Any day now my first child will be born. I’m very, very excited, but also a little nervous. It’s a huge life changing event. However, my excitement far outweighs any anxiety I feel.

As I’ve mentioned before, the posting frequency on Brad’s Reader is about to go way down. I can’t promise how much I’ll be able to post or even if I’ll get the weekly Friday Link Love in. Everything is up in the air. But rest assured, Brad’s Reader isn’t going anywhere.

That’s all I have for now. It’s a beautiful day here in Chicago as the humidity has gone down. Hopefully this will be our new trend until Autumn. As always, have a happy and safe weekend.

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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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Publishers are tearing their hair out over ebooks. How do they make money when ebook prices are being pushed so low? One idea that has been thrown around is to subsidize ebook with in-book ads. Yes, the idea is controversial and probably makes traditional book lovers cringe. Heck, it makes me cringe a little too.

I’ve already visited this subject twice on Brad’s Reader. The first was back in 2007 in my post Advertising in Books: Will it Work? and again in 2009 Ads in ebooks – Coming to an eReader near you. Notice that my thinking on this does shift from post to post.

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Apologies for the very late Friday Link Love. I’ve been very preoccupied this last month or two (hence my decreased number of posts) with some personal matters. Don’t worry though, you’ll soon find out why and it is very good news. Once things settle, I should be back to posting several times a week.

That said, it’s Saturday and the weekend is almost halfway over. Stay safe!

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The annual Teen Lit Fest in Humble, TX will have 5 less authors this year. According to Publishers Weekly, author Ellen Hopkins had her invitation revoked after a librarian and a few parents protested her books to the superintendent and school board:

In the post, entitled “Censorship Bites,” Hopkins announced that her invitation had been revoked after a middle-school librarian and parents approached a superintendent and the school board about her participation. Hopkins’s novels in verse deal with gritty subject matter: her Crank series, which concludes next month with Fallout, centers on meth addiction, while her 2009 novel, Tricks, was about teen prostitution.

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I’m not the superstitious type, so being Friday the 13th has no real meaning for me. Just another day. However, I was watching the news this morning and one of the anchors pointed out that today is the only Friday the 13th in 2010. A very minor interesting bit of trivia.

There’s really not much else to say today. I have a fairly busy weekend ahead so I may not be writing any new posts in the next few days. However, I try to post on Twitter as much as possible (140 characters is much easier than a blog post). So if you’re not following me already, now might be a good time.

That’s it. Have a happy and safe weekend!

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I hear a lot of people say they will forgo dedicated e-readers, such as the Kindle and Nook, in favor of the more expensive Apple iPad. I think this is a bad idea. While I love the iPad (I don’t own one, but I’d gladly buy one if my wallet would only let me) and think it is useful in a lot of ways, I don’t think reading ebooks is one of them.

A recent post from my favorite ebook blog, Teleread, summed up pretty well why the iPad makes a horrible ebook reader:

The machine is far too heavy to hold for any length of time. It is also very slippery which means that you have to read with it in a case, which, in turn, just adds to its bulk and weight. Also, while I have no trouble reading for extended periods from my iPhone, the iPad has just too much glare for prolonged use. I get sick of reading black text on a white background to cut the glare. More: its pretty much useless outside (I use my Kindle there); I’ll never buy books from the iBookstore and I rarely read comics – at least electronically.

The glare issue alone is a big one. Many of use already strain our eyes too much sitting in front of our computers. Why add the extra strain to your eyes? Dedicated e-readers are designed to read like a print book with minimal strain on the eyes. I can read for extended periods on my Sony Reader with no problems.

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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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Given the e-reader price wars going on between Amazon and Barnes & Noble, I’m predicting that by this time next year there will be either a Kindle or Nook available for $100, or even less. Obviously consumers will follow these lower prices, causing more people to embrace ebooks.

The only variable that is too hard to predict (at least this early in the game) is the price of the ebooks themselves. Publishers want higher ebook prices while ebooksellers like Amazon and consumers want lower ebook prices. If ebook prices increase, then it will probably negate the lower-priced e-readers.

Yes, it’s an exciting time for ebooks. While they still remain less than 5% of overall book sales, their rapid growth will surely bring some interesting surprises over the next decade.

But enough of that. It’s Friday and you know what that means. Have a happy and safe weekend.

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When I first saw the tweet that laptop computers and other digital devices (including the Amazon Kindle, and I’m assuming the B&N Nook) are banned from some coffee shops, I had to read the tweet twice. Then I read this NYT blog post in which the author described his experience at one coffee shop:

After placing my order I sat down at a table and pulled out my Amazon Kindle.

I barely made it a sentence into the e-book I was reading before an employee of the coffee shop came by, stood over me and said, “Excuse me sir, but we don’t allow computers in the coffee shop.”

I looked up at him with an incredulous look and replied, “This isn’t a computer, it’s an e-book reader.”

Surprisingly, the employee makes this argument:

He then told me that the “device” in my hand had a screen and required batteries, so it was obviously “some variation of a computer.” The coffee shop, I was told, did not allow the use of computers.

The basic argument these coffee shops make is that people buy a latte, then sit at a large table with their entire “office” spread out and sit there for 5 hours doing work.

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