dmatkins

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I know, I have been absent from fandom since March 4 when our scumbag now-ex-landlord gave us notice. The house sold. The new owners are nice and reasonable people. They have given us the extra time we needed to find a new place and pack our very large household. We are packing and still packing.

This week's good news was that we finally signed a new lease on a house and will be moving on the 16th. That gives us a week to finish packing here. Then the clean up. Then the unpacking at the new place. All things considered, I will probably be missing from online communities for another month.

I miss you all.

Wow, you folks rock! I have temporarily sold out of copies of Faewolf. I have ordered another batch from the publisher. I'll let folks know when I get them!

In the meantime, you can still get ebook copies at several different sites. You can see reviews and links to places to purchase the book at: http://www.dmatkins.net/wordpress/?page_id=233

These are samples of work by artist MirAngel, who has volutneered to donate the money for painting or drawing commissions toward the fundraiser for buying our house.

See her profile on DeviantArt: http://mirangel.deviantart.com/

Down the page is information about commissions. Click on her Gallery to see the range of art she can do.

She does both original and fan art. Just talk to her about what you want and let her know that it's to benefit "The Rabbits" as my family is nicknamed.

Meanthile, thanks to everyone who has ordered books and sent donations. We're working hard to pull this together. It would be wonderful to not be uprooted again and finally have our own place.

Since Faewolf is an ebook, it has got me thinking a lot about the barriers that I have had to buying ebooks.

My first objection was readability. That is becoming less and less of an option, especially given how much reading folks do online already and how much better the technology is now. For Faewolf, I think Circlet Press has done an excellent job in their formatting and in making sure it is available in lots of different types of files. The new reading devices that are coming out are amazing in their quality so that they look more and more like reading on paper. (I have friends who have Sony and Kindle devices.)

My second objection was durability. I am very used to having a book to hold in my hands. And I still like that. On the other hand, ebooks make up for that in a number of ways. The files are permanent, you can keep them and store them on your computer or other device. They take up less space and are easier to move. Our last move was a nightmare. We have over twenty large bookcases full of books. I am actually looking at getting some of those books in digital form so we can have more room in our house. As digital space becomes less expensive and physical space more expensive, this is an attractive feature.

I am also finding ebooks might help with access issues for me. My fibromyalgia means it can be difficult and painful to hold a large book, especially in hardcover, when I read. There are also new adaptive technologies that allow things like voice commands or even voice reading. For example, the Kindle has both large type and voice reader options.

My third concern was value. Like most people, I want to stretch my money to cover as much as possible. Yet, most ebooks are priced less than a paperback. Even with discounts, the traditional hardback release is usually five times as much money as a new ebook. Ebooks are immediately downloadable and you don't have to pay for shipping. Even when you find a cheap used paperback online, you have to pay to ship it.

Faewolf, along with most ebooks, costs less than it costs to go to see a movie. When you go to the theatre, you don't even get to re-watch the movie. And DVDs usually cost more than ebooks. My family are big movie fans. For one movie, we will spend the cost of taking all of us (4-5 adults) plus soda, candy and popcorn to the show. Then if we like the movie, we buy the DVD when it comes out. That means we probably spend at least $50 on a film, sometimes more. An ebook costs less than taking one person to a film!

My biggest problem with ebooks so far is portability. But only because the portable reading devices are still too expensive. If my family is to realistically switch over to buying more ebooks, we will need a reading device for each of us. The ebook devices we like so far are all several hundred dollars. There are five adults and one teenager in our house. That's a lot of money to equip us. We probably won't be able to do it until they are under $100 each. In the meantime, we use our laptops. I like to read in bed, and I find it possible, but more awkward, to read in bed with a laptop. It gets heavy and hot. And I want the book that can slip into my bag or pocket. In my family, we never go anywhere without a book. It can be odd but fun to see us all sitting there during a lull on outings, reading our books.

The move to ebooks has a lot to recommend it and I will be doing more with them. I like the growing diversity of choices for reading and I want to support it. As a writer, I like the potential to develop new literature and give more creative control to authors. As a reader, I like that it will give me more books to read.

For those who have (or haven't) been following the Amazon Fail about their blatant censorship not only of "erotic" titles but all LGBT ones, I am chiming in to add that all three of my in print LGBT non-fiction titles are among those stripped of their rankings.

Fail.

More information: Who moved my rank? Sales rank purged from Amazon

For those who don't understand why this matters. This will drastically hurt sales of the books that are marked this way. It means they will not come up in some of the searches, etc. Many sales on Amazon are from people buying books "like" the other ones they ordered. For more information see: Why do Amazon Ranks matter.