Gearing Up for the BEA

This is our first year as participants in Book Expo America - the premier event for the North American publishing industry - and we are plenty excited. BookExpo America will be held this year from Thursday, May 28 through Sunday, May 31 at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York, NY.

We thought it would be a good choice, even though we are painfully small, since the expo was slated to come to Washington, DC in 2010. All of that has been changed (to our chagrin), perhaps due to the economy. The BEA is now staying at the Javits Center for 3 more years.

Sigh.

Anyway, we will be there with our three new books: Federal City View, The Long, Steep Climb, and AfroCyberspace. We will also have previews of Insane Messiah - a speculative fiction book that delivers in October 2009. We will be offering special discounts on all orders placed during the show and free shipping on full case orders. We will also be promoting the Black Author Showcase community.

Come by and check out our catalog, meet our authors, or just to say hi and give support. This is a big step for us and we look forward to meeting existing and new friends.

Visit us at booth 2148 Directly behind the Tom Joyner Foundation (2248) - don't miss us!

Amazon New Rules for POD May Create PO'ed Publishers

Many have weighed in since the announcement in February 2008 - and not all is happiness and light.

Amazon changes rules for print-on-demand publishers
Robert L. Mitchell weighs in over at ComputerWorld with "Amazon pulls a Microsoft"

Where do you stand? Angela Hoy of BookLocker is fighting the good fight for the little guy. Check out: http://www.writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/004597_03272008.html

Authors, readers, and small publishers are taking a stand:
"We bemoan the loss of independent booksellers, but they're going out of business because we buy our best-sellers at Wal-Mart and online. This move will lead to small publishers going out of business, too, unless readers decide to take a stand.

There's a precedent for Amazon's throwing its weight around. Back in 2000, they began suing companies using a similar mechanism to their one-click checkout system. It wasn't until a PR swell on the Internet threatened their business that they backed down."
Now there's a petition to protest Amazon's move:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/protectPOD/

Greg at the blog Publish Yourself comes down on the side of publishers and consumers with Amazon Strongarms Small Publishers.

The shakeout will be interesting. Will small publishers move to B&N and rely more on their own websites to sell or will they relinquish more profit to Amazon and pay $29 per book Advantage fee distributed with 55% off of the cover price?

Great Author's Bookmark Idea

Author Chris Crutcher has a great idea that also saves money on his webpage. He has uploaded his newest bookmark (front and back). The beauty of this particular bookmark? While most authors create new bookmarks for each new book they write and promote, Crutcher has chosen to promote himself - the story writer.

It's a awesome concept and if I'm late on the train, so what! He never needs another bookmark. On one side it has an outstretched photo of him with the phrase "I feel a story coming on . . ." and on the reverse is his headshowt and contact information. Brilliant!


Don't totally copy or plagerize it, but please use the concept. And give Chris his props. Check out his site here:
Author, Chris Crutcher - Homepage

Amazon's Kindle is Sold Out! Is it the iPod of Reading?

I waited a bit before I bought my first iPod. While I love all things tech, I also have a healthy bit of experience with being an early adapter and that's enough to put the brakes on 'gotta have it first' spending.

I thought the iPod was a marvelous device (and still do), but I scanned the geek sites for bugs and actually waited for the storage to go up and the price to come down. That definitely worked out. So I didn't have the instant subway cache of white wire hanging from my ears for almost two years.

I'm wondering if Amazon's new wireless reading device the Kindle, is going to be the next big thing I have to save for (especially at its price of $399). It's a 10.3 ounce, 7.5" x 5.3" x 0.7" (hmm . . . paperback sized), wireless (Sprint's national high-speed EVDO), handheld book reader and Amazon shopping cart.

That's right - Buy a book from Amazon and it is wirelessly delivered to your Kindle for free. Supposedly within one minute. It has a 6" display it calls E-Ink® that is gray scale with 600 x 800 pixel resolution.

As a complete 'bookaholic' I've got to admit that this does sound plenty tasty. While traveling I can scan blogs, check my webmail, read newspapers and magazines, along with instant book gratification. However, I think I may stay in 'wait-and-see' mode for a bit longer. The pros and the cons have quite a bit to battle out:

• According to beta testers, the battery life is more than decent and the screen is easy to read.


• Books have DRM (digital rights management, that's content or copy protection to you partner). Will I even own the book after ten years?


• Book purchases are stored at Amazon.com to be retrieved if the Kindle is lost, broken or stolen. Other files should be on an SD memory card so they can be easily backed up.


• It doesn't read PDF file format (rats!). However, you can use another program (Mobipocket Creator 4.2 - free) to convert PDF's to Mobi format, then upload to the Kindle.


• Wow! Imagine having all of your school books on one device. That would make it worth it's wait in gold. The lack of Quasimodo backpack shoulder alone is priceless.


• Oh no! Not another device? It took me awhile to combine my Tungsten pda with my cell phone. My handbag was (is) filled with electronics - iPod, pda, phone. Let's just use a rolling suitcase from now on, huh?


• What if, after reading the book on the Kindle, you want a hard copy? Will there be a discount on the actual book? Or maybe, buy the book and get Kindle file free?


• Will we ever be able to download files from libraries? For free? Or will it be forever married to Amazon?


• On that same tip, what does this mean for independent book stores? Will they make the shift and sell more ebooks on CD (ugh)? Or find a way to upload their own supply?


• The price really isn't that bad when you take in account the monthly cost of EVDO (at least $40 a month). All wireless is free on the Kindle.


• Editors and other professional readers will not be able to site pages by fixed page numbers. The fluidity of the pages makes this maddening. Editors will have to a search for text or a phrase or sentence, much like searching for data on a webpage or site. Perhaps this will be addressed in future versions.


• This may be a boon to self-published authors. An ISBN isn't even needed to sell your book on the Kindle platform.


• There have been some complaints of flimsy construction.


• Here's one of my favorites: If you buy more than one Kindle (on the same account), then anything you buy for one will be automatically downloaded to the others. Up to 6 Kindles can be dedicated to a single account. Ha! Now all I need is a special husband-wife/family discount. Come on Mr. Bezos. Just this once, for me . . . Please?

Okay, so what am I really waiting for? Let's see . . . I'm waiting for the iPhone to be offered with my carrier Verizon and perhaps a '2.1 version of the Kindle.

The war may be over before the battle begins - it already has it's own 'noun-verb' . . . kindling.

Check out Toni Morrison's take on the Kindle.

Black Author Showcase™ A Standing Room Only Success!

Comments heard last Friday at the Black Author Showcase™ at Howard University Continuing Education:

"That was just fantastic!"

"A premium experience"

". . . so upscale"

"We really enjoyed the authors and their presentations . . ."

"The food was excellent!"

(It was) so good – more than I expected."

"Please make sure I'm on your invitation list for the next one!"
Thank you to all of you who made the showcase this past Friday a success. Over 130 people came out in the rain to see:

Rey Harris - Motivational Morsels

Henriette Edmonds - The Georgia Avenue Bus

James A. Jimason - Dante's Destiny

Silvia Henderson - Why You Talk So White?

Angeline Bandon-Bibum - Sojourner's Dream

R.J. Williams - Cheapa 2 Keepa

Stafford L. Battle - AfroCyberspace

Shaun Mathis - This Hurts

Hilda Thomasine Wren - A Plain, Brown Wren

Wanda Childs - Pushed Into My Purpose

K. Lowery Moore - When I'm Loving You

Joyce Veranda Gray - Dark Karma

Dwayne Vernon - My Man, My Boyz

MacArthur Burton - Management Out of the Blue

Anita R Lambert - F.H.M. Murray

Matthew Horne - The Universe Is Inviting You In

Larry Chang - Wisdom for the Soul of Black Folk

Oscar Harp - Across Time: Mystery of the Great Sphinx

Theresa Grant - Hope and Desire

William Powell, Jr. - Valkyrie

Paul Lawrence Vann - Living on Higher Ground

22nd Century Press also introduced three new authors: Pleasetta Grace, Randy Philip, and Ralph Spencer.

The works ran the gamut: novels, self help, romance, poetry, autobiographical, technology, sci-fi, historical - you name it. There was a book for every type of book buying customer (except children, but keep an eye out for our next showcase in February).

The speakers were outstanding. Some had only a few minutes, but still left an indelible mark on the audience. During intermissions attendees checked out the school's facilities, visited the photographer Kea Taylor of Imagine Photography Studios taking professional head shots on location during the showcase, and dined on assorted cheeses, wines, smoked salmon, caviar and more. All of this and it was free to the public.

You will not want to miss the next one. Special thanks to the Prince George's County, MD chapter of the Black Writer's Guild for their support. See their website for the Afro Books Expo in February 2008.

The More Things Change . . . Books and Race - Blah, Blah, Blah

As a writer, where do you want your book to reside in ANY bookstore? That's right. WHEREVER the most people interested in your genre will find it. It's a shame that writers of Sci-Fi, horror, and other genres are instantly installed in the "African American" section of the major booksellers just because they also happen to be a different shade.

Simply put, bookstore segregation must stop. However, there will be no busing of novels across the store aisles. Supposedly, Barnes and Nobel has begun to integrate their fiction stacks.

I am going to keep my eye on the lawsuit filed by Nadine Aldred against her publisher, the Penguin Group. This lawsuit and the larger issue are covered in this article written by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg in the December 6, 2006 issue of the Wall Street Journal: Why Book Industry Sees the World Split Still by Race - WSJ.com

The blog, "On The Wrong Side of the Alligator" has posted a large portion of the complaint. It's lengthy but fascinating reading for those of us that want the best chance to produce an international bestseller. Ms. Aldred's pseudonym weighs in on her blog here: Millenia Black | Taking Care of Business