e-books, upcoming and present

Given that no one (big publishers, little publishers, individuals, stray elephants) has really mastered the internet equivalent of paying for a big fat book dump at the checkout counter, or paying for end displays, or massive print and distribution strategies to put the book in front of buyers in ever bookstore, etc or any of the other way that publishing cheated and gamed the system (to readers, authors and indeed publishing's eventual loss) we're still in a situation where e- book buyers are looking 'other readers also bought' and where a pre-existing name/series and of course sheer volume of offerings count, I have decided that I have to stretch a little and get some more work out there.



At the moment we have THE GOTH SEX KITTEN, CRAWLSPACE AND OTHER STORIES and forthcoming from Naked Reader, WITHOUT A TRACE.



THE FORLORN is also OOP and out of contracted grant of rights - I've asked for my rights back, and will give it its original ending back - and a new cover. At the moment it is available - for free - from Baen Free Library. It will be fascinating to see how many people buy it.



A MANKIND WITCH also appears to be OOP and I've asked for those rights to revert too. At last I will get that book a cover it deserves. It's a part of a series, but as i am sole author, it's sucked hind teat and been allowed to go OOP.



And finally, I've had SAVE THE DRAGONS sitting at Baen for (mumble) many months now. Patience is not my strongest suite, so that will very shortly be going up too.

It's going to be interesting to see what (if any) impact 6 books(rather than 2 collections of shorts) have on visibility. Personally I am of the opinion these need to approach 20, and include some new novels, in series to be effective. I am thinking of a Rats Bats and Vats book, which will go directly to Kindle.

Interesting times. What do you guys think? How many books do you need out there? Are books (new) more effective than old material? And what do you want to see?

This And That And The Other

So, today is my day to promote, again, which makes me feel rather on the spot. Since we last talked, I’ve sold a short story (An Answer From The North which will come out in Courts of The Fey, edited by Russell Davis.) Wrote another which I’m in the process of cleaning up (hopefully) for acceptance. I delivered a book – A Fatal Stain – to Prime Crime. I’m hoping to get the sample chapters for that up this weekend. The samples for the other two are here. And I had a few things come out with Naked reader.

First, I want to call your attention to Death Of A Musketeer. Excerpts are here. The trailer video is here.

There is also A Touch of Night, written by Sofie Skapski and myself. The reason we wrote this – Pride, Prejudice and dragons, oh my – is that my Magical British Empire Series wasn’t selling, so we did this to use the world. For fun. An unedited and shorter version is out at austen.com. Of course, the minute we’d written it, the MBE sold to Bantam Spectra.

I have also attended a steam punk con. Yeah, that’s what the picture is all about. It was surprisingly fun. First, possibly because I hadn’t dressed up in years. Second because though it took place on a college campus – though, you say? Though, I reply – the attendees were all bright, engaging and interested young people who actually seemed to read for fun. Why is it “though”? Because with notable exceptions, a lot of young sf fandom seems to be more media and games based. My excuse to be there, of course, was having written the Magical British Empire Trilogy. Samples for which are here. It is a chase for the eye of the goddess in a magical land in which the industrial revolution is underfoot in a way you’ve never seen before, and all shape shifters are illegal and subjected to being killed on sight.

And right now I’m working on finishing Darkship Renegades, which is the sequel to Darkship Thieves. Excerpts for Darkship Thieves live here. Darkship Renegades starts this way:

Out Of The Frying Pan

I was a princess from Earth and he was a rogue spaceman from a mythical world. He saved my life three times. I rescued him from a fate worse than death.
We married and lived happily ever after.
Ever after comes with an expiration date these days. We’d been married less than year when Kit got shot in the head.

And if you're totally at loose ends, let me remind you I give away some short stories and even a collection. If you haven't tried the short stories, read them or download them here. As for the collection, please visit the Baen Free Library and look for my name. Happy reading.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, and the occasional dragon (thought I wouldn't see you, lurking there at the back, uh?) have a good weekend. I shall go imbibe massive quantities of caffeine and work.

(The Picture is courtesy http://Fantascenes.net )

*Due to serious lack of caffeine as well as fact I am finishing a book, this post being echoed over at According To Hoyt*

The Jakirian Series

The Jakirian series is heroic fantasy set on the world of Yos, with its unique ecology and twin suns, where all metal is magical and where control of magic is the basis for power.

The Calvanni was first published in Australia in 2006. Readers have had to wait a long time for the sequel.

Now I am happy to announce the wait is finally over!

Naked Reader will be publishing the follow on book from The Calvanni, Scytheman, and also the third book in the series, Sorcerer. All three will be available both as electronic and also print-on-demand. The nice people at Naked Reader have also agreed to do both US and UK/Australian English versions! How cool is that?

For years I have been getting emails from people saying 'I loved the Calvanni, when is the second book coming out?' Well Scytheman has been burning a hole in my hard drive for a long time. Finally I can email all those people back!


The publication schedule is:
Flight of The Phoenix (prequel novella): May (electronic)
The Calvanni: June 2011 (electronic & POD)
Scytheman: December 2011 (electronic & POD)
Sorcerer: June 2012 (electronic & POD)

The events in The Calvanni are set thirty years after the fall of the once vast Bulvuran Empire, when Kelas is divided into waring sardoms, and the ancient enemy of Man, the Eathal, plot their long-awaited revenge.

The Druids have monopolized power, outlawing the ancient practice of Sorcery, once the domain of the Bulvuran nobility.

An unknown evil – once contained by the Emperors – is now reaching to ensnare new victims.

In The Calvanni, first of the series, it is Storm Season on the world of Yos, when the twin suns eclipse and the planet is plunged into bitter cold. It is usually a time of quiet, when the wise lock their doors, praying for the demons of the red sun-goddess Uros to pass them by. Yet deep in the Caverns of Maht, Hukum, the Sorcerer-Lord of cavern-dwelling Eathal, plots his attack on the world of men.

Cedrin, a street-wise calvanni (knife-fighter), is summoned to the secret underground tunnels of the Brotherhood of the Night. There, Cedrin is forced to join Hukum’s attack against the rulers of his native Athria. Caught between the threat of death and his suspicions that all is not what it seems, he must try to keep his friends Marken and Skye alive and escape.

When Cedrin makes his escape he comes face-to-face with Hukum’s minion Raziin, a fearsome mercenary. His world is shaken as Raziin’s Sorcerous attack triggers the awakening of his own powers. Cedrin survives, but must now flee not only the wrath of the rulers of Athria, but also Raziin and the Brotherhood of the Night.

Ellen, daughter of the assassinated Athrian Sarlord, is named as heir before his death. She struggles to assert herself as the new ruler, little suspecting the civil war that will be unleashed on Athria within days. Ellen’s father warned her never to reveal her hidden powers of Sorcery, but as Hukum’s minions close in, she has little choice. She is forced to flee persecution at the hands of the Druids.

Both Cedrin and Ellen head for the ancient capital of Raynor, soon to come under attack by Hukum’s armies. Pursuing both Cedrin and Ellen is Raziin, eager to escape his bondage to Hukum and convinced by a powerful prophecy that Cedrin holds the key to an artifact of untold power. . .

I hope you enjoy the ride!

For more background on the world of Yos, check out my first post on Yos.

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

As you've probably noticed over the last month and a half, Saturdays have become promotion days for MGC. Sometimes it will be self-promotion. Others will be guest blogs by authors who have new books coming out. Sometimes, we'll even throw in an open floor. Today, I'm going to step in and do a bit of promotion for the MGCers who have titles coming out from Naked Reader Press this month and nexzt.


In a land with a weak king, in a time when murder was often disregarded, four men made sure justice was served.

First up -- and I'm really excited about this -- is Death of a Musketeer by Sarah D'Almeida.

This is the first in the series and it has never before been released in digital format. Now, I see some of you scratching your heads and wondering who this D'Almeida chick is. Well, if you take a look at her Amazon author page, you'll see that she looks pretty familiar. Actually, it's no secret that Sarah D'Almeida is one of several pseudonyms our own Sarah A. Hoyt writes under.



Computer hackers are nothing compared to Legion. Its source is unknown and it continues to baffle programmers and defeat firewalls and antivirus programs. Nothing seems able to stop it. Could Legion possibly be intelligent? Or is it something else, something totally unexpected?

Up next is a wonderful short story written by Dave Freer and Kate Paulk. Legion: The Enemy Within came out earlier this month and, as with all NRP titles, it is DRM-free and available not only at the NRP site but also from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.





A boy's search for the truth sends him on a journey to find his grandfather's downed plane. Suddenly trapped in an alternate South Africa, faced with pirates and worse, he refuses to give up. His quest to clear his grandfather's name turns into a desperate race against time. It's a race he can't afford to lose.

Our next title is Dave Freer's middle school/early YA novella, Without a Trace. It is currently available for early purchase as an uncorrected e-arc (advanced readers copy). The edited version will be available for purchase the second half of March. If you like a rip-roaring adventure, or know someone who does, Without a Trace is for you.

The day she died Mackenzie Santos's life and her perception of the world changed forever. Everyone else thought her return to the living was a miracle. She knew better. How else could she explain away the dreams she knew were symptoms she was losing her mind? And if that weren't enough, she's now in charge of the investigation into the most brutal murder she can remember in her time with the Dallas Police Department.

Nocturnal Origins is by, well, me. Yes, me. The blogger currently hiding under the bed because self-promotion isn't something I'm comfortable with. It will be available from NRP the first half of March.

And don't forget that Kate Paulk's unique take on the Dracula legend, Impaler, comes out in March as well. For more information on Impaler, as well as a snippet or two, check out Kate's website. You can also find more information on Impaler at The Naked Truth and here on MGC. One word of warning, do not expect any sparkling vampires or emo werewolves in this novel. As far as Kate's concerned, the only time vampires should sparkle are when they've stepped into the sunlight and are bursting into flame.

With the exception of Legion: The Enemy Within, each of these titles will also be breaking new ground for NRP. Each of these titles will also be released in print as well as in digital formats.

(Full disclosure here -- for those who don't know, I'm the senior executive editor for Naked Reader Press.)

Welcome to Yos!

My first novel, The Calvanni, is an heroic fantasy adventure set on the world of Yos.

The book is no doubt heavily influenced by David Gemmell, my all time favourite writer.

To the left is a map of the continent of Kelas, where all the action in The Calvanni takes place.

On Yos all metal is magical. Weapons are crafted of exotic ceramics, the secrets handed down from master glassmith to apprentice for centuries. Razor sharp, but often brittle, the lanedd blades can be cast no longer than a long knife or calv. Calvanni means 'knife fighter'. On Yos there are no swords, and specialist pole arms called 'scythes' and spears are the weapons of choice in the field.

Control of magic is the ultimate basis for power. Since the fall of the Bulvuran Empire the Druids have monopolized power, outlawing the ancient practice of Sorcery, once the domain of the Bulvuran nobility.

Yos has twin suns that play havoc with the weather. Their regular eclipse causes Storm Season, when most of the wildlife - and the various sentient races - stay out of the cold and the vicious storms that follow. Any human unlucky enough to find themselves out in Storm Season has to contend with the Heat, a biological mechanism that can keep them alive - at a price.

The events in The Calvanni are set thirty years after the fall of the once vast Bulvuran Empire, when Kelas is divided into waring sardoms, and the ancient enemy of Man, the Eathal, plot their long-awaited revenge in the deep caverns of Maht.

My first foray into the world of Yos was a novella called Flight of the Phoenix, set at the fall of the Empire. Learning of the plot to destroy the Bulvuran Emperor and his family, the aging general Belin has to race through the night to save the life of the Empress Evylin and her newborn child. Always fearful of magic, Belin is confronted with powerful sorcery, facing an Eathal shapechanger in an epic battle that shakes the foundations of Yos itself.

The novella was published in 2003 in the Fantasy Readers Wanted - Apply Within anthology.

I am very excited to announce that Flight of the Phoenix will be republished by Naked Reader in electronic format (May/June)!

I have a signed copy of the Fantasy Readers Wanted - Apply Within anthology to give away (which has a poem by Neil Gaiman in it. No really.) to the first person to email me at "chrismcmahonATspeechnet.com.au" with the answer to the following cryptic question:)

How many Temples of the Iris are there?














HINT: If you have not read The Calvanni, the answer is somewhere on my website.

Good hunting!

The Allure of Evil

(This is the first of a three-part set of posts. Tomorrow part 2 will be posted at The Naked Truth blog, and part 3 will be posted at my site on Saturday. Blame Amanda. She asked me to write about Impaler and why I wrote it, and this is what happened.)

Have you ever desperately wanted to do something you knew was wrong? Have you ever done it, and then thought up all manner of justifications why it wasn't really wrong in the first place? No, don't answer. I'm not who needs to know.

If you answered "no" to either question, you've either successfully convinced yourself, or you've been lying to yourself. Humans are good at that - at both "that"s, really.

Now, one of the things I find terribly unsatisfying about a lot of fantasy and SF is that the evil is so often hollow, unconvincing. You look at it and - if you're me, which fortunately is a rare phenomenon - you wonder why anyone would want it. For instance, in Lord of the Rings, the evil side is uniformly deformed and twisted - there's no reason the average orc would want to stay there, and they can't all be fallen from elf-ness. Admittedly, Tolkien was writing what he thought was mythology, which has a different flow and needs than fiction.

Thing is, coming off 100 years packed solid with examples of populist and/or popular evil - they had to appeal to enough people to get into and consolidate power. After that it wasn't such a big thing - your standard ugly, repulsive evil just doesn't cut it, at least for me.

I'm prepared to admit that I might be a tad on the strange side here (when am I not?), but I've been fascinated by the nature of evil for as long as I can remember, so unconvincing evil irritates me. Evil is attractive: it's supposed to be.

At a more basic level, evil involves letting our least human aspects (i.e., the animal nature) run free. Not being stuck with all those stupid rules and getting a good solid boost over those (insert your epithet of choice here) who make your life miserable... you bet your sweet ass that's attractive. When it's wrapped in a charismatic package, it's very attractive. The idea is to seduce people from what they know is right, after all. And, Rule 34 notwithstanding, orcs and seduction just do not go.

All of this is one heck of an introduction to how I came to write Impaler, and why - trust me, it's relevant. See, my guilty sideline in my reading habits is history. Specifically, the history of such charming topics as torture, of regimes like Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Pol Pot's Cambodia, the Mongolian Hordes, and other equally delightful regimes. I joke that I have a hotline to Evil Bastard Central in my head, but whether it's the subconscious processing of my unclean fascination or springs from some other dark corner of my subconscious is something I don't know and prefer not to investigate too closely. I might find the answer...

Enter serendipity, in the form of (I think) a 1980s documentary. At that point, I had what you might call the pop-culture image of Dracula: the pale dude with fangs who wore old-fashioned evening dress and a high-necked cloak. Discovering that there had been real man named Dracula, and that he made even your nastier-than-average vampire look like a wuss, hit me like a hammer on speed.

Naturally I started reading vampire fiction as well as the history of the vampire mythos. Of course, I read Bram Stoker's Dracula. Most of the fiction that mentioned Dracula stuck with the Stoker image, although some (Jeanne Kalogridis (Diaries of the Family Dracul) and Dan Simmons (Children of the Night) come to mind) incorporated the history of Prince Vlad Dracula with the vampire myth. Vlad - of course - was always evil, and usually chewing-the-furniture insane as well.

Eventually I managed to get my claws on the books that are still the gold standard for Vlad: the McNally and Florescu Dracula books (In Search of Dracula, Prince of Many Faces, and assorted others). Fascination turned borderline obsessive: there were (and are) gaping holes in the history, and massive inconsistencies in the narrative. This was a man who was revered by his people (and to some extent still is). How could that reconcile with the standard "perverted mass murderer" narrative?

My first - and thankfully long-buried - attempt to write Vlad's story from his perspective started around then. I wasn't a good enough writer to do it. Besides, I didn't have the resources or the research material I needed. Yes, this was before the Internet.

The situation and idea nagged at me during the following years, generating a crude outline for an alternate history - which is recognizably Impaler, although the resemblance is like an artist's sketch beside the final painting. Over the same time period, my writing kept cycling back to the theme of someone who - for whatever the reason - does evil in the service of good. Not evil rationalized into faux-good, but actually in service to good.

In Impaler, I made the analogy between what a ruler like Vlad has to do, and a gardener pruning diseased branches so the whole plant doesn't die. It's not the only time I explicitly called out that what Vlad is doing is evil by most standard but is in service to a much greater need. Vlad doesn't - usually - excuse his actions on these grounds. He mentally adds them to the long list of sins he'll ultimately be punished for.

This dichotomy between action and goal, between cruelty now to prevent worse later, is a topic I find endlessly fascinating, and I'll be exploring that and the circumstances of Vlad's life - the things that shaped him into the man who dominates Impaler - tomorrow at The Naked Truth.

Update: Post 2: The Kindness of Cruelty is available.

Updated Update: Post 3: The Man Behind the Monster is now posted.

Nocturnal Origins

That thud you heard the other day was the sound of my jaw dropping to the ground when my bosses at Naked Reader Press informed me that they'd just done something and really didn't care if I liked it or not. I don't know about you, but when the bosses tell me something like that, I tend to get a little paranoid. Had they just decided to fire me? Reassign me? With my heart pounding, I waited, never expecting what they were about to tell me. It seems that they'd made an editorial decision without consulting me and had added a book to the NRP catalog. It seems they decided, without me actually submitting my novel to them, to publish my urban fantasy novel, Nocturnal Origins. That is when my jaw dropped. So, I'm here to announce that it will be coming out in March -- GULP. I've snippeted the first two scenes below. I hope you enjoy it. Now I'm going to go hide under the bed.

One

Some things can never be forgotten, no matter how hard you try. The memory remains, forever imprinted on your soul. It colors your perceptions and expectations. It affects everything you say and do. It doesn't matter if the memory is good or bad, full of life and love or pain and death. That memory remains until the day you die – if you're lucky.

If not, the memory haunts you for all eternity.

Detective Sergeant Mackenzie Santos knew that bitter lesson all too well. The day she died had changed her life and her perception of the world forever.

It didn't matter that everyone, even her doctors, believed a miracle occurred when she awoke in the hospital morgue. She knew better. She knew she had died.

It hadn't been a miracle. At least not a holy one. Ask the poor attendant who'd run screaming from that cold, desolate room in the hospital basement, when Mac had suddenly sat up, gasping for breath and still covered with too much blood. He'd been convinced a demon from Hell had risen to come for him.

Mac couldn't blame him. As far as she was concerned, that was the day the dogs of Hell had come for her.

Now, standing in the alley behind Gunn's, one of the most fashionable restaurants in Dallas, Mac closed her eyes and prayed . She suspected what lay ahead. She could almost smell it – not quite, but enough to know what was there. Sweat trickled down her spine and plastered her thin cotton shirt to her back. Her stomach lurched rebelliously and she swallowed hard against the rising gorge. She had to keep control. At least for the next few hours.

Easy, Mackenzie. Just take it slow and easy.

She opened her eyes and drew a deep breath. She knew it was bad. Two uniformed officers, hands on knees, vomited into the gutter. There were no black humor jokes, no conversation, nothing. In fact, other than the sounds of retching, the scene was eerily quiet, so it felt almost like a dream. A nightmare.

She took a few more steps. The harsh, unmistakable stench assailed her nose, warning her what she'd find.

Unless the restaurant had dumped several hundred pounds of raw hamburger out to spoil in the summer heat, a dead body lay at the far end of the alley. That was bad enough. Then she felt as though she were enveloped in blood and her stomach rolled over once again.

Oh, God.

Jaw clenched, she stepped forward. Never before had it been so hard to approach a crime scene. Not even when she'd responded to her first dead body call a lifetime ago. She hadn't hesitated then, not like this.

But she was different now. She knew what sort of horror awaited her. She'd seen it before and it haunted her. Haunted her because it touched something in her very few suspected even existed, something she tried so desperately to hide. The beast within fought for dominance, called by the smell of blood, the sight of raw flesh.

She mustn't lose control. Not here and certainly not now. She blew out a long breath and slammed her mind shut to the horribly enticing sights and smells. Even as she did, the nightmare that had become the core of her existence clawed against her all too fragile self-control as it fought for release.

Focus on the job, Mac. Just focus on the job.

Finally, satisfied she wouldn't lose control – yet – she nodded once. It was time to get to work.

###

Hidden deep in the shadows across the street, he watched and waited. Anger and frustration seethed just below the surface, held at bay only by sheer will power. He still couldn't believe it. All his careful plans ruined. Now he was forced to lurk in the dark as he watched events unfold across the street.

Damn them!

When he'd first scented the men approaching, he had cursed his foul luck. He wasn't finished. His prey still lived. There had been so much fight in her, so much fear. How that thrilled him. Too much time had passed since he'd been able to play with his quarry as he had with this one. She'd fought desperately. Then she'd done everything she could to escape. Finally, she'd huddled in fear and begged for her life even as he continued to play with her much like a cat plays with a mouse just before making that last pounce followed by the kill.

But it wasn't to be. He had scented the men long before they reached the alley entrance. Their conversation warned him they were police. For one brief moment he'd actually toyed with the idea of killing them. Then memory of his last encounter with one of their kind intruded and forced him to admit the folly of the thought.

Damn them all to Hell!

He'd been forced to kill his prey before he finished with her. Worse, he hadn't been able to feed off her. Instead, he'd slunk away like a carrion eater in the face of a stronger, meaner predator. How he hated that. He was no coward, no bottom feeder. He was the predator and yet here he stood, hiding in the shadows as they swarmed over his kill. That flew in the face of the natural order. He was stronger, more cunning. They should tremble in fear before him. Instead, he played the coward, unwilling to face their greater numbers or their guns.

But they would pay. Sooner or later they would pay for being foolish enough, unfortunate enough to interrupt him. They'd pay the ultimate price and forfeit their lives. However, that had to wait, at least for a little while.

Still, the night might not be a total loss. The circus across the street offered a potential show he'd not hoped to see. At least not yet. An almost feral smile touched his lips and he chuckled softly. He might get lucky after all.

And all because of one woman, one tall, beautiful woman with a shock of dark hair and penetrating green eyes.

His smile widened to a grin and his right hand fisted at his side as his heart gave an excited leap. That one woman had brought him such anticipation and then so much frustration. He could hardly wait until they met once more. It would be a meeting he planned to make their last.

Two months had passed since he first laid eyes on her. Something about her had called to him, demanding he master her. So he'd set out to stalk her, confident in his ability not only to find her but also to make her his for as long as he wanted. What a wonderful plan it had been.

Unfortunately, it hadn't worked out quite the way he'd expected. She wasn't like the others – men and women both – who'd fallen to him in the past. She'd proven to be as tough and determined as she was beautiful. When he thought he had her cornered and ready for the taking, she'd done the unexpected, the unforgivable. She'd fought back, leaving him wounded and forced to flee before she could summon help.

She drew his attention once more. He could hardly wait to see how she reacted to his handiwork. Maybe, just maybe, the evening wouldn't be a complete loss after all.

###

Walking a Thin Line . . .

between sanity and insanity, and it hasn't been helped by a very intermittent internet this weekend. Let's put it this way, I was on the phone and then on chat and then back on the phone with my provider before 0630 this morning. Not exactly the way I want to start any day, so forgive the rambling post this morning.

After reading Kate's post this past Thursday and the comments that followed, I debated whether to answer in the comments section or not. After talking with Kate, I decided to address some of the comments here, from an editorial point of view.

Most of you know that I'm one of the editors at Naked Reader Press. NRP, for those who don't know, is a small -- think micro -- e-publisher. We went live in August and offered our first titles for sale in September. In the few months since then, we've started building not only our stable of authors but also the number of sales. To say I've been pleasantly surprised is putting it mildly.

But it has been a lot of work. Not just for me but for everyone involved in the venture. There is a great deal that goes into not only starting up an e-press but in keeping it running. A big part of that is preparing the books and short stories for publication.

The quick version is a manuscript is submitted by an author and accepted or rejected by our editorial board. If it is accepted, it is assigned to an editor and that's when the process really begins. The editor will make suggestions and comments in Word -- yes, I know. I can hear the groans. It's not my favorite program, but it works and most folks have it -- and then they send the manuscript back to the author. The author then reviews the comments and suggestions and either accepts or rejects them. Then it's back to the editor. Sometimes, that is the end of this phase. But quite often, this process is repeated at least once more.

Once everyone is as satisfied as possible with the story or novel, it is sent to our tech guru to be translated into the different formats we sell. The first step is to translate the manuscript into HTML. Now, the easy way is to use the "save as" function in Word. The problem is that this leaves a lot of junk code, code that can cause problems later as the file is converted into the different e-reader formats. So the techies use a text editor and, thankfully, they are much quicker at it than am I. From there, the manuscript is checked in a web browser to make sure the formatting looks right.

While all this is going on, our art director is working to get the best cover possible for not only our novels but the short stories as well. Even with e-books, covers matter. Once the cover has been decided on, the ISBN registered and the files ready for conversion into the proper format, then we're ready to make the e-book.

From there, it's an upload to the NRP site store where the e-book is immediately available for purchase and download. The lag time for Amazon and Barnes & Noble runs anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days. Smashwords can be up to a week or more -- and that is if there is no problem with formatting. They have their own rules and require different fly page text from every other outlet we use. Google books can be even slower. To upload directly to the iBookstore, you have to have a Mac with very specific specifications.

It is important to note that all of the outlets listed above require specific formats to be uploaded for their own "conversion" process prior to sale. None, require a PDF file.

This is important, and goes to the heart of the POD question raised in response to Kate's post Thursday, because most -- if not all -- POD outlets require you to submit your book as a PDF. What that means is that you have to upload your "book" in ready to print format.

That's a very different format than what is put together for e-books. Because of the differences in e-readers and programs, you don't put in headers or page numbers. You don't use fancy fonts and you keep the formatting to a minimum. You don't have to worry about page bleed or margins. Basically, if it looks good in html, it will look good as an e-book -- at least in theory.

To set up a book for hard copy publication, you have to worry about all of that. Layout is very important. Sure, you can set it up in Word or Open Office and save as a PDF. But there are problems in that. There are some wonderful programs that allow you to make "proper" PDF files for publication. Some even allow for easy -- again, in theory -- translation to e-books. These are not cheap, however. And, as anyone knows who has tried to translate a PDF file to MOBI or EPUB, there isn't a seamless translation.

Now, what that means for NRP is that we will do print editions of our books one day. But not in the immediate future. We'd rather put out the best e-books we can, both in the quality of writing but also in the quality of presentation, than to water down our efforts right now by expanding into print too quickly. However, that isn't to say we won't do print. If we see a big enough demand for a book, we will consider putting it out in hard copy. But that will be driven by demand.

As a lover of "real" books, I look forward to the day when NRP is in the position to start putting out hard copies of some of our titles. As a reader of e-books, I love the fact we can bring out books that have been out of print (we'll be bringing out two of Tom Easton's books -- Firefight and The Great Flying Saucer Conspiracy -- this year) as well as introducing new authors to our readers.

So here's a question for you. What format do you prefer, paper or digital, and why?