The nation’s largest bookseller introduced a long-anticipated new ereader to the market today called the Nookcolor. Rumors have been buzzing around the internet after B&N announced they were going to have a press event today. According to Barnes & Noble’s website, the Nookcolor sports the following features:

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I’ve been buying and reading a lot of ebooks lately. And I’ve been noticing a disturbing trend – ebook prices appear to be rising. When I first started buying ebooks after I purchased my 1st generation Sony Reader, prices were steady at $9.99 or less. It stayed that way for a while.

A few weeks ago, however, I was browsing for something to read and I realized that a lot of ebooks are now priced at $12.99. For example, Jonathan Franzen’s new book, Freedom: A Novel (aff link), is $12.99 on the Sony ebookstore, Barnes & Noble and Amazon. This is only one example. If you look at the bestseller lists at the various ebookstores, the average price appears to be above $9.99.

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How nice would it be to spend all your time traveling around buying used books and then selling them again on Amazon? You’d get to keep your finger on the pulse of literature, knowing what’s selling and for how much. The lifestyle isn’t easy, as the profit margin on used books can be very slim.

I’ve sold some of my old books on Amazon Marketplace. I think most books only brought in a few extra bucks – not even close to being able to make a living.

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I’m always on the lookout for good authors that I believe are greatly underappreciated. Timothy Frost is one of those authors. I previously read his novel Final Passage (aff link) earlier this year – which I gave a rave review. The cool part was, I picked the book on a whim to read on my iPhone whenever I had a few moments to spare. I couldn’t put the book down.

So when I found out that Timothy Frost had released The Abigail Affair (aff link), I jumped at the opportunity to read it. Only this time I downloaded it to my Sony Pocket eReader.

This novel is escapist reading at its best. The plot is full of twists and turns and plenty of adventure. It’s one of my favorite types of novels – a page turner.

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In yet another sign that self-publishing is gaining legitimacy among the book crowd, both Borders and Barnes & Noble have launched their own self-publishing programs. No doubt part of it is strategic: Too compete with the ebook giant Amazon and with Smashwords, the latter lets authors publish their works as ebook in multiple formats.

Borders, who got into the ebook business late, is partnering with BookBrewer to offer self-published ebooks on their online ebookstore. Here’s an excerpt from BookBrewer’s press release:

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No, we’re not talking about a dating service for Kindle owners (ouch, I know, bad joke). Amazon announced today that they will be offering works that are between 10,000 to 30,000 words to Kindle owners. Here’s an excerpt from their press release:

Today, Amazon is announcing that it will launch “Kindle Singles”–Kindle books that are twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book. Kindle Singles will have their own section in the Kindle Store and be priced much less than a typical book. Today’s announcement is a call to serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to join Amazon in making such works available to readers around the world.

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The popularity of ebooks is rising, and so is the concern about ebook piracy. This in part explains why publishers have been treading cautiously in the ebook trade. They demand stringent DRM, the use of proprietary formats and a pricing model similar to print books.

But how big of a threat is ebook piracy? I’m not naive, so I know that piracy takes place, although I am skeptical of how big of a problem it really is.

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The other day I was at Target shopping for some basic items. In the kids section I came across a device I’ve seen in commercials. It’s called the V.Reader (aff link). The V.Reader allows kids to learn to read while enjoying entertaining music and animation. In other words, it makes learning to read fun for kids.

Some might say this is cheating kids into reading. Times have changed.

When I was growing up, I learned to read the traditional way – with a printed book and lots of practice. No fancy animation. No catchy childrens songs. But as a kid, I also didn’t have computers, video games and on-demand movies competing for my attention. This all makes sitting down to read a book seem downright boring.

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During the last month, when most of my attention has been devoted to my newborn son, I still have had a chance to reflect on the different parts of my blog that have been gnawing at me for a while. One of those parts is the weekly Friday Link Love feature.

After much contemplation, I decided to suspend Friday Link Love indefinitely. My reasons are simple. Organizing the Link Love feature is quite time consuming and it doesn’t provide the jump in site traffic that I expect from a weekly feature. Also, I’ve been feeling like I’ve been linking to the same sites and same blogs over and over again. It’s getting stale.

My plan is to use the time I’d normally dedicated to Friday Link Love to writing more, high quality blog posts. So you should see the frequency of my blog posts pick up soon.

That said, you might see Friday Link Love come back in the future. You’ll just have to come back and see.

Have a happy and safe weekend!

Have you ever bought something and then immediately regretted it? This usually happens with more expensive purchases. I know this happens to me quite frequently with electronics. It’s called buyer’s remorse.

But what about writer’s remorse? What is it? I’ll give you an example.

I just began a new short story. The idea for this story has been rattling around in my head for a while. Not only that, but I have been (and still am) really excited about this particular story.

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