Add in the layoff announcement from Borders and there’s some serious consolidation about to occur.
OTOH, I’m not going to shed too many crocodile tears for B&N — it looks as though this is less a “sale” than a move by the Reggio Brothers to take B&N private….after which its anyone’s guess what sort of soul-sucking gambits they’ll perpetrate.
Likewise, I sort of expect that Apple’s going to get involved with either Borders or B&N before Amazon does, most likely B&N. Amazon doesn’t need a brick-and-mortar base, but Apple wouldn’t mind having the Nook. The Reggios are sharks, but I’m not sure they’re big enough sharks to survive a swim in Apple’s sea.
I’m so glad we’re not swimming in anybody’s sea right now!
I doubt Amazon has any interest in the b&m market. That isn’t their business model. And if we are going to mention monopolies, B&N did a very good job of destroying independent bookstores across the country back in the 1990s and early 2000s. Getting eaten up by a bigger shark seems a fitting end should that happen. Apple and Amazon are pretty big sharks these days, though Apple somehow doesn’t get the stigma Amazon does. A head-scratcher as they are not all that different from each other.
I never liked B&N since they always put their scifi and manga in the back near the bathrooms while Borders put theirs in the middle where there is the most foot traffic. I buy my books at Borders if I don’t get them from Amazon. We don’t have an independent bookseller here besides for childrens books.
We’ve got a lovely family-owned independent who will order anything you want. Their little store is jam-packed with all sorts of stuff but the best is the soda fountain at the back where you can get sandwiches, milk shakes, coffee etc. For the sandwiches think very old-style on white bread dripping mayo with potato chips on the side.
Ooooh, lovely! We have Aunties’ and Uncles (books and gaming stuff) that is in a huge old building, and it has a little bit of everything: it also hosts any writer they can get their hands on for a new-book reading and signing, so it’s got a lot to recommend it. The fact they couldn’t be troubled for Jane and me when we first came to town leaves a slight less warm-fuzzy—perhaps a soggy warm-fuzzy—but right now they’re big ol’ T-rex that all the locals are beginning to love and feed as the Last Dinosaur.
The other classic book store in town is in an immense commercial building. Used books, action figures, LP’s, CD’s, collectibles, and you never know what you’ll find and the store layout changes at the whim of the owners. At one side, with an entrance from the store, is a coffee shop and the side has a Tex-Mex restaurant, also with an entrance from the store. The owners also do tax preparation.
Some of the B&N stores in the North Dallas area do a pretty good job of supporting the local authors. They even hosted the De Camps when they became local writers.
I should think that A&U must not be very interested in science fiction and fantasy if they “couldn’t be troubled” by a writer with three Hugos on her mantel!
This is amusing because the Borders within walking distance of my workplace kept the sci-fi downstairs in prime placement, but moved the manga upstairs near the bathrooms and the B&N near me had the manga next to the sci-fi then moved it across the store, then moved it /back/ to where it was originally but cut the selection in half.
We’re lucky to have the mecca known as Powells in an extremely convienent location. They have an enormous new and used book selection, but their used prices are near full price (blargh!). What I miss from living in Seattle is Half Price Books where a used paperback costs half of the listed price. (I felt like I had gone to heaven when visiting in Seattle and a trip to HPB was made!)
And just when I’d resigned myself to B&N, although my visit last weekend was disappointing – whole racks of books had been moved out to make way for more games and a Nook sales stand.
When in California I went to Kepler’s in Menlo Park, or a Clean & Well Lighted Place in SF; I still visit on my trips back. My favorite independent in San Jose went out of business after B&N moved in so I boycotted B&N for years. There was a great local bookstore within walking distance of my house when I lived in Pennsylvania, but now in Baltimore, the independent is way too new agey for my tastes. I like to read a bit of the book before investing in it, so on-line purchases don’t give me the same satisfaction as a bookstore.
I’m a voracious reader, and my contribution to the economy is my monthly book budget…which I justify by 1) not having a TV and 2) recycling books through my book club, my sisters, friends, sisters-in-law and my mother-ex-law who do not have my financial resources. It also supports the USPS! I couldn’t do that if I bought electronic versions with DRM.
After staring at a computer screen all day at work, the last thing I want to do is read a book on a computer screen. I’m too tactile! I like to make notes on the pages. And my bedtime routine is to read an old favorite just before falling to sleep – if it’s a new book, I’ll stay up all night reading LOL. But an old favorite, where I know the story line, allows me to relax and then fall asleep because I don’t HAVE to know what will happen next.
Recently, I read an article that suggested staring at a computer screen right before falling asleep could be causing sleep disorders because of the bright lights.
So for me, it’s still printed material. The only question is where will I buy it?
Did you know that Amazon lets you download free samples of most books for the Kindle before you commit to the purchase? I know it’s not the same as being able to skim through a real book, but it can stop you from making a horrendous mistake, or introduce you to a new author with no committment to buy, and all this without leaving the privacy of your favorite reading position.
That sounds sad. Up here in Toronto we lost a great Bookstore, Mcnally Robinson some months ago
and are now left with Chapters and Indigo as the large chains which aren’t bad but not as good as
that one was.
Fortunately we still have a fair number of smaller ones but they can’t survive forever I think
with the likes of Amazon as well for competition.
The local book store here in Iowa City is Prairie Lights. It is a dangerous place, at least to my bank account. 3 floors of the printed word plus an independent coffee shop. No soda fountain though.
The last Soda fountian in Iowa City, possibly the last in Iowa, was located in a small independent drug store that closed down several years ago. It could not compete with the chain stores for perscriptions. As I understand it, it is also hard to find anyone who knows how to maintain the old fountain equipment.
Prairie Lights may be known to thoes of you who are NPR listners. They have a national radio program with authors reading from their books and then participating in a Q&A session afterward. Having the Iowa Writers Workshop at the UofI gave them a resident pool of authors to start the program. (The likes of James Mitchner, Kurt Vonnegut and Joe Haldeman don’t hurt) It has been sucessful enough to bring in authors from all over the US and beyond.
B&N and Borders drove many indy book stores out of business & now they might go under too? So many people will be left with what? WalMart & Target? sweetbo is right, Amazon is unlikely to want to acquire a chain of brick & mortar stores. Their goal is to dominate sales of all sorts of products on-line.
If any of you pay attention to real estate news, a big part of why commercial real estate has dropped so much in value is that chains that were once thought to be rock solid tenants – like B&N – are gone or are in trouble.
1 of the things that SF often fails to do is predict how business may change as tech advances. Many stories portray people doing business in ways that are already considered old fashioned in our own time.
The nearest B&N store is huge, the size of a small to medium sized library, complete with coffee, tea, and sweets shop in the center-back. Huge bookshelves are filled with books. The SF&F section is in one forward corner, rather tucked away, but large. There are manga and SF&F coffee table books. There are the big TV/movie series SF books. There are currently the fashionable urban fantasy books. There are fewer SF&F books, but they are there. They had Foreigner books and the Chanur Saga and one or two other Cherryh titles, last time I went, but not as much as there used to be. There was also cyberpunk and there were some other things.
The one thing I noticed? Maybe I was tired. maybe I’m used to shopping online now. But I was overwhelmed, and looking through all those titles and authors was not as much of an adventure as formerly. It was similar over in the Foreign Languages section and the Art and Design and Photography sections and the one or two other sections I visited. (OK, I looked in the History and Reference sections briefly and about as briefly in the Gay and Lesbian section. And hey, at least they *have* a GLBT section.)
With my eyesight, it is sometimes a pain to look through book spines for titles and authors. Turn your head on the side, squint, scan with your face quite close, to read the titles, but thankfully, other reader-shoppers are usually not bothered by that, as they have to look too. When tired or pressed for time, it’s a little disappointing to wade through titles and authors, occasionally pick out a cover, check the back jacket blurb, and hmmm… is this worth my $7 to $12 or so for a pb these days? Might be. But that visit, I wanted something that would reach out, grab me, shake me, and say, “Read me! Buy me! I’m a fantastic book by an author you’ve never read before! I’m a great story by an author you love!” Ehhh…I didn’t find too much. But my trip was primarily for a reference text, so the sidestep into the SF&F was because…because I can’t NOT look there. 😉
If B&N sells, they’ll need to sell to another bookseller or someone who understands books and reading. If they reorganize, fine. If they merge or sell to, fine, if that buyer understands how to mind the store.
As a reader and buyer, I know I am likely to leave any bookstore or library with an armload of books, if my budget will allow it (or sometimes if not). I want a good selection. I want to be able to browse through the books to see if the book is right for me. I want surprises and I want favorites. I want stuff in print. I also, these days, want ebooks. I will buy my music and audio and video elsewhere, thanks. If you can throw in a soda fountain or tea or snacks or an occasional cappucino, great, fantastic…though I won’t likely read if having a snack/drink, as that might damage the book while still in the store.
One thing that troubles me is — I like buying from Closed Circle and would like buying direct from other authors and artists, but it is not necessarily simple to find an author or artist’s site and store. Even with, or perhaps especially with, the web, there is the need to let customers / patrons (readers, listeners, watchers) know you are out there, open for business, eager to sell them copies, and eager for them to check out your art. — I now check Closed Circle and then check Amazon, but otherwise, I am likely to check Amazon and iTunes before turning to Google to hunt for a particular artist or author.
I do hope B&N overcomes their problems, because they are one of the big boys in the business, after muscling out the little guys, and if B&N folds, then…well, something will fill its place, but it may fill it in an unpleasant way.
The books, music, and video industries are in turmoil as everyone, from artists to sellers to buyers / patrons searches for what works in the new digital and web world. It’s like ice cubes the size of icebergs hitting the water with all of us in a little rowboat or submarine. (And thanks, cat, for walking on my keyboard….) The water is all churned up, and nothing’s settled out yet. We ride out the sotrm and hope for the best. There must be a better mode than this.
One notes that the original purpose of a notebook was to write notes, not just to read, and this, it seems to me, is something the laptop and ereader and MP3 player makers have all forgotten in their rush to market. I need a good pocket com and one of those nice Trek data pads, the ones with the voice and touch interfaces…. It’ll get here, someday. Yes, I’ll want to listen to music and audio and watch a video or read a book, with my whole library with me. 😉
In our house, the sticking point is audiobooks. DH loves them and was overjoyed when he found an enormous trove of Star Trek books in MP3 format, but tracking down some books or authors is difficult. Not every book is available in spoken format, and I’m not sure the Kindle text-to-voice app is as good as hearing a voice actor read a book. I’ve been looking for Julian Stockwin (Napoleonic era naval fiction) in spoken word format, but no luck so far.
“and I’m not sure the Kindle text-to-voice app is as good as hearing a voice actor read a book. ”
I am very sure it’s NOT! Have you HEARD any? The inflection is ludicrous — the same phrase will always be given the same inflection, whether or not it makes sense. And the pronunciation of any uncommon word, especially a name — well, suffice it to say, the technology is NOT there yet.
Well, the Kindle can play audiobooks as well as the text-to-voice, but you are correct that text-to-voice is a last resort. But then again I’ve paid for audiobooks that I thought could have been done better by that same text-to-voice, except for the names…
I think we are on the cusp of a world where we will buy our books, movies and music as data downloads instead of the physical object itself. Seemingly we are in that transition now. I’ve already gone out and purchased one of those music servers from Olive Music (SF based) and its already hooked up to my computer. And a Kindle as well. Soon CD’s and DVD’s and perhaps even Books will be a thing of the past. Books will be the last to go though. It might be considered a somewhat dangerous proposition to chance reading your $400.00 Kindle while you are lying soaking in the tub. Plus it’s kind of nice to go into your library, look up at your bookshelves, grab a book that you haven’t read in a while and read it a second or even third time. Buying a data product (in place of a physical product) is also a way of going green. You have savings in paper products, plastics, and the energy costs of shipping. It is however a little disconcerting to spend $10.00 on a bunch of data bits (instead of the physical object) and where one hard drive failure could cost you hundreds (even thousands) of dollars in lost books and music. I guess we have CERN or Harvard or whomever invented the internet for the current state of affairs.
Well, at least if you buy a Closed Circle book, you can find us and ask for a re-download if you had a disaster, because we have a purchase record. It’s also why we encourage people who buy our books to put them on a dvd, and keep your media up to date, when we move on from dvds.
Glad to hear that and saving it to a CD makes good sense and I just bought a book from Closed Circle (Heavytime). It’s on my Kindle and reads great. Also downloaded Vol. 1 of your Writers Life. I want to thank you for giving us readers a glimpse of the creative process at work and the extraordinary level of committment and work it takes to bring a book project to its conclusion. Times that by 50 or more and well you are just amazing CJ. I always thought a SiFi writer entered some kind of transendental mind fugue state (not sure what that is) in order to bring a scene or tableau and especially a character to life with just words. To provide enough information to the reader so that they can creat within their own minds (shall we say consciousness) what you the writer needs them to see to make it all work. Hard to do. You know, enable us readers to disconnect (at least for a little while) from this world in order to bring that one forth. But what do I know. I’m beginning to ramble here so I’ll end with thanks for giving us a little peek at what it takes to do what you do so well.
That sounds like it would be within sniffing distance of monopoly.
Add in the layoff announcement from Borders and there’s some serious consolidation about to occur.
OTOH, I’m not going to shed too many crocodile tears for B&N — it looks as though this is less a “sale” than a move by the Reggio Brothers to take B&N private….after which its anyone’s guess what sort of soul-sucking gambits they’ll perpetrate.
Likewise, I sort of expect that Apple’s going to get involved with either Borders or B&N before Amazon does, most likely B&N. Amazon doesn’t need a brick-and-mortar base, but Apple wouldn’t mind having the Nook. The Reggios are sharks, but I’m not sure they’re big enough sharks to survive a swim in Apple’s sea.
I’m so glad we’re not swimming in anybody’s sea right now!
I doubt Amazon has any interest in the b&m market. That isn’t their business model. And if we are going to mention monopolies, B&N did a very good job of destroying independent bookstores across the country back in the 1990s and early 2000s. Getting eaten up by a bigger shark seems a fitting end should that happen. Apple and Amazon are pretty big sharks these days, though Apple somehow doesn’t get the stigma Amazon does. A head-scratcher as they are not all that different from each other.
I never liked B&N since they always put their scifi and manga in the back near the bathrooms while Borders put theirs in the middle where there is the most foot traffic. I buy my books at Borders if I don’t get them from Amazon. We don’t have an independent bookseller here besides for childrens books.
We’ve got a lovely family-owned independent who will order anything you want. Their little store is jam-packed with all sorts of stuff but the best is the soda fountain at the back where you can get sandwiches, milk shakes, coffee etc. For the sandwiches think very old-style on white bread dripping mayo with potato chips on the side.
And they also carry the racing form.
Ooooh, lovely! We have Aunties’ and Uncles (books and gaming stuff) that is in a huge old building, and it has a little bit of everything: it also hosts any writer they can get their hands on for a new-book reading and signing, so it’s got a lot to recommend it. The fact they couldn’t be troubled for Jane and me when we first came to town leaves a slight less warm-fuzzy—perhaps a soggy warm-fuzzy—but right now they’re big ol’ T-rex that all the locals are beginning to love and feed as the Last Dinosaur.
The other classic book store in town is in an immense commercial building. Used books, action figures, LP’s, CD’s, collectibles, and you never know what you’ll find and the store layout changes at the whim of the owners. At one side, with an entrance from the store, is a coffee shop and the side has a Tex-Mex restaurant, also with an entrance from the store. The owners also do tax preparation.
Some of the B&N stores in the North Dallas area do a pretty good job of supporting the local authors. They even hosted the De Camps when they became local writers.
I should think that A&U must not be very interested in science fiction and fantasy if they “couldn’t be troubled” by a writer with three Hugos on her mantel!
This is amusing because the Borders within walking distance of my workplace kept the sci-fi downstairs in prime placement, but moved the manga upstairs near the bathrooms and the B&N near me had the manga next to the sci-fi then moved it across the store, then moved it /back/ to where it was originally but cut the selection in half.
We’re lucky to have the mecca known as Powells in an extremely convienent location. They have an enormous new and used book selection, but their used prices are near full price (blargh!). What I miss from living in Seattle is Half Price Books where a used paperback costs half of the listed price. (I felt like I had gone to heaven when visiting in Seattle and a trip to HPB was made!)
And just when I’d resigned myself to B&N, although my visit last weekend was disappointing – whole racks of books had been moved out to make way for more games and a Nook sales stand.
When in California I went to Kepler’s in Menlo Park, or a Clean & Well Lighted Place in SF; I still visit on my trips back. My favorite independent in San Jose went out of business after B&N moved in so I boycotted B&N for years. There was a great local bookstore within walking distance of my house when I lived in Pennsylvania, but now in Baltimore, the independent is way too new agey for my tastes. I like to read a bit of the book before investing in it, so on-line purchases don’t give me the same satisfaction as a bookstore.
I’m a voracious reader, and my contribution to the economy is my monthly book budget…which I justify by 1) not having a TV and 2) recycling books through my book club, my sisters, friends, sisters-in-law and my mother-ex-law who do not have my financial resources. It also supports the USPS! I couldn’t do that if I bought electronic versions with DRM.
After staring at a computer screen all day at work, the last thing I want to do is read a book on a computer screen. I’m too tactile! I like to make notes on the pages. And my bedtime routine is to read an old favorite just before falling to sleep – if it’s a new book, I’ll stay up all night reading LOL. But an old favorite, where I know the story line, allows me to relax and then fall asleep because I don’t HAVE to know what will happen next.
Recently, I read an article that suggested staring at a computer screen right before falling asleep could be causing sleep disorders because of the bright lights.
So for me, it’s still printed material. The only question is where will I buy it?
Have you considered browsing new books at the library and then making a buy/no buy decision? That’s what I’ve been doing recently.
Did you know that Amazon lets you download free samples of most books for the Kindle before you commit to the purchase? I know it’s not the same as being able to skim through a real book, but it can stop you from making a horrendous mistake, or introduce you to a new author with no committment to buy, and all this without leaving the privacy of your favorite reading position.
That sounds sad. Up here in Toronto we lost a great Bookstore, Mcnally Robinson some months ago
and are now left with Chapters and Indigo as the large chains which aren’t bad but not as good as
that one was.
Fortunately we still have a fair number of smaller ones but they can’t survive forever I think
with the likes of Amazon as well for competition.
The local book store here in Iowa City is Prairie Lights. It is a dangerous place, at least to my bank account. 3 floors of the printed word plus an independent coffee shop. No soda fountain though.
The last Soda fountian in Iowa City, possibly the last in Iowa, was located in a small independent drug store that closed down several years ago. It could not compete with the chain stores for perscriptions. As I understand it, it is also hard to find anyone who knows how to maintain the old fountain equipment.
Prairie Lights may be known to thoes of you who are NPR listners. They have a national radio program with authors reading from their books and then participating in a Q&A session afterward. Having the Iowa Writers Workshop at the UofI gave them a resident pool of authors to start the program. (The likes of James Mitchner, Kurt Vonnegut and Joe Haldeman don’t hurt) It has been sucessful enough to bring in authors from all over the US and beyond.
B&N and Borders drove many indy book stores out of business & now they might go under too? So many people will be left with what? WalMart & Target? sweetbo is right, Amazon is unlikely to want to acquire a chain of brick & mortar stores. Their goal is to dominate sales of all sorts of products on-line.
If any of you pay attention to real estate news, a big part of why commercial real estate has dropped so much in value is that chains that were once thought to be rock solid tenants – like B&N – are gone or are in trouble.
1 of the things that SF often fails to do is predict how business may change as tech advances. Many stories portray people doing business in ways that are already considered old fashioned in our own time.
The nearest B&N store is huge, the size of a small to medium sized library, complete with coffee, tea, and sweets shop in the center-back. Huge bookshelves are filled with books. The SF&F section is in one forward corner, rather tucked away, but large. There are manga and SF&F coffee table books. There are the big TV/movie series SF books. There are currently the fashionable urban fantasy books. There are fewer SF&F books, but they are there. They had Foreigner books and the Chanur Saga and one or two other Cherryh titles, last time I went, but not as much as there used to be. There was also cyberpunk and there were some other things.
The one thing I noticed? Maybe I was tired. maybe I’m used to shopping online now. But I was overwhelmed, and looking through all those titles and authors was not as much of an adventure as formerly. It was similar over in the Foreign Languages section and the Art and Design and Photography sections and the one or two other sections I visited. (OK, I looked in the History and Reference sections briefly and about as briefly in the Gay and Lesbian section. And hey, at least they *have* a GLBT section.)
With my eyesight, it is sometimes a pain to look through book spines for titles and authors. Turn your head on the side, squint, scan with your face quite close, to read the titles, but thankfully, other reader-shoppers are usually not bothered by that, as they have to look too. When tired or pressed for time, it’s a little disappointing to wade through titles and authors, occasionally pick out a cover, check the back jacket blurb, and hmmm… is this worth my $7 to $12 or so for a pb these days? Might be. But that visit, I wanted something that would reach out, grab me, shake me, and say, “Read me! Buy me! I’m a fantastic book by an author you’ve never read before! I’m a great story by an author you love!” Ehhh…I didn’t find too much. But my trip was primarily for a reference text, so the sidestep into the SF&F was because…because I can’t NOT look there. 😉
If B&N sells, they’ll need to sell to another bookseller or someone who understands books and reading. If they reorganize, fine. If they merge or sell to, fine, if that buyer understands how to mind the store.
As a reader and buyer, I know I am likely to leave any bookstore or library with an armload of books, if my budget will allow it (or sometimes if not). I want a good selection. I want to be able to browse through the books to see if the book is right for me. I want surprises and I want favorites. I want stuff in print. I also, these days, want ebooks. I will buy my music and audio and video elsewhere, thanks. If you can throw in a soda fountain or tea or snacks or an occasional cappucino, great, fantastic…though I won’t likely read if having a snack/drink, as that might damage the book while still in the store.
One thing that troubles me is — I like buying from Closed Circle and would like buying direct from other authors and artists, but it is not necessarily simple to find an author or artist’s site and store. Even with, or perhaps especially with, the web, there is the need to let customers / patrons (readers, listeners, watchers) know you are out there, open for business, eager to sell them copies, and eager for them to check out your art. — I now check Closed Circle and then check Amazon, but otherwise, I am likely to check Amazon and iTunes before turning to Google to hunt for a particular artist or author.
I do hope B&N overcomes their problems, because they are one of the big boys in the business, after muscling out the little guys, and if B&N folds, then…well, something will fill its place, but it may fill it in an unpleasant way.
The books, music, and video industries are in turmoil as everyone, from artists to sellers to buyers / patrons searches for what works in the new digital and web world. It’s like ice cubes the size of icebergs hitting the water with all of us in a little rowboat or submarine. (And thanks, cat, for walking on my keyboard….) The water is all churned up, and nothing’s settled out yet. We ride out the sotrm and hope for the best. There must be a better mode than this.
One notes that the original purpose of a notebook was to write notes, not just to read, and this, it seems to me, is something the laptop and ereader and MP3 player makers have all forgotten in their rush to market. I need a good pocket com and one of those nice Trek data pads, the ones with the voice and touch interfaces…. It’ll get here, someday. Yes, I’ll want to listen to music and audio and watch a video or read a book, with my whole library with me. 😉
In our house, the sticking point is audiobooks. DH loves them and was overjoyed when he found an enormous trove of Star Trek books in MP3 format, but tracking down some books or authors is difficult. Not every book is available in spoken format, and I’m not sure the Kindle text-to-voice app is as good as hearing a voice actor read a book. I’ve been looking for Julian Stockwin (Napoleonic era naval fiction) in spoken word format, but no luck so far.
“and I’m not sure the Kindle text-to-voice app is as good as hearing a voice actor read a book. ”
I am very sure it’s NOT! Have you HEARD any? The inflection is ludicrous — the same phrase will always be given the same inflection, whether or not it makes sense. And the pronunciation of any uncommon word, especially a name — well, suffice it to say, the technology is NOT there yet.
Well, the Kindle can play audiobooks as well as the text-to-voice, but you are correct that text-to-voice is a last resort. But then again I’ve paid for audiobooks that I thought could have been done better by that same text-to-voice, except for the names…
I think we are on the cusp of a world where we will buy our books, movies and music as data downloads instead of the physical object itself. Seemingly we are in that transition now. I’ve already gone out and purchased one of those music servers from Olive Music (SF based) and its already hooked up to my computer. And a Kindle as well. Soon CD’s and DVD’s and perhaps even Books will be a thing of the past. Books will be the last to go though. It might be considered a somewhat dangerous proposition to chance reading your $400.00 Kindle while you are lying soaking in the tub. Plus it’s kind of nice to go into your library, look up at your bookshelves, grab a book that you haven’t read in a while and read it a second or even third time. Buying a data product (in place of a physical product) is also a way of going green. You have savings in paper products, plastics, and the energy costs of shipping. It is however a little disconcerting to spend $10.00 on a bunch of data bits (instead of the physical object) and where one hard drive failure could cost you hundreds (even thousands) of dollars in lost books and music. I guess we have CERN or Harvard or whomever invented the internet for the current state of affairs.
Well, at least if you buy a Closed Circle book, you can find us and ask for a re-download if you had a disaster, because we have a purchase record. It’s also why we encourage people who buy our books to put them on a dvd, and keep your media up to date, when we move on from dvds.
Glad to hear that and saving it to a CD makes good sense and I just bought a book from Closed Circle (Heavytime). It’s on my Kindle and reads great. Also downloaded Vol. 1 of your Writers Life. I want to thank you for giving us readers a glimpse of the creative process at work and the extraordinary level of committment and work it takes to bring a book project to its conclusion. Times that by 50 or more and well you are just amazing CJ. I always thought a SiFi writer entered some kind of transendental mind fugue state (not sure what that is) in order to bring a scene or tableau and especially a character to life with just words. To provide enough information to the reader so that they can creat within their own minds (shall we say consciousness) what you the writer needs them to see to make it all work. Hard to do. You know, enable us readers to disconnect (at least for a little while) from this world in order to bring that one forth. But what do I know. I’m beginning to ramble here so I’ll end with thanks for giving us a little peek at what it takes to do what you do so well.