Borders, the brick-and-mortar bookstore that always seems on the brink of financial collapse, will be opening their own ebookstore next month, according to this Mashable article. Along with an ebookstore, Borders has been taking pre-orders for the Kobo e-reader, which will retail for around $150. Borders will also release its own mobile ebook reading app.

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Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to find another source of ebooks. I found that I could download ebooks from the Barnes & Noble website and then load them onto my Sony Pocket Reader. The ebooks download in the pdb format. So I transfered them to Calibre and converted them to ePub. I plugged my reader in and the ebooks easily transferred.

I figured this was possible with the B&N ebookstore, I just never got around to giving it a try until yesterday. B&N appears to have a large number of free ebooks, a lot of them coming from Smashwords (aff link) – another ebook provider B&N partnered up with not too long ago.

Needless to say, I think I’ll have plenty of ebooks on my Sony for a long time to come. Have a happy and safe weekend!

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Fan fiction (fanfic) is when a fan of a novel, movie or even television show writes their own stories using the same characters.  However, fanfic remains in legal and ethical limbo. Some authors maintain that fanfic is just innocent flattery. But other authors go as far as to say it’s illegal.

Personally, I’ve never been enthusiastic about fanfic, not because of its legal implications, but because I just don’t find it very exciting.

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One of the smallest, yet probably the most important part of character development is picking the right name. After all, your character’s very identity starts with his/her name. I’ve struggled with this ever since I started writing fiction before high school. In fact, I usually won’t even start a new fiction project until I have all the character names pinned down.

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Amazon is not only tracking Kindle users highlighted passages, they are also advertising the fact. While this might make for an interesting study in what readers find important in a particular book, my big question is: Does this mean privacy should be compromised?

I first saw this story on Mediabistro, which gave a rather simplistic, non critical post of this new Amazon practice. I did a quick Google search and found another, more critical article from Bnet Amazon risks Kindle sales by tracking, reporting what readers highlight. This fact that Amazon is now tracking your ebook highlights begs other questions: What else are they tracking? What about annotated comments?

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Brad’s Reader is coming up on almost 3.5 years on the net, something I’m very proud of and I hope to continue blogging for many more years to come. That said, you will start seeing a slow shift on Brad’s Reader to reflect all the changes this blog has gone through in the last 3.5 years.

The changes won’t be anything drastic. I’ll still be posting regularly and most of the content will stay the same. I guess you can say I’m giving the Brad’s Reader brand a slight shift into a direction it has been headed in for a while now.  I also have a new website in the works that will compliment this blog in a huge way. I’m keeping most of my plans under wraps for now – so you’ll have to stand by for more announcements.

That said, have a very happy and safe weekend!

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I always love to read author’s self-publishing success stories. They are not only very inspiring, but these stories chip away at the negative stigma of self-publishing. The route these authors take is a hard one, they don’t have the resources of a large publishing house and distributor behind them. Thus they often have to promote their work themselves using their own websites, Twitter, Facebook and other methods.

But one author has taken self-publishing to a whole new level. Christopher Herz decided to use the POD model with his book The Last Block in Harlem (aff link) and then take it to the streets, literally. He’d hand sell one copy at a time to strangers on the street. You might recall that I wrote about him in my previous post Author sells self-published book one copy at a time. His efforts were even picked up by Publishers Weekly. Well, all of his hard work has finally paid off.

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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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Note: Can’t decide on which ebook reader is right for you? Check out my post Ebook Reader Holiday Roundup that compares the major readers on the market. You might also want to read Nook Vs. Kindle: Sharing Ebooks with Others.

Barnes & Noble’s Nook ebook reader just got a face lift when firmware 1.3 became available for Nook owners to download. This is probably the biggest and most significant firmware upgrade for Nook to date. And it’s becoming even more obvious that the largest bookseller in the United States is serious about taking on the Kindle and the Sony family of ereaders.

Here are the new Nook 1.3 features:

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I finally got my hands on the new Apple iPad last weekend when I visited my local Apple Store. I will admit, the device is beautiful, albeit a bit heavy.

Portable gaming is brought to a whole new level – I demoed my favorite iPhone game “Flight Control.” The virtual keyboard that pops up when you need to type is easy to use and is almost like a real keyboard. For my thoughts about iBooks and ebook reading on the iPad, visit my previous post 5 Minutes with the iPad.

After trying out the iPad for myself, I now want one. Of course, my wallet keeps my inner geek in check. I can dream, can’t I?

As always, have a happy and safe weekend!

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