It seems like just the other day I was talking about Lemony Snicket. Oh wait, I was.

It would that a new four book prequel series focusing on the childhood of Lemony Snicket is in the worlds. The series will be called All the Wrong Questions and the first book will be titled Who Could That Be At This Hour?. More importantly, the first book will be coming out this year on October 23rd. The books will probably be as dreadful as the Series of Unfortunate Events and good portions will be made up of Snicket encouraging readers to read something else.

From the press release: “Drawing on events that took place during a period of his youth spent in a fading town, far from anyone he knew or trusted, Snicket chronicles his experiences as an apprentice in an organization nobody knows about. While there, he began to ask a series of questions—wrong questions that should not have been on his mind. Who Could That Be at This Hour? is Snicket’s account of the first wrong question.”

I’m excited. Are you excited?

I stopped by Borders Bookstore in Eugene, OR last week. The store was closing and the signs informed me that everything must go. It was what you expected of a going out of business sale. Their giant bookshelves were being sold for $50 a pop and most of the books still in stock were ones that didn’t interesting me. However, I did find two books that have been sitting on my “to check out” list. Insignificant Others by Stephen McCauley and Million Little Mistakes by Heather McElhatton. Seeing as how fictions books were 60% off, I couldn’t resist.

I also bought a 2012 Corgi calendar, thus making it the last (and first for that matter) calendar I’ll ever purchase from Borders.

Booking Through Thursday asks:
What’s the last book you were really EXCITED to read? And, were you excited about it in advance? Or did the excitement bloom while you were reading it? Are there any books you’re excited about right NOW?

And I will respond with a picture.

This is the third book in Clive Barker’s Abarat series. The second book came out in 2004. Needless to say, i’ve been waiting for this book for a long while. Just today, my ARC came from Harper! Have I mentioned how much I enjoy Harper right now?

I came across this website this morning, OpenLibrary.org. The Consumerist states that “OpenLibrary.org current operates a database with more than 1 million e-books without restrictions.” While that number certainly may be true, I could not find a single book I would be interested in reading. A lot of the books on OL.org are non-fiction so if you are craving the latest Stephen King without the trip to bookstore, you’re out of luck. There are some newer non-fiction books, but you have to know how to search for them which isn’t apparent.

I think the idea of being able to lend people books is one of the last hurdles e-books have to overcome before the truly become mainstream. It’s becoming super easy to get public domain books on your e-reader, but who really wants to read Pride and Prejudice? The big problem is a lack of modern books like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or the latest James Patterson. The reason you wont ever find those on OP.org is because the publisher wants you to go out and buy the book. They want your money and if you could easily get it at a virtual library, how will the publisher make money and stay in business?

Well, i’m glad you asked. Because I have a couple ideas about that.

E-Library Business Model #1
The first concept I would like the bounce off of you is based off of the iTunes model of renting movies. In iTunes you can rent a movie for $3.99 and have 24 hours to watch it. Amazon offers a similar model of movie rentals (but they give 48 hours). Since Apple and Amazon, I would argue, are the current leaders in e-readers, their respective e-bookstores could offer a rental of the newest books like Tick Tock (James Patterson) for $0.99 for 7 days. Dedicated booklovers can easily get through one book a week. From that $0.99, part can go to the distributor (Apple, Amazon, etc) and the rest the publisher (to pass along to the author). They could also let self publishing authors put their books up on this library for the same price similar to Amazon’s strategy for letting authors publish stuff on the Kindle.

There are a couple drawbacks for this model. The first is publishers might think their books are worth more than $0.99 and will want to charged $1.99-$2.99 to check out books. Granted, at this point this system is more akin to a rental library than a traditional library. The other problem will be what happens on the 7th day and the book is due back? Does it automatically lock or delete itself in the e-reader until the reader re-checks it out? Or will there be a late fee assessed ($0.10/day?) until the book it officially checked back in somehow?

E-Library Business Model #2
This model I call The Netflix Model. I’ve heard this one brought up before on other web sites. You, the reader, pay a monthly fee of $10-$15 and you can checkout 2 books at a time. When you return one, you are allowed to get another. All this could be done through either Amazon or Apple’s iBookstore. With this, Amazon/Apple will have to buy the rights to distribute the books through their sites. Publishers could get paid solely on the number of times the book gets checked out or get paid a flat fee for a set amount of time the book is available to check out.

I think sites like OpenLibrary.org are taking a bold step in the right direction, it’s not enough because most mainstream readers don’t want public domain books. Do you think Netflix would be doing so well as a company if it only offered documentaries or public domain films? The futures of e-libraries, sadly, needs to be a business because that’s the only way I can foresee it being agreeable for everyone involved (readers, publishers, businesses).

How sad.

Perry Moore, author of Hero and producer of the recent Chronicles of Narnia movies, was found dead yesterday from an apparent overdose.

:-(

UPDATED: I got an e-mail back from Tin House. They were wanting to make sure that they weren’t undercutting any of the independant booksellers which is why the prices were set at the same price as an actual book. However it was decided that e-book prices will match what you would pay on Amazon or iBooks. So now if you have to choose, you can go with Tin House and pay the same price while cutting out that annoying middle man.

Tin House was nice enough to send me an e-mail this morning announcing the redesign of their site. There wasn’t anything particularly wrong with their site in the first place but redesigns are always fun/scary.

What caught my eye was a line in the e-mail about buying Tin House’s books from their new site:
“You can buy them separately, or in combination with a print edition for a discounted price.”

What a fantastic idea! I’ve been eyeing a Kindle for a while now, but i’m reluctant to give up actual print. If books were to be bundled with a ebook version as well, I think that would be enough to force me to jump on the e-book bandwagon. So at this point i’m pretty excited about Tin House doing something that mainstream publishers have yet to embrace. I quickly clicked over to the site and started playing around on it.

When I got to the section where you can buy books, I decided to play around and see just how good of a discount Tin House gives for buying both the physical book and the e-book.

Let’s do some math.

Tin House’s Site
Call It What You Want by Keith Lee Morris
Tin House Book Price (20% off list price): 12.00
Tin House E-Book Prince: 12.00

When you buy both of these you get 50% off the E-Book. You will end up paying 18.00 for the book and a digital copy. This didn’t feel like that much of a deal to me, so I decided to compare it to what I could pay if I bought the same book through Amazon.

Amazon
Call It What You Want by Keith Lee Morris
Amazon Book Price (22% off list price): 11.66
Amazon E-Book Price: 9.99

If you were to buy both the total would be 21.65. So it would be cheap to buy them together through Tin House. What strikes me as odd is that Amazon offers a lower price on both the physical and digital copy of the book. I can understand how Tin House can offer 20% off when buying physical books. But what escapes me is why they charge 20% more with their e-books. This question bugged me so much that I e-mailed Tin House and asked for some insight on the matter.

Oh, and as for the Open Bars mentioned in the title, it’s the name of their blog. Check it out.

I haven’t read this book, but it seems like it would be getting around to reading.

Via: Lance Reynald’s Facebook page

Dear friends:

Whenever people ask me why I wrote BLUE BOY, I always say that I wrote the book that I needed as a kid but didn’t have. Every week, I receive messages from people around the world who have come to the book one way or the other, and it is always very heartening to see that books really can change people, that they have the chance to transcend boundaries and difficulties.

In light of the tragic news stories of the past couple of weeks, my publisher and Amazon have been gracious enough to make the book available for a free Kindle download today, October 6. Kiran, the main character of BLUE BOY, is spurned by his classmates and peers, but the point of the book is that children, even when faced with tough circumstances, can have a beautiful resilience that sees them through their dark times if they trust their own imagination, creativity, and spirit. I think that this is a point that continues to be of the highest importance, especially now.

To purchase a Kindle edition of the book for free, please follow this link:

http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Boy-ebook/dp/B00276HAJ4/ref=ed_oe_k

Please help me spread the word by sending this along to any avid readers you know — or just to that one person who might benefit from reading Kiran’s story. Thank you very much, and please take care.

Rakesh

A blog that has already reviewed this book (I was only able to find one):

CHROMA

From: Hollywoodreporter.com

What I want to know is WHO is writing Snookie’s book because it sure as hell isn’t Snookie.

In the mean time,