I say: not gonna happen. And here’s why:

1. Lack of an ePaper display.

This is the deal-breaker for me. Reading on an LCD screen causes eye strain after awhile. Not a big deal if we’re just reading blogs or news sites for a few minutes at a time. But when reading a book, I might sit down for hours at a time to read. With an LCD display, that’s going to cause eye strain. That’s the single biggest reason I would not consider this at all for a viable ebook reader.

The other side effect of not having an epaper screen is that I have to charge the thing every day. With epaper, a charge can last for days or sometimes even weeks. That means if I’m going away for the weekend, I don’t have to carry along a charger with a Kindle or a Nook.

2. Lack of Selection.

The official Kindle store has more than 400,000 books available. Barnes & Noble’s Nook has access to over a million books, newspapers, and periodicals. And that doesn’t count the hundreds of thousands of books available on sites like Smashwords and Fictionwise. The iBooks store currently has titles available from five major publishers. Which probably amounts to a few thousand books (probably more with backlists, but I bet it’s still less than a hundred thousand titles). So if you only read mainstream ebooks, the iBookstore might have everything you’re looking for. But more likely, it won’t. And it’s unclear how well iBooks will play with DRM-free ebooks from other sites.

3. DRM.

If iTunes is any indication, iBooks will have heavy digital rights management. The mainstream publishing industry embraces DRM, but it’s pretty clear that tech-savvy consumers (which is what the iPad is most likely to appeal to) don’t appreciate DRM.

Other Shortcomings

The iBooks software isn’t the only shortcoming the iPad has. First of all, the internal memory is really lacking. Sure, the most expensive version has 64GB of storage, but the base model (the one that’s only $499) only has 16GB. To top that off, there’s no SD slot. Which means I can’t expand that 16GB of storage. I can tell you how long that will last me. About a month if this is something that I’m watching movies on, listening to music on, storing photos on, and reading books on. That’s unacceptable.

The lack of an SD slot also means I have to hook this thing up to my MacBook Pro if I want to transfer photos to it. Which makes that photo software they were showcasing a whole lot less impressive. It doesn’t even have a USB port. Or an HDMI port. That means I can’t hook it up to my TV to watch high definition movies. What’s the point?

A Better Alternative

First of all, if you just want a dedicated ebook reader, buy a Kindle. Buy a Nook. Buy an Alex. Don’t buy an iPad. If you want a giant iPod Touch, then buy an iPad.

The good news is that there’s a better alternative only a few months away. A company called Pixel Qi has come out with a new transflective display. What this means is that the display does double-duty. Let’s say you want to watch a movie. Then you use the display as a standard LCD. But then let’s say you want to read a book. You simply switch it over to epaper mode! And if you’re trying to surf the web in bright sunlight, then you can switch it over to transflective mode, which has less saturated color, but is easier to read in direct light.

And there’s a company based in India, Notion Ink, that has created a tablet that uses this new display. It runs on the open source Android platform, which means there are plenty of apps available, and it’s easy enough to learn to code them yourself. The best part? It’ll have expandable storage and it’s expected to retail for only $325. This is what I’ll be waiting for.

I’m working on international distribution at the moment. The issue I’m running into is shipping costs. For international priority mail, the cost is about $13. But what I’m seeing is that first class mail is nearly that much to most areas (with the exception of Canada) and it can take twice as long. Can international orders be done through Amazon.com? Or through Barnes & Noble’s US website? If anyone knows the answer to this, please let me know!

At some point in the next couple weeks I plan on writing a post outlining the entire publishing process. Until then, feel free to ask any questions you might have in the comments here. And thanks to everyone for their support!

Photo by paveita, via Flickr

I’m going to try to write regularly about my process as I work on this novel, sharing what I’m doing, learning, and experimenting with over the next few weeks as I hammer out a first draft and then later when I start revising. So this week I’m going to talk about character development, one of my absolute favorite parts of writing fiction.

One of the first things I do before I start writing a new novel is to cast my characters. Sometimes I  know instantly who my leading man would be, who my main character should be, or who some of my secondary characters would be played by. Other times I spend hours pouring over celebrity photo sites looking for the right face. That’s right—I use actors and actresses, not just random photos I’ve found online or in magazines.

There are a couple of different reasons for this. The most important one to me is that it makes it easier to hear their voices in my head, to see the way they move, the way they talk, their facial expressions if I’ve actually seen them in movies. This makes it much easier to write believable dialogue and believable characters in general.

For my current novel, I’ve basically got four main characters. There’s Cass, who in my head is Kate Winslet; there’s Dave, Cass’ husband, who bears a striking resemblance to Matthew Fox; Tessa, who, in a perfect world, would be played by Charlize Theron (though a bit older); and Grady—the leading man in this particular work—Hugh Jackman in my mind (this might have something to do with recently watching both Australia and the new Wolverine movie). In addition to casting like this, I’ll save a handful of images of each actor or actress in a “characters” folder within the folder for my novel. The only thing I won’t do when working on a novel like this is watch any movies these actors appear in that are at all similar to my current work-in-progress. It’s too easy to end up making the character exactly like an existing character without even realizing it.

One of the other primary bits of character development I do is to fill out a Proust Questionnaire for each character. I’m partial to Vanity Fair‘s version, though I’ll sometimes add in questions from the Inside the Actors Studio version, too, which was modeled on Proust’s questions. Proust’s original questionnaire is helpful, too.

I keep the questionnaires in a Google doc, along with my outline and research. But more on outlines in my next post in this series.

Feel free to share your own character development tips in the comments below.

Photo by nate steiner, via Flickr

All of those are perfectly acceptable options. But what if you want to do something different? What if you look at the options above and your brain just screams, “BORING!”

I have two more options for you: binding your own books (paperback or hardcover) or writing a “blovel”—a blog novel.

Hamish MacDonald was the first person I heard about who was doing his own book binding for his novels. He currently offers four books for sale, all hand-bound by him. He also offers a series of podcasts for the DIY novelist. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Kvasir House Press is another great resource for learning bookbinding and for other information related to self publishing. The owner, Chad Muller, offers an excellent two-part tutorial on how to bind your own books. The directions are excellent, and I honestly can’t wait to try them out myself.

No Media Kings offers a great comparison of self-publishing options that includes instructions for creating your own book press and for binding your own books. Definitely worth a read, though be aware that not all of the information in the self-pub options is accurate (mainly the assertion that POD books are only sold at retail price, which is false).

The other viable option for publishing your own books is to go the ebook route. But instead of going through SmashWords or the Kindle store, why not publish your novel on a blog? Serialized novels used to be quite popular in newspapers and magazines decades ago. Why not due the same thing on your blog? With one chapter released per week (or day), it gives readers a chance to come back to your blog on a regular basis. If you pair this with releasing a print copy of your book, you’re likely to see more sales than you would otherwise. And don’t forget to put a donation button on your blog so readers can support your work!

JungleG has a wonderful post titled “Procrastinating on that novel? Write a Blovel instead.” It gives a basic outline of what their approach to a blovel would be, though there’s plenty of room for customization.

We CAN! Promote Our Books has a great article on experimenting with the whole blovel idea (this time with a YA novel written entirely in poetry).

This idea has become so popular that there’s now a site dedicated entirely to providing authors with a space to write their blovel: Blovel Spot.

I’m sure there are plenty of other unique ways authors are self publishing their books. If you know of any, please share them in the comments below.

Photo by Jeff Milner, via Flickr

So I thought I’d put together a bit of a “best practices” guide for getting the most out of social media and the Internet if you’re a writer (published or aspiring). Here are some tips for using social media tools effectively and in a way that’s likely to get you more followers and fans.

1. Set up a good website. There are thousands of free website templates out there. If you have no design skills and no money to hire a designer, use a template. A professional-looking website goes a long way toward making you look like a professional. Make sure you include basic information about who you are and what you write. It doesn’t need to be complicated. It does need to be user friendly and professional.
2. It’s okay to have a blog as your primary site. Just make sure you include an about page that details who you are and what books you’ve written (or, if you’re unpublished, what you’re working on and the kinds of things you write). And if you’re going to blog, make sure you update regularly and moderate your comments. There’s nothing worse than coming to a blog and seeing no updates for three months and tons of spam comments.
3. List the genre of your books! It’s not always apparent from the title of a book, or even the brief description and blurb what genre your book fits into. I don’t know how many books I came across that left me wondering, “Is this a thriller? Horror? Mystery? Romance?” Make it clear so that if you’re ever included in a list of authors or mentioned on someone’s site, they identify you with the correct genre (the last thing you want is to be identified as a thriller author if you write romance, or vice versa).
4. Engage with your fans and followers. If you’re using a site like Twitter or Facebook to interact with your readers, make sure you engage with them! Have conversations. Retweet their (valuable) content.
5. Don’t just promote yourself. This is a big no-no. When compiling these lists, anyone who just promotes their book(s) automatically got cut. Don’t use social media as a giant advertisement. If anything, it’s more like a press release. Give your followers a reason to follow you and a reason to be engaged with what you’re doing. Offering up glimpses into your day-to-day life, what you’re reading (both online and off), and useful links and resources goes a long way toward making you look like a real person instead of just a self-interested twit.
6. Update regularly! This one is really important. Whether you choose to update hourly, daily, or weekly, make sure you do so consistently. If I came across Twitter accounts where the person hadn’t tweeted in three weeks, you can bet they weren’t included on the list. The same goes for people who would tweet consistently for a week and then nothing for two weeks. I get it if you don’t have a chance to update on some days, but make sure those days are few and far between. For example, if I’m going to be out of town for the day without Internet access (I live in Northern New England, hot spots are few and far between in most places up here), I’ll tweet in the morning to say I’m going out of town and won’t be back until late. This way my followers know not to expect new updates.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but hopefully it at least provides a starting off point for using social media.