Fractals of Change

Kindle – Book Reader’s Review

Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader came and got buried among the holiday packages. But it emerged from post-holiday pile of cardboard, wrapping paper, and ribbons. Since we were planning a three day trip, it was a good time for a road test.

Not surprisingly, there is no access to the Sprint network – the network which underlies Amazon’ WhisperNet - in ruralVermont so couldn’t download any books before leaving home. Contented myself with reading the introduction already loaded onto Kindle and with practice page-turning.

The electronic ink IS amazing. As you “turn” each page by pressing a next page bar on the side of the unit, there’s a flicker as the ink drops rush from their old positions to their new ones. Reminds me of the Harvard University Marching Band which, in my day, eschewed marching; a pistol was fired and each player ran from his current location to wherever he was supposed to be in the next formation.

Once the ink drops reassemble, the look is much more like good ink on good paper than dots on a screen. You read by reflected light; no light comes from the screen – just like a “real” book.  Better in some ways because you can change the font size on Kindle to suit your eyes. Black ink on a white screen is the only option – just like the first Macintosh.

This architecture not only makes Kindle pages very readable, it also prolongs battery life since there is no backlight and energy is only required to move the dots, not to keep them in position.

Kindle travels in a felt covered case about the size of a paperback and clearly designed to say “book”. Only quibble is that there’s nowhere for the Kindle charger in the case so it goes with the rest of the tangle of wires in your computer bag.

At Burlington airport Sprint was four bars and, immediately, my novel hackoff.com:an historic murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble and Fractals of Change – both of which I’d ordered when I ordered Kindle – downloaded. Whole download took no more than a minute or so. Note excellent Amazon customer experience: didn’t have to register because Amazon knew I’d bought the unit; didn’t have to register for the Sprint service because it comes with the unit; didn’t have to ask for what I’d already ordered to be downloaded. Got a nice thank you letter from Jeff Bezos, too. Device can hold 200 books BEFORE you add expansion memory AND everything you buy is archived forever at Amazon for redownload in case you lose or have to delete some.

I looked for books for the trip in the Kindle Store, which is never more than a click away. Naturally Amazon’s suggestions based on my past orders and promotional fees paid my publishers were there just as if I’d been on my computer. I downloaded Weak Links: Stabilizers of Complex Systems from Proteins to Social Networks and, once I noticed that I had the option to do this free, the first chapter of No Country for Old Men.

Weak Links appears not to have been formatted correctly for an electronic edition (more on this when I post on implications for authors). Some of the letters are incomplete; there are spaces in the middle of words and hyphenation in the middle of lines. I wrote Amazon and asked for a refund (book content seems interesting though). Update: Amazon responded to my email to customer service within 24 hours, verified what I saw, apologized, and gave me a credit

No Country formatted well and was a pleasant reading experience except that the pages are a little smaller than those of a paperback, the lines a little short for the way I read, and the flicker at page turn a little distracting. My guess is these are all things readers’ll get over quickly and we’ll retrain ourselves. Decided not to order the book based on its style but that’s a plus for the first chapter free policy.

Noticed that all three books on my Kindle opened in strange places when first accessed although it’s easy enough to get back to the cover or table of contents. I suspect this is a problem in book prep seeing how much trouble I had with this when preparing the e-book edition of hackoff.com. Still annoying.

Reading Fractals of Change as a paid subscription ($.99/month) was a good experience on Kindle. Formatting was right; color pictures rendered well into black, white, and grey; links were live. However, reading Fractals and other things in the browser (which provides FREE Internet access), is problematic. See this post for a review of Kindle’s browser for more on that and even more in an upcoming author’s post.

The flight attendants say “the cabin door is closed. Please turn off all devices with an on-off switch. We will tell you when it’s safe to turn on approved electronics.” Of course this means that you have to carry at least a magazine to read during taxi, takeoffs, and landings. Else you might find yourself talking to the person next to you.

Kindle does have a simple switch to turn off its radio for use aloft where radios are forbidden.

I give it a B+ as a book reader based on initial experience.

Nice Review

Steve Rucinski, executive producer of Small Business Trends Radio posted a very nice review of the podcast edition of my novel hackoff.com: an historic murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble.

“This novel turned podcast takes you through the fun, games and hysteria of the turn of the century Internet bubble and blowup.

“With all the best features of a true mystery novel, sexually charged players and of course technology, this novel set to podcast will pull you in and not let go.

“The sound is great, the narration and character play terrific. Before you know it hours will have passed while you listen to the story…”

[music to an author’s ears]

He also writes:

“Pluses: I love this whole idea of a relevant fictional story set in recent times, revolving around technology in both print and podcasted format (complete with stock charts). The site is great, the graphics are effective and the visitor choice is maximized. You can even bookmark your place if you stop part of the way through the story. I even learned a new term ‘Blooks’ blogs as books or books as blogs, whichever you prefer.

“Minuses: Occasionally the sound is a little echoey but I can find no other fault with this great and creative podcast.

Recommendation: If you like great stories you need to try out the Hackoff.com Podcast.”

The hackoff.com podcast is free and you can subscribe to it by email or RSS or get it from iTunes. You can also read the online edition free. However, if you prefer to pay for books [nb. not a bad thing], you can buy the handsome hardcover from Amazon [great holiday gift] or download to the new Kindle you just got.

Kindle – Free Internet Browsing for Just $400

Both this blog, Fractals of Change, and my novel hackoff.com: an historic murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble are available for Kindle, Amazon’s new e-book reader. These two reasons are enough for me to buy one even at the $400 pre-Christmas price; but there’s a third reason that might convince even non-authors: free Internet browsing.

Update: I should’ve been clear. You have to pay to subscribe to FOC ($.99/month) or to buy hackoff.com ($4.76) on Kindle in Kindle format although both are free on the web and even through the Kindle browser (see below). Fred Wilson hates this but it doesn’t bother me because the connectivity is free (once you buy the device). Usually you pay connect to the Internet and get the content free. This is another choice for readers.

In a New York Times article this morning, Saul Hansell quotes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos: “If you go back in time, the landscape is littered with the bodies of dead e-book readers.” Presumably Jeff means the devices and not the people who used them.

Obviously, Amazon means to succeed with this device despite the fact that other e-book devices have hardly taken the world by storm. It is different in at least one important way from its predecessors: it comes with a free wireless Internet connection via Sprint EVDO service (which Amazon calls Whispernet). Clearly, this connectivity is meant to make the device easy to use and written material easy to purchase. For comparison, an unlimited EVDO plan from Sprint costs $60/month but you don’t have to have an account with Sprint to use EVDO.

You can do more than just buy e-books or order from Amazon over this connection. Kindle includes a web browser. Unlimited use of this browser over Whispernet is free. Note: This isn’t absolutely clear from the Kindle documentation so I called Kindle support. “Yes,” the CSR said, “free,” and “yes, unlimited.”

From an author’s point of view, the inclusion of a browser is a breakthrough. My blog as well as the online editions of hackoff.com and The Interpreter’s Tale all include links which I think added to the stories but get lost in the paper editions. People already read blogs online, both because of timeliness and links. I’ll start reading books online when they are richer than paper books – that means links that work!

This isn’t full Internet access. There is limited e-mail available through which you can receive attachments which Amazon converts to Kindle format at $.10 for each conversion (or free if you email them to your non-Kindle email account). Other people you authorize (remember, you’re paying for the conversion) can also send you attachments. But this isn’t a Blackberry; you can’t do your regular email through it you can only do email in the browser.

Other than downloading Kindle-compatible content and products from Audible.com, it doesn’t appear that you can do any other kinds of file transfer over the Internet connection. You can use the included USB cable, however, to transfer photos and music from your PC directly.

Even the browser isn’t fully featured. According to the User’s Guide: “Your Kindle comes with an Experimental application called Basic Web which is a Web browser that is optimized to read text-centric Web sites. It supports JavaScript, SSL and cookies but does not support media plug-ins (Flash, Shockwave, etc.) or Java applets.” That means no YouTube on your Kindle. Note: TechCrunch says that Kindle DOESN’T support JavaScript. I’m assuming they mean Java since web access these days is almost useless without JavaScript but don’t have a device so can’t be sure.

Depending on Sprint EVDO has its plusses and minuses: there is no searching for a hotspot as there would have been with WiFi and no worry about signing on to a WiFi service. On the other hand, Sprint EVDO isn’t everywhere in the US and is hardly anywhere outside the US. Amazon marketing says: “With Whispernet, you can be anywhere, think of a book, and get it in one minute. Similarly, your content automatically comes to you, wherever you are. Newspaper subscriptions are delivered wirelessly each morning. Most magazines arrive before they hit newsstands.” I buy the one minute; but “anywhere” is quite a stretch.

My bet, WiFi will be added soon. If people are going to use the live links, it won’t be satisfying to download where you have EVDO connectivity and then read offline. But WiFi is becoming pervasive in homes and hotels and’ll soon be in planes (I hope).

Maybe Kindle is the wave of the future for free web access. See this post.

BookTour.com and Amazon

BookTour.com, the site which links touring authors with readers, has a cool new feature which takes advantage of the fact that many readers are also customers of Amazon.com. If you give BookTour your Amazon credentials, it logs into Amazon, finds out what authors’ books you’ve been buying, and then lets you know by email or RSS when these authors are touring near you.

This supplements a feature which BookTour has had since the beginning: you can tell BookTour explicitly which authors you’re interested in meeting if they should be nearby and have it alert you to their upcoming appearances. You can also use BookTour to invite your favorite authors to your book club, library, or store.

Only those authors who have currently signed up with BookTour.com will get added to your profile. There is this chicken and egg thing with new web services that match providers and consumers. Providers don’t have much incentive to sign up until consumers do; consumers don’t have much incentive until there are providers. But, full disclosure, I’m signed up as an author with BookTour.com so; if you bought hackoff.com: an historic murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble or “The Interpreter’s Tale” (an Amazon short) from Amazon, you’ll find me on your author list automagically if you use this new feature.

Once your Amazon authors have been added, you can manually delete the ones you DON’T want to hear from or about.

Chris Anderson, cofounder of BookTour and author of The Long Tail, says that BookTour protects your privacy by promptly forgetting your Amazon credentials. You need to give them again in order to refresh your author list. I’d like to see this polite behavior be the default option with an override allowing the site to remember my Amazon credentials but this is just a quibble.

BookTour is free for both authors and readers although authors can buy ads. I haven’t tried that yet.

Chat Groups

Any exCEO understands the temptation to participate in Yahoo chat groups which Whole Foods CEO John Mackey now apologizes for giving in to. Despite being cesspools of foul language, misinformation, stock pumping and pummeling, and adolescent fantasies, the chat groups which formed around every public company were an integral and influential part of the last Internet bubble and rubble.

No sane CEO should have spent much time looking at the garbage posted anonymously; almost every one of us CEOs kept a browser window open on the chat group formed around our stock symbol – but this wasn’t a time of sanity. We had two excuses for doing this:

1. Our stockholders ranging from rank amateurs to sophisticated mutual fund managers were watching the same chat groups (you can tell by their questions). Surely we had to know what they were reading.
2. The chat groups provide instant feedback. If a press release is unclear, you can tell by the chat group. You can even gauge in real time your performance during a live webcast earnings conference and clarify on the fly (but you lose your concentration so this isn’t really a good idea).

Mary and I resisted the temptation to join in the discussions(?) either anonymously or under our own names; but it was difficult. It was company policy that any employee participating in the ITXC chat group might be fired. The risk was simply too great of running afoul of the Security and Exchange Commissions’ Reg FD regarding non-public disclosure of data about a public company (no one wanted to be the test case for whether a chat group is public enough or not), disclosing data which shouldn’t have been disclosed, or making a misstatement.

On a couple of occasions we corrected a gross error of fact officially as the company when we felt that we had, in some way, contributed to misunderstanding. Lawyers didn’t even like that because it might have implied that we now had a responsibility to correct every bit of incorrect information or analysis which appeared on the chat group. I also remember sending a lawyer letter to Yahoo because a poster was pretending to be my son. Yahoo didn’t reply substantively but that poster disappeared from the board.

If blogs had existed then, I probably would have blogged at least partly as a counterpoint to the chat groups, not that lawyers would have liked that any better.

There is, of course, a chat group in my novel hackoff.com: an historic murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble. When you read the excerpt below – carefully keeping it from your children, you’ll have a hard time believing that I actually toned the language down but that’s the case. This chat takes place as the news reaches the market of the death of hackoff.com CEO Larry Lazard by bullet wound to the head and the accession of ex-swimsuit model and CFO Donna Langhorne to the CEOship.

Oh-Oh
by: thewatcher02 (38/M/New Rochelle, NY)                           04/01/03 9:40 am
Msg: 99020 of 99034
hackoff’s not trading!

Re: Oh-Oh
by: ChorusLine (25/F/Paramus, NJ)
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy                                                    04/01/03 9:41 am
Msg: 99021 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99020 by thewatcher02
Got to be an april fools joke:-}

Re: Oh-Oh
by: pooper
Long-Term Sentiment: Sell                                                    04/01/03 9:43 am
Msg: 99022 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99021 by ChorusLine
The real April Fool’s joke is George Bush

Re: Press Advisory Out
by: Jumbo10 (46/M/New York, NY)
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy                                                    04/01/03 9:45 am
Msg: 99023 of 99034
There is a press advisory out for an announcement expected at 10AM explaining the halt in trading. Whatever it is, you can bet it’ll be good for the crooks on wall street and bad for everyone stupid enough to be holding the stock.

Re: Oh-Oh
by: scooper
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy                                                    04/01/03 9:48 am
Msg: 99024 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99022 by pooper
pooper, your just as much an asshole as your buddy clinton and this is not a political board

Re: Press Advisory Out
by: Alaska60-60
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Sell                                       04/01/03 9:52 am
Msg: 99025 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99023 by jumbo10
I’ve been telling you idiots allalong that lizard would have to sell jerkoff to antihack. he probly just didn’t get his own parachute big enuf b4 but I heard from insider that the deal is definitly on now. of coarse they stopped trading so only insiders can benfit but thats how lizards are

Re: Press Advisory Out
by: scooper
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy                                                    04/01/03 9:56 am
Msg: 99026 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99025 by Alaska60-60
alaska, your as much an asshole as your friend pooper and this is not the antihack board. why dont you stay there where you belong so you can pump and dump that and not bother us here on this board

Press Release Out
by: Alaska60-60
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Sell                                       04/01/03 10:01 am
Msg: 99027 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99025 by Alaska60-60
The press release is on Yahoo.  The lizard is out and the cunt is in…  this stock is in the crapper if it ever starts trading again

Re: Press Advisory Out
by: Jumbo10 (46/M/New York, NY)
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy                                                    04/01/03 10:05 am
Msg: 99028 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99023 by jumbo10
This may not be bad for the stock. I’ve changed my sentiment to buy and will buy after it settles down after trading resumes. Donna may be smarter than Larry was about selling the company or making it profitable. She always did a better job than he did at the quarterly webcasts. Often regime change makes a company go up even when it is unexpected.

Re: Press Advisory Out
by: PacPhil (25/M/New York, NY)
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy                                                    04/01/03 10:07 am
Msg: 99029 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99028 by jumbo10
Jumbo, you always have good analysis. I hope you’ll write more later in the day. Why do you think Larry shot himself?  Does that matter to the stock?  Is the new CFO any good?  What will The Street think?

Re: Press Advisory Out
by: Alaska60-60
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Sell                                       04/01/03 10:10 am
Msg: 99030 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99028 by jumbo10
Your an idiot or just getting reddy to dump your stock. The cunt cant run the company. the lizard couldnt run the company. The company sucks. it doesn’t have anything. They should have sold to antihack… now noone will pay a penny for this piece of shit

Whats Happening
by: CLess                                                                                04/01/03 10:15 am
Msg: 99031 of 99034
Does anyone know why the stock isn’t trading???

Donna
by: TestTost (35/M/San Francisco, CA)
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy                                       04/01/03 10:15 am
Msg: 99032 of 99034
Donna’s a peace of ass.  She was in the SI Swimsuit addition in the early 90s.  She’s still hot.

Re: Oh-Oh
by: ChorusLine (25/F/Paramus, NJ)
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy                                                    04/01/03 10:16 am
Msg: 99033 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99021 by ChorusLine
It wasn’t an april fools joke.  what will the street think?

Stock Opened
by: thewatcher02 (38/M/New Rochelle, NY)                           04/01/03 10:16 am
Msg: 99034 of 99034
hackoff’s trading again! 1k shares at 1.26 unchanged. bid 1.24; ask 1.26.

BookTour.com

BookTour.com debuted last week as a web solution to a real world problem: book tours don’t work well (in fact, hardly work at all) except for very famous authors who probably don’t need them anyway. Appropriately, one of BookTour.com’s founders is Chris Anderson, editor of Wired Magazine and author of the Long Tail book and blog. Although his own book is at the head of the power curve, Chris understands the needs of the rest of us out on the long tail of the curve and the opportunities in serving those needs – that’s what his book and blog are all about.

From the about page of BookTour.com: “For authors, BookTour.com serves as a one-stop tool for book promotion, allowing authors at all levels of their careers to locate receptive live audiences. For readers and audiences, BookTour.com makes finding when a favorite author is coming to your town as easy as checking the weather.”

Full disclosure:  I was a pre-release author on BookTour.com and have a vested interest in seeing it succeed in its promotional aspirations.

Back in my father’s day, publishers arranged book tours for their authors. They didn’t do a great job of this except for their stars. Later authors turned to their own publicists to help with tours (I did that). Independent publicists seem to be able to get bookings but not to be able to drive enough local publicity or get the book stores to do enough promotion to draw crowds. If you have friends or relatives in a town, you can get turnout; if not, not. I sat in a coffee shop attached to a bookstore in Connecticut for an hour and a half making conversation with a very nice lady from the store and looking sadly at the pile of hackoff.com: an historic murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble stacked nicely waiting to be signed. In my home town of Stowe, on the other hand, there was a very nice turnout at the library (Mary promoted that one).

Book tours can’t be justified by the number of books you sell while you’re there although selling signed books is an incidental benefit and helps cover the expenses. The purpose of book tours is to create buzz about your book a city at a time; ideally a stop in a city involves a couple of appearances and readings as well as some newspaper publicity and a stop at a couple of radio and/or TV stations. A single appearance at a single book store in a large town is likely wasted effort.

Since each author’s schedule appears on BookTour.com, readers can find out who’s coming when to their town; libraries and other venues can ask to be added when they know the author is going to be nearby; and we authors can fill our dance card and all those empty seats in front of the lectern. You can go to my page on the site (where you’ll find that I’m not currently touring) and invite me to come talk to your group or at your store. I won’t be able to honor all invitations but chances are I can come to some.

Computers, communication, and eventually the Internet created the long tail – the opportunity for niche products and non-hits to be available to those who want them; Chris Anderson calls this the endless shelf because there is no limit to shelf space in a virtual store while brick and mortar stores have to remove slow sellers from their finite shelves. What’s not so clear is how consumers find out about the niche products or even those that are not immediate hits; if it succeeds, BookTour.com’ll be part of the answer. It will succeed, ironically, if it becomes a hit and is THE marketplace where readers find touring authors and vice versa.

New Excerpt from The Interpreter's Tale

This is a second teaser from my long short story "The Interpreter's Tale".  The whole story is for sale as an Amazon Short.  You can buy it from Amazon for reading, printing, or downloading as a PDF for just 49 cents, the price of all Amazon Shorts. Unfortnuately, though, you have to have a US shipping address to buy an Amazon Short.  Still trying to work out something for nonUS readers.

The Blurb

The pickpockets of Barcelona are justly famed for their ability to extract whatever they want from anywhere; why are they suddenly stealing cheap cellphones in preference to laden purses? What does this have to do with Gaudi's fantastic unfinished cathedral, with mega-yachts, with the long-ago Caliphate, and modern-day terrorists? Interpol and their super-hacker consultant Dom Montain would like to know; so would the Romanian-born police interpreter Maria whose tale this is. If you read my novel hackoff.com, you already know Dom. Whether you read hackoff.com or not, I think you'll enjoy meeting Maria.

The Teaser

About five minutes apart, the Americans and the engineer both rent the audioguide in English for the tour of Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi’s great unfinished basilica in Barcelona.  Even had there been a guide available in Arabic, the engineer would not have asked for it. He could be mistaken for an Englishman in his appearance, his language, and his mannerisms.

“I didn’t even know it was still being built,” the American says to his wife. “I hardly even heard of it before.  It’s huge, much bigger than all those Gothic cathedrals you drag me through.  When did he start it?”

“I don’t know,” the American wife says, “probably late 1800s early 1900s.  Parts look like his other building, parts don’t.”

The audioguide tells them that many contemporary architects and sculptors have been enlisted to complete Gaudi’s vision.  He intended the basilica to be “the last great sanctuary of Christendom” according to the tape.  Plans for its crowning cross, which is not yet in place, include a giant beacon which will be visible far out to sea.

The engineer looks up to where massive columns branch into what appear to be delicate stone tendrils.  The tendrils become arches supporting the unfinished roof of the central nave under which he and many others including the Americans are standing.  The concrete decorations are cast on site before fitting.  Workmen then hoist them up to the arches and tendrils. Electrical wires for the connection of lights dangle incongruously from holes in the stone columns.  The engineer plays a section of the recording several times and makes careful notes of numbers and sketches of the supports.

The engineer and the Americans are in the same elevator going up for a high view from the towers but they don’t notice each other.  “You can see carved fruit on some of the spires,” the wife says.

“The guide says Gaudi specified ceramics for these heights because the rain would wash them clean,” the American says.  “Looks like he was an architect who actually understood engineering.”

“I still smile when I think about the roof of the house he designed on the Passeig de Gracia,” says the wife. “He has such a sense of fun.  That tour was wonderful.”

“Too bad it was so crowded.”

Even from the height of the balcony off the tower, the engineer is looking up to see the vaults of the central nave. He makes a few more sketches. He draws part of the scaffolding and the notes carefully the circuitous route through partially-finished spiral stairs and temporary ladders which leads from the floor to the highest platforms.

Both the engineer and the Americans visit the gift shop before leaving.  Both buy books.  While the American couple is visiting an ancillary school room for workers’ children, also designed by Gaudi, the engineer makes a wax cast of the simple hasp lock on one of the gates which separates the workers from the tourists.

The Americans leave by subway.  The engineer leaves on a motorbike.

**************

The rest of the story is here.

This is a second teaser from my long short story "The Interpreter's Tale".  The whole story is for sale as an Amazon Short.  You can buy it from Amazon for reading, printing, or downloading as a PDF for just 49 cents, the price of all Amazon Shorts. Unfortnuately, though, you have to have a US shipping address to buy an Amazon Short.  Still trying to work out something for nonUS readers.

The Blurb

The pickpockets of Barcelona are justly famed for their ability to extract whatever they want from anywhere; why are they suddenly stealing cheap cellphones in preference to laden purses? What does this have to do with Gaudi's fantastic unfinished cathedral, with mega-yachts, with the long-ago Caliphate, and modern-day terrorists? Interpol and their super-hacker consultant Dom Montain would like to know; so would the Romanian-born police interpreter Maria whose tale this is. If you read my novel hackoff.com, you already know Dom. Whether you read hackoff.com or not, I think you'll enjoy meeting Maria.

The Teaser

About five minutes apart, the Americans and the engineer both rent the audioguide in English for the tour of Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi’s great unfinished basilica in Barcelona.  Even had there been a guide available in Arabic, the engineer would not have asked for it. He could be mistaken for an Englishman in his appearance, his language, and his mannerisms.

“I didn’t even know it was still being built,” the American says to his wife. “I hardly even heard of it before.  It’s huge, much bigger than all those Gothic cathedrals you drag me through.  When did he start it?”

“I don’t know,” the American wife says, “probably late 1800s early 1900s.  Parts look like his other building, parts don’t.”

The audioguide tells them that many contemporary architects and sculptors have been enlisted to complete Gaudi’s vision.  He intended the basilica to be “the last great sanctuary of Christendom” according to the tape.  Plans for its crowning cross, which is not yet in place, include a giant beacon which will be visible far out to sea.

The engineer looks up to where massive columns branch into what appear to be delicate stone tendrils.  The tendrils become arches supporting the unfinished roof of the central nave under which he and many others including the Americans are standing.  The concrete decorations are cast on site before fitting.  Workmen then hoist them up to the arches and tendrils. Electrical wires for the connection of lights dangle incongruously from holes in the stone columns.  The engineer plays a section of the recording several times and makes careful notes of numbers and sketches of the supports.

The engineer and the Americans are in the same elevator going up for a high view from the towers but they don’t notice each other.  “You can see carved fruit on some of the spires,” the wife says.

“The guide says Gaudi specified ceramics for these heights because the rain would wash them clean,” the American says.  “Looks like he was an architect who actually understood engineering.”

“I still smile when I think about the roof of the house he designed on the Passeig de Gracia,” says the wife. “He has such a sense of fun.  That tour was wonderful.”

“Too bad it was so crowded.”

Even from the height of the balcony off the tower, the engineer is looking up to see the vaults of the central nave. He makes a few more sketches. He draws part of the scaffolding and the notes carefully the circuitous route through partially-finished spiral stairs and temporary ladders which leads from the floor to the highest platforms.

Both the engineer and the Americans visit the gift shop before leaving.  Both buy books.  While the American couple is visiting an ancillary school room for workers’ children, also designed by Gaudi, the engineer makes a wax cast of the simple hasp lock on one of the gates which separates the workers from the tourists.

The Americans leave by subway.  The engineer leaves on a motorbike.

**************

The rest of the story is here.

hackoff.com – e-book Edition

My novel hackoff.com: an historic murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble is now available as an e-book from a number of online retailers affiliated with MobiPocket which is owned by Amazon.  This edition is suitable for downloading to book-reader devices, PDAs, and of course, computers.

hackoff.com was first released as a blook: a book serialized in the form of a blog. It’s still available for free viewing, subscribing to the serialization, downloading (as PDFs), or even podcast listening at www.hackoff.com. For those who like physical books which go to the beach (it is a mystery, after all), the hardcover edition is available from Amazon or by order from bookstores.

So why would you want to pay $5.95 to download what you could otherwise get for free?  If you’re happy with the blook edition or want the hardcover (also not free), you probably don’t want to buy the download. However, if you read on a PDA or a bookreader, this may be the edition for you. The technology supplied by MobiPocket means that the book formats itself for whatever device you read it on. Seems to work as far as I’ve been able to tell from the device emulators supplied to authors by MobiPocket.

For those who do download, please tell me what the experience is like from buying through reading.

Note to authors: You set the suggested selling price for your e-book.  Commissions are 50% of that suggested price (retailers can discount but can’t discount your royalty).  You get an additional 10% if the referral for the sale is by link from your website (there’s  a link in the right sidebar of Fractals of Change).  Another way to use the service is to sell your e-book directly from your own site, which I’m not doing..  If you do that, you pay them a 10% fee for the formatting an digital rights management (DRM).  BTW, DRM is mandatory or they won’t distribute.

MobiPocket sells through a large number of online retailers.  Unlike Amazon Shorts, they have a strong international presence and can sell where VAT collection is required.  No exclusivity is required; they are just another outlet.

If your book is a single Word file, PDF, or HTML document, conversion to ebook format with the free tools supplied by MobiPocket should be fairly easy. If you have fifteen big Word files too big for Word to combine without crashing, life is much more difficult. As usual Word, is somewhat problematic for conversion anyway.  I had to go through every converted chapter page by page and look for anomalies; some I needed to correct by hacking the html.  Yuk.  But probably could have corrected in Word IF I’d had only one document.

Check your illustrations as well.  JPEGs and GIFs should be scaled reasonably small because they’ll get scaled more to fit the various devices.

Support through the MobiPocket support forum is quite good. You can see the thread of help I got here.

New arrivals get highlighted.  There are email promotions to readers; haven’t figured out how to get into them yet, though. Guess I’ll ask in the forum.

Amazon Shorts

Update! “The Interpreter’s Tale is now available for download from Amazon Shorts.  A short preview is here.

Today an email came saying that my long story (or short novel) “The Interpreter’s Tale” has been accepted into the Amazon Shorts program. The Shorts are “are never-before-seen short works from a wide variety of well-known authors, available only on Amazon.com.”  They are only distributed electronically although you are welcome to print them.  And they all sell for $.49.

Since I self-published my first novel, hackoff.com: an historic murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble, it drew neither acceptance (nor rejection) letters. An acceptance letter turns out to be more gratifying than I would have thought, quite possibly because I’m the son of two oft-published writers and the spirits of our house ebbed and flowed with acceptance and rejection letters not to mention that we ate (or didn’t) based on royalties.

Authors get a whopping 40% royalty for Shorts; much more than the standard 6% my parents got.  But, of course, their books sold for a lot more than $.49. This is most likely not a road to riches but it is two different experiments for me.

The author experiment is the open-ended question: what can fiction look like if we don’t worry about the printed media called books and magazines?  Can we find new, interesting ways to tell a story?  This is a continuation of  the experiment that started with publishing hackoff.com as a blook.

In the old days of non-electronic distribution, there was usually a clear line between short stories, which had to fit in magazines, and novels, which had to fill the form factor of a book.  A very well-know author could stretch this some with a novella or a long short story serialized but generally the story had to fit the medium it was distributed in.

I have a story to tell in bits and pieces, a mosaic of little mysteries that may knit into the tapestry of an adventure.  Some pieces are long like hackoff.com; some are much shorter like “The Interpreter’s Tale”.  All are likely to contain links to online pictures, maps, and who knows what else.  I am writing for the electronic editions, not paper, although I know from experience with hackoff.com that many of you will choose to print and read.  One of the things I like about the Amazon Shorts program is that you retain the right to view or download the electronic edition forever.   Even if you read primarily paper, you can go back and click through any links that you want to follow.

As a web guy, I’m interested in distribution and how content creators connect with content consumers.  How do content creators make a living meeting the need of content consumers?  Part of the answer is that prices go down because a lot of middlemen disappear and much of the physical cost of distribution goes down.  But another part of the answer has to be some sort of marketplace or substitute for a marketplace where sellers find their buyers and vice versa.

My experience with hackoff.com was that about ten to twenty thousand readers read all or a substantial part of the blook online or listed to the podcasts (all free).  These readers found the blook mainly by word of blog and a small amount of planned promotion.  However, this online interest did NOT make the eventual hardcover edition a hit by any means.  It still sells; people still read the online version.  But there is no efficient way to promote either of them in isolation and I don’t have a list of other books to sell along with them.  Thanks to traditional Amazon, however, the book isn’t doomed to disappear and become inaccessible.

Amazon Shorts and other forms of electronic distribution like Mobipocket.com, which I’m also experimenting with, may be part of the answer.  They are places where people who like to read go (don’t know how many).  The fact that content costs money through these channels means that the channel has a reason to promote.  I suspect that channel promotion will remain important to authors – even those authors who don’t need to make a direct living from their books.

Speaking of promotion: I’m only going to tell you a tiny bit about “The Interpreter’s Tale” now.  It takes place in Barcelona; Dom Montain, super-hacker from the last novel, is back;  Larry Lazard, who died in the last novel, is not; there are no stock brokers or IPOs in the story.  Mary says I’m not allowed to say more until there is an Amazon Shorts URL for the story to link to; you know, that call to action thing.

Book Tour – South Burlington, VT and Hanover, NH

Two weeks from tomorrow on Saturday, February 10, I’ll be at the Borders Express (formerly Waldenbooks) in University Mall, 55 Dorset Street, South Burlington, VT from noon to two.

On Saturday, March 24, I’ll be at the Dartmouth Bookstore, 33 South Main Street, Hanover, NH at 7PM.

At both places I’ll be reading from hackoff.com: an historic murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble, signing copies, and glad to talk about the book, my blog Fractals of Change, or anything else you like.  Hope to see you at one of these places if you live here or are visiting for the now great skiing.