Similar Posts
Jon Ronson, mild-mannered pal of extremists
Take a guy who does humorous journalism, but not in the sneering sort of way, and send him out to find out more about extremists (KKK, Islamicists, etc.) and conspiracy theories (he didn’t really believe in the Bildeburgers…until he was followed), and what do you get?Well, you get British journalist Jon Ronson.
I just listened to a wonderful interview with him on Radio West.
Don’t miss it.
JB Speculates: eBooks, Book Contracts, Agents, and Libraries
I’ve looked in the crystal ball I hide under my desk and caught a glimpse of what ebooks will change in the next few years. Specifically I saw what will happen to:
- Book Contracts
- Literary Agents
- eBook Aggregators and Libraries
After showing me the vision, the ball thanked me for shopping at Walmart. Weird.
PRINT ONLY CONTRACTS
The only reason to have a print publisher is to get distribution you cannot obtain on your own, or to get it more cheaply than it would cost you if you tried to get it on your own. That’s it. Now, it’s true publishers have excellent art departments and story editors. But you can contract out cover art, copy editing, formatting, and even story editing yourself.
Distribution is the main thing publishers offer that you can’t get anywhere else.
BTW, when I’m talking about distribution, I’m talking mostly about getting the books out to places people can see and purchase them. For example, publishers can get your book into hundreds or thousands of books stores all at the same time–Barnes & Noble, Hastings, Walmart, Costco, indie book stores, airport book stores, grocery stores, drug stores, etc. Publishers can get you display in those stores so consumers see your book. One form of that are the racks and new book displays. Another is one that Scholastic does so well, i.e. displaying and selling titles in tens of thousands of classrooms with its book catalogs. A single author just can’t do that.
It’s also true publishers can convince some platform venues, that would never look at a self-pubbed author, to spotlight your book. For example, it’s unlikely a self-published author will be able to convince Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, which have huge platform for library book purchasers, to review a book. But publishers have no problem getting their stuff in there. Likewise, it’s often much easier for publishers to get endorsements from other authors or people with platform than it is for a single author. Of course, there are so many places that have some kind of platform, that publishers don’t have a lock on them all, e.g. Goodreads and Amazon reader reviews. But for the sake of simplicity, let’s just look at the distribution end.
Because 90% of book sales are still hardcopy, the only way to have HUGE sales numbers, right now, is through a print publisher. I’m talking about the numbers you see in the Publishers Weekly top selling books, where you have to sell at least 100k copies in hard back, 500k copies in mass market, to even make the list.
Publisher’s lock on this ability will erode. We can see signs of this in the USA Today Top 150 already. I consider this to be the most accurate picture of what truly is selling the most. Here’s why. And ebooks are starting to be the best selling format for a number of books. On that list, they add up sales of a title in all formats and then list the best-selling format. So when you see an (E) at the end of the listing, you know it’s selling more ebooks than any other format. E’s are starting to pop up all over and we’re still in the early adopter stage for ebooks and ereaders.
So what does this mean?
If I put on my author business slacks (why does it always have to be hats we change?), I’d be crazy to turn down a publisher that wanted to offer me monster distribution. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. You offer me $500k now, I’m taking the money and running all the way to the bank and then the $6.99 Indian all-you-can-eat buffet.
Of course, I’m not likely to get that kind of an offer. We new writers are more likely to get an offer for, what were Hines’ numbers? $6k – $12k? And for that the publisher will want all our ebook rights and will tie them up for years and years and years. And then they’ll try to give us a fraction of what we could get selling directly. Furthermore, they don’t provide such books the same push to garner platform spotlight. They don’t spend the money to give them the prime display in bookstores. This means the difference between what they bring to the table for us smaller authors and what we can do on our own is much less. And the ebook has narrowed that even further.
How much further? Well, how many books would you have to sell to make that advance of $6k – $12k? If you’re selling your books for $2.99 for the Kindle, you get about $2.00 a book. That means you’d have to sell 3k-6k copies of an ebook to earn as much as that average advance.
Do you think you can sell 3k – 6k copies of an ebook at $2.99?
Some authors will be able to do this. Some won’t. If you wanted to do that in three years, you’d have to sell about 150-350 books per month. For a more in depth comparison between traditional publishing and self-publshing ebooks, see Dean Smith’s blog on cash flow.
Maybe you don’t think you can make those numbers. But maybe you can. The point is that if you think you can, then you can make as much on your own as you can with a publisher. This means there is absolutely no financial reason on earth to take the publisher’s deal. None. Now, if you have non-financial reasons, that’s another thing, but when looking at dollars and cents, it’s fairly clear the publisher’s ability to put you into their distribution channels isn’t worth what it will cost you. Especially since the ebook is forever and may keep selling for years to come AND because the market for ebooks is still in the early adopter phase–it’s only going to grow massively over these next years.
But this doesn’t mean paper publishing is dead. It’s not. Nor will it be for some time. Just because SOME authors can make as much in the ebook market on their own as they can with a publisher through their distribution channels doesn’t mean all of them can. Furthermore, publishers with distribution have something to offer even those who successfully publish ebooks themselves.
Let’s say you have an ebook series that starts to sell well for you, 1,000 per month. That’s $2k per month, $24k per year. If a publisher wanted to buy the rights to that from me, they would have to pay me MORE than $70k as an advance. MORE. Because I can make that on my own in three years selling it myself. In fact, since ebooks are forever, I have to look at the present value of all of those years of sales. That income stream is going to be a LOT MORE than $70k, even if we think sales will taper off after five or six years.
How many big publishers are going to want to pay that?
Probably none. Or, at least, I suspect those deals will be few and far between. But there is money to be made in paper, even if that market is shrinking. There will be some smaller publishers who, for the right price, will offer paper distribution. And if they can get me distribution that I couldn’t get myself for paper, or do it at a lower cost, then I’d want to sell them paper rights. Why not?
And so what I see in the crystal ball are some authors, the ones who do well selling ebooks, being able to sign contracts with publishers that sell paper rights only. I know the big publishers probably won’t go for that in the near term, but smaller publishers will see the value and step up to the plate.
AGENTS
What about agents? Are they going to die?
I think if we remember that literary agents are SALES agents, then their future becomes clear. The only reason to get a sales agent is because doing so makes my property worth more (same reason for getting a publisher, btw). If, by letting them focus on sales and letting me focus on getting more product out the door, I make more money than I would if I tried to do BOTH the selling and the producing, then I want an agent.
I want to sell as many rights as I can to as many people as possible–gaming, film, audio, foreign, merchandise, etc. I’d be a fool to say, well, no, I’ve got this little ebook gig going. I’m not going to sell any of these many other rights to anybody. No, I’m just going to let them sit in my basket and earn me nothing. Let them go to waste.
!?
A good agent should be able to sell more than I could on my own because they have a better ability to reach AND close editors AND other people that are in the market for purchasing rights to my property. They’ll also allow me to sell more because all the time I would have spent selling, I can now use to create more product. So not only do I have more books, and therefore rights, to sell, I can hopefully sell them for a better price and terms than I could on my own.
I’d be a fool not to increase my revenue. I’d be a fool not to have a good agent.
So as long as there are people who want to purchase these non-ebook rights, and an agent can make a sale I couldn’t or can make it for less than what it would cost me to do it on my own, then agents will be useful. Because of this, because we’ll always have more than ebook rights to sell, I don’t see a role for good agents ever going away.
EBOOK AGGREGATORS & LIBRARIES
When more and more people begin reading ebooks what happens to the libraries?
Ebooks cost less. So a lower price per book would simply allow libraries to purchase more books and expand the collection. But wait, they don’t need rooms and rooms to hold all the paper. You can store the world’s library in one computer room. Shoot, this means that housing the collection on a server instead of on the shelves would cost less. This would allow for an even bigger collection. But why maintain a server and manage your own collection if you can network to the collection down the road?
In fact, what if there were a mega service with millions of titles you could subscribe to? That would be even cheaper. Then you wouldn’t have to pay book purchasing agents or IT folks to keep your server running.
Enter the ebook aggregators–the Netflixes of ebooks (I know somebody somewhere is working on this business plan; is it you?)
I’m betting the whole library system goes national. I’m betting you’ll have some government aggregators, but they’ll probably be dwarfed by the private companies. You’d subscribe to the aggregator’s service just as you do Netflix today and many university libraries currently subscribe to electronic periodical collections.
The aggregators will probably charge users as Netflix does for a certain number of books checked out at the same time. If a large entity like a library wanted to subscribe, I bet the aggregator would charge access to the collection based on number of users at the library. The library would pass some of that fee onto patrons. The rest of the fee would be paid by the community’s tax dollars, just as those tax dollars pay for the current collections. You might even have device manufacturers coupling subscriptions with purchase of the product as incentives to buy their devices.
When the aggregators step in, we suddenly end up with a different mix of distribution channels that will coexist:
- Author –> ebook retailer (Amazon Kindle, B&N Nook, etc.) –> reader
- Author –> subscription aggregator –> reader
- Author –> subscription aggregator –> public and school libraries –> reader
- Author –> publisher –> subscription aggregator –> then option 2 or 3 above
- Author –> publisher –> current distribution channels
Surprised by #5? Well, the current distribution channels are not going away until every book can be read on an ereader and everyone who reads has and wants to read on such a device. That’s going to take some time, if it happens at all.
Why would readers buy individual titles ala distribution channel 1 above? Some people just want to own. Other readers will be happy to purchase the books because they don’t want to wait for a checkout slot to open up, e.g. I already have my allotted number of books checked out and I really want this one on hand all the time because it’s Suzie’s favorite. Other readers will want to customize a book with highlights, margin notes, links, etc. just as many of us like to mark up paper texts. We’ll need our own copy for that. Still, I think the bulk of reading will move to the subscriptions. For example, right now I purchase DVDs I love, even though I can get them from Netflix. But the number of DVD’s I own are a fraction of those I watch. Most TV and film I watch once and it goes back to Netflix until I want to see it again. And this checking out becomes even easier where there’s nothing physical to send through the mail.
Please note: there will probably be some form of gatekeeping with the aggregators. I doubt they will carry every scrap of anything ever written. They’ll carry a lot of stuff, but not every written word. Furthermore, when you have hundreds of thousands of titles, you’ll need mechanisms for helping your subscribers find great content suited to their tastes. A lot of “people who read this read that,” review services, etc.–the next generation of Netflix recommendations, Goodreads reviews, and Pandora like tools.
Aggregators won’t be the only gatekeepers, however. The key is in getting notice. And there will be many places with platform that will be able to shine a spotlight on a book. Think about all the places you find out about movies today—radio movie programs, TV movie reviews, Rotten Tomatoes, Newspaper Reviews, Yahoo viewer and critic review summaries, Kids-in-mind, and on and on. Look at all the ways you find music. There will be just as many ways to find books.
As far as paying authors, I suspect aggregators will pay authors each time a book is checked out, or, if it’s a must-have name author, they will pay to list the title plus a per use payment.
So that’s the future I saw in my strange little ball. Feel free to comment or add your own thoughts.
Black Hawk Down, Pete Blaber, Not Waving But Drowning
A Ferocious Battle
I just finished reading Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden. It is the most gripping account of any battle I have ever read.In 1992 a Somali warlord attacked and killed U.N. peacekeeping forces. As a result, the US put a $25,000 bounty on his head and attempted to arrest and try him for war crimes. On October 3, 1993, by the order of President Bill Clinton, a force of United States Army Rangers and Delta Force operators, the Army’s most elite warriors, set out to capture several lieutenants of the warlord’s militia in an area of the Somali capital city of Mogadishu that was controlled by the warlord.
The force of about a hundred U.S. soldiers helicoptered in during broad daylight. They roped down to the streets surrounding the target building. It was supposed to take them no more than an hour. They would bag the warlord’s lieutenants, put them on a convoy of Army trucks that had barreled into the city and were waiting right around the corner, and get out.
But the citizenry, loyal to the warlord, weren’t going to take it lying down. They began to swarm with guns and rocket propelled grenades. They attacked, almost heedless of the danger. One Somali with an AK-47 rode a cow out in a strange charge, a number of other Somali’s taking cover behind (yeah, he and the cow died). But the Americans were overconfident of their Black Hawk helicopters. They didn’t think the types of weapons the Somalis had could bring them down.
One chopper was hit and crashed. Then another. A third and then a fourth were damaged and barely made it back to safety before they crash landed. As for the Rangers and D-boys, they were in for the fight of their life.
The book tells the story of their courage, but it also brings in the point of view of a number of actual Somalis who fought and were injured. In the process, we get a view of the battle that is both thrilling and poignant.
Bowden did an excellent job researching and writing this. I could not put it down. It does include some military grade profanity, but it wasn’t there to titillate or shock. I’ve talked to those who saw the movie based on this book, and I could tell the book is, per usual, better than the movie. If you’re at all interested in the military and the military operations we conduct overseas, let me recommend that you read this book.
Delta Force Commander Shares Insights
Delta Force is the world’s most elite counterterrorist fighting force. Pete Blaber was a Delta Force operator that worked his way up to become a Delta Force commander and took part in some of the most dangerous, controversial, and significant military and political events of our time.During his time in uniform, he learned a number of lessons about life, about how we make decisions and act on them. In The Mission, The Men, and Me, Blaber writes about a number of the missions he conducted and the lessons he learned from them.
The missions were conducted in Montana, Iraq, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. One featured a commander stupidly ordering Blaber to take his men into sure destruction. Another featured some of the first plans to capture Osama Bin Laden, before 9/11. Another included a man in a gorilla suit.
The lessons Blaber draws from these experiences are fascinating and apply to more than military operations. For example, the lesson he drew from the operation featuring the gorilla suit is something I use every day with my writing. Anyone who leads or manages or works in groups will find other critical lessons. This was another book I couldn’t put down. Anyone interested in special forces will love this book.
Not Waving But Drowning
“Not Waving but Drowning” is a poem by female British poet Stevie Smith. It was published in 1957 as part of a collection with the same title. The work is her most famous poem and describes a man whose distressed thrashing in the sea causes onlookers to believe that he is waving to them, not drowning
I hadn’t thought about this poem since I was a student at BYU. Then a local poet read it as part of his remarks at a conference I recently attended. The image and message lingered with me for hours. I thought about it off and on over the following weeks. This is, for me, an incredibly powerful poem. It needs to be read aloud, I think, to be appreciated. Not in some silly way, but with the appropriate feeling. I’m going to record a reading for my website, but you can read it aloud for yourself. Or have someone else do it for you. Then read it again.
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.How often does this happen? Those onlookers, caring only superficially, thinking it was too cold, thinking he was funning. But it wasn’t too cold. And his heart didn’t give out. He was struggling for his life, and they were too preoccupied to see it.
Too preoccupied to really see.
I wonder. Is there someone around me, that if I just looked, just paused from my rush, I’d see they were much too far out, and not waving, but drowning.
My Most Favorite Movies of the Decade: 2000 – 2009
I was bummed after seeing Clash of the Titans because the movie just didn’t work for me (although Medusa was cool). It was a total thumbs down. After expressing my disappointment, my wife said it seemed I never liked any movie we saw in a theater. To defend myself against this heinous accusation I shall list all my favorite movies of the last decade. My only question is: where are all the love stories? I haven’t seen a great love story since Sabrina and Far and Away.
Of course, I haven’t had time to see all the movies made in the last ten years. So if you have some favorites not listed here, post them.
Top 10 Movies: 2000 – 2009
10. A Beautiful Mind (2001, PG-13)
John Forbes Nash, a mathematician, thinks he’s broken the code for a terrible Soviet conspiracy plot, but the real truth turns his world upside down. It’s full of mystery, suspense, and love. Russell Crowe gives a brilliant performance as Nash. Furthermore, the film is based on the the true story of John Forbes Nash, Jr., a Nobel Laureate in Economics.
9. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003, PG-13)
Swashbuckling adventure, a curse, and lots of humor. Probably the best pirate movie ever made. The next two movies fell flat for me, but this one was simply amazing.
8. Gladiator (2000, R)
Another Russell Crowe film. A corrupt prince betrays a Roman general and murders his family. They general is captured and made a slave to fight as a Gladiator. I was so drawn into the story that at one point in the movie theater I had to restrain myself from shouting out at a suspenseful moment.
7. The Last Samurai (2003, R)
Nathan Algren, a former US soldier in America’s west, drowns his regrets in alcohol. He becomes a military advisor in Japan, but is captured by the enemy. He learns from the enemy samurai, but does he become a new, better man? This one has Tom Cruise in it. I enjoyed it immensely.
6. We Were Soldiers (2002, R)
From the IMDB: “In a place soon to be known as The Valley of Death, in a small clearing called landing zone X-Ray, Lt. Colonel Hal Moore and 400 young fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, all troopers from an elite American combat division, were surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. The ensuing battle was one of the most savage in U.S. history. We Were Soldiers Once And Young is a tribute to the nobility of those men under fire, their common acts of uncommon valor, and their loyalty to and love for one another. The story of the first major battle of the American phase of the Vietnam War and the soldiers on both sides that fought it.” This is an incredible story. Mel Gibson and the others give an outstanding performance. I wept at their courage.
5. Spiderman-2 (2004, PG-13)
The first Spiderman stank. Sorry. It stank because the villain was too cartoonish. The third one stank as well. This one, however, oh baby. Peter Parker’s personal life is falling apart, he’s losing the one thing in life that would make him happy (yes, a girl). Furthermore, he begins to lose his powers just as he has to battle a brilliant scientist named Doctor Otto Octavius, who becomes Doctor Octopus (aka Doc Ock), after an accident causes him to bond psychically with mechanical tentacles that do his bidding. Loved this. Drama, gosh wow super-heroism, and a heart.
4. Ice Age (2002, G)
Another hilarious animated tale with heart. Set during the Ice Age, a saber tooth tiger, a sloth, and a wooly mammoth find a lost human infant and try to return him to his tribe. Of course, the saber tooth tiger was sent to lead the others into a trap. Sid the sloth is one of the best characters to come along in a long time. You’ll love this show. Again, another show I can watch over and over again.
3. The Emperor’s New Groove (2000, G)
I saw the previews to this and thought D-U-M-B. But it is one of the best films ever. Animated. Hilarious. Emperor Kuzco’s ex-administrator Yzma wants to kill him and rule. She turns him into a llama instead, and her not too bright side-kick doesn’t quite finish him off. Now the selfish emperor is on the run and needs to regain his throne. But the only person who can help him is the guy whose home he’s going to bulldoze. But that doesn’t capture the half of it. The characters are wonderful. Me and the kids watch this three or four times a year and still don’t tire of it.
2. The Incredibles (2004, PG)
A family of undercover superheroes tries to live a normal suburban life but is forced into action to save the world. This is Pixar’s best film. Every one of these characters is interesting. The family dynamics are real and often hilarious. There’s suspense, drama, and gosh-wow. Imagine James Bond as a family man. I LOVE this movie.
1. The Lord of the Rings trilogy: Lord of the Rings (2001, PG-13), The Two Towers (2002, PG-13), The Return of the King (2003, PG-13)
For those readers who aren’t familiar with this, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is one of the most popular series written in the last 50 years. His three books spawned a whole new genre. It is, in fact, the genre I currently write in. Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh did an amazing job bringing the beloved epic fantasy to the screen. There’s heroism, suspense, and wonder galore. These movies transport you to another world, immerse you in it, and leave you wanting more.
Runners Up
Casino Royale (2006, PG-13)
I gave up on James Bond years ago. This is Bond like you’ve never seen him. Loved this. The next Bond, The Quantum of Solace, fell totally on its face. But Casino Royale is the real deal–action, spy, and poignant love story all wrapped up in one.
Luther (2003, PG-13)
The story of the early 16th century German monk Martin Luther who, sick of Church materialism, begins the Protestant Reformation. I knew very little about Luther. This movie was an eye-opener.
Matchstick Men (2003, PG-13)
Nicolas Cage is a phobic con man who learns he has a teenage daughter. He plans another con, but things start to fall apart. In the end, well, let’s just say it was a heart-breaking, then absolutely satisfying.
Seabiscuit (2003, PG-13)
Based on the true story of the undersized Depression-era racehorse whose victories lifted the spirits of the nation. This story is full of heartbreak and redemption. About not giving up on broken things. Loved it.
Slumdog Millionaire (2008, R)
A Mumbai teen who grew up in the slums, becomes a contestant on the Indian version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” He is arrested under suspicion of cheating, and while being interrogated, events from his life history are shown which explain why he knows the answers.
Walk the Line (2005, PG-13)
This tells the story of country music legend Johnny Cash. It starts from his early days on an Arkansas cotton farm to his rise to fame with Sun Records in Memphis. It shows how he fell to drugs, and how he climbed back out again. Marvelous performances and story.
A Better Way to Rate Movies
Life is too short to waste it on movies that offend instead of uplift.
I have found over the years that the MPAA movie ratings are lousy at helping me avoid dreck. They’re okay as a rough guide, but they don’t give me enough information to make a good choice. Furthermore, the MPAA often rates a movie mature for elements I don’t find offensive and not for others I do. Luckily, there are other places that rate movies. The one that I’ve found most helpful is KidsInMind.com.
The folks there give movies separate ratings on three things: sex/nudity, violence/gore, and profanity. But they don’t just present some mysterious number. They also list exactly what’s in the movie. What this does is give you the information you need to make a wise decision. By looking at movies that made me uncomfortable in each of those three areas and comparing scores, I soon pegged my acceptable KidsInMind levels.
KidsInMind doesn’t tell me anything about the quality of the story or movie-making. But I can look at other reviews for that kind of stuff. What it does well is help me avoid movies with content I know I will find objectionable. Of course, I still look at the MPAA rating, but before I go see a movie or order it on Netflix, I check the KidsInMind ratings. It’s not perfect, but in almost every case it works like a charm. The only downside to the site is its five gazillion popup ads. But it’s a small price to pay for good information.
Author Interview: David Farland
David Farland has been a big influence on me. It was his workshop back in the 90’s that actually made me think I could write professionally and led directly to my first publication as a Writers of the Future winner. Later Dave gave me comments on my first novel which helped me write a second, much better one that attracted Tor Books. And it was Dave who showed me the ropes on my first ever author tour.But long before all that, Dave was a writer whose work I loved. I read ON MY WAY TO PARADISE when it first came out and enjoyed the heck out of it. SERPENT CATCH and PATH OF THE HERO were next. I gobbeled them up too. Then came the THE GOLDEN QUEEN. By the way, SERPENT CATCH and THE GOLDEN QUEEN are two of my favorite novels. Now, all of those were written under Dave’s given name–Dave Wolverton. When he switched over to fantasy he used the Farland pseudonym. His first Farland book was RUNELORDS. Folks, RUNELORDS is, in my opinion, one of the top 10 epic fantasies ever written. Ever.
Of course, Dave has written many other novels and was involved with some Hollywood producers. Now he’s doing something new. He’s started his own publishing company–East India Press–and is releasing the first of his enhanced books through it. Enhanced meaning far more than a book in print or electronic form–there’s also a soundtrack and art. NIGHTINGALE is that book. I asked him to share with my readers a bit more about it. Here’s his reply.
*
JOHN: Tell us about how you came up with the idea for Nightingale?
DAVE: Years ago, in the late 1980s or early 1990s, I read a book by a doctor who had worked for the CIA, experimenting with drugs that would erase both long- and short-term memories. It was fascinating work, and he eventually won the Nobel Prize for it. So I became interested in memory transfer.
Later on, one Christmas, I got to thinking about the three “Wise Men” from the bible. Normally, a “wise man” is called a wizard. A “maji” is called a magician. Why was it that the writers of the bible were using double-speak when discussing these guys? Weren’t they astrologers? Doesn’t the Old Testament condemn these folks to death?
So I went back to the Hebrew and found out that indeed these three gentlemen were in the same class of magicians that the Old Testament condemned to death, the m’khashepah—which originally referred to a class of magicians that hung around royal courts. Of them the bible says, “Thou shalt not suffer a m’khashepah to live.”
So the thought occurred to me, “What if they weren’t just coming to give Jesus gifts? What if they really had come to be . . . advisors. What if they wanted to give him wisdom?”
That started a whole train of thought dealing with memory transfer—transfer of memories, the possibility of training reflexes, transfer of memories on a cellular level, and so on—which led to the creation of my magic system.
The questions arose, what would people do with such power?
And of course from that a novel was born.
Nightingale tells the story of a young man named Bron Jones, who is abandoned at birth. Raised in foster care, he’s shuffled from home to home. At age 16, he’s kind of the ultimate loner, until he’s sent to a new foster home and meets Olivia, a marvelous teacher, who recognizes that Bron is something special, something that her people call a “Nightingale,” a creature that is not quite human.
Suddenly epic forces combine to claim Bron, and he must fight to keep from getting ripped away from the only home, family, and girlfriend that he has ever known. He must risk his life to learn the answers to the mysteries of his birth: “What am I? Where did I come from? Who am I?”
This is a big project, an enhanced novel with illustrations and animations from half a dozen talented illustrators. It has a sound track by the head of the National Composer’s Guild, James Guymon, with a dozen professional musicians and vocalists. We’re releasing the novel in several formats, as an enhanced novel, a normal e-book, an audiobook, and as a hardcover.
But we did one last cool thing. The enhanced book was designed for the iPad, though you will also be able to read it on just about any other pad or smartphone. But we had our programmers create a web app so that you can enjoy the book on your computer—read a few chapters, take it for a test drive, or simply buy it for reading online. You’re free to go check out the results at www.nightingalenovel.com. If you like it, remember to “Like” us on Facebook. Better yet, re-post our site info and tell your friends on Facebook.
Oh, and while you’re there, check out our short-story contest, where you can win $1000.
*
John sez: I’m very excited to see where this goes. I’ve loved Dave’s stories for a long time. And the premise of this book sounds great. Samples are available at: www.nightingalenovel.com
Good Stuff: Why We Get Fat
What if everything you know about fat, cholesterol, and diet is pretty much wrong?
What if you found out that the science behind the good old food pyramid is, well, not really there?
We’ve been told that a healthy diet consists of lots of grains, bagels, bread, pasta, cereals, rice, etc. and very little fat. What if it’s actually the reverse?
If it is, then it might explain why the rates of diabetes and obesity began to skyrocket as the nation started to implement a low fat high carb diet.
I remember having gained about fifteen pounds when I was first married. I decided I would go on a diet. I read up on the low fat high carb diet and followed it strictly. Two weeks later, I had gained ten more pounds. Did I, at the time, look at the diet and think that maybe there was something wrong with it?
No. That would have been too intelligent.
Instead, I figured something must be wrong with me and continued to try to “eat healthy.” What’s that definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? Call me insane. Or slow. Or too trusting of authority.
It appears that the science of nutrition got hijacked. Government policy then ran away with it. It’s a fascinating and cautionary tale. Let me recommend three books that explain what really causes us to deposit fat and how we got off track.
The first is Why We Get Fat by science writer Gary Taubes. In it he reveals the bad nutritional science of the last century, why the good science was ignored, what really causes us to store fat, and what to do about it.
The next is The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung. Fung is a kidney specialist. Obesity and diabetes are the root of many kidney problems. And so he decided to help his patients by strop treating symptoms and get at the root cause. Fung’s gift is clarity. He explains how obesity and diabetes became an epidemic, the errors in how we think about calories and diet, and then he explains in great clarity the new model of what really causes obesity and how to reverse it.
The last is The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet by investigative journalist Nina Teicholz. She spent nine years investigating this, and the book reveals how the misinformation about saturated fats took hold in the scientific community, government, and the public and how recent findings overturn these beliefs. It’s a startling history, a cautionary tale showing how ego, bias, and premature institutional consensus allowed dangerous misrepresentations to become dietary dogma.
If you’re dealing with obesity, heart disease, or diabetes, I think you’ll find these books very interesting.
