Missing your favorite Earth Girl?

Feel like it's been forever since you've spent time with Jarra?  Think you physically cannot survive without some interplanetary travel before the final book, Earth Flight, comes out in September?


Well, luckily for you author Janet Edwards was nice enough to release some short stories featuring your favorite characters! Available now on Kindle (other devices coming soon) is the prequel collection Earth 2788 that you can grab for only $0.99.  Less than a buck?  Can't argue with that bargain.  Well, you technically can't argue with anything other than a human, unless you don't care about it being one-sided, but we don't judge.

And if you haven't had the chance to hop into Edwards' futuristic world, then Earth 2788 is a nice taste of what you've been missing.  

Farewell, Widdershins

Widdershins has been abandoned, kicked down, left for dead, stabbed a few of times, and arrested once or twice. She thought leaving her home would help her wounds heal, but now she knows the only way to forget your past is to bury it once and for all.  Tomorrow, Ari Marmell brings his thrilling Widdershins Adventures to a dramatic close in Covenant's End. 

The thief Widdershins and her own "personal god," Olgun, return to their home city of Davillon after almost a year away. Her nemesis, Lisette, has also returned, and she is not alone. Lisette has made a dark pact with supernatural powers that have granted her abilities far greater than anything Widdershins and Olgun can match.

Together, Widdershins and Olgun will face enemies on both sides of the law, for Lisette's schemes have given her power in both Davillon's government and its underworld. 

Even with the help of Olgun, old friends, and new allies, Widdershins may be required to make the hardest sacrifice of her life, if she is to rid Davillon--and herself--of Lisette once and for all.

To celebrate the conclusion of the Widdershins series, you can pick up the Kindle edition of the first Widdershins Adventure, Thief's Covenant, at only $3.99 for the entire month!

And the next books in the series will be waiting patiently with open arms...er...pages, when you've finished. This is one you definitely won't want to miss.

Shadow's Lure available on Kindle

Hey folks,

Shadow's Lure, book 2 of my Shadow Saga, is now available on Kindle. Yay!

Join the Empire

For a limited time, Empire in Black and Gold, the first book in Adrian Tchaikovsky's brilliant fantasy epic, Shadows of the Apt, is available on Kindle at the reduced price of $1.99.

The city states of the Lowlands have lived in peace for decades, bastions of civilization, prosperity and sophistication, protected by treaties, trade and a belief in the reasonable nature of their neighbours.

  But meanwhile, in far-off corners, the Wasp Empire has been devouring city after city with its highly trained armies, its machines, it killing Art . . . And now its hunger for conquest and war has become insatiable.

  Only the ageing Stenwold Maker, spymaster, artificer and statesman, can see that the long days of peace are over.  It falls upon his shoulders to open the eyes of his people, before a black-and-gold tide sweeps down over the Lowlands and burns away everything in its path.  

But first he must stop himself from becoming the Empire's latest victim.



"Tchaikovsky succeeds at creating a compelling, absorbing and unique plot populated with characters worth investing time in. Interestingly, the humans in this series could be considered the monsters in any other series, and the insect/human hybrid characters are believable and fascinating. A promising debut by a verbose and lyrical writer. Four stars: Compelling—Page-turner." —RT Book Reviews

"Tchaikovsky's first novel exhibits a vibrancy and creative spirit that commands attention. Set in a world where human tribes are identified with totem insects—e.g., messenger Fly-kinden, military-minded Ant-kinden—the story moves quickly between intensely personal interactions and scenes of large-scale battle... This original and well-told series opener belongs in most fantasy collections and deserves exposure to a wide audience."
—Library Journal

Free on Kindle: Joel Shepherd's Sasha (A Trial of Blood & Steel)

Reminder that the first book in Joel Shepherd's A Trial of Blood & Steel quartet, Sasha, is now Free on Kinde. Shepherd's series, which is complete now with the publication of Haven, is a complex, gritty, realistic fantasy that drawns numerous comparisons to a certain other series. Here's what they're saying:

"...quite engrossing... this heroic fantasy should please fans of, say, George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels." Booklist

"Shepherd has created a court fantasy similar to George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire....a good epic fantasy that focuses more on the epic than the fantasy. Sasha is excellent reading for fans of character driven stories. I recommend it." Grasping for the Wind

"Sasha was excellent, especially given that this is Joel Shepherd’s first fantasy novel. It offers a huge fantasy world, a fascinating heroine, heart-pounding descriptions of both small-scale sword fights and full-on warfare, several characters that genuinely grow and change, and — maybe most importantly — the hint that this is just the start of what could become a great series. While I wouldn't rank it quite as high as George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, I think Sasha will go down very well with fans of that series because it shares some of its characteristics, including its huge scope and cast, its focus on politics and noble intrigue, and (at least in the early novels of ASoIaF) the almost complete absence of magic and mystical creatures. " Fantasy Literature

“I liked [Sasha]. She’s fierce, strong and courageous. She’s also a bit tempermental and stubborn, but in my opinion these qualities make her even more likeable… This book could have some profound and lasting effects on a female reader by instilling within her a fighter’s spirit and the idea that one can accomplish anything regardless of one’s gender. Think about this: how many female sword fighters so we see in such books like Shepherd’s Sasha? I am willing to guess not many… In this book, a woman is the warrior who leads others in a large battle. The cover alone is telling.”  -Femspec, Volume 11, Issue 1, 2010 

For a limited time!

For a very limited time, Ian McDonald's Hugo-nominated novel The Dervish House is available on Kindle for just $1.99 and Clay & Susan Griffith's acclaimed The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire Book One) is $2.99. Get 'em while the sale last. Sorry but this is US only.

Free on Kindle: Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky

Free on Kindle

Kay Kenyon's brilliant sci-fantasy epic quartet, The Entire and the Rose, is now available in its entirety in hardcover, trade paperback, and Kindle-format ebook. And to celebrate, the first book in the series, Bright of the Sky, is now FREE on Kindle.

If a price of zero point zero weren't enough for you to check it out, here are some additional compelling reasons:

“[A] splendid fantasy quest as compelling as anything by Stephen R. Donaldson, Philip José Farmer or, yes, J.R.R. Tolkien. ...you can actually feel the grasses and smell the smoke from the trains and experience great wonder in the cities of this impossible yet beautiful universe.” - Washington Post Book World

"[Bright of the Sky] knocked my socks off with its brilliant evocation of a quest through a parallel universe that has a strange river running through it. Unique in conception, like Larry Niven's Ringworld, this is the beginning to what should be an amazing SF-Fantasy series.”
- Locus Online, Best of 2007

“[A] star-maker, a magnificent book that should establish its author’s reputation as among the very best in the field today. Deservedly so, because it’s that good...a classic piece of world-making....here is another of those grand worlds whose mere idea invites us in to share in the wonder. Bright of the Sky enchants on the scale of your first encounter with the world inside of Rama, or the immense history behind the deserts of Dune, or the unbridled audacity of Riverworld. It's an enormous stage demanding a grand story and, so far, Kenyon is telling it with style and substance. The characters are as solid as the world they live in, and Kenyon's prose sweeps you up and never lets go. On its own, [it] could very well be the book of the year. If the rest of the series measures up, it will be one for the ages.” -SF Site

“Reminiscent of the groundbreaking novels of Philip K. Dick, Philip Jose Farmer, and Dan Simmons, her latest volume belongs in most libraries.” -Library Journal

“With a rich and vivid setting, peopled with believable and sympathetic characters and fascinating aliens, Kay Kenyon has launched an impressive saga with Bright of the Sky.”
-SFFWorld

“Bright Of The Sky effortlessly blends science fiction concepts and world-building with fantasy story telling to create a unique and intriguing whole....Kay Kenyon has created a standout novel....I'm looking forward to the rest of series. 4 out of 5 stars.” -SFSignal.com

“A brilliant SF setting that rivals Larry Niven's Ringworld and Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series for sheer invention, adventure, complexity, and a sense of wonder.” - Omnivoracious

“Kay Kenyon’s Bright of the Sky is her richest and most ambitious novel yet — fascinating, and best of all, there promises to be more to come.” – Greg Bear, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Quantico and Darwin’s Radio

The Ghost Arrives on the Kindle!

We've been getting a lot of emails and comments asking when George Mann's Ghosts of Manhattan will be released on the Kindle, so I know a lot of people are going to be excited to learn that it's here!

"Ghosts of Manhattan is a brilliant hybrid of superhero/vigilante tale, film noir, and 1920s decadence... It is an exceedingly dark character study of damaged characters attempting to make the world a better place than it has been for them. It is a portrait of a world just one step removed from our reality, a New York that never was but could have been. It is a thematic rumination on the nature of heroism, blessed with exquisite prose, twisty mystery (one revelation in particular almost made me want to start reading all over again, to note the earlier clues), genuinely thrilling suspense, and cracking violence--a beautifully crafted novel whose dark heart is counterbalanced with small moments of unexpected tenderness. And dirigibles." --RobWillReview.com

New on Kindle: Two Shadows and the Devil

We're up to 57 books available on the Kindle now. Jon Sprunk's Shadow's Son, Mark Chadbourn's The Devil in Green, and Matthew Sturges' The Office of Shadow are among the latest releases.

And before you ask, more formats coming "soon."

Further Thoughts on eReader apps for the iPad

Yesterday, Barnes and Noble released their much-anticipated, long-awaiting B&N eReader app specifically for the iPad. With its arrival, there are now three excellent eReading options, and as a user of all three, I though a follow up to my "My Life in eBooks" post might be due. (I haven't downloaded the Kobo app yet, due to early reports of bugs, so that one isn't addressed but may follow in later report).

I've been reading for the two plus months on the iPad, mostly in iBooks but also in the Kindle for iPad app. But before the iPad I had read a whole novel - Fritz Leiber's Swords & Deviltry - in the B&N iPhone app, which was my favorite of the iPhone reading apps for commercially published books. I say "commercially published" because before the iPad I read all manuscript submissions in Stanza for iPhone.

I've got about twenty ebooks now on each of the three apps, and while the majority of my ebooks were free, I have paid for books from all three. Swords & Deviltry was my only purchase on B&N, The Graveyard Book and Return of the Sword, along with a few low-cost pulps (Doc Savage and Fu Manchu), were my Kindle purchases, and I've purchased six books so far via iBooks, including Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things, The House on Pooh Corner, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Runaway Ralph, and the Beneath Ceaseless Skies anthology.

But I've been itching for B&N to get onboard iPad and downloaded it first thing yesterday morning. So...

The B&N eReader app does a lot of things very, very well.  With its plain white background on the home page and simple page swiping, it's not as sexy as iBooks, whose virtual bookshelf and realistic page turning emulation are really, really gorgeous. But what B&N lacks in style it more than makes up for in functionality, and its iPad version is far more user friendly than its iPhone app. It now opens its dictionary inside the page of the book, rather than pulling you out of the read as the iPhone version of the app did, allows for note taking and highlighting, has an assortment of font choices and sizes etc... Of course, some version of these tools are pretty much de rigueur now for any eReader. But B&N adds two features that are very, very nice. In addition to customizing the fonts, you can alter the width of the page's margins and you can alter the spacing between lines. Between changing the margins and changing the spacing, you can really, really create a perfectly tailored, comfortable reading experience. And then you can save that as a theme to apply later! This is brilliant, and may be the nicest feature on any of the three major apps. Against this, both iBooks and the Kindle app suddenly look very limited in what they allow.


B&N's eReader also opens up the Table of Contents in a pop-up window, without pulling you out of your place in the book, along with tabs to bring up lists of your highlights and bookmarks. Which is another very nice feature. I also appreciate the fact that they have chosen to go with page numbers, rather than percentages or the perplexing Kindle location system. Yes, page count changes when you change font sizes and spacing, but then, it does the same thing when we raise the point size of a font in printing a physical book. It's still very nice aesthetically and psychologically to use actual page numbers.

I was also delighted to discover, when perusing Bram Stoker's Dracula,  that the end notes were hyperlinked. Clicking on them took me to a list of notes at the end of the chapter, with a convenient "Back" button to return me to my place in the text. Nice.

I did have a few problems with the eReader. It crashed on me twice when I was trying to highlight a chapter title in Swords & Deviltry, I have two copies of the same edition of Dracula displayed in my shelf and can't seem to get it to just show just one, and when you delete a book on your shelf, it still shows the cover with a "Download" label across it. To actually get rid of my complimentary copy of Little Women -- (no disrespect to Louisa May Alcott) -- I had to go to B&N.com in the Safari browser and remove it permanently from My Library. This is a minor inconvenience but it will probably have the effect of preventing me from sampling as many titles as I otherwise would. I haven't tried the LendMe feature yet, but it is obviously a plus. I did make notes and highlights in a book and was disappointed to see that they didn't carry across to my iPhone edition.

Overall, it's a very good app, with a lot to recommend it, and a few key features that score higher than its competitors. And, of course, I'm sure it will only get better as updates are issued.

Meanwhile, last month I read Gaiman's The Graveyard Book on the Kindle app, which, thanks to Whispersync, was read on both my iPhone and iPad.

Kindle's aforementioned perplexing locations are augmented with page numbers for the iPad version, and I also find the actual layout of text more attractive on the iPad than on the iPhone. Visually, the home page is prettier than the B&N eReader app, and the Whispersync technology can't be beat. Its amazing how many occasions every day you find yourself with a minute or three where you can pull your phone out and read a few paragraphs, where you might not have easy access to the larger iPad.  Currently neither B&N nor Apple's iBooks has a syncing feature, though both promise that in the next iteration of their iPhone app software updates. And, of course, Kindle has by far the best selection of titles.

Where iBooks scores over both of them is in presentation and in the ability to easily load ePub format ebooks acquired from other sources into iBooks with just one click. Because of this, iBooks has been my default reader for amassing a library, in the same way all my music, whether purchased digitally or ripped from CDs, goes into iTunes. I also use Stanza Desktop's "Save as ePub" feature to convert Word Docs into ePub format files, so now I'm doing all my manuscript reading on the iPad. And it's amazing how helpful it is, when thinking about how a particularly manuscript would be if you acquired it and turned it into a book, to actually see it looking like a book, with actual pages. It's really intuitively helpful to me, when judging a book's pacing, to be able to see how far into the book I am, and the feature that tells you how many pages remain in a chapter is fantastic!

Currently you can't take notes in iBooks, though I can't imagine that will be long in coming, and while you can copy sections of text from non DRM's ePub files, you can't cut and past lines into email from the books purchased from the iBookstore (at least the ones I've purchased). So the annotation features in Kindle and B&N score over iBooks in that respect. The iBooks reader needs to do more than it does, but its too strongest selling points - its beauty and its ability to accept ePub files into iTunes - are extremely attractive features that will probably keep it in the top slot for my primary reader. On the downside, the selection at iBooks isn't what it needs to be, though that is something that will be changing fast. But given there is no way to browse through the iBookstore, unless an author/book is listed in the promotional displays in a genre's category, there is no way to know if the book is there except by running a search, which right now will return no results more often than not.

Sadly, none of the eReaders allow you to bring up a full-page view of the cover, which is a shame given how good the iPad is at displaying art. Since this is a complaint with all three apps, I'm wondering if it is somehow a limitation of ePub. Either way, it seems like an essential element of book reading that needs to be addressed and thus, presumably, will be.

In summary, B&N's eReader app is a welcome addition to the iPad eReader space and offers enough that I won't be penalizing it too much for being late to the party. iBooks versatility will make it my default manuscript reading app, and probably my first choice for an eReader, but I anticipate continuing to buy some books from the Kindle (due, if nothing else, to their wide selection) and some from B&N (most notably, the rest of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series). Instead of having one reading app and one online library, it looks like I'm going to have one device (or family of devices) and multiple apps. For now, I can live with that. Of course, all the competition between apps and devices can only be good for the overall evolution of the eReader, so who knows where things will be next year? Personally, I'm eager to find out.

B&N eReader:
Pros:

• Customizable fonts, colors, margins, spacing
• Annotations
• Wide Selection
• Dictionary opens inside page. 

Cons:

• Visually boring interface.
• Currently no sync with iPhone version.
• Can only take B&N books despite ePub format.

Kindle for iPad:
Pros:

• Whispersync
• Enormous selection
• Visually attractive

Cons:

• Proprietary Format.

iBooks
Pros:

• Visually stunning.
• Can import any non DRM ePub files.
• Dictionary opens inside page.

Cons:

• Currently no iPhone version.
• Currently no annotation. 
• Currently small selection, poor inventory browsing. 
• No dictionary.

Pyr on the Kindle

We're up to 50 Pyr books on the Kindle now (more formats coming).

My Life in eBooks

I read my first ebook in 1990. It was William Gibson's Count Zero, and I read it on Apple's Hypercard stacks program. I loved the experience, particularly being able to highlight a character's name and call up every occurrence of that character in the text. Hypercard didn't last, but I was hooked. I could see the future.

In 2000, I worked in a dot com start up called Bookface.com, long vanished now, but one of the first to be taken seriously in the ebook space. (First to market, first to, well you know...). While working at the company, where I read Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter in our proprietary browser-format, I found that reading online books radically increased my own purchase of physical books. This trend continues...

For the last year, I've been doing all my manuscript submission reading on Stanza for iPhone, and have recently been editing on it as well (most recently The Dervish House and The Goblin Corps). Now I've gotten an iPad, and I've started reading manuscripts in iBooks (using Stanza Desktop's "Save as ePub" feature to convert Word docs, which are then easy to upload to iTunes with a simple click of the "add to Library" menu button.)

I've learned that I can walk and read, and, in fact, walking and reading cuts down on all the distractions offered by the Glorious Desktop Screen, so I'm reading on Stanza for iPhone in the morning, and in iBooks on iPad in the afternoon in Starbucks. (I walked 11 hours over the last four days, by the way. Drunk a lot of coffee too.)

I've purchased books for the Kindle app, the Barnes & Noble eReader app, and the iBook app. And I've downloaded quite a few free ones. I don't own a Kindle or Nook, but I have played on the former briefly and borrowed the latter for a few days from my father - before it froze up on him and he returned it!  Yesterday, I finished reading Fritz Leiber's Swords & Deviltry on the B&N eReader on my iPhone, and I completed a 10 day long (chapter a day) read of Winnie the Pooh to my son on iPad.

So here's my thoughts on eReaders, with the caveat that my needs are fairly specific, given that I read more manuscripts than finished books, and YMMV.

First in general, I really don't like e-ink, which looks to me like reading off a digital watch. I do my pleasure reading in bed, from 6 to 6:35 am while my wife sleeps, and I need the back-lighting. And I like color. And I just much prefer the screen on my phone to the screen on either the Kindle or Nook.

When reading documents on the iPhone, Stanza is far and away the best reader, given how easy it is to upload, how easy it is to cut-and-email paragraphs (to authors, with notes) and also the general user-friendly and aesthetic experience of the reader itself. Because it's such a versatile device, it loses some formatting, particularly italics, so it's not my ideal reading device for commercially-available books, just manuscripts. The Kindle app, by contrast, is a much less comfortable reading experience. I've noticed weird kerning and leading between words in the way text is displayed, and I just don't find it comfortable on the eyes. So for commercially-available books, I use the B&N eReader software. It was the most comfortable read, the best display, in many ways, the most like Stanza actually. My only complaint is the number of books they offer that are currently missing their covers, and the inability to customize your ebooks by manually adding the cover you want back in (as you can with Stanza).

When reading on the iPad, iBooks is hands down the best experience. Now, it should be said, neither Stanza nor B&N has come out with an iPad-optimized version of their respective reader, though it is expected both will appear in May. By that time, however, I may be completely hooked on iBooks.

However, it should be said that Kindle for iPad is gorgeous, much much better than Kindle for iPhone, or really, the actual Kindle itself. And, while you cannot purchase magazines for your Kindle for iPhone ap, Apple has very wisely chosen to treat the Kindle for iPad like another form of Kindle, and you can read magazines on it. I downloaded samples of Asimov's and Realms of Fantasy, and was impressed with the display. I've yet to read a whole book on the Kindle for iPad app, but plan to soon (most likely starting with Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, since I already own it in this format as well as hardcover -- see prior comment about ebooks/physical books.) I expect I could be reading magazines on the Kindle app soon too.

Where iBooks scores over all of them is the ability to upload your existing ePub files into iTunes with a click, which is as simple and elegant as adding MP3s to iTunes has trained us to expect. And in its display. I would have thought two weeks ago that I wouldn't have cared less about replicating the look of a book turning pages, but I have to say it made reading Winnie the Pooh to my son, who thrilled at watching the pages flip under his finger. Also, the artwork in the book, essential for children's books of this age range, looked fantastic. The artwork in Kindle books, by contrast, looks much much better on the iPad than on the iPhone, but still has a box of contrast around it (the white of the illustration background against the white of their page). I have Elric: Stealer of Souls in Kindle format, though, and I must say that Picacio's artwork looks amazing. So I am nitpicking, as the Kindle books I've sampled on the iPad all look great and Kindle for iPad is a very close second to iBooks. And, of course, you cannot beat Kindle for availability of titles, which is key.

What I'd like to see from iBooks soon is the ability to annotate the text and export the annotations. As it is, you can already copy selections of text and then close out of the application and paste them into emails, which makes it fine for manuscripts requiring a light edit, but not great for ones requiring a heavy one. (For those, I'd use the Pages app, except that it is wonderful in all respects but one: it lacks a Track Changes feature, making it useless for editing!!!) I'd also like to see an iPhone version of iBooks, but since we are reportedly seeing that come the next OS update this summer, I'm happy.

In summary, I wish I could come down to just one app on one device, but I figure I'm going to end up using multiple apps on two devices, both with an i at the start of their names. I expect that for manuscripts I'll continue using Stanza for iPhone when I need to be at my most mobile, iBooks for iPad otherwise, and that for my own ebook purchases I'll probably stick to iBooks (whose selection isn't yet where it needs to be), with occasional purchases from B&N. I would have already purchased Swords & Death from them, if their eReader were optimized for the iPad. As it is, I'm waiting.

But I cannot see purchasing a Kindle or a Nook when you can purchase an iPad and have the option of all three reading platforms in one device, that also surfs the web, does email, plays games, streams movies, etc...

So, screw all those cliched complaints about "Where's my Flying Car?" - this is the future world I've personally been waiting on since 1990. I might even have to go full circle and reread Count Zero.

This is Mutiny, Mr Christian!!

Mike Resnick's Starship: Mutiny, the first book in his Starship series, has just appeared for the Kindle. This is good, given that books 2 and 4 have been up a while. Also, before you say it, other ebook formats are coming soon!

8 More Pyr Titles Arrive on the Kindle

A batch of eight more Pyr books has been Kindle-ized (though one is only listed as pre-order. Didn't know they'd do that with ebooks.)

They are:

Justina Robson's Chasing the Dragon (Quantum Gravity, Book 4)(Preorder)

Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter: Books of the Cataclysm: One

Chris Roberson's End of the Century

Gardner Dozois' Galileo's Children: Tales Of Science VS. Superstition

Sean Williams' The Hanging Mountains

Alexis Glynn Latner's Hurricane Moon

Theodore Judson's The Martian General's Daughter

Matthew Sturges' Midwinter

Again, no control of the order in which Amazon puts these things up. It is apparently based at least partially on demand, as logged by their "I'd like to read this book on Kindle" button. Click often.