Tag: ebooks

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand? 3/11/12

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Virtual Nightstand

The Book Bloggers and Publishers Online Conference is winding down. The final sessions are this evening, March 11. The conference has been absolutely awesome, and I’m definitely planning to do it again next year. I’ve learned so much.

However (cough, cough) my to-do list for the next couple of weeks has grown by leaps and bounds because of all the good information I’ve picked up.

And it is definitely conference season. This week, March 14-16, we have the Public Library Association Conference in Philadelphia. We meaning I’m going to Philly. And since public librarians purchase a lot of fiction, there should be a lot of Advance Reading Copies available on the exhibit floor.

The good news is that because my husband works for a library vendor, I discovered at ALA Midwinter I can ship the ARCs I pick up back home with their booth. The bad news is that I can ship the ARCs I pick up back home with their booth. Those of you who are addicted to books know exactly what I mean.

Because of PLA, I am pleased to say that the nightstand for the upcoming week is not quite as covered with books as it might be. Catch up time!

First up is Haevyn by Darcy Abriel. This is the second book in her Humanotica series, after Silver. And just like Silver, I have also promised to review this for Book Lovers Inc. Haevyn is due out on March 20, and I need to get them my review before then. Howsomever, when you read my review and/or my thoughts about Silver, although it was interesting, you’ll see that it wasn’t my favorite book. It’s SFR, which is why I took it, but Silver was not a main character with agency. Thankfully Silver isn’t the point-of-view character for Haevyn. I’m hoping for more worldbuilding and a main character who moves the story under his own steam instead of waiting for thing to happen to him.

My other title is Suzanne Brockmann’s Born to Darkness. I haven’t read Brockmann before but I’ve heard tons of good things. This title is the first in a new series, and it’s military-based paranormal. I’ve really enjoyed the military-based romances I’ve read recently (The Night is Mine, SEAL of my Dreams, and military sci-fi titles too numerous to mention) and I adore paranormal, so this seemed like a great way to try some of Brockmann’s work. There’s a prequel e-only short story for Born to Darkness titled Shane’s Last Stand. Completist that I am, I’m going to read that first. Of course.

As far as last week’s nightstand goes, I finished Motor City Mage, and it was a treat! I think this might be the last we see of magical Detroit, because this is the last couple to be matched up in this group of otherworldly and magical beings. I’m sad to see this one end.

It looks like Apocalypse to Go and The House of Velvet and Glass are going to be my “airplane books” for the trip to Philadelphia. I always take at least one print book for the plane, so I have something to read when they make me turn of my iPad. Those will be it.

Reading Reality‘s blogoversary is coming up! April 4 marks the one year anniversary of the blog. It’s the day before my birthday, too. But I’d like to do something special to mark the blogoversary. Because of the two conferences, I still have my thinking cap on.

I would love to hear ideas for the blogoversary from readers. I’d love for you to help me celebrate!

But until the party starts, it’s still a regular week. Ebook Review Central is tomorrow. See you bright and early with featured titles from Carina Press.

 

 

Ebook Review Central, Amber Quill, Astraea Press, Liquid Silver Books, Riptide Publishing, January 2012

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

And another month ends here at Ebook Review Central. As I searched for reviews for the January titles from Amber Quill, Astraea Press, Liquid Silver Books, and Riptide Publishing, I had a few moments where I feared that January was going to be going out with more of a whimper than a bang.

No wait, it’s March that does the in like a lion, out like a lamb thing.

The issue is that I have good news, and I very nearly had bad news.

The good news was that this list came closer than ever to 100% of the titles getting reviewed. Only two books out of all the lists were missed, and they were from different publishers. This is excellent and is a testament to the hard work that the review coordinators are doing.

On my now infamous other hand, until nearly the end of my search, I was afraid that the reviewers were still sleeping off their holiday excesses well into January. Almost every title received a review, but, and you knew that but was coming, almost every title received just that, a, meaning one, review. Occasionally two.

That doesn’t give me enough to pick a feature on.

Just as I was reaching the end of the lists, the featured books practically jumped out at me.    These three titles not only had more than just one or two reviews, they each had several very enthusiastic reviews!

The other interesting thing about this set of featured titles is that they are all male/male romances. Because this group of publishers has titles all over the romance spectrum, I never know what types of romance will capture reviewers’ attention in any month. This month, it was all m/m romance.

The first two featured titles are both from Amber Quill’s Amber Allure imprint, and from their Hot College Daze series.

The title that generated the most reviewing heat is Tailor Made by Josephine Myles. This is a story about how a good man can make a bad boy change for the better, and not just when it comes to love and sex and sleeping around. College is about growing up, and the two young men in this story start out as complete opposites, but by the end, grow towards each other, in spite of their differences. One reviewer summed it up by saying “this story just left me smiling when I finished it”.

Number two on the hit parade is Lou Harper’s Academic Pursuits. Academic Pursuits is slightly different. It’s told from the first-person perspective, and reads like someone’s diary, or as if someone is telling you a dirty story from their college days. And it’s pretty naughty story about a very charming guy who likes to chase, and seduce, supposedly straight guys. Life is working really well for him in college until someone new starts chasing him. Reviewers mostly found this book amusing, but opinions divided depending on whether or not the reviewer liked the main character.

Riptide Publishing, with only two books in January, still managed to get one into the featured books this month. Rhi Etzweiler’s Blacker than Black ghosted into the number three slot with this paranormal tale of vampires who feed off the life energy of other beings. Black and Jhez are Nightwalkers; they turn tricks in order to bring fresh victims for the vamps, and in return, they get to live. Until one vamp wants them to spy on his own kind. Then the vamps start dying, and all hell breaks loose. Well, looser than it already was.  Energy vampires in an urban fantasy setting. No wonder the reviewers thought this was cool. It just plain sounds cool.

That’s a wrap on another edition of Ebook Review Central. We’ll be back next week with the first February ERC. We’ll see what Carina Press published in February 2012, and what the reviewers had to say about it.

Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Big 6 publishers> ebooks> ebooks in libraries> libraries

And now libraries know that Random House is planning to use real silver for that lining.

The problem with Random House’s plan is that libraries don’t have all that much silver to give them  in this era of shrinking budgets.

On February 2, Random House, the only one of the “Big 6” publishers to provide ebooks to libraries without restrictions, made an announcement that they would continue their generous policy, but that there would be a price hike to deal with some of the issues surrounding permanent access to ebooks.

Most libraries probably expected the price to rise somewhere in the neighborhood of 50%. Maybe double.

The hammer fell March 1. Hammer as in auction hammer. Or the hammer of doom.

Yesterday, Random House tripled the prices of their ebooks. You read that right. An ebook that cost a library $15 on Monday, costs $45 today. The libraries are reeling from the sticker shock.

But what will this mean?

Library budgets are not growing, they are flat or shrinking. Public libraries are creatures of local government, and tax revenues at the local government level are still sucky. Let’s be blunt here.

If the per-title price rises significantly, as it has just done. and the budget stays flat, what will happen? In most cases, libraries will buy fewer titles with the same dollars. Some will rearrange their budgets as much as they can, but very, very few will be able to triple their ebook budgets.

What gets purchased in this scenario? High-demand titles get purchased, so the hold queues get filled. Or at least stay tamed. John Grisham does not lose many library sales out of this.

What doesn’t get purchased? Mid-list authors and debut authors, because there is very little money left in the budget with which to take a chance. And the next John Grisham and Nora Roberts and James Patterson have to come from somewhere. Some of them will come from self-publication Cinderella stories like Amanda Hocking, but some will still come from the mid-list. If they get the chance.

Unlike V.C. Andrews, most authors do not write from beyond the grave. What are the publishers planning to do when the current crop of bestselling juggernauts decide to retire?  The number one way that readers decide to purchase a book is because they liked the author’s last book. The trick seems to be to get people to read an author the first time. And with the demise of more and more bricks-and-mortar bookstores, that trick is getting harder all the time.

But protecting their authors is not what this move is about. Revenue numbers from 2011 are starting to come in from the major publishers, and the picture that emerges is very interesting. Sales of print are down, digital is up and profitability is up. Think about it for a minute. Digital books have no inventory, no print costs, and very low distribution costs. Most of the infrastructure to produce them already exists. For the publisher, they are almost pure profit.

Profitability is in no way a bad thing. It’s required for a business to remain in business. But let’s not pretend. Random House is charging more for their ebooks to libraries because Random House believes:

that pricing to libraries must account for the higher value of this institutional model, which permits e-books to be repeatedly circulated without limitation. The library e-book and the lending privileges it allows enables many more readers to enjoy that copy than a typical consumer copy. Therefore, Random House believes it has greater value, and should be priced accordingly.

In other words, because they can.

Ebook Review Central, Samhain Publishing, January 2012

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

It’s time to warm up a cold winter’s night by taking a look at the titles released by Samhain Publishing during the month of January 2012.

And the reason I said warm up is because all of the featured titles for this month’s issue carry Samhain’s “Red Hots!!!” label. The stories favored by the reviewers for this month were all steamy enough to heat up the coldest winter night.

The other thing that this month’s hits all have in common is that they were all series entries.

The first featured entry this week, is Devon’s Pair, by Jayne Rylon. This is the fourth book in her Powertools series, and the “warning” in the description calls it the first “m/f/m/f/m/f/m/m/f” they think. Call this a ménage with a fairly big crew. Which is part of the point of the story. The Powertools series is about a crew of home renovators that seem to share everything, their tools, their company, and their spouses. By the time this fourth book in the series comes around, every relationship between ever possible combination of partners, triples, etc. is up for exploration in hot and loving detail. And based on the reviews, readers keep eating each new addition to the mix.

Hidden Fire by Jess Dee is part of the Red Hot Weekend series. It is also the sequel to Winter Fire, a novella in the same series from January 2011. In Winter Fire, Rachel Ashberg and Garreth Halt spend one night together, as he indulges her fantasy of being with a man she can never have.  Two years later, it is Garreth’s story, and he is trapped for the weekend with Janna Brooks, the woman he loves but who has always been out of reach. Reviewers must have begged for Garreth’s story, and been thrilled when they finally got it!

Vivian Arend’s Rocky Mountain Heat was a November featured title, and she has continued to heat up the mountains with her Six Pack Ranch Series. Book two at the Six Pack Ranch, Rocky Mountain Haven, captured the reviewers hearts this month. Haven not only contains Arend’s signature wit and heated love scenes, but also captures a complicated second-chance-at-love story between an intelligent and interesting characters. The reviews make this sound like a strong entry in what is shaping up to be a very interesting romantic and erotic series.

Next week will be the January 4-in-1 post, so we’ll look at Amber Quill Press, Astraea Publishing, Liquid Silver Books and Riptide Publishing.

9 Rings, 8 Planets, 7 Dwarfs, 6 Publishers

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Big 6 publishers

List the names of the Seven Dwarfs. Go ahead, do it.

If you’re like most people, you have to tick the names off on your fingers, and you’ll forget one or two, usually either Bashful or Doc, because they don’t fit the “-py” naming convention the rest of them do.

What about those “Big 6” publishers everyone is talking about? Can you name them?

Even in the library world, in spite of all the recent discussion about how the Big 6 are deciding whether and how to lend ebooks to libraries, most people can’t. Not because they’re not important, but because the names aren’t the way we know them. We don’t think of the publisher all that much until one of them withdraws their ebooks from the library market, as Penguin did late last week.

What we know are their books. When there is a title that patrons want, and we can’t buy it, that’s when we are reminded who the “Big 6” are.

This is one librarian’s guide to the “Big 6” publishers, based on the titles they publish.

1. Hachette Book Group

We never see the name Hachette. The names we see are the names of their imprints, particularly Grand Central Publishing and Little, Brown and Company.

Hachette dropped out of the library market in 2009, so their backlist is still in library ebook catalogs, but not their new books.

Current titles on the New York Times bestseller list from Hachette that are not available:

 

 

 

 

 

2. HarperCollins

HarperCollins is the publisher with the famous, or infamous “Rule of 26”. Every copy purchased after they changed their licensing terms to libraries last year is only available for 26 checkouts, then the library needs to purchase another copy. But some availability is perhaps better than no availability.

In addition to the publishing imprints with the name “Harper” in the title, HarperCollins also includes the publisers William Morrow and Avon.

Here are a few examples of current NYT bestsellers that are affected by the 26-checkout limit:

 

 

 

 

 

3. Macmillan

Macmillan has always just said “no” to libraries.

But it isn’t just the name Macmillan, because the name Macmillan covers St. Martin’s Press. And Henry Holt, Farrar Straus & Giroux and Minotaur. Also Tor, a highly respected science fiction and fantasy publisher, as well as Feiwel & Friends, a children’s publisher.

There have been many, many Macmillan titles that libraries have never been able to purchase, including these current titles:

 

 

 

 

 

4. Penguin Group

Penguin has just exited the library ebook marketplace. As of this writing, any titles licensed by libraries before Penguin’s departure on February 10, 2012 will remain available, but no new content will be added.

Penguin Group includes Penguin, Putnam, Prentice-Hall and Puffin, a childrens’ publisher. But also Viking Press and Dutton, as well as Ace and Berkley, two well-known mass-market paperback publishers.

Because Penguin stopped licensing new content to libraries in November 2011, the impact of their departure has already been felt with the unavailability of these titles:

 

 

 

 

 

5. Random House

Random House represents the “good guys” in the library ebook market. They have recently reconfirmed their commitment to license ebooks to libraries, although they have stated that there will be a rise in the price. This is possibly the first time that a price increase has been treated as good news, but we live in interesting times.

Update 3/3/12: That price rise turned out to be 300%. Not so good. In fact, very bad. Very, very bad. See Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud for more details)

Random House is a not just Random House, but also Knopf Doubleday, Delacorte, Bantam, and Crown.

Because Random House has stuck with libraries, these are titles that we have been able to offer:

 

 

 

 

 

6. Simon and Schuster is the last of the “Big 6”. They have remained a steadfast naysayer when it comes to libraries.

This is unfortunate. Not only is the Simon and Schuster imprint big, but Scribner is one of their major imprints. Atheneum and Aladdin are among their Childrens’ houses, and Pocket is one of the big paperback presses.

These represent some of the current S&S titles that libraries would love to offer, but cannot:

 

 

 

 

 

The notion of the “Big 6” publishers is a somewhat abstract concept, but the books they publish are not. However, these types of designations are subject to change.

Once upon a time business used to refer to the “Big 8” accounting firms. Now it’s the “Big 4”.

There used to be nine planets, then Pluto got demoted. Now there are eight.

In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the One Ring ruled them all, but nine rings were given to mortal men. Those men were once proud kings, but they tried to seize more power than they were capable of holding.

Those kings ignored the warnings they were given about the danger represented by the rings.

Just like the publishers are ignoring the statistics that “50% of all library users report purchasing books by an author they were introduced to in the library”.  Those publishers also cast aside warnings that compare the current state of the publishing industry to the state of Kodak during the rise of digital photography, as well as those that compare how much better new authors can do for themselves than with a “traditional publisher”. Traditional, read “big 6” publishers, are increasingly being cut out of the equation and their purpose in the supply chain is being questioned.

Those kings who picked up the nine rings–no one remembers their names.

 

The Fiction about Friction

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

Let’s talk about a concept that keeps coming up in the conversation about ebook lending in libraries. The publishers who are currently not participating in the library ebook market all seem to be worrying about the lack of “friction” in the library ebook lending transaction as far as the patrons are concerned.

What do they mean by “friction”?

With physical media, in other words, books and CDs and DVDs, patrons have to come to the library to borrow them and come back to the library to return them. According to the February 10 post in Publisher’s Lunch, forcing patrons to come into the library to borrow ebooks is also the appropriate model for ebook lending. The publishers say they are doing this for the libraries’ own good, to reinforce the concept of the library as destination. Research indicates that ebook users are already “power users” of library resources, regularly visiting their local libraries for programming and to borrow materials, as well as borrowing ebooks online, and doing all those activities in great gulps.

Back to that “friction” thing again. The publishers seem to be laboring under a set of misapprehensions about how “easy” it is to borrow an ebook from a library. Let’s look at that for a moment.

According to the recent report in American Libraries, when ALA President Molly Raphael met with the Big 6 publishers in New York recently, many of the executives from those publishers were laboring under the mistaken belief libraries loaned ebooks to anyone who happened to click through their websites. We all know that’s not the case.

Libraries are responsible to their communities, and their resources are paid for by the taxes raised in those communities. We make our resources available to those who live or own property in the community. Many libraries make arrangements with their neighboring communities to reciprocally serve their patrons.

So it’s not quite as easy as the publishers think. But is it easy?

The so-called “friction” in borrowing an ebook from the library is different than the model the publishers are used to, but it is definitely there.

The hold queues for ebooks are very, very long. A recent article in the Washington Post showed hundreds of people waiting in line for some of the titles. The libraries in the D.C. metro area also have attempted to purchase copies to meet the demand, but the numbers are staggering. Placing a hold for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and seeing yourself listed as number 508 in the queue has to be a shock to anyone.

The second piece of grit that causes no end of friction is the general supply of ebooks. Period. When a person logs into their local library’s ebooks collection and wants to read something, anything, but just get a book, right now, can they? The answer generally is only if they understand the system and are willing to take something they may not be familiar with.

Patrons complain, with justification, that everything is out.  My LPOW has about 10,000 ebooks on OverDrive. However, if I check to see what a patron might check out, the first several screens all tell me to put myself on the waiting list. It is possible to search for only the titles currently available, but you have to know how to do that. And if you do know, you must search for EPUB, PDF, Open EPUB and Open PDF separately. There’s no option for just ebook. Out of those 10,000 ebooks, there are only 50 science fiction and fantasy titles in today. I did a quick scroll through, and a significant chunk of those are unfortunately mis-categorized. They’re really paranormal romance, which wouldn’t bother me, but would disappoint a lot of readers.

That’s not all the friction in this potential transaction.

Those of us who have been on the receiving end, know that dealing with end-users brings its own variety of friction. Whatever the client program is, whether it is OverDrive’s Media Console or the search program or the patron’s device or any other piece of the puzzle, there is a chain. Server to website to search to download to device to human. Any one of those parts can suffer a classic case of “failure to communicate” and when the chain breaks, the patron calls the library.

OverDrive’s Media Console isn’t quite as intuitive to use as the Kindle app, or the Nook app, or Bluefire. It’s pretty decent, and I frequently use it for EPUB format books, but there are a couple of things that get to me. For example, I can rename books in Bluefire and I can’t in OverDrive.

But the transaction to borrow an ebook in OverDrive far from frictionless. There’s no ability to search all of one type of format. So a patron can’t just search for “ebooks” or just search for “audiobooks”. The format limits are EPUB or PDF, and MP3 Audiobook or WMA Audiobook.

Once you find something you want to borrow, there’s the need for a library card number and a PIN, or personal identification number. Some libraries have made this easy by tying it to something the patron can’t forget, some don’t. But once past that hurdle, there’s the whole download business. If you’re reasonably savvy about your device, it is a piece of cake. With an iPhone or an iPad, there is, of course, an app for that.

Dealing with a side load through Adobe Digital Editions into a Classic Nook the first time is not for the faint of of heart, and not the night before you leave on vacation. Especially not if your flight is at “oh dark thirty”. Of those “power users” that LJ surveyed; 23% have given up on borrowing an ebook from the library because the process was “too complicated”.

If our sophisticated users have difficulty with the process, what about the new ereader users? A lot of people who are not tech-savvy got ereaders  because of the convenience factor and the content, but not the “gee-whiz” factor. How “frictionless” will they think the current ebook lending process is?

There is plenty of friction in the ebook borrowing transaction. The libraries are having enough issues ensuring that their interface with living, breathing patrons who use the library is as frictionless as possible.

What we don’t need is publishers telling us that library ebook lending needs more of this so-called “friction” than it already has. What we need is more ebooks in the library market.

Ebook Review Central, Carina Press, January 2012

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

It’s a new year at Ebook Review Central. This issue covers the January 2012 titles from Carina Press. And what titles they were!

There’s an old phrase that goes “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”. Undoubtedly, that’s just as true for women. I see the application of it every week when I run down the reviews for the new titles. The same book (this week it’s Stephanie Julian’s Sex, Lies and Surveillance) can be rated 5 out of 5 by one reviewer, and the ever-frustrating DNF (Did Not Finish) from another.

I do think that the “Wallbanger” review is going to slowly disappear from the reviewing lexicon. No matter how much I detest a book, I can’t afford to throw my iPad against the wall in frustration.

The three featured titles this week are all different. We have one urban fantasy, one science fiction romance, and one contemporary romance. The one thing they do have in common is that all three titles are part of series, so readers either knew what to expect, or are looking for more from these worlds or relationships in the future.

First up, Zoe Archer’s Chain Reaction. Ms. Archer is not only an established author in print, but Chain Reaction is the sequel to Collision Course, published by Carina Press in April 2011. Chain Reaction is science fiction romance, taking place in a space opera universe where a plucky rebel alliance of elite pilots and engineers is fighting against an evil empire. In this entry to the series. the warrior-pilot is the female of the duo and the nerd-engineer is the male, which makes the romance even more interesting. She’s the alpha and he’s the beta in this equation.

The urban fantasy featured entry is Don’t Bite the Messenger by Regan Summers. The messenger of the title refers to Ms. Sydney Kildare, one of the highly-paid and generally short-lived crew of human messengers who try to survive long enough as couriers for the vampires who have taken over Anchorage Alaska. Vampires are an economic boom, but they wreck havoc with electricity, among other things. And they usually try to enslave any humans who get near them. Sydney just so happens to be immune. When Sydney suddenly becomes a target, one man tries to save her. Too bad he’s not what he appears to be. Don’t Bite the Messenger looks like the start of an excellent urban fantasy series. Vampires go to the Southern hemisphere for the summer. More stories waiting.

The final featured story set a new record for the number of reviews for a single title. On January 1, 2012 Carina Press re-issued Exclusively Yours by Shannon Stacey, in both print and ebook. Exclusively Yours is the first book in Ms. Stacey’s Kowalskis series, and was originally published during Carina Press’ launch in 2010. Between the reviews from the initial publication, and the interest generated by this relaunch, there were 34 reviews for this contemporary romance!

That much talk deserves some attention. But it’s more than that. The reviews are overwhelmingly positive–the equivalent of a B- grade or higher. Generally the reviews a lot higher. People didn’t just read this book, they liked this book. They liked it a lot! If you enjoy contemporary romance, and you haven’t read Shannon Stacey, take a look at some of these reviews, and then find yourself a copy of Exclusively Yours.

Dreamspinner Press is up next week with their January 2012 books. See you then!

 

 

 

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

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Virtual Nightstand

I need to be more careful when I write about the weather. Not only is it  36° outside, the windchill makes it feel like 27°. And tomorrow night we might even see some of what I call “freezy, skid stuff”. In other words, rain mixed with sleet and snow.

Sounds like the perfect night to stay in and read!

Looking ahead to next week, the things I have to review are definitely not the usual suspects.

There’s a reason my nightstand is mostly but not totally virtual–two of my upcoming books are print.

I have a print galley of Matthew Pearl’s The Technologists. This is a historical thriller that takes place just after the Civil War. The setting is Boston, during the founding years of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The description of the book makes it sound like a cross between Young Sherlock Holmes, Lev Grossman’s The Magicians (except using engineering as a substitute for magic), and CSI. I’m looking forward to it.

Speaking of print books, I just picked up my copy of Apocalypse to Go, by Katharine Kerr from the post office. I’m the lucky recipient of one of the Goodreads First Reads copies. This is my first one. Apocalypse to Go is the third book in Katharine Kerr’s Nola O’Grady series. I read the first book License to Ensorcell, last year when the series started, but I didn’t get to the second book, Water to Burn. Although the Nola O’Grady series is urban fantasy, Kerr is best known for her epic fantasy series set in the land of Deverry. Daggerspell and Darkspell are two of my all-time favorites. Stories about the cost of magic and power always get me.

I have one other review due next week, and I did get this one from NetGalley. I’ve discovered that once you get involved in a mystery series, it’s very hard to stop. I’ve read or listened to all of the Hamish Macbeth mysteries by M.C. Beaton, because I started listening on audio. Mysteries are great in the car. After 27 books, I still have to find out what’s happening to all the people in Constable Macbeth’s tiny Highland village, besides the annual corpse. So I’ll be reading M.C. Beaton’s Death of a Kingfisher and savoring my annual glimpse of Scottish rural life, and death.

I’m going to confess that I got totally sidetracked yesterday. I read a glowing review of Merrick’s Destiny, the new novella in Rogers’ Bloodhounds series at The Book Pushers. Although the review is fantastic, it was the cover that really got my attention. Compare these two pictures and you’ll understand why. (The picture on the far right is Cmdr. Riker from Star Trek Next Gen)  After I got over the double (triple) take, I read the review again. Since Merrick’s Destiny is book 1.5 in the series, I took a look at the first book, Wilder’s Mate. The summary sounded a lot like Shona Husk’s Dark Vow (reviewed here), but more emphasis on the sex and less on the angst. The Bloodhounds series is turning out to be a fantastic sidetrack!

Looking back at last week, I can see where things ran right over me this past week. I did send my review of Danger Zone to Library Journal, and I also queued up a longer review to appear on these very pages, so that’s done. I really enjoyed both of Ms. Adams’ books, and I’m looking forward to the third story in the Adrenaline Highs series sometime this summer.

The weekends are never long enough, but that means that tomorrow will be Ebook Review Central. It’s time to turn our freezing brain cells to 2012, and the January titles from Carina Press.

Penguin wobbling toward 1984

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | ebooks> OverDrive

On February 9, Penguin Books announced that it has pulled out of its contract with OverDrive to supply ebooks and downloadable audiobooks to libraries. The effective date of Penguin’s withdrawal from the library space is February 10.

Are you watching all those birds in tuxedos? They’re marching away.

The penguins have been milling around since November 2011, ever since Penguin Books stopped providing new titles for libraries through OverDrive. Since November, only their backlist has been available. So a library could get added copies of the first 33 books in J.D. Robb’s In Death series, but when the 34th book comes out in February, libraries won’t be able to get it.

This decision doesn’t just affect OverDrive. Penguin Books are not available through 3M, OverDrive’s newest competition. And they won’t be. Penguin Books doesn’t have a contract with 3M.

As of this writing, Penguin is negotiating a “continuance agreement” with OverDrive, so that libraries won’t lose access to the Penguin ebooks they currently have in their catalogs. In other words, the ebooks the libraries purchased last October. And the added copies they purchased last month.

That’s the thing about ebook purchases: they usually aren’t purchases. They’re usually licenses. This is a point where libraries need to read the fine print in the contract with their vendors.

So without that “continuance agreement,” Penguin can withdraw all their content. All their ebooks, all their audiobooks. In an infamous 2009 incident Amazon erased copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindles when it turned out that the particular edition users had purchased was being sold by a publisher that didn’t happen to have the rights to sell it.

If Penguin withdraws OverDrive’s right to lend Penguin content, the same thing could happen to libraries. Penguin content could disappear overnight.

Penguin Books published Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. It’s too bad that the recent meeting between the leaders of the American Library Association and top executives of Penguin Books as well as other Big 6 publishers did not “help” Penguin to reach a conclusion more favorable to libraries than this complete withdrawal. For the sake of library patrons everywhere, I hope that Penguin will see the light on this issue and reach a “continuation agreement” with OverDrive soon.