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 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).

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

:-(

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.

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

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

In the mean time,

Are you excited? I’m excited. I rather like the Tales of the City series. I tried to read the entire series last summer but failed to get around to reading the last two books. I guess I need to do that before Mary Ann in Autumn comes out in November.

Tin House Implements New Policy for Fall Reading Period. Unsolicited Submissions must be Accompanied by a Receipt for a Hardcover or Paperback from a Real-Life Bookstore

PORTLAND, OREGON (JUNE 30, 2010) In the spirit of discovering new talent as well as supporting established authors and the bookstores who support them, Tin House Books will accept unsolicited manuscripts dated between August 1 and November 30, 2010, as long as each submission is accompanied by a receipt for a book from a bookstore. Tin House magazine will require the same for unsolicited submissions sent between September 1 and December 30, 2010.

Writers who cannot afford to buy a book or cannot get to an actual bookstore are encouraged to explain why in haiku or one sentence (100 words or fewer). Tin House Books and Tin House magazine will consider the purchase of e-books as a substitute only if the writer explains: why he or she cannot go to his or her neighborhood bookstore, why he or she prefers digital reads, what device, and why.

Writers are invited to videotape, film, paint, photograph, animate, twitter, or memorialize in any way (that is logical and/or decipherable) the process of stepping into a bookstore and buying a book to send along for our possible amusement and/or use on our Web site.

I for one would enjoy seeing these videos. Tin House, will you be posting these on YouTube by chance?But of course, you can go buy a book regardless of your desire to submit to Tin House.