iPad Books for Sale

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Fred Bubbers

A Couple iPadTwo of my mini-eBooks (After the Fire and A Couple) made it into the first electronic shipment of premium catalog titles from Smashwords to the Apple iPad bookstore.  It took quite a big effort on the part of the people at Smashwords, and I suspect at Apple as well, to pull it all of in time for this past weekend’s release of the new device.  I’m a sucker for new electronic toys, but I have far too many computers and electronic gadgets as it is.  I also function as the IT director and help desk for the home network I share with my wife and daughter.  I’m trying to simplify.  If an iPad could replace my smartphone, my desktop media center computer (which feeds the xbox in the den), my personal notebook, and work notebook, I could justify it.  But since it can’t, it would only be just another sexy toy.  And sexy it is.

A coworker got his iPad this weekend, so I checked out what my eBooks look like on it.  I’m very impressed and eBooks may end up being the killer app for the iPad.

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Crippled Inside

Posted on April 3, 2010 by Fred Bubbers

This song by John Lennon says it all.

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Prophets of the Airwaves, Mad and Otherwise

Posted on March 21, 2010 by Fred Bubbers

Peter Finch as Howard BealeIn the 1976 movie Network evening news anchor Howard Beale,  portrayed by Peter Finch, has a psychotic breakdown and declares that  he will blow his brains out on the air next Tuesday.  Beale had earlier been informed that because of poor ratings, he would be leaving the program in two weeks time.  After his televised breakdown, Beale is immediately fired, but his best friend, the President of the network news division (William Holden) intervenes and allows Beale to anchor the news one last time.  Beale, one of the most respected figures in the history of broadcast-journalism, will be allowed to end his career with honor and dignity, not madness.  They’re both old-school  broadcaster-journalists with their gray hair, their lined and weathered faces, and their trench coats.  They like hard drinking and talking about the good old days with Murrow, before news became a product  to be packaged and sold like soap flakes.  Unfortunately, and in spite of the deep affection the two men have for one another, Beale has truly gone off the deep end and the next night during the live broadcast,  launches into a tirade about how everything in life has turned into bullshit.

The ratings are spectacular and the network changes its mind about Beale’s retirement.  The evening news is handed over to a young ambitious programming executive from the entertainment division (Faye Dunaway), and Beale becomes “The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves.”  His rallying cry to his audience is, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.”  Millions of people across the nation open their windows and scream it out into the night.  Glenn Beck can only wish he had that kind of clout.

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eBook Week, Meta-Memoir

Posted on March 7, 2010 by Fred Bubbers

ebook week

The Reader is Horizontal

As I wrote yesterday, this week is “Read an eBook Week.”  While the printed book is in no danger of extinction, technological innovations, as well as business model innovations, make it clear that the way books are produced, distributed and bought is rapidly changing.

It’s new, it’s green, it’s hot.

Sorry, that sounded a little too much like blowhard Tom Friedman.  Let me start over.

Last fall, when I was in San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador, researching my next book, The World is Green, Sweaty, and Concave, I had a conversation with the cab driver who drove me to the airport about the International Monetary Fund’s Latin American policy and its impact on the  nanotechnology research incubators being established in the former rustbelt of the United States.  When he’s not driving his cab, Pepe is a student at the local university and heads an internet social-media startup…

Sorry, I did it again. One more time, I promise to be good.

EBooks, I was talking about eBooks and the coming revolution…

Last fall, I was talking to some acquaintances, ordinary writers with families and boring day jobs, not high-tech entrepreneurial cabbies from exotic countries, about the changes in publishing, and in particular POD publishing technology and eBooks.  For very little cost, it’s now possible for any writer to publish a book, in digital or print form, and sell it on the internet.  Whether or not it gets any attention at all and sells beyond the small circle of the writer’s friends is another question.  I’m still old-fashioned enough to be skeptical about self-publishing and aside from this blog, I’m still going at it the old fashioned way: trying to convince someone else to publish me.

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