From Paul Wilson:

• Baen.com
• Red Books
• Deisel
• Free Online Novels
• Cory Doctorow

From Ronald Snijder:

• OAPEN partners

Here are some others I stumbled on to while perusing the above links:

• The Book Depository
• Book Rags: This site has books, study guides, and lesson plans along with much more
• Public Bookshelf for romance novels
• Free Books, specializing in audio books
• Free eBook of the Day
• Literature Masters for free online novels
• 10 Free Science Fiction Books Online
• Small Beer Press

These are just a selection of site. There must be hundreds of sites offering free eBooks or free online books.
Happy reading

The project is great for accessing text files of books. Any one can take the text and format it in any way they want. The books can’t be sold for their interior – that’s free. But a book that has been cleaned up, reformatted, and published can be sold. Amazon has some of these books for a really low price of $2.00. But if they are for free on the Project Gutenberg site, why should I have to pay for them?

There is lies the problem. The formatting provided by Project Gutenberg is not always the most appealing presentation. Old Mortality by Sir Walter Scott is a good example. Within the body there are numerous references and citations, along with explanatory notes. The version provided by Project Guttenberg has the notes, citations, and references running in the body text instead of being called out. That level of reformatting took 8 hours.

The moral of the story is, there’s no free lunch. Either you take the free file from Project Guttenburg and deal with the lack of formatting, or you reformat it yourself.

Take a look at these two. You can decide which you like better and choose accordingly. For now, French Creek Press is posting the link to Project Guttenberg files and the corresponding French Creek Press of any out-of-copyright formatted ebooks. If you have a favorite book you would like to have formatted into an ebook, write a note in the comments section of this blog entry.

Old Mortality by Sir Walter Scott, Project Gutenberg file:
Volume 1
Volume 2

Old Mortality by Sir Walter Scott, French Creek Press ebook:
Old Mortality Vol 1
Old Mortality Vol 2

By the way, if you don’t have an ebook, you can download the free Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac from Amazon. It’s a great way to test out how you do with ebooks. The only caution I have is that reading from a computer is much harsher on the eyes than the Kindle device. I’m glad I was able to try out ebooks with no investment, and I’m even more thrilled to now have a Kindle.

I did not expect the same from Stephen King. Not many people believe that the horror genre has any merit, unless one is studying Poe. Asimov and Lovecraft are not touted as great literature. Stephen King belonged in the category of “never-admit-that-I-read-his-stuff” when I’m near a writer. And that’s a shame. The gift of time was granted to me recently – time to do only non-stressful tasks, like reading. I chose to read everything I could get my hands on authored by Stephen King: short stories, essays, novels (if you find anything, like notes or sketches, be sure to send them to me). In the middle of rereading It I stumbled upon character names right out of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha county, names like Sartoris and Snopes, the irony being the characters in King’s story were African American, and the characters in Faulkner’s stories sole purpose in life seemed to be to uphold the “White” Southern institution. I really got a chuckle out of that. To read more about these influences see Faulkner Sightings, about half-way through the page. Faulkner Sightings only reports direct influence. You have to know Faulkner’s stories to see Faulkner’s incredible stream of consciousness through Stephen King’s eyes. It turns the horror genre on its head.

Then I turned on my limited literary analysis tools, limited because the only analysis class I ever took was in high school. Stephen King is only a few years older than me, ok, maybe 10 years older. I heard shades of Neil Young singing through the pros, “…out of the blue and into the black…”. Vietnam underlying everything,  the turtle under Vietnam, and the gunslinger/cow poke at the bottom. All that shaped me had already shaped King enough that he could write about it, and I could relive it.

I saw this question in my search for the Faulkner influence, “Will Stephen King ever be part of the American Literature Canon?” If he does not enter that hall of American lit it will be because people cannot get past the “horror” angle. That’s unfortunate. Stephen King is versatile, his characters live and breathe, his story lines are real enough to be truly horrible, and his mastery of human nature is spooky.

William Faulkner

With such great stories as The Unvanquished and Intruder in the Dust it is a wonder that most High School American Literature classes introduce Faulkner’s work with As I Lay Dying, a difficult stream of consciousness masterpiece. The only story on par with it (in difficulty) is Faulkner’s first novel, The Sound and the Fury. Both are incredible examples of living within the mind of the character, but perhaps the younger reader needs more context from which to read these two novels. Once the reader has Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County in mind, and has read stories of the Snopes, Sartoris, and Sutpen, the reader can then understand As I Lay Dying in context.

Around the same time I discovered Stephen King’s Carrie. King was a continuation of my horror education started by Edgar Allen Poe. Alfred Hitchcock did not grab me the way King did. I read every book King published, up through The Gunslinger. And then I moved on. I thought I was grown up, and grown ups didn’t read horror. I graduated to Science Fiction, but the Dark Tower series was not sci fi, even though it had its elements as such.

Stephen King

Last fall I began reading Hearts in Atlantis,  then read through the entire Dark Tower series, went back to Insomnia, and started reading everything King published that I could find. I even paid for Under the Dome to be shipped to me instead of waiting to find it in the used bookstore.What I discovered, that I didn’t pay attention to in those younger reading years, is that Stephen King also intertwines his stories. And most of his stories connect to the area around Bangor, Maine. But even more, I found King to be a great story teller.

When I read Faulkner I see, feel life in spirals, going ever so deeper on each iteration of the story, stories within stories that connect to other stories in other books. I read “history” by following each generation to the next, from the Native American land grab through the Civil War through the First World War. King does a similar thing by connecting his worlds across 30+ years of story telling.

I’ve changed my opinion about reading horror, at least about reading Stephen King’s works. He is a great storyteller. I don’t think I would want him to visit my campfire and tell scary stories – I would be too scared. I do, however, want to read more, and reread all that I read before. He doesn’t supplant Faulkner, but I don’t know that any author will. King has taken a spot right next to Martha Grimes, whose works I read as soon as I can, including buying them first hand.

This year Frances Pinter of Bloomsbury Academic is one of the keynote speakers at the Tools of Change for Publishing conference. Just reading the first line of the blurb “Living through a time of transition is exciting, stimulating, stretching and expensive!” causes excitement. This publisher embraces future trends “experimenting with open content licensing for scholarly monographs” while maintaining a comfortable position in tradition. This promises to be a great talk.

Another keynote speaker is Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-In-Chief of The Huffington Post. Just recently I talked about the influence The Huffington Post has on the future of publishing (I wonder at O’Reilly’s skill in knowing exactly what I’m looking for). “Publishers just need to find new and innovative ways to reach these digitally-focused eyeballs.” As the publishing industry free-falls, Ms. Huffington steps up with possibilities in the brave new world.

I look forward to hearing Angela Bole, Associate Director, Book Industry Study Group, Inc. speak about the eBook consumer. Allison Belan Assistant Production Manager for Journals, Duke University Press and Maureen McMahon President & Publisher, Kaplan Publishing are joining together to explore “Change”, how to drive it and achieve real lasting change.

Lisa Shannon, Associate Publisher at Wiley speaks about the transition from ebooks into training. Christine Perey of PEREY Research & Consulting brings her “18 years experience working in emerging multimedia communications markets” to speak about “augmented Reality … mixing digital information and the real world in a highly interactive manner “. They are joined by Angelina Ward, Senior Acquisitions Editor at Syngress. Ms Ward is presenting a case study about a year growing her publishing business.

I’m always excited by Adobe, and I’m sure I won’t be disappointed by Julie Baher, Experience Design Manager at Adobe as she discusses the future of digital reading. Diana Childress, Senior Director, Content Partnerships at Blackboard Inc. and Carrie O’Donnell,President at O’Donnell & Associates, LLC talk about the digital reality and whether or not digital content eases research or not.

This sample of influential women is only from one day of the three day conference. And, just as last year, I am unable to attend in person. Thanks to O’Reilly I can view all the sessions online; I “attend” a little later than everyone else.

This promises to be a great conference. Hope you can make it.

“4. Most authors will be indie authors”
“5. Successful publishing companies will be those that put the most total profit in the author’s pocket. No, not the highest per-unit royalty percentage.”

It’s no new thought that the United States influences other cultures. Americans have been doing that since they settled in the foreign wilderness to take their chances with Native Americans and Nature rather than submit to an “un-G-dly” power. Rebellion is always fueled by the knowledge that an entire country was founded out of rebellion against its colonizing parent country. Horatio Alger wannabees, astronauts, freedom riders, strikers, protesters of all kinds take strength from knowing that the Independent spirit lives on, a whole nation of independents.

So when Mark predicts “most authors will be indie authors”, he’s got good solid footing for that statement. Traditional publishing depends on large teams of people from previewing, reading the manuscript through the production, distribution, and sales. Today that team is not needed. It is possible for an author to hire every single person on that chain, topnotch professional editors, readers, book designers, book cover designers, printers, distributors, and salespeople. The author can get these services for a fraction of the cost of a traditional publisher, there is no infrastructure overhead to account for. At this time authors already have to hire publicists to sell their books. What’s keeping them from hiring the whole team?

Imagine, I, Ms Author, write a book. I can’t get an advance from a publisher because no publisher has any money. So I support myself for the months it takes to write. Then I hire a great editor. Maybe even an editor from a well-known publisher. Why can I do that? Because the editor just found him/herself out of a job because the publishing company went under. Then I hire a designer for the interior and cover of the book. Granted, I’m footing the bill here myself. It means I need a nest egg of about $500. At this point I run out of money, so I use Print on Demand technology to print and distribute the book. I only pay the setup fees and shipping cost of that first book. Once the book is available I get out into the Social Media scene and I start to market my book.

A writer must be in the Business of writing today, just to survive. Tomorrow it will be so “rule of thumb” that I’ll do it because I get the greatest return on my investment by doing it myself, braving nature myself, pulling myself up by my own bootstraps.

And that’s what makes number 5 a reality. I learn that I can produce my own works, get them out there, and pocket the majority of the proceeds.

Each team approaches joint projects in a unique way, depending on the chemistry between the authors and the strengths each brings to the project. One person might be in charge of one theme which runs through the book while the others act a accessories, each contributing minor excerpts to support the main thread. Or the group might become decentralized where every author writes a chapter or section of the book independent of the other parts. Sometimes there are researchers and writers. The researcher finds all the supporting evidence and the writer mashes it, stirs it, and produces a cohesive final book.

Today there are books being written by many people, 144 characters at a time, on Twitter. Brandon Mendelson wrote The Falcon Can Hear the Falconer in Twitter. Instantaneous writing and reading. Ever sit on pins an needles waiting for the next installment of a sequel? Imagine the story is unfolding, tweeting out to your desktop, as your working. And these Twitter novels don’t have a plan, an outline, to speak of. How could thousands of people write to an outline, instantly, in 144 characters? The content reflects real time, it’s certainly not static. Current events make their way into the story as the event occurs. The downside to this is managing the contributors, writing time, and the danger of loosing the main theme.

Collaboration takes another twist in an Agile environment. For those of you who don’t know Agile development, on one foot, it is development to small goals within a limited time frame, usually a week to three weeks long. Certain small goals are set and worked towards. Then the project is reanalyzed and new goals set for the next round or sprint. Writers have to adapt to a new writing cycle between themselves and among the Agile team. Publishing collaborative works follows the general model, if you don’t look too closely. The introduction of writing sprints changes everything. Publication dates become part of a sprint. The piece might be “published” many times before it reached its intended audience.

The next model is slightly more complicated. I’ll be looking a single sourcing information and its relevance to commercial publishing.

Agents, publicists and publishing companies do the same with their authors. The author gets time if s/he is a best seller. The author may also get time by being a squeaky wheel, but that is only effective until the recipient recognizes the author’s phone number and doesn’t answer. What can an author do to put him/herself forward? Create an online author’s platform.

The concept of an author platform has been around for many years. This is just another name for a resume, a beefed up resume, but still a resume. The author must not only write well (sometimes I think some popular writers must have become popular because they are good marketers – their writing stinks), the author has to speak well, photograph well, display well in video recordings, and generally be an all-around good package to sell. This is a difficult pill for a budding author to swallow. When an agent/publicist/publisher wants to buy, they are not just buying a book or an idea, they are buying the author and the way the author reaches people. Many new authors focus solely on writing their books, dreaming of the Pulitzer, thinking they can work on their platform after the book is published. Unfortunately, the business doesn’t work that way. An author can’t wait until the book sells to build a platform, because the platform is what helps sell the book.

Did you follow that? The platform sells the book. It sells the book to the agent who must decide to take the risk with the author and throw time and money into getting the book in front of the publisher. The platform sells the book to the publicist who must find the right venue to market the book. And the platform sells the book to the publisher, who sees not only book sales, but speaking tours, book signing engagements, book trailers on YouTube, and a myriad of public, television, and radio appearances. The platform tells the publisher that this author has value outside the book.

The platform, the online resume, is either a web page that hangs from the publisher’s website, or it is a website dedicated solely to the author. The platform must include a clear focus on the targeted market. An author that writes children’s stories is not going to target computer engineers. Once the market is defined the rest falls into place. Press releases, blog entries, articles, pictures of events, music, anything that is related to the author can go on the platform. After the initial construction of the author platform, weekly maintenance can keep the web site/page current, active, and changing, which results in more traffic to the author platform, better SEO, and more potential money making contacts.

Contact French Creek Press services at services@frenchcreekpress.com for information about our author pages.

Oh eBook, let me list the kinds: Sony Portable Reader, Bookeen Cybook Opus, PocketBook 301, 302, 360, HanLIn eBook V5, Polymer Vision Radius, Hanvon WISE Readers (a whole family), Azbooka WISE Reader, Amazon Kindle, COOL-ER Classic, txtr reader GmbH, NUUTbook Neolux, iriver Story, Barnes and Noble Nook, iTex DR800SG, iLiad, Digital Reader 1000, Astak Mentor Electra, Plastic Logic Que, and many older devices.

And you expect me to make a buying decision on what? Color? Size? Who knows how long these devices are supposed to last? If I buy one now, I already know it will be obsolete by February (probably as soon as I test drive it, it will be obsolete). Some features standout. The Sony Portable reader comes in pretty colors. That’s important. A 5 inch reader fits in my bag easier than a 6 inch reader. But my old eyes can see the screen on a 6 inch reader better than on a 5 inch reader.

• Weight -  The device can’t be heavy. It has to be light enough for me to lug around, and yet it also has to be sturdy.

• Touch screen – I like using a stylus on the Nokia N97 phone. So I anticipate that I’ll like a touch screen on a reader.

• Memory – this is probably the most important feature in my book. I want to store lots and lots of books. I’m always in the middle of reading 2 or 3, sometimes 4.

• Interface – this is second most important. How am I going to get my eBooks onto the device? If I have to mess around with lots of drivers, forget it.

• Supported formats – this is right up there with memory. No, I do not want to be limited to Kindle format. Can I get a reader that supports all formats? Don’t think so.

• Font size – my old eyes need help. This can be a deciding factor if all other factors are equal.

• Text to Speech – this is not important to me. But, however, wait a minute, as soon as I get one without text to speech I’m sure there will be a great need to have it.

Notice I said nothing about price? They all run in the same range, which is why I have not yet purchased one. Sigh, anyone want to give me an eBook reader to test? I’ll try my best to use it in adverse conditions. I’ll test boundary conditions. Until the time I scrape up the money (or someone takes pity on my poor whining self) I’ll have to be content with drool laden pictures of the latest eBook readers.

The Pittsfield, Massachusetts of the sixties that I grew up in was a blue-collar enclave of Catholics and Protestants. It was hardly a literary hotbed though Normal Mailer lived for a while in Stockbridge and William Shirer in Lenox. Historically, in the late nineteenth century, Hawthorne and Melville resided collegially in the Berkshires, though Melville, as he was composing Moby Dick about ten minutes from the house where I grew up, scared Mrs. Hawthorne with his wild appearance and energies. Henry James would visit Edith Wharton at her estate, which was called “The Mount”, and Emerson and Thoreau were also known to pass through.

And though Pittsfield in the Woodstock era was hardly anyone’s idea of Brook Farm, I was raised in a literary household—my mother remains well-read and my father had gone for a PhD in literature at the University of Michigan. My mother gave me my first book of Malamud stories, “The Magic Barrel”, when I was about fourteen. I remember reading them as I lay on a short divan in our living room, Verdi on the turntable, my father at the desk behind me paying bills. I read the stories again and again. And then, “The Assistant”. “The Fixer”. “The Natural”. “Idiot’s First”. I branched out into Bellow and Singer and Roth but always came back to Malamud. Bellow’s style was richer, his authorial voice far more urbane.

Singer was more fanciful and exotic; Roth more provocatively sexual; and though Malamud stories were, objectively, grim, they resonated with me as presenting a greater, more transcendent reality than these other writers, texts which were both more deeply felt and morally engaged. For despite these stories’ limited venues—a tenement room, a jail cell, a grocery—there was always present the hint and whiff of Biblical grandeur. And so from early on, I wanted to meet this morally stern and ascetic, monkish Vermont writer.

He taught at Bennington College, a girl’s school gone recently coed, a course in short story reading and writing in the spring. My chance presented itself when a close friend at the University of Vermont transferred to Vassar and the prospect of remaining alone in Burlington, Vermont seized me in chilled alarm. Thus I decided to transfer to Bennington College where I imagined bowing down at Mr. Malamud’s feet and begging him to rework my rock ‘n roll-infected mind into the sensibility of a serious artist’s. Bennington College accepted me for the spring semester, I ended up taking the year off and living in Israel, and began school the following fall. I was to meet the great man for the first time in March, 1976.

I’ll speak about all that next week as well as the existential issues that meeting and befriending such a serious writer raised and continues to raise in my own life.