Today is an “abbreviated” Friday Link Love because it has been a pretty hectic week – both on the writing front and at home. This also explains my only writing one post between last week’s Link Love and this week’s.

It has been a big week in ereader news. Amazon announced Kindle WiFi, selling for $139. There’s no doubt they are trying to compete with Barnes & Noble’s own Nook WiFi, which retails for $149. While the retailers continue their ereader price wars, the consumer wins. Lower priced ereaders will convert more people to ebooks.

There was a lot of other big news this week – too much to cover here. But I’ll be scrutinizing the big stories and writing posts on the one’s that I feel are the most important.

With that said, have a happy and safe weekend!

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I just finished reading the final novel in Stieg Larsson’s

Amazon made waves this week by claiming they sold 180 ebooks for every 100 hardcover books. A lot of people were skeptical of this claim (myself included). But publishers confirmed Amazon’s numbers.

While this isn’t the death knell for hardcovers, it gives ebooks another boost of credibility. And with ebook prices far below that of print books (at least for now), penny-pinching readers might be willing to forget how much they love the feel of a “real” print book.

That’s all I have for today. Keep on reading. Keep on writing. And as always, have a safe and happy weekend.

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Some of my most vivid and pleasant childhood memories are from the books I read. I can easily remember characters, plot details and even the setting of a lot of books.

I think this has a lot do with the brain being actively engaged in the reading, therefore being “burned” into your memory bank forever. Television, on the other hand, is a passive activity where the use of your own imagination is severely limited.

Music is also a lot like reading. I associate different phases of my life with the music I listened to at the time. For example, my college years are painted with the gritty music of the Grateful Dead.

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UPDATE 7/22/10: Publishers have responded to and confirmed Amazon’s claims that ebooks sales have been outpacing hardcover book sales. Publisher’s Confirm Amazon’s Ebook Sales Figures

In a recent press release, Amazon.com claims to have sold 180 ebooks for every 100 hardcover editions sold in the last month. As a self-described “ebook evangalist” I’m thrilled that ebooks are becoming a larger part of overall books sales. But I’m also skeptical of Amazon’s claims.

In the press release, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos puts these numbers into perspective:

“We’ve reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle–the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189,” said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “In addition, even while our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books–astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months.”

I have always maintained that print books are here to stay for a very long time, ebooks are also here to stay and not just another fad.

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I just started reading the third book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy series The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (aff link). I plowed through the first two novels of the series, as they were real page-turners. The third is a bit different. I’m not going to go into details yet, as I’m not even halfway through the novel. Once I finish, however, I’ll be posting a review here – so stay tuned.

That’s all I have for this week. As always, if you have any blog links related to ebooks, writing, books/literature or publishing, please feel free to send them to me to be included in Friday Link Love. Just remember that they need to be for the current week.

As always, have a safe and happy weekend.

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The biggest reason I hear people use for resisting ebooks is that they like real books. They like the feel of a real book when the hold it. They like turning the pages of a real book. They even like the smell of a real book.

All those reasons are very superficial.

Ebooks, just like printed books, are only the medium that the content reaches us. The story and characters do not change if you read a novel in ebook format as opposed to print. The only difference is that you’re reading on a screen rather than paper.

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I’ve always guessed that the main demographic for those who read ebooks would be the younger crowd. You know, those who are tech-savvy, have a lot of disposable income and like to have the latest and greatest of all the gadgets out there.

Well, I’m wrong. It appears that ebook readers are a little older, at least according to one article.

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The holiday weekend here in the U.S. (Fourth of July) really threw my week off. Today it feels like it should be Thursday, not Friday. This probably explains why I was a little short on posts this week.

Don’t forget, I’m always looking for great links for my Friday Link Love feature. If you have a post (whether your own or another post you’ve found) that you think would be great, send me the link! Remember to keep the links about ebooks, publishing, writing or books/literature. Links that are overly ‘sales-ish’ won’t be included. I look forward to seeing what you send.

That said, have a happy and safe weekend.

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I have read enough novels and short stories over the years to be able to come up with a list of, what I believe, makes good fiction. The list I compiled has only 3 items on it, and you might be surprised by what I left out.

When I sat down to write this post, I wrote it specifically with the novel in mind. Short stories are an entirely different breed and require a slightly different way of analyzing them.

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