Anthony, E-Reads' Technical Director, conducted the greatest migration since the Ice Age

My phone console has a number of speed-dial buttons. There is RC Phone Home, of course. There’s one for our foreign sub-agent with whom I talk daily, and there are those for frequently called clients. There are intercom buttons for buzzing staff. And then there’s the Anthony Button. Anthony is E-Reads’ technical director. The button for his station is bright red. On a Friday morning in December I hit the Anthony Button. Hard.

As that day dawned I noticed that I had not received emails for eight hours. Refreshing and other tried-and-true techniques for goosing the get-mail function availed nothing. Then I clicked on the E-Reads home page. Some of it came in, but where the banner should have been was an error message.

I leaned all my weight on the hot button: ANTHONY! PICK UP!

Anthony had already seen the outage and analyzed it.  “Our cloud server is running on fumes.  We’ve loaded so many files recently that it’s maxed out.  We have to migrate our files to a larger server.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this was happening?” I asked, logically.

“I did,” he reminded me.

And he had.  But a move from the 60 gigabyte capacity of our current server to the 300 gig one we needed was a jump of four or five times the cost and I had dragged my heels.  To make room for more uploads Anthony had trimmed a bunch of junk files but it was hard to tell exactly how close the meter was hovering over Empty.

Once the system went down he didn’t wait around to determine if I was being penny wise and pound foolish (that was now a given). He immediately committed us to the larger server. But the changeover is not implemented with the snap of one’s fingers. Hundreds of thousands of files great and small, text files and jpegs, excel spreadsheets and metadata folders plus backups had to be migrated from computer A to computer B. But even with supercomputers running at peak speed, the transfer would take a minimum of 72 hours. In fact it took 96. Down so long it looked like up to me.

Meanwhile, though our resourceful technical director managed to rescue enough gigabytes to enable us to use our email, our website had to be taken offline.

If you’re looking for a definition of helplessness, try gazing at a “Sorry” message on one’s own website for 24, 48, 72, 96 hours. Though I was assured we had triple backup redundancy, excluding the portable hard drives I ferry once a week between home and office, the paranoid terror of a permanent failure haunted my dreams for four consecutive nights.

On the fifth day it came back, and it was good. Thank you, Anthony.

Wretched though this incident was, the bright side is that it was the result of a company that is growing – growing at a rate of of about 40 gigabytes a year.

Watch this space for the announcement that we’ve topped one terabyte.

Richard Curtis

Anything can happen under a Christmas Moon. Even a miracle that the Three Kings would have appreciated.

Pregnant, unwed and down on her luck, history teacher Emma Carlyle is facing the worst Christmas of her life. Needing some research for her master’s thesis on legendary Wyoming lawman J.D. McNulty, she makes a Christmas Eve drive to South Pass City, where J.D. was buried. But…

Heading home, she loses her way in a storm. After her car vanishes, she ends up in 1870, half-frozen and in labor, on the doorstep of a remote mountain cabin. When J.D. himself opens the door with a pistol in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other…well, let’s just say that sparks start flying. These two lost souls are clearly meant for each other. But there’s one problem. Emma has studied everything about J.D.–and she knows he has only a few weeks to live.

Maybe, until then Emma didn’t believe in miracles. But this is the time of the Christmas Moon , and, as we said, anything can happen.

Author Elizabeth Lane has penned a sensual time travel romance with an inspiring message that will send chills down your spine. Christmas Moon is an E-Reads original, never before published. For other Elizabeth Lane novels visit her author page.
RC

Coming soon to a bookshop near you: a sign that says “Cell Phones Prohibited.”

“Bookstore owners everywhere have a lurking suspicion,” writes Julie Bosman in the New York Times. “that customers who type into their smartphones while browsing in the store, and then leave, are planning to buy the books online later — probably at a steep discount from the bookstores’ archrival, Amazon.com.

“Now a survey has confirmed that the practice, known among booksellers as showrooming, is not a figment of their imaginations,” she adds, citing a survey confirming that a quarter of those who’d bought a book from an online store had scouted it while browsing in a physical shop.

As if that isn’t upsetting enough to the shops’ proprietors, Tricia Duryee, writing in AllthingsD.com, tells us that brazen showrooming is actually being incentivized: “Amazon is offering consumers up to $5 off on purchases if they compare prices using the online giant’s mobile phone application in a store.” The offer is for all kinds of products but it feels aimed particularly at bookstore owners. “While Amazon’s applications and its $5 incentive can be viewed as friendly to consumers, physical retailers will see it only one way — as an attack,” says Duryee.

Amazon’s strategy could backfire, however.  The company’s recently created publishing imprints will need the good will of bookstore owners. But when Amazon’s sales reps call for an appointment to pitch their list, they may find the owners’ phones turned off.

See Book Shopping in Stores, Then Buying Online.

Richard Curtis

On this the 70th anniversary of the infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor E-Reads commemorates the fallen men and women of that national trauma with publication, in e-book and print, of Sunday in Hell: Pearl Harbor Minute by Minute, an excruciating, stunningly detailed account by Bill McWilliams.

Meticulously researched and written for all audiences, the book provides fresh information, a trove of photographs and previously untold stories by the men, women, children and families who lived, worked and fought on the day of the Japanese surprise attack on America’s most important naval base in the Pacific.

Author McWilliams, in his third major book work, places the attack in historical context, summarizing the ten-year lead-up to America’s first and most disastrous battle of World War II. Then, in the words of the people who lived the events, he brings readers deep inside the stark, vividly remembered hell of Pearl Harbor. The story takes you moment by moment, airfield by airfield, ship by ship through the tragedies, sacrifices, inspirational heroism and valor and the desperation of that day – and the first 24 days of the aftermath – when an entire nation, outraged and inspired by the Japanese Empire’s treachery, was jolted into a massive mobilization and forever changed.

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Praise for SUNDAY IN HELL: PEARL HARBOR MINUTE BY MINUTE

“The attack on Pearl Harbor was a profoundly bitter surprise for an unprepared America. It was an earth shaking event in a chain of devastating events perpetrated by the twentieth century’s new totalitarians – the Axis powers of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and militarist Japan. This work revitalizes the cry, ‘Remember Pearl Harbor!’ and records anew America’s entry into World War II, the deadly, never-to-be-ignored lessons totalitarians leave in the archives of history’s darkest hours.” – Gordon R. Sullivan – General, US Army, Retired – 32nd Chief of Staff

“Bill McWilliams delivers a most readable history that immerses us in the depths of our Nation’s darkest hour. Feel the shock and anger, the humiliation and devastation that roused the ‘Sleeping Giant’ and inspired the greatest mobilization of spirit, and pride our nation has ever seen. This is the story of real people whose shattered lives became the stuff of the ‘Greatest Generation.’” – General John P. Jumper – US Air Force (Ret) – Chief of Staff 2001-05

“A memorable history should read like an exciting true story, create clear visual images, and cause readers to feel they are among the people living the events. This work does. Bill McWilliams pulls us into the story, where we experience the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of war, while feeling the powerful crosscurrents of emotion war provokes.” – General Thomas R. Morgan – USMC (Retired) – Assistant Commandant – Marine Corps, 1986-88

“Masterfully told; a powerful true story of the devastating events surrounding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that propelled America into the most destructive war in human history. McWilliams’ third major work after A RETURN TO GLORY and ON HALLOWED GROUND wrings inspiration and remembrance from sacrifice, valor and tragedy. Reading like an action-packed novel, this is truly history at its best.” – Colin Burgess – Award-winning Australian military and spaceflight historian and author

To purchase Sunday in Hell in Kindle, click here. To purchase it in Nook, click here. To buy the print edition, click here.

Not THAT kind of flap, you idiot!

Daniel Menaker, Editor of Grin and Tonic, has codified the rules for writing foolproof flap copy.  Writing in the Barnes & Noble Review, he offers such recommendations as:

# Always use “stunning,” except when the book is about the history of the stun gun.
#Always use “deeply.”
#Use items in a series as often as possible. “In this stunning, deeply passionate, and thrilling tale of guns, gangs, and gambling…”
# In addition to “stunning,” use at least three of the following adjectives for every flap: “Enthralling,” “gritty,” “original,” “remarkable,” “magical,” “ground-breaking,” “arresting,” “dazzling,” “heartbreaking,” “compelling,” “devastating,” “captivating.”
#Find a way to work in “best-selling,” even if it has to take the form of something like “Often compared to the stunning best-selling novelist _________…”
#Try to end the flap with the word “resolve” or “resolution.” (“Stunning” should always be placed near the beginning.)
#Forget “subtly.”

Flap Rules by Daniel Menaker

The Digital Revolution has created more paradoxes than a quantum physics think tank.  Silicon Valley parents sending their kids to schools that outlaw computers  (see High-Tech Kids in No-Tech Schools).  Elderly people who read faster on screens  than they do on paper (see Old People Do It Faster).  Children who don’t learn well on screens, except for autistic ones who thrive on iPads (See this video)   Students who prefer expensive paper textbooks to cheaper e-texts (see Surprise: Students Prefer Print Textbooks).

The New York Times’s Matt Richtel and Julie Bosman have produced yet another oddity: “Parents who themselves are die-hard downloaders of books onto Kindles, iPads, laptops and phones…. .want their children to be surrounded by print books.

“Parents also say they like cuddling up with their child and a book,” the Times team writes, “and fear that a shiny gadget might get all the attention. Also, if little Joey is going to spit up, a book may be easier to clean than a tablet computer.

“’It’s intimacy, the intimacy of reading and touching the world,’” said a parent who reads books on his iphone but print books to his daughter. “’I know I’m a Luddite on this, but there’s something very personal about a book and not one of one thousand files on an iPad, something that’s connected and emotional, something I grew up with and that I want them to grow up with,’” said another.

For Their Children, Many E-Book Fans Insist on Paper

Richard Curtis

As all frequenters of online bookstores know, read-inside-the-book features entitle e-tailers to publish a certain percentage of your book at no charge to encourage readers to sample the goods.

Content providers are given a choice ranging from a minimum of 20% to a maximum of 100%.  It’s a good policy, as it helps readers to browse.  In one case, however, readers were inadvertently given a window to get an author’s book free.

You probably don’t pore over the terms of your agreement with Kindle Direct Publishing, but if you did you would learn that one of KDP’s policies is that they have the right to lower the price of your e-book to match that of its competitors. This is an age-old marketing retail practice and far from extraordinary. However, the activation of this policy in the case of author James Crawford caused him serious inconvenience and potential losses in the thousands of dollars.

The problem occurred when KDP, believing that rival Barnes & Noble had dropped the price of Crawford’s book to free, changed its own price to zero as well. In point of fact, writes the author, B&N had not gone to zero.  It had merely offered the first three chapters at no charge as a come-on to customers.

Before he could straighten it out with Amazon he had lost revenues on more than 5100 copies given away at 100% discount.  We say “straighten out” but now that his book Blood Soaked and Contagious has been restored at his requested list price, Amazon has informed him it will not not refund revenues lost.  “We’re sorry, we’re unable to pay royalties for your sales when your title was listed at $0 on our website,” he was told in writing.  In writing because, as KDP users have discovered, “KDP does not have telephone contact with the outside world,” laments Crawford.

The complete cautionary tale may be read here. Two things you need to see for the following saga to make sense

Richard Curtis

The jury is still out on the effectiveness of reading on screens, especially among children. Some studies show they are too easily distracted by screens that tempt restless minds to to navigate away from schoolwork to emails, games and websites. (See High-Tech Kids in No-Tech Schools)

But for the elderly, e-reading devices such as the Kindle and the iPad actually accelerate reading speed. “German researchers found that elderly people read three times faster when using an iPad than a real book,” writes Nadia Gilani on Daily Mail Online. “The iPad’s screen was found to help them process the information on the page, even though the tablet’s LED screen has been criticized for hurting readers’ eyes if used over a long period of time.”

Tablets like the iPad were more effective than eInk devices like Kindle, the study revealed.  But when asked, the older crowd said they preferred printed books to gadgets.

Elderly people ‘read iPads three times faster than normal books’

Richard Curtis