Tag: books and reading

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand? 2-5-12

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Virtual Nightstand

Is it really February? In Atlanta it’s 65 and sunny. I know we’re still in the South, but I did think this place was supposed to have something like seasons. So far, it’s been pretty much shirt-sleeve weather all year.

It’s not that I miss winter, and definitely not that I miss snow, but it just “feels” wrong for February.

I got a new book added to my nightstand late last week. Actually two new books. Library Journal asked me to review Danger Zone by Dee J. Adams, and those reviews always have a very short window, so my review is due on Friday, February 10. And it’s a sequel. So there I was downloading Dangerous Race from Carina Press. I got lucky, there was a sale! And even better, they are really, really good romantic suspense. I’ve already finished Dangerous Race, and I’m halfway through Danger Zone. Very neat stories about Formula One racing and the Hollywood filming thereof.

I also picked The Woman Who Loved Jesse James by Cindi Myers from NetGalley. It was published on January 23, but it’s still available. The description sounded a lot like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, if it were told from Etta Place’s point of view. I’ll find out.

And for next Tuesday I have the new Robin Hood re-telling, Scarlet, by A.C. Gaughen. This is supposed to be YA version, but that’s not the reason I requested it on NetGalley. In this version of the Robin Hood story, “Will” Scarlet is a female passing as male. The Robin Hood legend is one of the truly great stories, I can’t wait to see what changes this twist makes!

In spite of the addition of the racing books, I did make some progress from last week’s list. Besides finishing and reviewing The Night is Mine by M.L. Buchman, I also finished Miss Hillary Schools a Scoundrel by Samantha Grace. So that review will be published early this week.

My review for The Devil of Jedburgh by Claire Robyns will also be published this week, after my thoughts on the book first appear at Book Lovers Inc. Reviewing for BLI is fun and different from what I do here.

I need to hike myself back to Theft of Swords. I keep thinking of those 500+ pages and going “eek”, but I enjoyed the part I read. I just keep getting distracted by other books.

And on Thursday, February 9, I will be conducting another webinar for the Maryland Library Association. This time the topic will be ebooks in libraries. For interested parties, the signup link is here.

Speaking of ebooks, tomorrow is Monday. That means it’ll be time for another edition of Ebook Review Central. ERC will finally say “Goodbye” to December with Amber Quill, Astraea, Liquid Silver, and Riptide. Tomorrow!

Covers, Stories, Teasers, Stars, Grades

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blogging> book reviews> Ebook Review Central

What makes a book appealing to you? For that matter, what makes a book appealing to anyone? For her February 3 TGIF feature, GReads asked the question “When you’re browsing Goodreads, the library, or a blogger’s reviews, what grabs your attention to make you want to read it?”

For this blog, that’s a two-part question.

  1. What makes a book appealing to me?
  2. What makes a book ‘feature-worthy’ for the weekly Ebook Review Central?

If books were food, I would be making the old joke about being on the “seafood diet”. The joke was that I “see food and I eat it”. In the case of books, I see books and I want to read them. Not all books, but too awfully darn many.

We all judge books by their covers, but I use it to judge what category the book might be. I see gears and I think “steampunk, cool”, and that goes into the “maybe, yes” column. I see a man in a kilt and think “Highland Scots romance, probably not”.  I have, I will again, but unless they are either paranormal or time travel or something otherwise supernatural, except for Diana Gabaldon, I may be done there for a while.

Spaceships or computer chips means cyberpunk, space opera or science fiction romance; again, count me in. But cover art only suggests, it doesn’t guarantee.

I also go for authors I know or whose series I have started. I don’t read a lot of mysteries per se, but I read a lot of mystery series where I’m neck deep in the series, and I’m invested. Or is that committed?

I also like stories where the author has tried something new, so if the reviewer says they didn’t just love the story, but also that there is something new and interesting going on, I might try the book. Particularly if I trust the reviewer. There are some reviewers whose “mehs” mean more than other reviewers’ 5 star ratings. Everyone has their own style.

But when it comes to Ebook Review Central, I use an entirely different criteria for determining which books get featured. Every Monday ERC features up to three books from the publishing output for the publisher(s) and the month in question. On January 30, the publisher of the week was Samhain Publishing, the month was December 2011. On February 3, the last December 2011 issue will feature Amber Quill, Astraea Press, Liquid Silver Books and Riptide Publishing.

I do look for books where there were a lot of reviews. If a title gets 15 or more reviews, that’s one I’ll definitely feature. At that point, they don’t even all have to be good reviews, although it helps. If something is worth talking about that much, then it’s a title that other readers might want to take a look at. In romance, after all, love and hate are often opposite sides of the same coin.

I also look for the tone of the reviews. When the reviewers are doing more than just giving a story five stars and A+ ratings, when the collective reviewing landscaping is searching for words beyond “everyone must read this NOW!” that’s a sign the book is worth showcasing.

When it comes to the Ebook Review Central, it really doesn’t have anything to do with my reading tastes. I might have read some of the books listed for the week, and I might not. And even if I did, I might not have agreed with the other reviewers. The books that get featured depend on the collective blogosphere.

Of course, sometimes I’ll see how much other reviewers loved a certain book, and I’ll be intrigued. There are also times when I’ll see that no one is reviewing a particular author’s books, and I’ll wonder why no one cared enough about the book to post a review on Goodreads or Amazon.

Which leads back to that question again.  What makes a book appealing to you?

Wrapping up NetGalley January

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | NetGalley> NetGalley Month

NetGalley January is a wrap. Well, the thing is, January is over, and since the little snowman in the picture says it was NetGalley January, there you are. That’s it for the month.

Those of us signed up for the 2012 NetGalley Reading Challenge are just going to have to soldier on, chortling with glee at all the lovely egalleys NetGalley will be sending us through the rest of the year. Every month can be NetGalley Month.

But back to the wrap. And I must use plastic wrap, since everyone needs to be able to see what I read.

Two books came out of my NetGalley TBR pile from September and October:

 

 

 

 

 

In addition to The Black Stiletto, which was fascinating, I also read the start of a very neat new mystery series, The Dharma Detective. I can’t wait for The Second Rule of Ten.

 

 

I also read a couple of Regency Romances from relatively new authors that were both a little different from the usual. It’s always interesting to see authors take the standard tropes and stretch the boundaries just a little bit. Or in the case of A Lady Awakened a “lotta” bit.

I read one YA/Cyberpunk that received a lot of buzz, and from the other posted wrap-ups, it looks like I’m not the only one who read Cinder. This title was highly anticipated. (I was turned down the first time I requested it, so I replied directly to the publisher outlining my specific review qualifications and was okayed on the second go-around).

Banshee Charmer is the start of a great new urban fantasy/paranormal series from a brand-new author. The author is doing a blog tour and the book is getting a lot of very nice attention.

 

 

I liked the first book in the Dark Dynasties series, Dark Awakening,  quite a bit, so when the second book, Midnight Reckoning listed on NetGalley, I grabbed it. Definitely fun for paranormal romance fans.

 

 

And, as always, I rounded out my reading month with titles from Carina Press. The icing on my reading cake: more urban fantasy and paranormal romance, and my science fiction romance fix for the month.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I posted thirteen reviews this month on NetGalley. I did finish a fourteenth book from NetGalley, The Devil of Jedburgh by Claire Robyns. But because I reviewed it for Book Lovers Inc., I can’t post the review on my site until after the review on BLI goes live, and that’s scheduled for February 9. I also finished The Night is Mine by M.L. Buchman sometime the night of January 31, but I can’t swear whether it was before or after midnight. I know that night was his, I just didn’t keep track of how much of it! So there you have it. My tally for this NetGalley Month. It’s all good for the 2012 NetGalley Reading Challenge. And it was all good reading!

Ebook Review Central, Samhain Publishing, December 2011

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Ebook Review Central> ebooks

By the time December rolled around, it’s pretty clear that the folks at Samhain Publishing were done with Christmas. Out of the 29 titles that Samhain published in December of last year, there’s only one Christmas book. Just take a look at their title list for December 2011 and you’ll see what I mean.

Samhain had other things on their publishing plate besides Santa’s milk and cookies.  On December 13 (not a Friday), Samhain launched their Retro Romance™ line. It’s their way of bringing out older titles that were previously published in print by a host of other publishers, and whose authors want to introduce their work to a new audience of ebook readers. Random House is doing something very similar with the revival of Loveswept, although the Loveswept revival includes some new titles.

The romances from the Retro line did not pick up a lot of new reviews, but my research introduced me to the blog Get Yer Bodices Ripped Here, which definitely wins the award for best blog title of the month. This blog is worth reading for the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s vintage cover-picture inspired trips down memory lane as well as the absolutely inspired snark-fest reviews, which still tell the reader everything they need to know about each book. This blog is awesome.

But what about the featured books for the month?

The first featured title continues a trend for Samhain. This is the second time they’ve managed to scoop up an ebook-only novella in a popular print series. That popularity was reflected in the double-digit reviews all with B ratings and above for Thea Harrison’s True Colors, book 3.5 in her Elder Races series. The Elder Races books are paranormal romances about a group of very powerful, ancient shapeshifters called the Wyr. The series began in May, 2011 with the release of Dragon Bound, and the reviews for each succeeding book, Storm’s Heart in August, Serpent’s Kiss in October, have continued to raise expectations. Since book four, Oracle’s Moon, won’t be out until March, this novella is just enough to whet fans appetites for more. And did I mention that there are dragons?

Head Rush by Carolyn Crane is the conclusion of her Disillusionist Trilogy. Based on the ratings and the fourteen reviews, the fans who were waiting for this book will not be disillusioned in the least. This urban fantasy wowed the reviewers as the perfect conclusion to an enthralling trilogy, complete with paranoia, mind games, awesome characters and bad guys you really need to see get what’s coming to them. It also sounds like this one only works if you start at the beginning, so first Mind Games, then Double Cross, then, and apparently only then, Head Rush. The reviewers all say it’s well worth the trip.

Last at this round up we have Cowboy Casanova by Lorelei James. This is book 12 in her Rough Riders series. Rough Riders is clearly a guilty pleasure for a tremendous number of readers–Ms. James’ books have appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list. The Rough Riders series is erotica, and sex very definitely sells. The series takes place in Sundance, Wyoming, and each book stars a different member of the McKay family. And yes, they are all cowboys. Well, there is one sister. But every single book is smoking hot according to the reviewers, and Cowboy Casanova is sounds like one of the hottest of the bunch. The reviewers are split on whether it’s necessary to read the whole series and get the background on the McKay family to fully enjoy the story, so if you want to start with the first book in the series instead, that was Long Hard Ride.

That’s  it for this week’s Ebook Review Central. We’ll be back next week with the multi-publisher post covering Amber Quill, Astraea Press, Liquid Silver and Riptide Publishing. And we’ll finish up 2011 in style!

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand? 1-29-12

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Virtual Nightstand

When I first started reviewing, it was easy to keep my books organized. I only had a few, and they were all on the Bluefire app on my iPad. (If you have an iPad and you need an all-purpose Adobe/PDF/everything-but-the-kitchen-sink reader, just get Bluefire, it reads everything) I read open EPUB format on the OverDrive app. Yes, I really did say OverDrive. It’s a perfectly decent EPUB reader, and it will read EPUBs that come from other sources quite happily. I use it all the time, if only to keep the list of books in my Bluefire app from getting more ginormous than it already is.

But my list in Bluefire is huge, sometimes pronounced as two syllables for emphasis, “hew-gee”. When I need to buy or borrow earlier books in a series in order to review later books, I need to track those too. After a while, my “To Be Reviewed” list became my “To Do” list, complete with calendar. It took me a while, but when I had to search my apps to figure out where a book to be reviewed was located, my entries started including all the locations of all the books involved, be they Bluefire, OverDrive, or in the case of previous entries in series, Kindle app, Google app or bookshelf. It gets complicated.

All this came up because of Cherie Priest’s Dreadnought. I had intended to pick up an Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) of something new to read (and review, of course) for the plane home from ALA Midwinter. I picked up so many ARCs that some had to be shipped home, but the book I read was not just not new, it was in my own TBR pile on my Nook app. It is way too easy to lose track of ebooks on an iPad. Way too easy.

But I’m back to looking ahead to February, which starts this week, even if it is still January now. The first books I have scheduled for February are a very diverse bunch.

The Dread by Gail Z. Martin is the second book in her dark fantasy Fallen Kings Cycle, after The Sworn. I’ve always meant to read something of Ms. Martin’s; I’ve seen her other work highly recommended. And The Fallen Kings Cycle is a duology, she has not “committed trilogy” on this one, so these two books are it. The Sworn and The Dread, as ominous as the titles sound, seemed like a good place to start, even if the two together are about 1,200 pages. Ouch.

The Night is Mine by M.L. Buchman is a military suspense romance about elite helicopter pilots who transport Navy SEALs and Delta Force teams to and from their missions. The heroine in this romance is the pilot who goes on a covert mission as bodyguard to the First Lady, with one of her special forces commanders as the love interest. I think the question about this one is whether the romance is going to trump the suspension of disbelief about the violation of military frat regs (yes, I watched way too much Stargate).

Miss Hillary Schools a Scoundrel by Samantha Grace gets the award for most fun title of the week. This just looked like a fun Regency that reports say has all of the elements done to a fine turn. This is a debut novel, so if the author has got it right, that would be fantastic!

Speaking of fantastic, I have Prehistoric Clock by Robert Appleton on my calendar for 2/6/12. This should be fantastic both because it is steampunk and because I found Mr. Appleton’s previous book, Sparks in Cosmic Dust, to be a “rollicking, adventurous science fiction romance.” I’m looking forward to his take on steampunk.

And to go even further for adventure, my last book is science fiction romance. I have Tundra 37 by Aubrie Dionne. Since this is labelled as A New Dawn Novel, Book 2, I picked up Paradise 21, the first book in the series. New Dawn is a colony ship series. It details life aboard the deep space transport vessel Expedition, destined for the planet Paradise 18. I haven’t read the first book yet, but I’m positive that any planet coded Tundra-anything can’t be paradise.

Even with the strange week this week, after coming back from ALA, I did get a few things read. Some of them were even the things I was supposed to read!

How to Dance with a Duke was not quite what I expected, but I did enjoy it. Thinking back, I just realized that they never actually dance! Writing that up will be one of the things that I do this week.

I started Michael J. Sullivan’s Theft of Swords, and I’m about 100 pages into it. I saw a print copy at ALA, and wow! It’s pretty in person, but it’s a tome! Theft of Swords was originally published as two books, The Crown Conspiracy and Avempartha and when it was re-edited to make one book, well, it’s clearly still got the heft of two books’ content in it. I’m glad I’m reading this as an ebook.

On Tuesday, January 31, I will be conducting a webinar for the Maryland Library Association about the importance of genre fiction collection development in libraries. For anyone interested, there’s a signup link.

And tomorrow, being Monday, is the day for Ebook Review Central. It’s Samhain’s turn for December 2011. See you there!

 

 

The Stubborn Dead

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

The Stubborn Dead by Natasha Hoar is every bit as good as the teaser in the January print RT Book Reviews claimed it to be. At just under 60 pages, the whole book is a teaser, and a damn fine one.

Rachel Miller is the resident member of the Order of Rescue Mediums in Vancouver. Her duty is to release trapped spirits from this earthly realm. Not all spirits want to be released, and sometimes Rachel has a supernatural fight on her hands. Occasionally, that fight manifests physically, and the spirit shoves Rachel into a wall. Lucky for Rachel, being a rescue medium means that she heals quickly.

Being summoned to a haunted house to exorcise a trapped spirit is all part and parcel of Rachel’s life. The local priests even know who Rachel is, because she handles the spirits who are beyond their powers.

So when Rachel gets a call from Sylvia Elkeles asking her to remove a spirit that’s already sent the local Catholic priest to the hospital, Rachel is concerned, but still comes to the house. Even after she calls the diocese and discovers that Father Simon is not only not in the hospital, but has never heard of Sylvia.

Rachel is not prepared enough for the lying, cheating, sociopathic Sylvia. Because Sylvia has studied up on rescued mediums, and uses the code that binds Rachel’s power into supernaturally forcing her to dealing with a special kind of stubborn undead. A rodach. A wraith who is still tied to his living body and still has a soul.

Rachel has 48 hours to either find the rodach’s body or eliminate his soul. And if she fails, her supernatural powers will be bound, forever.

While the clock is ticking, Rachel has her own personal issues to deal with. Her perpetual stalker, Janus Ostara. Janus is a mob boss. But not of the usual kind of mob. Janus’ mob only contains members of the supernatural, and he wants to add Rachel to his crew, personally.

Meanwhile, about that rodach…they’re supposed to be extinct. Which means that information on dealing with the problem appropriately is limited in the extreme. And that clock keeps ticking away…

Escape Rating B+: This is one of those cases where my biggest complaint is that the book was way too damn short! I want to know more about these rescue mediums and the world that requires their services. If you’re an urban fantasy fan, just about the time you get really sucked in, it’s over.

The story itself wraps up very, very well. It’s just that I want more of the worldbuilding. I want it bad. The second book, titled The Ravenous Dead, is out on submission according to the author’s site. I really want a publisher (Carina, hopefully) to pick this up. Like yesterday.

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand? 1-22-12

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Virtual Nightstand

I am in Dallas at the American Library Association Midwinter Convention. Connectivity is decent, so this post is coming to you from my room, and not from the hotel bar. I’m not sure whether that’s the good news or the bad news.

The biggest problem with any kind of ALA Conference is the exhibit hall floor. The exhibits are miles and miles of carpet over concrete, and endless walking. There is no thrill of victory, there is only the endless agony of the feet.

And, because I want to get on more publishers’ direct lists for reviews, I left my card at every fiction publisher’s booth…and I picked up Advance Reading Copies. Well, I couldn’t very well say I wanted to review their books without actually picking up some books to review, now could I?

I just took a look at what’s on my TBR (is that To Be Read or To Be Reviewed?) list for January 31 and February 1 and wanted to avert my eyes. Then I scrolled through the rest of February and decided it’s not so bad after all. There’s a lot for 1/31 and 2/1, but not much after. I’ll catch up. But let’s just deal with the 1/31 books this week. February is a whole other month, right?

How to Dance with a Duke by Manda Collins caught my eye on NetGalley because the heroine is a wallflower and a bluestocking and involved an exclusive academic society. It reminded a tiny bit of Elizabeth Peter’s Amelia Peabody Emerson books. Whether the heroine does or not, well, the reading will be the proof of that.

Horizon is book 3 in Sophie Littlefield’s Aftertime series. Aftertime is a dystopian series about one of the few survivors of the zombie apocalypse, and I heard a lot of terrific things about the series. When this book popped up on NetGalley, I grabbed it. But in my usual completist fashion, I need to read through the series to get to it, so before Horizon, there is Survivors (prequel novella), Aftertime, and Rebirth ahead of me.

And slightly out of the usual for me, I have The Mountain of Gold by J.D. Davies. This is adventure on the high seas, similar to Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander series, which I read and loved, all 20 books of it. The difference is that O’Brian’s series took place during the Napoleonic Wars, and Davies series concerns the Restoration period, about a century and a half earlier. Yes, I said series. The Mountain of Gold is the second book. I still need to read the first book Gentleman Captain. (At least I don’t have to worry about running out of time on The Mountain of Gold from NetGalley. I found a print ARC at the conference.)

As I expected I haven’t been able to take many books off my nightstand while I’ve been at the conference. Too many meetings, too little time.

I did finish up Todd Grimson’s Stainless, because I started it on the plane from Atlanta. The story was weird, mostly in a good way. Obsessive love, obsessive hate and an endless quest to feel anything at all make for quite a story. I’m reviewing this for Book Lovers Inc, and I’ll write it up after I get home.

I’m in the middle of The Canvas Thief by P. Kirby, and so far, I like it better than a lot of the other reviewers did.  I’ve also finished The Stubborn Dead by Natasha Hoar, and that review will be up early this week. My short take on The Stubborn Dead is that it is excellent but too darn short!

I’ll need to pick one of the ARCs off the pile for at least part of the trip home. It is so annoying when they make me turn off my iPad. It’s not just any electronic device–it’s a book!

Tomorrow is Dreamspinner’s turn on Ebook Review Central, with a whopping 59 titles for December 2011. Don’t forget to tune in!

 

 

 

Do I read romances? Is the sky blue?

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | reading challenges

I can never resist a happy ending. Or even a “happy for now” ending.

As a friend pointed out, I do review a lot of what he called “bodice rippers” on my blog. Even if not a lot of actual bodices get ripped, because some of them are contemporary romances and as many as I can find are science fiction romances. But my friend was close to correct, at least in the “horseshoes and hand grenades” definition of close. I do read a lot of romance novels. I enjoy them.

I am also aware that I am quite fortunate. A lot of romance novels are available for review on NetGalley. This is what we call a win-win. Except when it comes to writing all the reviews. I read a lot of books, I write a lot of reviews.

Reading Romances, the blog, is running a Reading Romances Challenge that has a signup and a Goodreads group. One of the interesting things about this challenge is that instead of the usual levels, there are specific, well, I guess you would call them tasks, except that’s not quite right.

A task implies that it’s something you wouldn’t want to do. These are more like stretch goals. The idea is to get romance readers to try something a bit out of their romance comfort zones. The January stretch is to either read the first book of a series, read a book by a debut author, read a book by an author that’s new to the reader, OR, read a YA romance OR read an erotic romance. All the “challengee” has to do is pick one of the above.

I chose to read a book by an author that’s new to me. Why? Because I read a lot of books by authors who are new to me. It’s part of my reviewing. I love discovering new “voices”.

And on the Goodreads group side of this equation–I committed to reading 50 romances. Like that’s going to be a problem. I think I’ve got 5 down and 45 to go. Make that 44 and 3/4–I started a new book today, and guess what? It’s a romance!

 

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand? 1-15-12

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Virtual Nightstand

Martin Luther King Day is tomorrow. No mail. No school. It’s a day off for a lot of people. But I’ll be working, Galen will be working. There’s no rest for the wicked, as my mom usually says to me. (And I fully recognize the implication!)

Mid-January in this library household means one other thing–the impending doom of the American Library Association Midwinter Conference. January 20-24, this year in Dallas, Texas. At least it might be warm? (2010 was in Denver, 2013 will be in Philadelphia, this point is very much NOT moot.)

ALA Midwinter is a major household disruption. We bring out suitcases. The cats hate suitcases. The suitcases take their people away! They might have to train new staff. This is very bad.

But the conference represents major headaches all the way around. In June in New Orleans, our hotel did not have connectivity in the rooms, so I only posted once, using Galen’s iPhone as my net connection. Not fun. This conference, I admit I’m going to queue up as much as I can, just in case connectivity is a tad “iffy”.

On the one hand, plane rides are still a terrific opportunity for reading. Not to mention that lovely extra two-hour wait ahead of the flight for “security”. On the other hand, ALA conferences are a sea of Advance Reading Copies, unfortunately all print. What’s a girl to do?

I have four books to read on the airplane on my way to and from Dallas, because these are scheduled for release January 24. Except I really only have three.

Heiress Without a Cause by Sara Ramsey popped up on NetGalley as a historical romance debut that just sounded interesting. According to the blurb copy, it was selected by Barnes & Noble for an exclusive release on the NOOK beginning Jan. 23rd.

The Stubborn Dead by Natasha Hoar was featured in January 2012 print issue of RT Book Reviews as one of the five debut authors not to miss in 2012. So I couldn’t resist picking up first book, about a “rescue medium” when it appeared on NetGalley. Whether this is urban fantasy or paranormal romance or a combination, it looks like a terrific start for this new author.

Daughter of the Centaurs by Kate Klimo is the first book of the Centauriad. It’s YA and it’s something I pulled from NetGalley when I was researching YA genre lit for a table talk I did for the South Carolina Collection Development mini-conference. Since this is definitely fantasy, I’m going to give it a try.

Banshee Charmer by Tiffany Allee is the last book on my calendar for January 24. I had downloaded it from NetGalley because I liked the premise, an urban fantasy about a half-banshee detective solving a serial killer murder. Sounded cool. Then Book Lovers Inc asked me to review it for them. Cool beans, I already had it.  I’ve read it, loved it, and written both reviews already, one for my blog and one for BLI. Done and dusted. I just can’t queue anything up here until the BLI review is posted.

And now for putting the cap back on the old recap.

My review of Nick Marsh’s Soul Purpose is already scheduled to post on Tuesday. I’ll get to Past Tense after I come back from Dallas. BLI says I can have two months. I promise I won’t take anywhere near that long! Besides, Soul Purpose was too much fun for me to wait that long to read the sequel. I want to see what happens next.

And I received an unstained copy of Todd Grimson’s Stainless this week. Woo-hoo! I take one “dead-tree” book with me on the plane, so I have something to read for those horrible minutes when they make me turn off my iPad. Stainless might be it.

I also finished A Lady Awakened and Don’t Bite the Messenger from last week, so reviews for both those books will be part of this week’s postings.

Reaching back, to the Christmas Nightstand, I’m in the middle of J.L. Hilton’s Stellarnet Rebel. As a blogger, and a science fiction fan, I’m caught up in the story on multiple levels. I mean wow, living on a space habitat, kind of like Babylon 5 or Deep Space 9. And, earning your living by being a blogger, live, full-time pretty much, total life immersion blogging. 3,000 posts or 3 years until she can go back to Earth. And will she want to?

Going even further back, I took a look at the 12/17/11 Nightstand and read Forever Mine, the prequel novella to Delilah Marvelle’s Forever and a Day. Yes, I’m a completist. I have to read the whole series.

That’s all we have time for in this pre-conference madness issue of the Nightstand. We’ll see you next week, live from Dallas, hopefully not blogging from the hotel lobby. The bar, on the other hand…

Tomorrow will be the Carina Press December 2011 edition of Ebook Review Central. And it will seem like Christmas all over again.

Ebooks in Public Libraries: Whither, Which, How

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audiobooks> books> ebooks> libraries

The Digital Public Library of America discussion list has kicked into high gear again, in anticipation of an in-person meeting at the American Library Association Midwinter Conference in mid-January, 2012 in Dallas, Texas.

The piece of the discussion that has caught my interest concerns the future availability of ebooks for public libraries to loan to patrons — and whether lending ebooks to patrons should be part of any public library future.

Statistics are showing double the ereader penetration in the US population from this time last year, not counting multi-function tablet (i.e. iPad) use. Libraries really don’t have the luxury to pretend this isn’t happening. The question remains what they can do about it.

The other question is, what do libraries provide? The “Big 6” publishers are increasingly skittish about providing ebooks for public libraries to lend.

  • Only Random House just plain lets libraries buy their ebooks to lend to patrons.
  • Harper Collins sells to libraries, and every time the copy has been checked out 26 times, the library has to buy it again.
  • Which puts Harper Collins ahead of Penguin and Hachette, who have both stopped selling ebooks to libraries.
  • And even further ahead of Simon and Schuster and Macmillan, who have never sold ebooks to libraries.

But back to the DPLA, which has been discussing the future of ebook publishing as it relates to libraries. There’s been a particular thread about commercial fiction and public library patrons.

The assumption that keeps niggling at me is that all the current trends will continue, and that the only changes we will see will be for the worse from the perspective of the library as institution.

My interpretation of the trendline being predicted is that the publishers will continue their unfortunate circling of their wagons, and that the lending rights that libraries have traditionally enjoyed with physical materials will disappear in the electronic age as publishers attempt to preserve their profit margins. Brilliance Audio’s scheduled January 31, 2012 withdrawal from the library download market is another step in this trend, as is the support of many, many publishers in the library marketplace for SOPA.

Publishers are worrying about their profits because those profits are based on a physical distribution model, and the physical distribution model is collapsing. And the publishers are becoming less optimistic about digital being their savior than they used to be, at least according to recent reports out of Digital Book World. So they are hanging on to every penny they can. Publishers have always feared that books borrowed from libraries have represented sales lost. But with physical books, sales to libraries were impossible to prevent.

With ebooks (and e-audiobooks) publishers don’t have to sell to libraries. So some of them are increasingly choosing not to — especially the big ones who believe that their authors don’t need libraries to help them develop a following.

But there are a lot of authors who do want their books, especially their ebooks, in libraries. I was interviewed by author Lindsay Buroker for an article on her blog about how self-published authors could get their books into their local libraries.

Self-published authors and authors who are published by small independent publishers are searching eagerly for ways to get their books into libraries. Increasingly those books are exclusively ebooks. Many of those authors would even be willing to donate a copy to their local public library (maybe not every public library, mind you, but the one in their own hometown) just to get readers.

In the print world, they used to be able to donate actual books. But in the digital world, what’s the mechanism? They don’t want to donate rights, they want to donate a couple of copies, and quite likely DRM-free copies at that, but how can they do it?

And for anyone who doesn’t think there is money in self-published authors, remember that Amazon has offered special incentives for self-published authors to make their work exclusively available through the Kindle Selects Program for 90-day periods.

This a a world that is changing faster than the “Big 6” can keep up with, which is why they are circling those wagons.

So, in this corner, we have the big publishers who either haven’t entered the library market or are sounding a retreat.

And in this corner, we have a lot of independent publishers and self-published authors who would love to enter the library space and are hungry for readers–readers that libraries know how to provide.

Libraries need  the equivalent of Smashwords for libraries. This may turn out to be something like what OverDrive will be when the big publishers have dropped out of the library market, with the addition of a method for self-published authors to donate copies or for libraries to buy copies of their work and lend it.

From a library institutional perspective, the library would miss the big blockbuster books. But we may not be able to keep those no matter what we do.  What we would get is a lot of popular content of the type that public library patrons read, popular genre fiction of all types. It would even cost less for the library than the current model. It might even be possible to have enough material so that people would have to wait forever for an ebook.

Yes, it would be different from how public libraries do ebooks now. But the future is going to be different. The question is, can we work toward making it different in a way we can have some control over? Can we have a future with a chance at a win-win?