What are you reading?

[RJDiogenes]

Starkers wrote:

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Yeah it's definitely a better (and cheaper) time to self publish. Sadly I think a lot of people never recouped their investments in the old days of vanity publishing.

Yeah, now there's a distribution system in place. The biggest problem remaining is advertising.

And there are lots of success stories these days as well (take 50 Shades!). I published my first novel via Lulu, and now have a novella/anthology on Amazon (shameless plug see my sig).

Amazon UK won't let me buy it, unfortunately.

[Miss Chicken]

It is available on the American Amazon (which is where I had to download it from)

[pigletsgiblets]

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

[C. Cole-Chakotay]

Still reading Beautiful Chaos, 3rd in the Beautiful Darkness series.

[RJDiogenes]

Miss Chicken wrote:

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It is available on the American Amazon (which is where I had to download it from)

Thanks. For some reason I didn't see it when I looked for it yesterday, but I have it now.

[Starkers]

Miss Chicken wrote:

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I have just downloaded a novella called "The Devils of Amber Street" onto my iPad. I don't know much about it, it only cost me 99c, and I will read it as soon as I finish Lost Classics: Writers on Books Loved and Lost, Overlooked, Under-read, Unavailable, Stolen, Extinct, or Otherwise Out of Commission which I have been reading on and off for about three weeks.

I never knew shameless plugging actually worked! I hope you enjoy it

RJDiogenes wrote:

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Yeah, now there's a distribution system in place. The biggest problem remaining is advertising.

This is very true, there's only so much you can do on a modest/non existant budget. I did consider Facebook advertising, but I must be dense as I can't figure out how cheaply you could do it! I see ads for self published work all the time but some of them have been going on for ages and must be costing a fortune!

[CommanderRaytas]

A book about the history of Berlin....I thought that I should catch up on the city I'm now living in.

[SwimmingGnu]

Reliquary by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

[trekkiebaggio]

Starkers wrote:

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I never knew shameless plugging actually worked! I hope you enjoy it

This is very true, there's only so much you can do on a modest/non existant budget. I did consider Facebook advertising, but I must be dense as I can't figure out how cheaply you could do it! I see ads for self published work all the time but some of them have been going on for ages and must be costing a fortune!

Yeah, getting word of mouth out is hard. I actually got an e-mail from Amazon the other day recommending my own book to me so I'm hoping it's recommending it to other people as well!

I read Alison Hewitt is Trapped on a couple of train rides over the weekend. It was a pretty good story about a girl who was trapped in a room in the shop where she worked. The whole thing was written as a series of blog entries, and at the end of each chapter there were comments which I found a nice stylistic choice. It was entertaining but it didn't leave any lasting impression.

[Starkers]

I've had Amazon recommending me stuff I've already bought from them before now...

[trekkiebaggio]

I mean the novel I published on Kindle, not one I bought. I was just making a note that Amazon recommendations are like advertising.

[Starkers]

Oh I knew what you meant, be good if they are advertising it!

[RJDiogenes]

I have a friend who has self-published a couple of books on Kindle and I've seen his stuff promoted in emails.

[TorontoTrekker]

pigletsgiblets wrote:

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Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

I started that about six months ago, after having owned all three books for about ten years and not having been able to get past page 50 or so. I said, "Dammit, I'm going to get through these!"

I'm about 80 pages from the end of Blue Mars, which is the third book. (I know there's a prequel, The Martians, but I think I'm going to give that a miss.)

I've been finding them very dry and slow-going, for the most part. There are bits here and there (mostly in the second book) which I found more interesting - mostly the politics - but I find the National Geographic travelogues dull. (As you might guess by the fact that I've been reading them for six months. Normally I read much faster than that, even though I only manage about 20 minutes a day, while I'm on the bus to work in the mornings. (In the evenings, I generally read the newspaper that I buy at lunch.)

How are you finding it?

I'm not a big fantasy reader, but I picked up the January/February issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine a few weeks ago, and have read about half the stories in it so far. I've enjoyed what I've read so far. (Normally, if I'm in a short story mood, I'm more likely to pick up Asimov's or Analog. But a friend had a story in this issue. )

[Gul Re'jal]

"Skeleton Crew" - a collection of stories by Stephen King.