Writers

Let’s face it, dropping a print book or an eReader into a body of water would be an awful way to ruin any summer reads. An eReader would be worse, because it costs more and houses a lot more books, but still no one wants to lose their paperback to the sea.

To combat water destruction of books, author Alan Cork is using a new water resistant technology for his eBook The Greater Bad when it comes out in print next year.

The Daily Mail has more about the technology: “It is said to increase shelf-life by up to 200 per cent as well as prevent running ink. Banks in Australia already use the technology to prolong the life of banknotes and to reduce the risk of forgery. But it is the first time that a standard paperback will receive the same treatment.”

Marty Beckerman, a former Esquire editor, has a new eBook out that takes a humorous look at Ernest Hemingway, called The Heming Way.

To memorialize the 50^th anniversary of the great American novelist’s passing on July 2nd, Beckerman looks at Hemingway as “history’s ultimate man.” The book pokes fun at Hemingway’s drinking, womanizing and self destructive tendencies with chapters such as “For Whom the Beer Flows,” “Death in the Afternoon… Lunch is Served,” “A Farewell to Smooth Arms, Backs, Taints, Etc.,” and “The Old Man and the See You in Hell.”

Beckerman had this statement: “Fifty years have passed since this giant walked the earth, and we’ve forgotten every lesson he taught. Instead of wasting our time on Facebook and Twitter, we should be climbing mountains, dominating battlefields, and transforming majestic creatures of the Southern Hemisphere into piano keyboards.”

The eBook is now available for $3.99.

Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest has sold more than 3.4 million copies in the U.S. in hardcover and eBook formats combined. Random House has sold more than 17 million books for all three books in the Millennium Trilogy, eBooks and print combined.

According to a Random House press release, Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy in the U.S has sold15 million copies in print in hardcover, trade, and mass market editions and more than 17 million in all formats. Random House breaks out sales as 80% physical and 20% digital. By these calculations, Larsson has sold 3.4 million eBooks in the U.S.

According to the release, Larsson has sold 60 million books in all formats worldwide.

James Patterson has sold more than 3 million eBooks. The company doesn’t yet have the news on its website, but the Associated Press and The Washington Post are both reporting this.

The AP’s post says: “The Hachette Book Group announced Wednesday that e-sales for the prolific author of such blockbuster series as “Maximum Ride” have topped 3 million, with 2 million coming just in the last 11 months. Patterson releases several books a year, many of them top sellers.”

This number is not surprising, as last October Amazon reported that Patterson had sold more than a million Kindle books alone.

Looking for a summer project? How about finishing your novel? For one day you can save 25 percent* on Mediabistro’s Novel Writing: Advanced course.

Today Mediabistro launched a “Summer Starts Now!” sale–your chance to save 25 percent on any course. Just sign up for the course using the promo code “SUMMER25.” The summer includes over a hundred new media, writing, and journalism courses to explore.

Here’s more about the memoir course: “By the end of class, you will be well on your way to completing the first draft of a novel. Students who have taken this class have published: Total Knockout: Tale of an Ex-Class President (Simon & Schuster), House and Home (Voice), The Damage Done (Forge), and signed with the McIntosh and Otis agency.”

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Journalist Scott Carney’s freshman book The Red Market, which is out on Harper Collins today, looks at the international network of organ brokers, bone thieves and child traffickers.

I caught up with the author for a feature interview on Media Bistro’s Avant Guild site. He spoke about reporting on the black market. In the interview called, Hey, How’d You Report on The Black Market and Live To Tell About It, Scott Carney?. “The trick is going into the interview empathizing with your subject and trying to see the world from their view,” he says in the interview. Avant Guild members can access the entire interview here.

Since his book is available as an eBook, I interviewed Carney about his thoughts on digital publishing for eBookNewser. Here is the interview.

EBN: What do you think of eBooks?

SC: Epublishing just might be the future–but maybe not. It is a very promising route forward that could change the way that we interact with media overall. There is one company that I think is particularly cutting edge called The Atavist, which was started by another Wired contributing editor named Evan Ratliff and a current New Yorker editor named Nick Thompson (who is now, officially a consultant on the project). They do feature stories, where a reader can download them like an iTunes song for like $1.99 for a really well researched story. Read more

Rocker Gregg Allman has inked a book deal with William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. The release will include an enhanced eBook with concert footage, as well as audio of various interviews and songs that Allman has recorded over the years.

In the book, Allman will share stories of life with the Allman Brothers, his solo career, his battles with drug and alcohol addiction, and his marriage to Cher.

Allman had this statement: “When I got out of high school, I thought, I’ll take a year or two off and play the clubs, get this out of my system, and then go to med school. More than forty years later, I figure it’s finally time to write about this crazy journey that’s taken me around the world and back.”

Google celebrated the late Will Eisner’s birthday this weekend with a Google Doodle, dedicated to the legendary comic author. Artist Mike Dutton drew the above homage to Eisner, in which the ‘oo’s in Google have been replaced by the eyes of one of Eisner’s most famous characters named “The Spirit”, aka Denny Colt, a crime fighting detective.

Comic artist Scott McCloud wrote an official post on Google’s blog honoring Eisner. In the post, he talks about how influential Eisner was in American comics in the 20th century. Here is more from the post: “Eisner influenced comics in dozens of ways. In the ‘40s, Eisner’s The Spirit—a seven-page newspaper feature—introduced an arsenal of visual storytelling techniques still used generations later, and provided an early testing ground for future comics stars including Jack Kirby and Jules Feiffer.”

McCloud recalls that when Eisner had an industry award named after him, things got funny when he, himself, was up for it. “Inevitably, the prospect loomed that Will Eisner himself might win an ‘Eisner Award’ leading to some awkward choices; Hall of Fame, maybe? Lifetime Achievement? His only suggestion was ‘Most Promising Young Cartoonist.’ And so he was.”

Making readers feel awesome about themselves is the best way to build passionate readers, said author Kathy Sierra in her keynote talk, “Creating Passionate Users,” at the O’Reilly “Tools of Change” conference yesterday.

In the talk, Sierra stressed the importance of giving the reader a good reading experience and making a book that makes them feel passionate and excited to talk about it. “People with a passion will not shut up,” she said.

And this is the kind of thing that will help a write with word-of-mouth marketing, something having a Twitter account can’t do.

Sierra advises writers to think of readers as users and to think about how every page will help the readers kick ass. In her case, writing JAVA guides, her job is not just to write a better JAVA book, but to make the reader a better JAVA programmer.

Pointing to death as an example of how change is not always good, at The O’Reilly “Tools of Change” conference today, Margaret Atwood discussed the complexities of the evolving digital publishing world today. “It doesn’t have to be a book,” she said. “There have been a lot of publishing tools. Yelling is one of them.”

Atwood is not against technology, she just pointed out that every technology is a tool and every tool has three sides –a sharp side, a dull side and a stupid side. “You can use a hammer to build a house for a homeless person or you can use it to kill your neighbor. The stupid side would be hitting your finger with the hammer.”

Pointing out books’ drawbacks, Atwood said that they are heavy, get wet in the bathtub and they make good kindling. eBooks on the other hand risk their demise at the hands of a big solar flare. Also, she said that if the technology changes, you are stuck with it. Think floppy discs. “One good thing about paper is when the lights go out, you can still read a paper book with a candle.” Read more