The Distance Between Us by Bart Yates eBook editions

Every once in a while you stumble across a true gem; and The Distance Between Us qualifies as one of those gems.  The book is classified by the Publisher as a GLBT title for reasons I do not understand.  Yes, one of the main characters happens to be gay, but it is hardly the point of the story. 

The story revolves mainly around Hester, a compelling old lady.  Although I am not altogether sure she would appreciate that description.  Because she uses anger to hold the world at bay, she is not exactly a likable character.  An extremely articulate and witty character; but not so likeable.  She is bitter; she drinks to much; she is acerbic and does not suffer fools.

Her children, particularly her daughter, are as hostile and verbally adept as she.  Her ex-husband is just flat out disgusted with her and the circumstances of their divorce.  This is one dysfunctional, unhappy family!

It is an interesting phenomena of life that if the message is right, the messenger hardly matters.  And Alex is a most unlikely messenger.  He is a a bright secretive and troubled young man.  A totally unlikely catalyst for acceptance and forgiveness.

While Heather and her family use words and booze as a way to run away from pain; Alex has actually physically run away from his.  Heather and Alex are two wounded souls who come together and somehow help each other heal.

Yates is a powerful writer.  His characters are finely nuanced and is use of language is exquisite.  But the real power is his writing comes from his ability to inject just the right amount of humor into an otherwise painful story.  The humor makes it readable and memorable long after the last words are read.

This is an amazing story!  Check it out for yourself!

Here is the publisher synopsis:

Hester Parker resides in an elegant Victorian house in the town of Bolton, Illinois. She spends her evenings listening to the lush tones of Mahler and Chopin, drinking sub-par Merlot, and reflecting on a life that has suddenly fallen apart. At seventy-one, Hester is as brilliant and sharp-tongued as ever, capable of inspiring her music students to soaring heights or reducing them to tears with a single comment. But her wit can't hide the bitterness that comes with losses:  the loss of her renowned violinist husband, Arthur Donovan, who left her for another woman, and the loss of her career as a concert pianist after injuring her wrist.

When Hester decides to rent out the attic apartment to Alex, a young college student, she has no idea of the impact he will have on her life and her family. Good-natured and awkward, with secrets of his own, Alex becomes an unlikely confidant and a means of reconnecting with the world outside Hester's window. But his presence also exposes old memories and grief that Hester has tried to bury. Over the course of one remarkable month, Hester will confront angry accusations, long-hidden jealousies, and the inescapable truth that tore her family apart and might, against all odds, help reconcile them again. And her brief friendship with Alex will leave each with a surprising legacy -- acceptance of the past, a seed of comfort in the present, and hope for the future, wherever it may lead.

"Absorbing. . .brims with quiet intensity."--Publishers Weekly

del.icio.us Tags: ebooks,e-books.ebooks about glbt,fiction,book review,yates,the distance between us

Bowker's "2008 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Report"

Bowker (the company that distributes and assign ISBN numbers to books) and Publisher's Weekly (the biggest publishing industry magazine) have released a new report about consumer book purchases and reading habits. For a mere $1000, you can buy and read the whole report. For the rest of us there is the press release.

The press release notes that eBooks and digital publishing are the bright notes in an otherwise dim industry outlook. The also offer the following info:

• 57% of book buyers are women yet women purchase 65% of the books sold in the U.S.
• Mystery books are the most popular genre for book club sales, with 17% of all purchases of mystery books coming directly from book clubs
• Generation X consumers buy more books online than any other demographic group, with 30% of them buying their books through the Internet
• 21% of book buyers said they became aware of a book through some sort of online promotion or ad
• Women made the majority of the purchases in the paperback, hardcover and audio-book segments
• Men accounted for 55% of e-book purchases

del.icio.us Tags: books,ebooks,e-books,publishing. bowker

Amazon Kindle Agreement

I mentioned the agreement in passing yesterday.  Later in the day I stumble upon this great blog piece that is an annotated version of the Kindle license agreement. 

Stowe Boyd does a great job of taking the agreement apart and explaining it in plain English.  He concludes:

This is an enormous mess for Bezos and Amazon, and the license agreement is not going to protect them from their misdeeds.

Probably not good news for Amazon because class action law firm KamberEdelson is looking at suing Amazon for removing books from the Kindle. 

Jay Edelson "says he intends to argue that the recall infringes on consumers' property rights. He will also argue that Amazon's ability to delete books makes the Kindle less valuable to consumers, who believed they were purchasing a device that would allow them to store books forever. Edelson says he intends to seek to represent all Kindle owners in the case against Amazon."

This is so much fun to watch!  Stay tuned. . .

del.icio.us Tags: kindle ebook,amazon,ebooks,ebook

Solar Powered eBooks?

Ubergizmo is reporting that Neoluxiim is talking about integrating a solar cell into their newest eInk products.

They are promoting it as an advertising device; not an eBook device. It is inevitable, however, that eBooks will eventually be run on solar power.

This particular offering has a got-cha built in. Seems that the device dies after 18 months. Now there is a great example obsolescence if I ever saw one.

Solar is green -- very nice. The eighteen month life cycle more than wipes out any benefit when you think about the electronic waste involved. What are they thinking????????

del.icio.us Tags: ebook,ebook readers,ebook hardware,solar eBook

Sullivan's Island and Return to Sullivan's Island -- eBooks by Dorothea Benton Frank

Dorthea Benton Frank is a southern writer.  Her works have been compared to Pat Conroy and Anne Rivers Siddons.  Nine years ago, those comparisons lead me to pick up her first book Sullivan's Island.  I loved it. 

The publisher synopsis really doesn't capture the magic of her writing or the powerful back story about her family, South Carolina and desegregation. 

Set in the steamy, stormy landscape of South Carolina, Sullivan's Island tells the unforgettable story of one woman's courageous journey toward truth.

Born and raised on idyllic Sullivan's Island, Susan Hayes navigated through her turbulent childhood with humor, spunk, and characteristic Southern sass. But years later, she is a conflicted woman with an unfaithful husband, a sometimes resentful teenage daughter, and a heart that aches with painful, poignant memories. And as Susan faces her uncertain future, she realizes that she must go back to her past. To the beachfront house where her sister welcomes her with open arms. To the only place she can truly call home.

When I read last year that Frank was writing an sequel Return to Sullivan's Island, I immediately added it to my summer reading list. Then I started think about the original book, Sullivan's Island.  I realized that my memory was pretty hazy; so hazy that it would make sense to re-read the book.

Actually, it turned out to be a good/bad decision. 

The good part is that Sullivan's Island is well written, engrossing and I would have missed some of the subtleties of the Return if I had not reread it. It was as much fun to reread as it had been to read. 

The bad part is that in the Return to Sullivan's Island the plot and the writing were definitely not up to the same standard.  I actually found myself wishing that she had not returned.  Or at least not in this particular fashion.  I found the return was incredibly disappointing and stretching my credulity beyond it's normal limits. 

I'm not sure it would have been so disappointing if I had read the books separately or if I had never read Frank before.  Return to Sullivan's Island is an "OK" beach read; it is mindless reading that will keep you entertained for several hours.  Great literature it is not.  Sullivan's Island on the other hand is recommended reading for the beach or anywhere else you happen to be!

 

Dorothea Benton Frank returns to the enchanted landscape of South Carolina's Lowcountry made famous in her beloved New York Times bestseller Sullivans Island to tell the story of the next generation of Hamiltons and Hayes.

Newly graduated from college and an aspiring writer, Beth Hayes craves independence and has a world to conquer. But her notions of travel, graduate study, and writing the great American novel will have to be postponed. With her mother, Susan, leaving to fulfill her own dreams in Paris and her Aunt Maggie, Uncle Grant, and stepfather, Simon, moving to California, Beth is elected by her elders to house-sit the Island Gamble.

Surrounded by the shimmering blue waters of the Atlantic, the white clapboards, silver tin roof, and confessional porch have seen and heard the stories of generations of Hamiltons. But will the ghosts of the Island Gamble be watching over Beth? Buoyed by sentimental memories of growing up on this tiny sandbar that seems to be untouched by time, Beth vows to give herself over to the Lowcountry force and discover the wisdom it holds. She will rest, rejuvenate, and then reenter the outside world. Just as she vows she will never give into the delusional world of white picket fences, minivans, and eternal love, she meets Max Mitchell. And all her convictions and plans begin to unravel with lightning speed. There is so much about life and her family's past that she does not know. Her ignorance nearly costs her both her inheritance and her family's respect. But Beth finds unexpected friends to help her through the disaster she faces: her wise and charming Aunt Sophie; Cecily Singleton, the granddaughter of Livvie Singleton; and Woody Morrison, the solid young investment banker.

This wonderful ensemble of characters could be your own family, but watch what unfolds as they succumb to the island's spell. If everything happens for a reason, then Beth's return to Sullivans Island teaches her that betrayal and tragedy are most easily handled when you surround yourself with loyal family and friends in a magical place that loves you so much that it wants to claim you as its own.

del.icio.us Tags: ebooks,ebooks about fictions,Dorothea Benton Frank,Sullivan's Island,Return to Sullivan's Island

Adobe FINALLY Makes a Move

For months there has been this nagging little question at the back of my brain.  It is -- "What the hell is Adobe thinking!?"

One day, with no warning and for no apparent reason to the average reader, they switched the eBook reading format from Adobe Reader to Adobe Digital Editions. 

Now, Adobe Reader is a fine little piece of software.  Sure it has some problems with reflowing text.  It means that to read some text you have to to scroll around (from right to left) to read a full page.  A nuisance for sure, but not a deal killer. 

Adobe Reader functions on Windows, Mac and many Unix computers as well as on most hand held devices.  It allows you to change how pages display.  It even lets you rotate the page view from portrait to landscape.  The search function is peppy and and if you want it, you can have an automated voice read to you.  Pretty nifty.

But one day it was: Goodbye Reader; Hello Digital Editions (DE). 

Initially DE only worked on Windows based computers. Now it works on a Mac, but still not Linux or Handhelds.  The big breakthrough was when they struck a deal with Sony so that the Sony eReader could actually accommodate DE.

And instead of a more or less intuitive menu structure DE pretty much did away with menus.  The DE interface gives new meaning to the idea of minimalist. The icons are hard to see and hard to decipher,  I suspect this is in an effort to hide the fact that they really aren't very useful.  Page display options are severely limited; search is deadly slow and there are no tools like zoom or automatic scroll.

It is apparently based on Flash and has the annoying characteristic of checking back to the Adobe site everytime you open it.

But here is my favorite part.  DE claims to have "Powerful markup features."  My question is where?  I have looked high and low, but so far have been unable to highlight, annotate or otherwise markup anything.  So I am not even sure what this claim means.

Almost every publisher creates an Adobe version of their title.  Very often the only available digital format is Adobe.  So why have publishers allowed Adobe to summarily change out the format and disenfranchise a big part of the market.  I know that we used to sell lots of Adobe versions to people with handhelds. 

The net result is a curious disconnect between book technology and book readers. Publishers love Adobe and none of the eReaders (with the exception of Sony) embrace it.  Very odd.

Evidently, that is about to changes.  Last week Adobe announced that they have a new SDK (software development kit) that will make it easy (?) to create Digital Editions formatted books for use on the Cybook, Illiad and Plastic Logic eReaders. 

I am always a little suspicious of technology that is referred to by initials:  SDK, OS and DRM come to mind. 

Adobe has a lot to prove!  Not to publishers, who evidently don't really care since eBooks are such a small part of their market.  But to eBook retailers like me who have seen our sales impacted at a time when no one can afford to take an economic hit.  And most importantly to readers who are increasingly frustrated by an industry that can not get it's act together.

 

del.icio.us Tags: ebook,e-books,adobe digital editions,pdf,ascm,digital reading

As I Live and Breathe the Cell Phone is Taking over the Center

Henri has been doing some thinking about kids, cell phones, open systems and the PC.  Here are his reflections. . .

Nothing has given me greater pleasure in life than the birth of my children. My youngest daughter turned thirty two this month. The next events in line have all had to do with the birth of revolutionary ideas in the world that I have lived in for sixty five years so far.

Let’s see, there was the birth of computing as a business support system. Then there was the ongoing revolution in electronics. The development of the human genome from the first days of the shape and form of DNA to the publication of the first actual readout of the genome itself was as fundamental a breakthrough in human knowledge.

Along the way there have been many gratifying moments and more than a few terrifying discoveries. The Ozone hole, global Warming and other threats to the ecosystems that sustain us all are among the scariest. Of course even the greatest gains in knowledge can be perverted by misuse or abuse. The idea that scientists are responsible for their creations is still gaining traction. Codes of ethics and other means of controlling misuse of great ideas are still in their infancy.

Meanwhile the Personal Computing revolution has given birth to the Internet and the Cell phone revolution has been playing around with the power that network offers. Now we are about to watch the birth of a new stage in that set of gains in human communication.

The PC King is dying and a new Queen is about to take over. Open systems are coming to cell phones. Taken together with the still growing power of handheld devices this will end the reign of King PC. Cell phones are the new center of Personal Computing. The iPhone is the earliest prophet of this revolution but the next wave will blow away all doubt.

You can start with the Android Operating System contributed by Google and end with the ever evolving nature of handheld devices themselves. It has been years since anything like the vitality that exists in the competition for market share in Cell Phones existed anywhere else in the electronic world.

There are reasons to believe that this next revolution in Personal Computing will bring on revolutions in education, publishing, government and too many other human institutions to mention here.

I am hoping to watch and continue to work to help those revolutionary times achieve the best possible results for the most people possible. There are millions of people who like me see these changes as positive. I hope you are among them.

del.icio.us Tags: ebooks,e-book,cell phone,android,google android

Readers are the winners with the new IDPF eBook open standards

This is a first – the first in a series of blog articles written by Gigi’s friends, associates and the eBooks About staff. Contributors are welcome –please contact Gigi with ideas, articles and comments! I want your participation! This piece is by FOG (friend of Gigi) Karsten Molinaro. Check his profile!

eBook formats have always been confusing, and a sore point for eBook buyers. Other than Adobe PDF, there has never been anything remotely close to an industry standard eBook format.

I know of at least 20 mutually incompatible, propriety formats that have been used over the years, many of which are now defunct! The losers, of course, are eBook buyers who find the eBook they bought yesterday can no longer be read today, while paper books are timeless.

Adobe PDF

PDF is the most recognized "defacto open" format for eBooks. The problem is that anyone who wants to read a PDF document on screen displays (desktops and handheld devices) often finds that PDF is very limiting, and even frustrating.

PDF was developed to preserve formatting and make electronic documents look exactly like paper ones. It does this by "hard wiring" the text onto a fixed size page. Great for printing.

But what if the electronic display is of a much different size than the page (usually much smaller), which is oftentimes the case? And what if the end-user would like to adjust typography like the font size and the font itself, and have the content "retypeset" in an optimal way? With PDF this can't realistically be done.

The need for the format to "reflow" the text is an important one for eBook users. Is there such a reflowable, permanent, open standard that the eBook industry may embrace? One which is designed to provide for the important needs of both publishers and end-users?

EPUB to the Rescue

Fortunately, there finally is! The new International Digital Publishing Forum’s (IDPF), “EPUB standard”. The IDPF represents a wide range of stakeholders in the eBook industry and has recently released a set of fully open industry standards which underly EPUB. I'm proud to have been one of the primary technical contributors to this major effort.

EPUB, based upon well-developed open standards, including those used for web pages, now provides for the important needs of both publishers and eBook readers: permanence, open standards, reflowability, accessibility, and high typographic quality. The ultimate winners of this new standard will be you, the eBook reader.

Many publishers are eagerly embracing the EPUB standard, and are now reformatting their content in the new format. Even Adobe recognizes the limitation of PDF for eBook use. They have been a major player in the development of the new IDPF standards. In fact they have already released Digital Editions, which displays EPUB eBooks.

The Future

Admittedly, the copy protection (DRM) side of EPUB has yet to be shaken out. But we expect to see a large number of unencumbered EPUB eBooks released, and believe that the eBook industry will eventually forego the use encryption for most books, which is where we see the music industry now headed.

So when do we see EPUB eBooks being sold through eBooks About Everything?

No one can really know, yet. What we do know that the industry is quickly moving in that direction, and we hope that eBooks About will be able to offer EPUB titles in the near future. Gigi will most certainly let you know when it happens!