GENREALITY

Read an E-Book Week officially started yesterday and runs through the end of the week, so I thought it might be a good time to highlight the event and spread the word.

Started by Rita Toews in 2004, the event is designed to “educate and inform the public about the pleasures and advantages of reading electronically. Authors, publishers, vendors, the media and readers world-wide are welcome to join in the effort and are encouraged to promote electronic reading with events of their own. These could include: public readings, library displays, reading challenges, school visits, newspaper and blog articles, chat show appearances, internet radio interviews, e-book give-ways, and website banners.”

One cool aspect of Read an E-Book Week is the fact that a number of online retailers and authors have joined the party and are offering free or deeply discounted titles during the event.  A full list of them can be found in the Ebook Store on the event’s website.

I’ve decided to participate myself and will be making my entire Templar Chronicles trilogy available in digital format throughout the week at a 25% discount.  I’ve even had new cover art done up to go along with the offer (see below).

What’s disappointing to me is that there are no major NY publishers taking part in this event even after its been in operation for six years.  Offering a free or discounted ebook from the hundreds of authors you publish sounds like an easy way to get customers to start taking advantage of your ebook offerings and the absence of the bigger houses is unfortunate.

If you enjoy ebooks, or even if you’re just coming to them for the first time, drop by the event website and check it out.

(And don’t forget to check out the Templar Chronicles trilogy! Book one, The Heretic, is available now and books two and three will be available later this week.)

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We’ve all heard the old saw that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, that what’s inside the book is far more important than what’s plastered on the front.  But I have to admit that I’m one of those people who is guilty of doing just that – it is often the cover art that attracts me to a particularly work, that makes me pick it up off the shelf in order to find out more.  I’ve never purchased a book simply because of the cover art, but it is certainly a factor in my overall decision.  If I’m on the fence about a particular book, having decent cover art can tip the scales in the book’s favor.

While rearranging the bookshelves in my office the other day, I spent some time pondering my own cover art. I was particularly intrigued by the way different artists and publishers had chosen to portray the same work.

For instance, here are the US, German, and Polish covers to my novel HERETIC.

Of the three, I’d probably be drawn to the Polish cover first, as it portrays a character from the book (in this case, Knight Commander Cade Williams) and gives me a clearer sense of what the book is about.  The Polish cover art also conjures up a greater sense of mystery for me – it makes me want to know more.  Who is this guy?  What’s with the sword?  Why is his face scarred so badly?   The other two covers are nice, but they don’t reach out and grab me as much as the final one in the group does.

Moving to the cover art for the second book in the series, A Scream of Angels, I found the same thing held true – I was more attracted to the art that prompted a sense of mystery and curiosity in me over the others.  In this comparison, I used the US, German, and Russian editions (as I don’t have a Polish edition of this book yet) and it was definitely the US edition that caught my eye.

So what about you?  What are some of your favorite covers and what attracted you to them?

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Back in October I wrote about a new digital project I was involved in centering on a new series written with fellow scribe Jon F. Merz.  The series, HELLstalkers, was specifically designed for the mobile phone and ebook markets and would be published by Blackbetty Mobilemedia in conjunction with telecommunication giants Vodafone and Verizon.

The story centers around an accident at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva and features transdimensional rifts, otherworldly creatures, and a mysterious group known as the Cerberus Project.  We will be releasing several of the opening chapters as teasers to introduce readers to the storyline and the characters.  The first of those, chapter one of The Cerberus Protocol, is available today, formatted for enjoyment on your favorite ebook reader of choice.

You can get the free download HERE.

We’ll be releasing a new episode each week over the next month or so and new formats will be rolling out on a weekly schedule as well.  Next up will be versions specifically formatted for various mobile phone platforms, including the Android and the iPhone. 

We are also putting together a street team to help with promoting the series.  In exchange for your tweets, blog comments, and general promotion activities like posting a banner or two, Jon and I wil be giving away lots of free swag, including HELLstalker hats, T-shirts, the chance to be a character in the series, and even consulting time with the two of us to help you move your own projects forward.  You can find out how to join your local HELLstalker unit by visiting the Recruitement Center.

At the recent Digital Bookd World conference in NY, it was revealed that Harlequin sells more than one million downloads a month to Japanese cell phone users.  That’s one heck of a market.  Jon and I are hoping that by making an early move in this direction, our work will reach a broader audience and that we’ll be in on the ground floor of one of publishing’s next new frontiers.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments about the series or about the medium itself.  The first five or six chapters are going to be free, so why not give it a try?  If you don’t have an ereader, you can always download the free Kindle for PC  app and give that a go.

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I spent the last several days trying to figure out what this week’s post should be about, but must admit to being distracted thanks to the fact that I’m on vacation at the wonderful world of Disney with my two youngest kids.  (Actually, that should be at the “holy shit I can’t believe it costs this much” world of Disney, but that’s a different post!)

Rather than focus on any one issue, I decided that I’d do a bit of a stream of consciousness post this week, show you some of the stuff that I’ve been thinking about industry wide over the past week and maybe get your thoughts on the same.

As I write this, Avatar is about to earn something in the neighborhood of 2 billion dollars.  Frankly, I’m amazed by this.  Not because it wasn’t an enjoyable film with great special effects (it was) but because Avatar has the most predictable overused storyline that I’ve seen in years.  If you are one of the few people on the planet who apparently haven’t seen it yet, please skip to the next paragraph.   For the rest of you, tell me this wasn’t Dances with Wolves in space?  Guy sent to study the natives and find their weaknesses, falls in love with native woman, changes sides, and then must fight his own former comrades to save his new friends.  We’ve seen this story a hundred, nay a thousand times before, people.  Stop spending so much money on what is basically a very unimaginative film!

The fight between Amazon and MacMillan over the price of ebooks goes on.  At this point Amazon has admitted that it must eventually cave to MacMillan.  They say they’ll restore MacMillan’s books to the site so customers can buy them, but right now all they’ve done is put “buy buttons” back on used copies of MacMillan’s books.  Gee, thanks Amazon!  Way to screw the author.  Then again, that’s not something new for Amazon, now is it?

I spent the last week putting together a proposal for a steampunk zombie novel, because an editor I’d like to work with asked for one from me.  I probably wouldn’t have decided to write one on my own, as I’ve never been a huge zombie fan, but once I got into the planning and developmental aspects of putting together the basic idea I had a lot of fun.  Now I hope the book sells for the simple reason that it I’m actually looking forward to writing this story.  Think the Blue Max meets Dawn of the Dead by way of The Dirty Dozen and you’ll have some idea of what I put together.

So what else happened this week?  Oh, yeah, right, the unveiling of the iPad, the supposed ebook game changer.  All I can say is…yawn.  No surprises and actually some real disappointments when it came to the feature list.  I’ll wait until the next generation before I line up to get one, as I want the benefit of all the changes the early adopters force Apple to make.

And finally, on the flight this week I had the pleasure of reading Cailtin Kittridge’s latest, Demon Bound, which was the sequel to Street Magic.  I heartily recommend it!  (But don’t expect to buy it from that link above, however, because it is published by St.Martin’s and guess what – they’re a MacMillan company!)

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I’ve always been a fan of both diversification and experimentation when it comes to my writing career. From my soon-to-be-launched cell phone project to making my work available in a variety of digital formats, I’ve tried to examine different ways to bring my writing to the people who value it the most – my readers.

2010 is going to be an adventure in living out that belief; I’m going to try different things and see just what folks respond to the most. And I’m happy to say that I’m here to announce the first of these experimental ventures – The Mirror’s Road.

The Mirror’s Road is a novel I’ve had hanging around in the back of my head for awhile. It’s such a mix of genres that I’ve never even tried to sell the idea to a publisher – it would probably give the guys in the marketing department fits as they tried endlessly to pigeonhole it into one genre or another without success. But it’s a story I want to tell, one I want to share with all my fans, so I’ve been looking for a way to do just that.

I found it through a little site called Kickstarter.

You see, Kickstarter is a site devoted to doing just what its name implies – kickstarting projects with the help of others. People pledge money to a project in return for cool rewards and a behind-the-scenes look at the development process from beginning to end. The site is backed by Amazon.com, which provides an appropriate measure of security to the entire process. It’s all or nothing funding, too; if a project does not meet its financial goal in the timeframe set (between 1 and 90 days) then no money changes hands.

I’ve turned The Mirror’s Road into a Kickstarter project, as you can see from the widget below, and I want to invite you all along to share the ride with me. If you decide to back the project – and there are various levels of doing so from $5.00 to $100.00, with appropriate rewards for each – you’ll get to participate in the project with me, providing suggestions on everything from character traits to plot lines. You’ll get to follow along from development of the intial idea to the actual writing, from the production of the cover art to the final printed product. And regardless of the level of backing you chose, you are assured of getting a copy of the completed book as my way of saying thanks for supporting the project.

So what’s the book about? I can tell you it’s an urban fantasy novel, full of things that shouldn’t exist in a world that doesn’t quite believe in them. And it’s a road story too, about a young man on a journey, searching not only for his destiny but also for the almond-eyed girl that appears in his dreams each night, the girl that calls him on through the darkness. Who they are and what they mean to each other? Well, I think we’ll find that out in time.

If you want to get involved, and I really hope you do, simply click on the widget above which will take you to the project’s home page. There you can read the first chapter and learn more about the project. If you discover that you’re interested in supporting it, simply click on the pledge level you want, select your reward, and follow the Amazon check out process.

And remember, the pledge period runs until April 16, so your card won’t be charged until then and only if we meet our goal.

I’d love to hear what other people think about taking this type of approach. What do you like about it? What do you dislike? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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