Some IPG Publishers Also Go DRM-Free

I knew it was only a matter of time after Macmillian’s TOR and Forge imprints went DRM-Free. Now there’s news that more publishers are heading down the unencumbered road.

Click to read more ...

Camp NaNoWriMo

I’ve been thinking for a while that I was at my most productive in this whole writing thing back in November for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and that it’d be really nice to get some of that high intensity output back. Thankfully I’m not the only one that feels that way. There are many initiatives throughout the year to do a novel in a month, since not everyone wants to do it in November, or like me, they want to do it more than just once a year. 

So this year I’m going to give Camp NaNoWriMo a try. It is pretty much what it sounds like; NaNoWriMo in the summer, a mental summer camp where you escape into your writing. Sounds pretty good to me. Just as a side note, NaNoWriMo isn’t the only group doing the novel-in-30-days thing in June; see also JuNoWriMo.com.

This won’t change anything for my writing; I’ll still hold myself to everything I’m currently doing. (Even WIP500, which I haven’t updated here in a month, but I do still have all my blog posts I can use to update my word count as soon as I have time to do it.) The one change I’ll have to institute is a division between editing work and writing work. I’ll have a Camp NaNoWriMo project and I’ll be continuing to edit things on the side. Those editing things will count towards WIP500 but not towards CNaNoWriMo.

Anyone else feeling crazy enough to jump into this? Or is summer too busy a time for you? What about this coming November? Any NaNoWriMo 2012 people reading this? Let me know in the comments.

Macmillan's TOR Imprint Removing DRM From All eBook Titles

J. K. Rowling’s Pottermore site recently opened their shop to allow the sale of Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free eBooks of Harry Potter’s adventures, and now she’s being joined in the DRM-free world by Macmillan’s TOR and Forge imprints.

This signals a big change in the eBook industry, and it’s one we’ve seen before. The music industry went through a similar change when iTunes signaled the end of audio DRM in the iTunes store.

While this move does run the risk of increasing piracy, if that is indeed an actual risk, it also means that paying customers don’t get penalized for being honest as they do right now. I have an extensive collection of Amazon Kinde eBooks for instance, and so I’m effectively locked into Amazon’s ecosystem. If I buy an eReader from a different manufacturer, I can’t bring my Amazon library over to it; they won’t work because of the DRM. When all my TOR titles go DRM-free, that restriction vanishes; I’ll be able to freely convert those TOR books into any other eBook format I want and read them on any device I want, now or in the future.

This is a huge win for many consumers, and has already gained Macmillan an awful lot of attention and praise just today. I can’t wait to see which imprints and which publishers are going to be the next to wade into these more open waters?

(via John Scalzi)

Sword & Laser Episode 1 is Live

The episode is live, I am indeed in the submitted videos, and now my stomach can stop churning so much. It’s a fantastic show, loving the video version. Tom and Veronica interview Scott Sigler, Phil Plait sends in a video question for Scott, then after the interview segment, they kick off the new fantasy book for the club, Lev Grossman’s The Magicians.

It turns out they did have an audio version of the interview with Robert J. Sawyer, so I feel a little silly having asked that, but it is true he has a new book out, so if they can get him on the show that’d be awesome.

And finally, it’s true, Veronica does have the same shirt. She scooped me on the final episode of Game On!

Sword & Laser Episode 1 Launches Today

By the time most of you read this, Sword & Laser will have released the first episode of their new video show at Felicia Day’s Geek and Sundry channel on YouTube. Sources say it’s at 10am, and since that source is show host Tom Merritt and he’s on Pacific Time, I’m guessing that’s 10am PST, or 1pm here in the East where I am.

Anyone interested in science fiction and/or fantasy should definitely check it out. Tom hosts with Veronica Belmont, and the two have worked on the show together for about the last 4 years as an audio podcast, which will still exist alongside this new video show.

This release is a big one for me, not just as a fan of the show, but because I’m actually a part of it. A very small part, but a part nonetheless. They asked the fan base for video feedback and questions, so I spent some time and created a tiny 10-second video to submit, and they accepted it, so that’s awesome. From what I’ve heard online, I get to share this episode with guest Scott Sigler, an awesome writer whose novel Infected was equal parts disturbing and fascinating. Also on the show in some capacity is a science hero of mine, Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer. I won’t know what capacity that is until I see it myself tomorrow.

I’ve been sort of struggling with the videoification of the web for a couple of years now, and that 10 second video submission was my first major step in dealing with it. I get pretty serious anxiety when trying to record video of myself. I’ve done Google hangouts before, but it always stresses me out pretty bad, at least until I’m actually in the hangout and participating. Then it sort of eases off and I just go with it. I’m hoping that by doing this sort of small video thing now and then I can work my way up to doing video reviews for the GeekBeat crew out at Livid Lobster, where I blog. And who knows, maybe I’ll be on a podcast for real one day.

Small steps.