The holidays are upon us again and that means there are great deals to be found. And with eReaders skyrocketing in popularity, they are going to be one of the more top selling gifts this year.

That said, great deals and steals are already starting to leak out from large retailers.

Here’s a rundown:

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Note: Read my follow-up posts Public Domain Invoked Incorrectly in Cooks Source Case and Update: Cooks Source ‘Probably’ Shutting Down’.

Here’s a good way to earn the wrath of the internet community: Steal someone’s article, publish it on your website, and when author complains, tell her that she should be paying you.

This is what happened to blogger Monica Guadio when she discovered that Cooks Source Magazine lifted an article she wrote several years ago about apple pie. When Guadio complained to Cooks Source editor Judith Griggs, she got this response:

But honestly Monica, the web is considered

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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It has been over a week since I’ve turned my computer on. But it’s good news. On Saturday August 28 my wife and I welcomed our first baby into the world. We weren’t expecting him to be born for another week, so it was a pleasant surprise to have him born early – the excitement and anticipation was killing us.

That said, it has been a little slow on Brad’s Reader. The last week has been very hectic as we are adjusting to a very different schedule filled with midnight feedings/diaper changes, doctor’s appointments and generally trying to get used to have another person in our lives.

Things are slowly turning back to normal. I’m hoping to get at least one post written within the next week, although I can’t make any promises.

Thanks all for your patience.

I generally don’t talk a lot about my personal life on Brad’s Reader because I don’t want to bore you with the mundane details of my life. But there is something I feel the need to share.

There is a big change coming my way. My wife is pregnant with our first child. It’s a boy! The name is being kept under wraps until he’s born – which can be any day now. She is full-term (and very uncomfortable) so we are just playing the waiting game.

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Writers, by nature, are risk takers. We sweat and toil over our writing, with no guarantee of success. There are a lot of writers who will spend a year or more writing a novel that will never get published. It’s the nature of the beast.

I think the risk of failure is the biggest obstacle many budding writers face. I know I struggle with this every time I open up my word processor. But what is more important than taking risks is that if you don’t succeed, you learn from your mistakes and try again.

One of the biggest risk-takers is Sir Richard Branson who started a small company called Virgin Records and eventually expanded it into an airline, mobile phone service and dozens of other businesses. Branson has also risked his life (literally) in other ways, such as attempting to circle the world in a balloon. He’s been plucked from the ocean for several rescues.

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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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I just wanted to post a quick announcement that I will be a guest on the show Conversations LIVE! with Cyrus Webb tonight at 8pm EST. The topic will be ‘The Business of Books.”

Other guests on tonight’s program include authors Zetta Elliot and Christopher Hertz, Todd Rutherford of Yorkshire Publishing and book reviewer Joe Pinkney. This is a great lineup of guests from across the publishing world and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.

You can also join the conversation through chat by following this link The Business of Books, or by calling in at 347.426.3645.

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter for updates, interesting links and more.

Look closely at the cover of this book that is listed on Amazon.com. Does anything strike you as odd? Yes, the “iStockPhoto” watermark is still on the cover image. This is a good example of why authors and publishers need to pay attention to detail, especially on the front cover! I’d say leaving the watermark on the cover image is a pretty big detail.

Having the watermark still on the cover image means that either A) They didn’t pay for the image, or B) They paid for the image but didn’t swap out the sample image for the paid one – the image without the watermark. Either way, it’s still a book cover fail!

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After my grandmother passed away last December, my mom and her brother and sister have been going through her house to get her belongings sorted out. Among those items was a short story I wrote when I was 12, around the time I was in the 7th grade (about 1992). I sent it to my grandparents and they had apparently filed it away for all these years.

I don’t remember writing this specific short story, but I remember it being an assignment for my creative writing class. We had to read them in front of the class – which was probably the worst part. The only other memory I have of this story is was received pretty well by my classmates and my creative writing teacher.

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