People name their favorite ebook fonts.

Standard

So I asked folks on various social media sites this question:

If you read ebooks, do you have a font preference? What font do you change to?

Only two fonts received more than one vote.

Serif:
Georgia / / /
Caecilia / /
Dutch /
Times New Roman /
Droid Serif /

Sans Serif:
Futura /
Arial /
Century Gothic /
Lato /

That’s a pretty small sample size (all self-selected), but 7 8 – 4 serif over sans serif is a pretty strong preference. And, since Georgia comes already installed on my computer (while Caecilia costs $35 or whatever) I might as well publish upcoming books with that font as the default. People can always change it to ::shudders:: Futura if they want.

Anyway, I like Georgia. The serifs are a little heavy compared to something like Cambria, but the letters have a nice size to them, which my aging eyes appreciates.

UPDATE: I’m going to keep changing the votes as people weigh in.

Story Seeds

Standard

1) Job Listing: ‘$40K a Year to Attend Harvard University as Me’ (This is a real Craigs List ad mentioned in The Atlantic)

2) It’s rare for me to do this, but:

3) Everyone has done and redone A CHRISTMAS CAROL, but I don’t think anyone has done it found-footage style, like BLAIR WITCH. Give Scrooge Google Glass, and there you go.

4) “[X] IN SPACE!” Heart of Darkness in Space. The Grapes of Wrath in Space. On the Road in Space. Great Expectations in Space.

5) A young scribe is sent to the wizard-king’s kitchens to create a cookbook, and discovers a whole secret world of pantry-spells, strange inhuman suppliers, and possibly a plot against the throne. Actually, I don’t like the plot against the throne, thing. Better if the scribe is just really determined to made a fully-comprehensive codex, even with the most obscure and difficult recipes.

6) The Seven Habits of Highly Cheerful Reapers. It must suck to be so grim all the time. I envision a whole section of the bookstore devoted to helping Reapers be more upbeat and deal with stress.

7) Title: THE CHOSEN ONE WINS THE FIGHT

Both hilarious and important

Standard

Maybe other people are talking about this all over the web and I’m not seeing it, but LAST WEEK TONIGHT has been really great right from the first episode.

Net Neutrality is an incredibly important principle and Oliver drives that point home while being 100% hilarious. He really is great.

Vox.com has a series of their explainer cards laying out the subject, and I’ve been waiting for an excuse to post these two links:

Yes, Your Internet Is Getting Slower: Your provider likes it that way. And the government doesn’t care.

Why The Government Should Provide Internet Access.

But even if you don’t agree that the internet should be treated as a public utility, you should watch the video. It’s damn funny.

I’ve already shared my opinion with the FCC right here.

New Kickstarter update

Standard

Is here.

The manuscript for The Great Way (the entire trilogy) has been turned over to the copy editor, which is good news for me. I’m pleased to be working on something else for a while.

The update also includes a (very) rough schedule for Kickstarter rewards.

Anyway, I’ve been superbusy–so busy, in fact, that I can’t even keep up with my Twitter timeline when I open it during “down” moments.

Back to it.

Yesterday was a day off writing.

Standard

Usually, Saturdays are the biggest writing day of the week for me, but yesterday I had the day off. We celebrated my wife’s birthday, and I put aside all the usual stuff I’m supposed to be getting done so she does not have to cook, clean, or loiter around waiting for me or the boy to start doing what she wanted to do.

So I made her favorite breakfast, took a quick library run to pick up the books she had on hold, then went to Lincoln Park for a picnic, a game of Qwirkle, and some general hanging out.

After we returned home, we have Asian take-out, she blew out the candles (on her crustless sweet potato pie) and we played a game of Bohnanza.

She won Qwirkle by a wide margin, but I kick butt in Bohnanza. I keep telling my family that they should always trade if they can. Never try to hurt another player by denying yourself a trade, but they keep playing defensively.

Then, best of all, she went to bed super-early and slept hard for 10 hours.

It wasn’t exactly a tennis bracelet/fancy restaurant birthday, but she had greenery, sunshine, and family time, which are her very favorite things, so we’re calling it a win.

Oh, yeah: I got her a nice, wide-brimmed straw hat for summer sunshines and being a little dressy. She was pleased.

But that was yesterday. Today I’m struggling with Scrivener once again. In a few minutes, I’m going to say fuck it and watch some Person of Interest.

Help Fund My Robot Army Table of Contents

Standard

Remember when I said I’d be in an anthology with a bunch of great authors like Seanan McGuire, Tobias Buckell, Mary Robinette Kowal, and many more? Well, now you can see the whole Table of Contents here:

http://www.johnjosephadams.com/robot-army/table-of-contents/

Check it out, you guys. It’s pretty cool. Expected sale date: July 1, 2014

Randomness for 5/27

Standard

1) A comparison of Zulu and Filipino stick fighting. Video.

2) The Oatmeal on the wonderfulness of the Tesla Model S electric car.

3) Five Details They Cut From My Season Of The Biggest Loser. We all knew this show was complete shit, but it’s even worse than I thought.

4) What happens when engineers own dogs. Video.

5) The 10 Commandments of Typography.

6) San Francisco “real estate magnate” hides $100 bills around city and leaves clues to their location via twitter account.

7) “In my view, the parties do not need a judge; what they need is a rather stern kindergarten teacher” Spiteful upper-class twits drive each other wild.

Upcoming anthology appearances, with an awkward note

Standard

Let’s start with the good news. I’m going to be in two anthologies coming out this summer, both of them funded via Kickstarter: Help Fund My Robot Army & Other Improbably Kickstarters, and the shared world Walk The Fire, Vol 2. Don’t worry, no one is asking you to back a campaign, I promise. These projects were closed months ago.

Again, the books will be available some time this summer, and believe me I’ll post links to buy them when they’re out.

The complicated part is this: I’m glad both books are coming out and I’m pleased with the stories I sold them, even though both rejected my initial submissions.

The WALK THE FIRE antho is a shared-world deal, centering on a future where people can travel via special fires. That’s right, fire. You step into the flames in one place and emerge in another. It’s teleportation with a few complications added in.

Anyway, the first story I wrote, “A No Without A Thank You”, was basically a slam on Doctor Who, because I thought the fires allowed people to travel through time and space. The anthology bible even said “time and space” in one spot. Feedback from the editor insisted that I hadn’t followed the guidelines correctly, and I had to read the bible several times before I worked out that it was supposed to be “time and space” only. The guidelines as a whole only made sense if they were space-only. Oops.

At that point, with a rejected story, I could have withdrawn; I do have a shitload of work to do to fulfill my own Kickstarter. But! I’d also promoted the campaign to my readers and thought it would be unfair to them if I back out of the project now. So I set everything aside and wrote a second story, called “Sterile Oceans”, which was accepted. And I’m proud of that story. Plus, “A No Without…” is ready to go into the short fiction collection I listed as a stretch goal for my Kickstarter backers. So that’s all good.

HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY… brought up a similar situation, although the reasons behind it were different. That anthology is a collection of stories told in the format of a Kickstarter campaign–with a sales pitch, stretch goals, comments, the whole deal–and my original submission was a parody of the “Above the Game” campaign, (which I won’t link) that PUA manual that supposedly advocated sexual assault. My story was about a PUA who planned to sell (short-acting) love potions, and who insisted they were completely different from roofies.

It was dark, yeah, but the editor decided it was too dark and bounced it. Once again, I had a choice of disappointing backers or writing a second attempt. The followup story was accepted, and it’s fun (but deliberately slight) and technically, this also frees up the PUA/love potion story for my own story collection.

Except, now that this loser in UCSB (I’m not posting his name online) has had his rampage, I’m tempted to yank it all together. The original story was supposed to be darkly funny, but I’m not feeling it anymore.

Anyway, two new anthologies mean four new stories from me this summer (or maybe just three, who knows.) I’m also thinking I need to take a break from Kickstarter anthologies.

A note to my readers re: Amazon

Standard

I haven’t been online all that much (and shouldn’t be right now, either–I have books to finish) but apparently Amazon has stepped up its pressure on Hachette by yanking buy links for all their books. Beyond that, they’re also screwing with search results, messing with book categorizations, and pushing readers who want to buy Hachette books toward Hachette’s competitors. And the reason they can do this is you.

Now, if your response to all this is to say “Amazon is an independent company and they can legally do whatever best serves their interests,” let me assure you that I agree. They can legally do all these things, just as Wal-Mart can legally include information on sighing up for food stamps during their new employee orientations. There are a lot of things powerful people and corporations can do that are both legal and deeply, deeply shitty.

And why is Amazon doing this? Because Hachette won’t accept a new, lower rate on their ebooks.

But the thing is, this wouldn’t matter so much without you.

It’s the readers who give Amazon all this power. It’s people who click through Amazon links but never do for any other bookstore, and who impulse buy like crazy online but no where else.

Some years ago, I tried an experiment: For a full month, I wrote about books constantly and all the buy links I put in my posts went to indiebound. Not one person bought a book.

The next month, the only buy links I posted went to Mysterious Galaxy, a terrific store in San Diego that ships books just like any other seller. Not one person bought a book.

Which isn’t to say that no one clicked those links. They did. But those clicks didn’t translate into sales.

More recently, I posted links for the new paperback POD edition of Twenty Palaces. The link pointing to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The link to Amazon got more sales than the link to B&N got clicks. When I’m talking about sales ebook sales for the same book, B&N provide about a fifth what Amazon does, with all the rest in negligible numbers.

Now, this is what the general public has chosen. When people go looking to buy something online, they turn to Amazon. Hell, when I want to send a purchase request to my local library, I use the Amazon page to dig up the publication date and the ISBN.

But at this point it’s hurting authors. (Here’s the website listing Hachette’s authors, highlighting bestsellers, of course, but like most publishers they have a mob of midlisters.) Anyone could be next. Small presses are already being squeezed. Self-published authors have been so happy with their “70% royalties” (which is really a 30% sales commission for hosting/delivering a file and processing payments) but as soon as Wall St decides the company needs to start turning profits, I’ll bet that’s the first place they start to squeeze.

But this raises questions for me: Do I remove the links to Amazon for all my books, as other authors have done? Like Fred Hicks, I’ve already emptied my Amazon cart of the obscure crap I was planning to buy when The Great Way was finished.

What’s the point of doing all that, of linking to other book sellers large and small, if readers won’t buy from them, even for paper editions?

How to recognize when someone is drowning 2014

Standard

Summer is about to start, so it’s time to repost my annual warning for 2014:

How to recognize when someone is drowning.

It’s not what you think. Before you take your kids or loved ones into the water, read this article.