, decided it was time to take my craft to the next level. Oddly though, a few kinks were beginning to emerge in my stories that I hadn’t previously encountered. I didn’t play inside box too well. I was putting homoerotic content into romances, and in one book, I just didn’t have the heart to hurt someone in a love triangle, so the triangle all ended up in bed together.

My heroes aren’t always tall, dark, handsome alphas, and that was probably my biggest sticking point. When I do write the traditional alpha male, he tends to be bisexual. My heroines are rarely passive feminine types. I love a strong, off-the-wall heroine that I can identify with personally.

I began to look for books with more erotic content, discovered Emma Holly’s Strange Attractions, and from there, I followed the trail of bread crumbs to e publishing.

As a reader, I was equally disappointed and stunned. I found gems side-by-side with stinkers. I tentatively purchased my first books, discovering that many, many readers had the same preferences that I had. Ménage abounded, as did bisexual content. I read my first BDSM romance, my first m/m romance and found authors who were mixing up genre every which way they could, with delightful results. I also found authors tackling subjects that are absolutely taboo elsewhere, most notably incest/twincest. Not my cup of tea, but in its way, fascinating.

It was pretty clear that if I wanted to retain my own edge as a writer, this was the place to do it.

Out there in the big, cold publishing world, progress has been crawling along. Authors such as JR Ward flirt with homoerotica, but never really seem to commit. Ménage is happening in a few of the edgier books, but is written quite tentatively and soft-edged.  Same sex encounters were generally portrayed in a negative light. However, I’m delighted to go into my local bookstore and see authors that I met through e-publishing showing up on the shelves in imprints such as Berkeley Heat and Kensington Aphrodesia.

To me, ebooks are the future for reasons other than technology. Authors working in this industry are a few steps ahead of New York. Some of the hottest authors in mainstream publishing keep their eyes on what’s happening in electronic publishing. Here, the turnover is fast, the authors are on their toes. The readers are voracious, creative, and on the lookout for fresh, original subject matter. This is not a ‘one size fits all’ industry. Every different e-publisher has their own flavor, their own spin on how they approach fiction and publishing.

No, I don’t think that e-publishing will ever replace New York, but I do think that the business models that are springing up will have a major influence on the industry. Readers that want to find edgier work will continue to discover us, and authors who just don’t march in time to a specific drummer will discover their perfect home online.

When I subbed those first manuscripts a couple years ago, I had no idea what a liberating adventure I’d be setting out on. Literally anything I can dream up can find a home, as long as it’s honest and well-written. I may not be a fashionista, but in my little way, I’m part of a trend-setting subculture, and quite happy to be exactly where I am.

Belinda lives in far Northern California, and sleeps at night snuggled with a bunch of bed-hogging Siberian Huskies. Her erotic sci fi romance Belle Starr is a 2010 finalist in the EPIC competition, which gives her a perfect excuse to go to New Orleans for her birthday next year.

Belinda is published at Loose Id, Changeling Press, and New Concepts Publishing. Please visit her website at http://www.belindamcbride.com

A reminder to all Untreed Reads visitors!  Save 5% off all of Belinda’s titles at Changeling Press when you enter coupon code Untreed09 at checkout.

Blog: http://www.belindam.blogspot.com

Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Belinda_McBride

There are certain rites of passage that one always remembers. First date. First kiss. First job. First child. First published book. Well, most people remember these dates. Oddly enough, I have no idea when I became a published writer. One day, about a month before More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire were to appear simultaneously in print, I happened to notice they were available as ebooks on my publisher’s website. How long had they been there? I don’t know. One moment I was an unpublished writer, the next moment I was published, and I didn’t even know the transformation had occurred. Shouldn’t it have been a momentous occasion? Shouldn’t such a milestone have caused a ripple in my life, a change? Shouldn’t it be a date I could celebrate?

There was a time when being epublished would not have qualified one to be considered a published writer, but that time has passed. I don’t see print books dying out any time soon, but one day, there will be more ebooks than dead tree books. Although e-books are 1.5% of the total book market, ebook sales grew 125% overall in 2008. And surprisingly e-book sales grew 183% among seniors aged 65+ and 174% among seniors aged 55-65.

One thing about ebooks that makes me want to cheer is that ebooks are not pulped. About 25% of all print books produced by the major houses are pulped because of over production and lack of warehouse space. Such a sacrilege! When someone mentions book-burning, people get upset, but if you mention book pulping, ho-hum, it’s business as usual. No one cares. I have a hunch in the not too distant future most books will be digitally printed as needed, perhaps even in the bookstores themselves. Or they will be sold as ebooks. It’s too much of a waste to throw away 25% of a product.

It pleases me to know that none of my books will ever be pulped. Daughter Am I, my recently released young woman/old gangsters coming-of-age tale, was published on October 15, 2009 as both an ebook and a digitally printed book. That date I know! The Kindle edition still isn’t available, but I’m anxiously awaiting that publication. It will be another milestone to celebrate. Another momentous date to remember.

Pat Bertram is a native of Colorado and a lifelong resident. When the traditional publishers stopped publishing her favorite type of book — character and story driven novels that can’t easily be slotted into a genre — she decided to write her own. Daughter Am I is Bertram’s third novel to be published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC. Also available are More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire.

I grew up with paper books – tangible things that you could see and feel and collect. My bookshelves overflowed, and I loved each and every one of those books. I still do, but over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the many benefits of e-books.

From a reader’s point of view, I can keep hundreds of them in my mini-laptop and read them anywhere from the airports to in the car waiting for someone, to at the park at lunchtime. That’s quite a plus for someone who managed to read five full-length novels while on a six-day family visit last spring. I can’t imagine the horror of having to lug five books from one end of the Chicago airport to the other, along with the rest of my baggage. I’m just not that athletic!

I buy e-books whenever one of my favorite authors has a new release, or when I’m browsing a publisher’s site and a book catches my imagination. I can store infinite numbers of them on a tiny little USB key or on the hard drive of the mini, ready for me whenever I need to take a break from reality. They take up hardly any space and the mini weighs in at three pounds –easy to tuck into my purse and haul around with me.

But it is as an author that I have truly learned to embrace the age of e-book. Traditional methods of writing require an author to print off hundreds of pages of manuscript, package it up neatly, and ship it to a prospective publisher. The manuscript can come and go dozens of times before it finally finds a home, and postage isn’t cheap these days. It’s a daunting proposition.

As an e-book author, I sent out queries and proposals by e-mail. Once I have a contract, I sit on my sofa, in my living room, thousands of miles from my publisher and write the story. It can bounce back and forth from me to my editor until it sparkles, and then it’s off to the proofers while I still lounge in the comfort of my home. In a mere couple of months, it’s up on the Publisher’s website and my royalties start to accumulate.

Compare that to the timeline of a print book, which can take up to two years or longer from the time that it is accepted for publication until the time it graces the shelves of the bookstore. Add on another six months before the fist royalty check is issued, and you can see why, from the author’s point of view, e-pubs are wonderful venues!

The life of an e-pubbed author is good!

Anne Kane lives in the beautiful Okanagan Valley with a bouncy Jack Russell terrier, a cantankerous Himalayan cat, and too many fish to count. She has two handsome sons and three adorable grandchildren. By day, she’s a respectable bean counter, but after hours her imagination soars and she writes romances that span the galaxy and encompass beings of all sizes, shapes and origins.She first started telling stories as a child and she just can’t seem to stop.

Her hobbies include kayaking, hiking, motorcycles, swimming, skating, karate, playing guitar, singing and of course, reading.

You can find Anne at:

Website: www.AnneKane.com

Blog: http://annekane.wordpress.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/annekane

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/anne.kane.author

Interested in Anne Kane’s writing?  You’ll find her titles in multiple formats through her publisher, Changeling Press, by clicking HERE. Untreed Reads visitors can save 5% on all titles at Changeling Press when you enter coupon code Untreed09 at checkout.

I confess I’m not a die-hard E-Book fan, as regards reading them. I’m from that old school that actually still prefers curling up with a print-version edition, in a wingback chair, in front of a roaring fire, a glass of vintage red wine (even vintage champagne in a bucket of ice) nearby. For me, there’s something about curling up with a Kindle, even in a wingback chair, in front of a roaring fire, a glass of vintage wine or champagne in hand, that just doesn’t come across as containing the same enjoyable aura.

That said, I suspected as early as 2005 that there might be something to the burgeoning E-Book phenomenon that might want to see me, as an author always eager for sales, to hop on its bandwagon. I had only one E-Book out at the time (my m/m erotica novel circuSex). Knowing it would take a good bit of work on my part to get all of my printed books formatted for E-Books, and not yet fully prepared to go that whole mile, especially if my estimation of the E-book market as “burgeoning” was way off base, I wrote the article, in February 2005, E-Books: Do People Really Read Them? (under my William J. Lambert III byline) for the on-line Useless Knowledge  web-site —
http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/feb/article334.html

My article was picked up by various other E-Book related sites, and I began getting all sorts of responses from people who insisted, yes, they do read E-Books and, yes, enjoy them and, yes, do predict that there would be even more readers of E-Books in the very-near future.

So, slowly but surely, I began, from that point on, to funnel all of my old but still-available print books, as well as all new ones, in the E-Book direction. Having, these four years later, recently checked my royalty statements from all of my publishers, I’m glad that I made the leap into E-Books and continue to do so, since the E-Book industry, and royalties there from, have, indeed, picked up steam.

Today, I feel extremely lucky (well, actually in more ways in one, but in this one way in particular), that my m/m publisher MLR Press is making the effort to see that all of its books (my new ones for them included) are not only released in print format but simultaneously as E-Book as well. Likewise, publishers like Aspen Mountain Press, with whom I’ve published a short story in an anthology (FOREIGN BOYS), do very well by me in royalties from E-Book sales.

I’m still finding it a little more difficult to get all of my older printed books into the E-Book pipeline — some of which likely will never see E-Book status unless I take the time and make the personal effort to get them converted to E-Book format. This often requires my completely retyping the book into the computer. While there are soft-ware programs available that scan a printed page and convert it into the likes of “Microsoft Office Word”, the scanner often reads text all wrong, and interprets smudges on the page as some kind of English that it invariably prints out as gobbledy-gook — providing me with all sorts of frustration. Still, I’m making the effort, because I see how far E-Books have come and foresee them continuing to grab a larger share of the book market.

Of the forty-some odd books I presently have available in print editions, all but about six are now available, or will be, as E-Books as well. While making my concentrated effort to make it 100%, I ran into a snag with my publisher Wildside/Borgo who interrupted my conversions for them by saying that it still didn’t “put much priority in the E-Book market”.  Until that publisher does, I’ve held back on the conversion of the remaining six books I need convert for them and have moved on to writing new books for MLR Press that’s a publisher more eager to move books into the E-Book pipeline.

So, despite the Wildside/Borgo set-back, I’ve come a decidedly long way, since my initial doubts about the E-Book market as expressed by me in 2005.

As of today I’m proud to announce to all potential readers that my E-Book lineup of m/m, m/f, m/f/m, and even f/m/f books, now include:

1. These m/m books of mine for MLR Press, presently available directly from the publisher:
http://www.mlrbooks.com/CatalogBooks.php

ARDENNIAN BOY— historical fiction and 2008 Lambda Finalist done in conjunction with Wayne Gunn

HARD-WORKING MEN — anthology and 2009 Lambda Finalsit done in conjunction with Victor J. Banis, J.P. Bowie, and Jardonn Smith

SUCKS: #1 OF THE DRAQUAL VAMPYRE CHRONICLES — blood-sucking vampyres in high-fashion

THAI DIED: #2 STUD DRAQUAL MYSTERY — Thailand-locale mystery and mayhem in the silk-production and in high-fashion industry

SCARED STIFF — m/m ghost anthology in conjunction with Laura Baumbach, Josh Lanyon, and Sarah Black.

BEYOND MACHU — South American-locale romance/adventure
BOND-SHATTERING — Sci-fi
CALIFORNIA CREAMIN’ AND OTHER STORIES — short-story collection
DIARY OF A HUSTLER — hustler’s autobiography
GOLDSANDS — Egyptian-locale romance/adventure
LOVE HURTS — B&D S&M short-story collection
SLOVAKIAN BOY — porn-star’s biography
SNAKES — Australian-locale romance/adventure
TUSKS — South African romance/adventure

2. This m/m book of mine for Aspen Mountain Press, presently available directly  from the publisher:

http://www.aspenmountainpress.com/romance/male-male-erotica/foreign-boys/prod_76.html

FOREIGN BOYS — anthology on hustlers in foreign locales done in collaboration with Laura Baumbach and Ally Blue

3. These m/m, m/f, m/f/m books of mine for Wildside/Borgo Press, presently available from Diesel on-line:

http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=search&template=search&templatehead=&templatebody=&templatefoot=&match=fulltext&limitcategory=&type=store&searchtype=and&searchfields=sku|brand|model|keywords|misc11&query=Maltese%2C+William

FROM THIS BELOVED HOUR — Egyptian-locale m/f SuperRomance #23, originally published under “Willa Lambert” byline — reissued version

ANAL COUSINS: CASE STUDIES IN VARIANT SEXUAL PRACTICES — clinical m/f studies and m/m study of incestuous relationships involving anal sex

A SLIP TO DIE FOR: #1 STUD DRAQUAL MYSTERY — m/m murder and mayhem in high-fashion, high society, and high finance

THE FAG IS NOT FOR BURNING — m/m murder and mayhem and police investigation in Seattle’s steamy art community

HEART ON FIRE — sweet m/f romance
YOUNG CRUISERS — m/m Boyland Park-locale short story-collection
CATYLTIC QUOTES — mainstream trivia fun
GERUN, THE HERETIC — mainstream sci-fi
circuSex — m/m circus-world erotica (and my very first E-Book)
WHEN SUMMER COMES — m/m road trip in combination with California surfers

4. These m/m, m/f, m/f/m books of mine for Wildside/Borgo Press, presently available from Fictionwise on-line:

http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/WilliamMalteseeBooks.htm

SS&M — WWII Nazi concentration-camplocale m/fl HARD-CORE S&M
BLOOD-RED RESOLUTION — Peruvian-jungle locale m/f romance/adventure

Every E-Book, I would think, for anyone looking forward to sitting back with their E-Book reader for a summer for some marvelous on-the-beach reading!

Author Bio (From The Author Himself):

I’ve been around awhile, doing what I do — some people think it’s been since Adam and Eve (or Lilith — what a gal!). I’ve been around so long, in fact — only a few of us oldies left over from the early days of m/m fiction — that I’ve been known to enter chat room or post an except, only to scare off everyone within in seconds (maybe it has something to do with personal hygiene?!).

I began writing professionally in university when I went to South America between my junior and senior year to look for Inca treasure; I found only crotch rot. I wrote that up in “Argosy” magazine, the article published while I was doing Basic Training in Fort Ord (having enlisted in the U.S. Army), and my writing career had begun.

Since those initial days of writing pulp male adventure, I’ve had published over 200 books, and I can’t even remember how many articles. I’ve done every genre, including a children’s book and three Harlequin SuperRomances (the former as Billy Lambert, the latter as Willa Lambert); my non-gluten help- cookbook is due out later this year.

I was there pretty near the beginning of the golden age of gay pulp fiction, which sees me with that beware-the-venerable-old-man aura that I seem to have acquired today. While I’ve often ventured away from gay fiction, on and off over the years, I always seem to return to it; what with the latest upsurge in m/m readership, I’m knee-deep in it again, via MLR Press, and Wildside/Borgo Press, and my German-language publisher Bruno Gmünder Verlag.

I couldn’t think of anything groundbreaking to write about ebooks. I read the previous entries of Jay’s guest bloggers and thought, well, that about says it all.

I mean I don’t even have a laptop, much less an ebook reader. I have to sit at my desk in front of my fifteen inch computer screen and download a pdf file.

And then I thought of my second favorite place after book stores — the library!
Who would have ever thought that libraries would be stocking e-books! After all, these are the last bastions of the printed page. But now, when I open the homepage of my local library this information pops up:

eBooks, Audiobooks and Videos
Maryland’s Digital eLibrary Consortium
OverDrive offers both Popular fiction and non-fiction eBooks, audiobooks, and videos you can check out online with your FCPL library card.

eBooks are in PDF format and require Adobe Reader 6.0 or higher.

Audiobooks are in Windows Media Audio (WMA) format and MP3 format. Some titles can now be played on iPods – see Supported portable listening devices.)

Videos are in Windows Media Video (WMV) format

You can check out up to 4 OverDrive items at a time for a period of 2 weeks. Videos check out for one week.

Holds can be placed on materials already checked out.

BookFLIX – Stories for Children

BookFLIX is an online literacy program for children that pairs classic video storybooks with nonfiction e-books. BookFLIX builds a love of reading while reinforcing early reading skills.

One of my neighboring library systems has ONLINE BOOK CLUBS where “Every day, Monday through Friday, you will receive in your email a five-minute selection from a chapter of a book. By the end of the week, you’ll have read 2-3 chapters. Every Monday we start a new book.” You can join clubs in fiction, science fiction, mysteries, thrillers, classics and romance and more.

Even though they don’t carry any of my m/m erotic romances, it still astounds me that the musty, little library stuck on one floor of the community center stocks books that can be read on the electronic page.

To end, in the immortal lyrics of a song I learned when I was still in elementary school:

“Oh, the place for you and the place for me is the local public library.”

From the author’s bio:

I am a native New Yorker, born and bred in Brooklyn, married for thirty-odd years (and they have been odd) to her high school sweetheart. Is it any wonder I became a romance novelist? I now live on a mountain top in rural Pennsylvania. I play guitar and studied voice privately with a coach from Julliard. I sing everything from folk music to Grand Opera – in ten languages including Gaelic and Hebrew. My day job involves music therapy for seniors.

I write paranormal, urban fantasy, contemporary, historical erotic romance, with both m/f and m/m content. My books are published with Loose Id, Liquid Silver Books, MLR Press and Aspen Mountain Press. Bend in the Road, my first m/m historical romance from MLR Press, is also available in print. All of my titles are available directly from the publisher and other venues.

You can find out more about me and my work at my website: www.jeannebarrack.com and my blog http://thesweetflagmenlove.blogspot.com/.

Maybe it’s just me, because I’m a woman of a certain age. I’ve had four children and been married for a good long while.  I’ve read thousands of romance novels, both print and ebook, and although I don’t confine my reading to genre fiction, I generally find myself gravitating toward a good love story if one is in the offing. More and more these days, this includes an open bedroom door. Shocking to some, not necessary to others, but certainly a large part of the romantic fiction I’ve read is erotic, sensual in nature if not largely graphic and explicit. I’m used to this as reader of heterosexual romance novels and I’m getting more and more used to this as a writer.

I prefer romance or mystery fiction that’s character driven, it just never occurred to me to confine that to one type of romance, or one type of relationship. Indeed, the more unusual relationships appeal to me more as there’s much more drama to enjoy, whether it’s a multi-cultural love story or one that spans a large age gap or bridges the space between species, the living and the undead, same sex, tentacle sex, no sex.  (I don’t write them all, but I’m inclined to read wherever the whim of the moment takes me.)

The beauty of e-publishing with regard to romance literature, to me, is its egalitarian nature. If I could have imagined when I got my first library card that I would someday be able to type keywords into my laptop such as “vampire, werewolf, glbt, ménage, love story, happy ending” and have it give me a list of books that I could choose from, I would have imploded on the spot. At the time I might have imagined a love story between Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham creature and the dog with the hats from Eastman’s Go Dog. Go! but the idea that I could reasonably expect to wish for a book that was clearly intended for a fairly under-populated niche market and then get not one but a plethora would have blown my mind.

It blows my mind today. We are all benefiting from on-demand publishing and independent presses in ways we can’t begin to imagine. There are those who harp on the quality of the work or the editing or the distribution model and the adult nature of many of the books, but they’re not seeing the big picture. While I love to hold a book in my hands, and I don’t ever want print books to go away, I believe the growth of e-publishing has injected a much needed jolt of adrenaline to publishing in general.

As a writer, the expansion of publishing into niche markets means that I’m likely to find my own niche in a place where publishing giants fear to tread. I’m not going to make anyone rich, not agents, not big print publishers, not myself, and yet, I can tell a story that someone might enjoy reading.  Many someones, and I can get paid for my time.

The same can be said for any writer, whether their stories are serious or playful, chaste or sexually adventurous. The truth is that it’s impossible to tell the result of technology on society at its inception. What e-publishing will mean to writers and readers over the long term remains to be seen. In the e-market a writer can find his or her audience among the many thousands of men and women looking for their bedtime stories, who like Goldilocks are free to choose between those that are too hard, too soft, and might—for them—be just right. And this includes, but is not limited to (as they say in the legalese of advertising) the so-called heat level, or erotic content of a book.

Is it going to make me stop reading the classics? No. Hardly. I’m inclined to see my foray into the world of e-publishing as an opportunity to learn more than I ever have about all different kinds of books.

The very fact that I write books that can be considered erotica floors me, since when I first began to write I could hardly find a word I liked for male genitalia besides member.  You’d have thought I was a Victorian schoolteacher if you’d been in the room with me, I practically chewed through my lip every time the subject…er… came up.

Clearly these books are not for everyone, but they’re for someone.  Someone like me who might never have even dreamed of reading a romance novel where the protagonist and the love interest were both men, or both women. Someone like me who never imagined writing a book for which people might pay, simply because the stories I have in my heart to tell don’t appeal to the majority of people who enter bookstores looking for the usual main stream publishing fare.

But is that all we can expect from e-publishing? The propagation of stories that the mainstream publishers won’t touch for reasons of taste or erotic content or—some would argue—quality? My answer is a resounding no, we have no idea where e-publishing will take us, and like paperback novels before them, and moveable type, and all the other things that have changed the way we think of the written word, we just need to settle back and wait to see what will happen.  For me it’s like the moment after one buckles on one’s restraint for a dangerous and exciting amusement park ride.  The seconds before the adventure begins…

Fasten your seatbelts…

Z. A. Maxfield is a fifth generation native of Los Angeles, although she now lives in Orange County, CA  She started writing in 2007 on a dare from her children and never looked back.  Pathologically disorganized, and perennially optimistic, she writes as much as she can, reads as much as she dares, and enjoys her time with family and friends.  If anyone asks her how a wife and mother of four manages to find time for a writing career, she’ll answer, “It’s amazing what you can do if you completely give up housework.” Check out her website at: http://www.zamaxfield.com.

Her published books include Crossing Borders, St. Nacho’s, and Drawn Together from Loose Id, and The Long Way Home, from Aspen Mountain Press. She is also one of the authors contributing to the charity ebook I DO! from MLR Press, from which proceeds go to Lambda Legal to help support marriage equality.

Most of the above titles can be purchased directly through the publisher. I DO!, along with THE LONG WAY HOME by Z.A. Maxfield can be purchased from the Untreed Reads Store in Kindle and Kindle for iPhone format.  No money is made by by Untreed Reads for Kindle purchases; the link is provided for your convenience.

Waiting for the Apocalypse…

In publishing that is. The death of publishing has been proclaimed for
years, maybe even decades. Perhaps when the first caveman moved out of
the caverns and had to leave their rock wall paintings behind people
have been saying publishing is dead, dying, on the verge of crisis. I’m
sure the scribes who used to labor over parchment tediously reproducing
books by hand in ink, must have thought the world was ending, or at
least going to hell in a hand basket ,when Gutenberg profaned books by
making it possible to mass produce them.

When I first started writing seriously – which is not when I first wrote
anything — my first book was written when I was 17. My first published
book came out when I was 50. But up to that point I had never heard of
electronic publishing or e-books. And I was in the computer field and
always tried to keep up on trends. Then the whispers began, the death of
printed books was nigh. Something called an electronic book was going to
sweep down and take its place. I scoffed. I was a heavy reader, I
couldn’t see myself reading a book on a computer screen. And I loudly
and frequently said as much – no computer screen reading for me. (That’s
the way it was originally envisioned, no one yet had produced an actual
reader) A niggling doubt began to grow in my head though. It was only
logical, in a time of growing shortages and the rising cost of
everything how could print books be competitive? I used to walk into a
book store with $20 in my pocket and know I could walk out with 2, 3
even 4 books, no problem. Now that same $20 will barely buy me one new
paperback (Canadian dollars) In fact when my book came out, it was
listed at $19.95 CDN. So obviously my book buying took a serious hit.
And I hated it. I love new books. I’m a book fanatic. I usually have at
least 2 on the go at any time and that doesn’t count the books and
articles I read for research purposes. Now, with the advent of e-books
that $20 will once again buy me several books. Joy!

But still I resisted. I tried reading books on my laptop and didn’t
enjoy it in the same way I do reading a physical book. The screen
lighting is wrong and you can’t take the thing out in strong light so no
sitting in a park on a nice sunny day.  Then came a new twist in the
ongoing revolution: e-readers and changing book buying habits. On their
way out, sadly, were independent bookstores, replaced by monolithic big
box stores that sold books alongside things like candles and picture
frames. I never felt the warm and fuzzies in these places, not like a
real bookstore. E-readers started up a while ago, but they were usually
so proprietary and limited that no one heard any more than a ghostly
whisper about them. These days 2 readers dominate the market and sales
are exploding. Amazon’s Kindle and Sony PRS-500.  Both have their fans.
The market is still fragmented with various formats competing for the
edge. Sites like Untread Read make it possible to find all those e-books
available and provides handy link to get to them.

A potential new player in the e-reader field is the Plastic Logic device. A rival to Kindle and the Sony reader. An innovative reader that will allow readers to use established formats like PDF files, Word documents and Power Point presentations. Could very well give Kindle, which is very proprietary, a run for its money. See more about it here:

http://www.plasticlogic.com/index.html

More and more publishers are getting on the bandwagon and most, though
not all, authors are embracing the form. There’s even a growing trend to
read whole novels on iPods. Hey, it’s one more way to get your work out
to readers. One thing I have always liked about it is that people
outside of North America can access my books. This wasn’t always the
case and I’m sure there were readers who wanted my books but couldn’t
get them in their area or they were prohibitively expensive due to
shipping costs.

Do I have an e-reader? Sadly, at this time no. I can’t afford the one I
want (Kindle) and until I can, I will keep buying the occasional e-book
in PDF format and reading them on my home PC. But I hear so many
positive things about the Kindle that I swear, someday… Meanwhile
sites like Untread Reads offer a wonderful venue to find a plethora of
e-books and offer a lot of free reads to whet your appetite for more.

Now the rest of the fight for e-book respectability seems to be in the
larger author organizations who still dismiss e-books as a viable form.
When the day comes that the Mystery Writers of America,  the Romance
Writers of America, or even, God strike us dead – the Pulitzer Prize in
literature accept e-books for inclusion, then I will know the e-book has
truly come of age.

P.A. Brown, author of the Chris and David series featuring LAPD homicide detective and his lover Christopher Bellamere as they struggle to overcome their differences to forge a bond beginning in L.A. HEAT, being reissued by MLR Press in Spring 2009, and L.A. MISCHIEF currently out in ebook format from Bristlecone Pine Press. Future books will include L.A. BONEYARD which sees David tempted by his new partner, and L.A. BYTES, where digital Armaggedon threatens Los Angeles. Other future stories include ANGEL LIGHT, a ghost story, BETWEEN THE DARKNESS AND THE LIGHT, a story about redemption and forgiveness and BIG CITY VET. All will be released in ebook format as well as paperback from MLR Press.

Until I discovered electronic publishing — ebooks — I was not much of a fan of novellas. That’s because, with the exception of romantically-theme anthologies, you don’t see a lot of novellas in mainstream publishing. It’s not practical to put a thirty thousand word story into print unless you can pair it with a couple of other novellas so that readers feel they’re getting their money’s worth. 

Usually what happens in these cases is three popular authors are paired together writing stories with a theme like…Christmas romance…and the typical reader likes one of the authors enough to buy the anthology. The hope is that two authors will gain a new fan. The doubling — and tripling — up happens in niche publishing as well. I generally write for the m/m or gay fiction market, and you’ll find all kinds of novella pairings here: everything from cowboys to vampires making abridged whoopee for anywhere from ten to fourteen bucks a pop.

Where the novella really comes into its own is in epublishing. 

 A novella, which can be pretty much anything from twenty to forty thousand words (depending on the individual publisher’s definition), sells fine all on its own in electronic format — no doubling up necessary. A novella is short enough to make reading at a desktop or a laptop feasible for those of us who still haven’t graduated to the higher forms of technology. But it’s also long enough to tell a complete — and relatively complex — story. It’s a great way for readers to sample authors and stories without investing a lot of time or money.

This is not to say that all readers love novellas; I’ve seen readers complain on a few forums that ebooks are too short, and I think they’re basically bitching about novellas, since ebook novels are generally as long as print mainstream novels (my own average seventy thousand words which is pretty much standard for a typical mystery mass market paperback). Not every story is complex enough for novel-length treatment, which some readers understand and some don’t. And, of course, if a reader loves a story or a set of characters, she just tends to want more. 

It’s that simplicity that — as a writer — I love about the novella. A novella is usually not going to have a lot of subplots or a huge cast of characters. The canvas is smaller, and although the work can be rich and nuanced, it’s not going to be the Sistine Chapel. That makes it perfect for fast-paced, rather linear stories. 

It also makes it a perfect vehicle for writers to learn their storytelling craft. Unlike the short story, which is its own unique and demanding (and often unforgiving) art form, the novella is ideal for learning how to structure a complete novel. In fact, it is a novel in miniature with character arcs, plot arcs, and themes. It’s a fairly easy step to move from mastering the novella to the demands and complexities of a novel. 

I think of novellas as mostly capturing a moment in time, so the stories and characters are usually caught on the cusp of some enormous change and dramatic arc — but nothing so huge or life-changing that we can’t resolve most of it within roughly one hundred pages. 

Why is the novella useful for writers? Beyond the obvious value of learning tool, it’s a good way to break into the electronic market — and just as it isn’t a huge investment of time or money for a reader, it isn’t a huge investment for a writer either. I can generally do a novella in about a month (I’ve done them in a week, but I prefer not to rush). It’s a way of testing the waters without making the commitment required for a novel, and it’s a good way of trying out different publishing houses — because each ebook publishing house has its own devoted list of readers. While eventually a writer will develop his or her own core readership, writing novellas for different houses is a way of exposing your wares to a brand new audience.

Novellas are fairly lucrative, too. They’re usually about the price of a paperback, but as in all electronic publishing, the royalty rate is much higher than you find in mainstream publishing. 

From my standpoint, both as a reader and writer, when it comes to novellas and epublishing, big things come in small packages. What are your thoughts? 

Over the past decade, multi-award-winning author Josh Lanyon has written numerous novels, novellas and short stories as well as the definitive M/M writing guide Man, Oh Man: Writing M/M Fiction for Kinks and Ca$h. He is the author of the Adrien English mystery novels, including The Hell You Say, winner of the 2006 USABookNews awards for GLBT fiction, and co-writer of the Crime and Cocktails series with Laura Baumbach.  Josh is a Lambda Literary Award finalist. You can find out more about Lanyon’s  titles at MLR Press by CLICKING HERE.

My longest love affair has been with books. Ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper, I have loved stories and the books that contained them. Before I could read, I can remember begging my mother to read to me (anybody remember Golden Books? The Poky Little Puppy? and the politically incorrect Little Black Sambo?). And as soon as I could use my eyes to form words on paper, I was off and running, a bookish little boy who couldn’t get enough. I tore through all the Oz books, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, classics like A Wrinkle in Time and more. I read books that I shouldn’t have (what’s that third grader doing reading Rosemary’s Baby? What could possibly interest a sixth grade boy in Diary of a Mad Housewife?).

I have never stopped loving books. For as long as I can remember, I have never NOT been reading one. I’m a true slut, moving restlessly from one to the next, never satisfied, always wanting more. As soon as I put one down, I’m looking for the next in line. I’m insatiable.

I suppose this love affair has a lot to do with why I grew up wanting to tell my own stories, to write my own books. But this isn’t so much about me as a writer. It’s about me as a reader. Becoming a creator of the same things I love has just been a fringe benefit.

This Christmas, Santa left me something that upped the ante on my love affair, but left me wondering if I’ve been unfaithful. See, what I got was an Amazon Kindle. The Kindle is probably one of the most talked about e-book readers of our time, being talked about all over the Internet and even given the blessing of not the Pope, but someone even more important (and perhaps, divine): Oprah. It’s a cool little white wedge, about the height and width of a mass market paperback, with the thickness of maybe a pencil. It makes indulging my habit even easier, since its display is very similar to paper (not at all like reading on a computer screen) and it allows me to adjust the type size to align with my aging eyes. With a touch of a button, I can turn pages, bookmark pages, write notes to myself, look up words, and even use the Internet. Yeah, the cool thing about the Kindle is it lets me connect wirelessly to the ‘Net…anywhere, anytime. It’s also the dangerous thing for an addict, excuse me, book lover like me. With this wireless connection, I can browse Amazon’s books, have a sizable sample sent to me, and purchase books…instantly and with NO waiting. A click and the book is on my Kindle, literally within seconds. And I can store hundreds of books on my Kindle, making me feel good about green and sparing the lives of some trees. And maybe the Kindle will help me cut down on the overflowing, weighty issue of way too many books in our house, when they can all be neatly stored on the Kindle. Or at least many of the ones I buy from here on in…

Okay, I have waxed euphoric enough about my new toy and how it only ratchets about the passion in this decades-old love affair. I know I’m starting to sound like Amazon is paying me. And they’re not. It’s the other way around. I’m buying even more books than ever; they’ve made it so easy. They should be giving these things away.

But, you might wonder, what about the feel of a real book…the paper, the glue, the cover, being able to curl up almost anywhere with one? Don’t you miss that? Pre-Kindle, I used to think I would. I used to think I could never come over to the side of e-books and that this new type of book delivery would die a quiet death. Who wants to read a book on a screen when a book has been pretty close to a perfect package for centuries? I do. I never thought I’d say that I prefer reading an e-book to a real one, but here I am. Utterly convinced. As I said above, it’s easier on the eyes, so I actually read for longer periods. Other than the bathtub or other places where I might get the Kindle wet, I can pretty much read it anywhere and the task is easier than with a paper book because I do not have to flip pages, try to hold it open, or otherwise fuss with it. I think there are some things I’ll never get over about loving paper books: the smell of them, the look of them lined up in orderly rows, the thrill of seeing my own name on the cover of one hot off the press, and yes, the ability to read in the bathtub. But these advantages don’t outweigh the environmental and ease of use advantages of reading e-books.

Why else would I sit here all morning and write this?

Oh yeah, I wouldn’t be the shameless publicity whore I am without plugging myself just once. Almost all of my books are now coming out in print as well as electronically (many are already in Kindle format and on Amazon, just search “Rick R. Reed” in the Kindle store). And I have to say, the Kindle owners I’ve met are just as much book addicts, er, lovers as I am.

I used to think people who said e-books were the wave of the future were full of it. I don’t think so anymore, unless “it” is the truth.

–
Rick R. Reed is the much-celebrated author of horror and GLBT titles, including Orientation and High Risk.  To discover more about him, visit http://www.rickrreed.com or http://rickrreedreality.blogspot.com/

Look…I’m a writer, okay? I have only two goals in life: 1) to write books, and 2) to have those books read. Exactly how they’re read doesn’t really matter to me. Paper, electronically, papyrus scrolls, or stone tablets, it’s all the same to me.  But, as I sit in my ivory tower, goose-quill pen in hand, I am not unaware of the sounds of battle going on far below my slotted window. The mighty fortress of standard publishing is under siege from the growing forces of e-books.

The defenders of the fortress have a lot going for them. Ever since the invention of the printing press, the word “book” has been defined as “words on paper.”  Humans are creatures of habit. A book is paper. Period. A shelf of books is like a group of old friends, and as is also part of the human condition, the sense of touch play a subtle but not insignificant role. To heft a book in one’s hands, to hold it as though weighing it’s contents, to physically turn the pages at one’s own speed and leisure, these have been ingrained into everyone who loves to read.

And then computers and the internet and the wonders of cyberspace made their appearance, and it became possible to read not only endless amounts of text on a monitor two feet in front of your face, but even full books. While convenient in theory, this method had its definite drawbacks in practice.  You weren’t holding anything in your hand. You had to sit there in one spot and read from one screen, and you couldn’t take the book with you as went into the kitchen to have a cup of coffee. (The invention of lap-top computers made this a bit easier, but still awkward.) 

You of course had the option of printing the book out on your printer, but by the time you factored in the expense in paper and ink, it was almost cheaper just to go buy the paper book…plus it was already bound and had a cover.

So devices specifically for the reading of e-books began to appear to make it easier. The problem there was the various devices were seldom compatible with other devices. A book available on one type of reader could not be read…at least not without more fiddling around with formatting than most people were willing to do…on another.  But we are nothing if not persistent and inventive, and along came Kindle and a new generation of e-book readers, and more and more people began making the switch from paper to electronic not through altruism but through practicality.

Our forests, and the trees from which books are made, are rapidly vanishing. The price of paper books has skyrocketed. Hard-cover books I used to buy as a teenager for $3.95 are now $29.95. Standard publishers, like Broadway play producers, continue to price themselves out of the market, to the great detriment of the people who love books and live performances.  E-books, being a fraction of the cost of print books, offer a practical solution.

At the moment, the average reader is caught between a rock and a hard place. I, for one, find it difficult, especially in these increasingly hard economic times, to plunk out $15.99 even for one of my own books. But I can buy an e-book for far less. The problem is that the cost of e-book readers is also, at the moment, out of my reach and the reach of a large percentage of other potential readers.

And so the battle rages. And in the not-unforeseeable future, a truce will be reached. People who love paper-based books will still read them. They will not go the way of the wooly mammoth. And as soon as e-book readers become economically feasible for the masses, more and more people will buy them, and a truce will be reached. And peace will be restored to the kingdom.

And in the meantime, I write.

Multiple Lambda-award nominee Dorien Grey is the successful author behind the Dick Hardesty mysteries (available in ebook from both GLB Publishers and Zumaya Publications), as well as the ebook western Calico.  His second mystery,  featuring Elliott Smith,  is due to be released by Zumaya in 2009.