One of the more disturbing stories I’ve covered over the last few days was a seemingly new policy implemented by the large bookstore chain Barnes & Noble requiring authors to place a link to the B&N website, or risk the large not ordering their books.

My first post on this story Why is Barnes & Noble dictating what authors should have on their website was fairly cautious, as I wanted to avoid adding fuel to a possible rumor (and there are plenty of them on the web). But this story has gained a lot of traction and is disturbing both in its truth and implications for authors.

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In today’s technology-driven, social online world, authors need a website to promote themselves and their books. Without an online presence, an author risks being thrown into obscurity. An author website should be primarily of an author’s own making (except for the design, that should be left to professionals). Their publisher (unless they are an indie author) might help them optimize their site to promote their books – that never hurts.

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Today I had the privilege of giving an interview on the radio show Conversations LIVE with Cyrus Webb. I was contacted a few weeks ago by Mr. Webb as a result of a blog post I wrote (Author sells self-published book one copy at a time) about Christopher Herz who hand sells his book on the street to individuals. My interview focused on that and more.

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It was back in mid-July when Amazon decided to remotely delete two George Orwell titles from the Kindles of customers who purchased the ebooks. As expected, the controversial move brought down a rain of criticism on Amazon. Jeff Bezos issued an apology, which was nice, but seemed more like a desperate public relations stunt than a genuine attempt at atonement for a company that crossed the line of privacy. And it appears Amazon is still thinking about the incident, which has prompted their latest offering.

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Have a cell phone? Have a web browser on your cell phone? If so, then that’s all you need to sign up for start-up website CellStories.net. The stories, some fiction and some non-fiction, are delivered through the site that can be easily accessed on your mobile browser. The content appears to be free.

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This news has been floating around the internet for a couple days now, so it’s probably old news. But I thought it’s worth it for me to comment on because it involves ebooks, indie authors and the large corporation Barnes and Noble. Strange bedfellows? Possibly. Though not in a bad way.

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Oh Sony, how can you break my heart? After all my excitement over your new and shiny ebook reading devices, you are now going to let me drown in a sea of obscurity only because I was an early adopter and took a chance when you first got into the ebook business. I didn’t think you’d forget about me, or at least, not this fast.

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I really do love Google. I use Gmail for my personal email. I have the Google app on my iPhone. I use Google to search for everything from strange diseases to tips on writing better dialogue. I even use Google to analyze the visitor stats for this blog. So I think it is safe to say that Google is a part of my everyday life.

But I still don’t trust them. Let me qualify that: I don’t trust Google with their plan to profit from millions of out-of-print by digitizing the world of literature.

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Today we have a special treat – an exclusive interview with author Wayne C. Long, who owns and operates LongShortStories, a website where he sells his short fiction as a subscription-based service. I first met Wayne back in 2008 after he sent me a message advertising his site – which I first wrote about in this post.

I’m going to keep this introduction short because I think the interview speaks for itself, and I hope you find Wayne’s answers as inspiring as I do. And when you get to the end of the interview, you might find a surprise!

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Yesterday I finally gave in and joined the book-lovers social media site LibraryThing. In a nutshell, this site lets you post information about the books you’re reading, rate them, write reviews, connect with others reading the same books, get recommendations, join groups and a whole lot more. View my LibraryThing profile to see the books I’ve already added to my library, and in the future, read my reviews, ratings and all that other good stuff.

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