We Need More Shelves…
A Book Review SIte from Jan McClintock
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Give Books Pledge logo

Pledge to Give Books

By Jan
 on November 27, 2013

Give Books Pledge logoChronicle Books has promised to make gift-giving even more meaningful this year. For every #GiveBooks tweet, pin, and online pledge, they will donate a book to a child in need. Please go to their web site and take the pledge.

Help others discover the pleasure we know every day.

In categories Uncategorized Tagged with Twitter
Dewey's Read-a-Thon

Read-a-Thon Time!

By Jan
 on April 25, 2013
It’s time for Dewey’s April Read-a-Thon, and I’m pumped up for this one. I’m getting my list of books ready and planning my food and snacks ahead. After all, if I’m skipping everything else that day (including showers and cooking), I don’t want to starve. I might get a late start because of Friday plans, but at least I will get some serious reading time in before my eyelids start to twitch.

To find out more about Dewey’s Read-a-Thon and how you can participate, visit the web site and read the FAQs. You don’t have to spend all 24 hours reading, but it’s fun to try.

My list so far:
One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde
The Tale of Hawthorn House by Susan Wittig Albert
Murder on Sister’s Row by Victoria Thompson
A few stories from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine thrown in

© Jan McClintock of We Need More Shelves

In categories Uncategorized Tagged with challenge, historical mystery
Ereader photo

Ebooks: Quality and Price

By Jan
 on February 17, 2013

I felt I had to reply to a comment I saw on Amazon.com recently. The situation was this: a new, non-fiction book was being “reviewed” and one of the commenters gave it one star. It’s impossible to give anything lower on Amazon.com. The reasoning was that the price of the Kindle version of the book was too high.

Most commenters probably agreed that it was overpriced. However, the commenter hadn’t even purchased the book, and it was agreed that it was poor form to slight the price in that case, as the bad rating went against the overall quality of the book using Amazon’s rating system. The star rating — as it applies to books — is usually reserved for rating the contents and whether the reader liked or disliked the  publication.

One commenter wrote the following while discussing this issue: “It costs very little to make an ebook. For amazon’s Kindle, one need only to upload the book in Microsoft Word format and upload a picture of the cover of the book, and perform a few odds and ends and you are set to go – no production costs after that, no worry about printing too many copies, etc.”

My answer to at least this statement follows:

“In reply to [reviewer’s name], it’s not as easy as “perform(ing) a few odds and ends” to prepare a book to be published in the correct format for the Kindle — or any other ebook. I’m an editor and I create ebooks for clients, so I know of what I speak.

If you are a regular reader of ebooks, you’ve seen books which have poor ‘translation’ from the original version, or perhaps were done without proper preparation. Those ebooks have strange paragraph returns, unexplained spacing, remaining page numbers, and countless other anomalies. (That doesn’t count the poor editing that many exhibit!)

Each major distributor of ebooks demands a different format, as well. If ebooks were offered in a standard format across the board, it would be much easier (and less expensive) to publish them. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen, as we know in the computer world.

I do agree that prices of ebooks should be lower than that of print books. However, major publishers like Harper still need to make a profit, as do the many, many entities down the line who get a cut of the price, including Amazon and of course, the author (who makes very little from this, I’m sure). BTW, authors have little to do with setting the price if a publisher is distributing the book.

Big publishers are in trouble because of the self-publishing industry, no doubt about it. If buyers — that’s YOU — insist on quality and agree to pay a fair price, then the market will follow, however slowly that happens.”

So, how much are YOU willing to pay for a good-quality ebook? And do you tell other potential buyers when you find one that has very poor editing or formatting?

© Jan McClintock of We Need More Shelves

In categories Uncategorized Tagged with e-book, publishing

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Great Story

By Jan
 on April 3, 2012

From the great post “Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Great Story” by Maria Popova on Brain Pickings, here is the list:

  1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
  2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
  3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
  4. Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.
  5. Start as close to the end as possible.
  6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
  7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
  8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

© Jan McClintock of We Need More Shelves

In categories Uncategorized Tagged with quote, short story

SMASHWORDS READ-AN-EBOOK WEEK SALE!

By Jan
 on March 7, 2012

“Our annual Read an Ebook Week sale is now underway.  The sale ends Saturday.
Access over 20,000 free and deep-discounted ebooks.
Simply click to http://www.smashwords.com then click to the Read an Ebook promotion catalog.  
Here’s the direct link:  https://www.smashwords.com/books/category/1/newest/1

There are four coupon codes you can use for participating books:

25% off:   REW25 – 2,300+ ebooks
50% off:   REW50 – 5,700+ ebooks
75% off:   REW75 – 900+ ebooks
100% off:  RE100 – 2,800+ ebooks

In addition to the limited-time deals above, Smashwords offers over 100,000 original ebooks at everyday low prices.  Over 13,000 Smashwords ebooks are regularly priced at FREE.  The average price of a Smashwords ebook is under $5.00.

Why are our prices so low?  It’s because you’re purchasing direct from the author.  When you purchase a Smashwords book, the author earns 85% of the net proceeds from the sale.  Thank you for supporting our authors!

Smashwords ebooks are multi-format and DRM-free, so you can read them on virtually an e-reading device, including the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Apple iPad/iPhone/Touch, Sony Reader, Kobo Reader, personal computers and most smart phones and tablets.

You can also purchase most Smashwords ebooks at your favorite ebook retailers, including the Apple iBookstore, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBook Store.  The codes above are only available for books purchased at the Smashwords store.  In the future, we hope to expand this annual promotion to our retail partners.”

© Jan McClintock of We Need More Shelves

In categories Uncategorized Tagged with e-book

Earth Day

By Jan
 on April 23, 2011
Cholla cactus blossoms in our yard, April 2011; after Photoshop Ink Outlines filter

© Jan McClintock of We Need More Shelves

In categories Uncategorized

Book Blogger Hop – Let’s Party!

By Jan
 on March 16, 2010
Jennifer over at Crazy For Books has a great idea for sharing book blogs: a Book Blogger Hop.
“Every day I seem to find another book blog that I start following. In the spirit of the Friday Follow, I thought it would be cool to do a Book Blog Hop to give us all bookies a chance to connect and find new blogs that we may be missing out on!  It will also give blog readers a chance to find other book blogs that they may not know existed!”

“Pretty please – Your blog should have content related to books, including, but not limited to book reviews.”

I love this plan and hope to “meet” a lot of other bloggers this way. Thanks, Jennifer!

© Jan McClintock of We Need More Shelves

In categories Uncategorized Tagged with challenge

"You Are Here" Giveaway

By Jan
 on February 7, 2010

Alyce at At Home With Books is running a great giveway right now for two copies of this book that is already on my TBR stack. Publisher’s Weekly says “this clear and smoothly written look at the mind-boggling history of everything is both informative and provocative.


You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe by Christopher Potter
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: February 2, 2010
ISBN: 9780061137877
304 Pages (Paperback)
Nonfiction


© Jan McClintock of We Need More Shelves

In categories Uncategorized
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