Science fiction and humor seldom interface successfully – unless your name is John DeChancie.  But for DeChancie it’s a piece of cake.  His wickedly funny Castle series has been cracking readers up for years. But it’s going to be hard to top The Kruton Interface. For one thing, it features a hero named Wanker.

Just when Captain David Wanker thinks his career has hit rock bottom, he’s assigned to the starship Repulse, the lowest-rated ship in the Space Forces. The navigator gets lost, the engineer speaks only Gaelic, the security personnel have narcolepsy, and the ship’s doctor needs medication.

No sooner does he takes command than his job as captain is lost to automation invented by a scientist who thinks he’s Groucho Marx. Worse yet, when he meets up with the inhabitants of the planet Kruton, a world that is one huge law firm, he finds himself a defendant in the biggest lawsuit ever to hit the Galactic courts. Hilarity not only ensues–it practically goes supernova!

“Unerring Marxmanship. This book would have left Harpo speechless.” — “William Tenn” (classic science fiction author, pseudonym of Philip Klass)

“Madcap science fantasy–fun filled adventure!” — Booklist

“DeChancie always delivers!” — Mike Resnick (Hugo Award winner)

Catch up on your John DeChancie – once you catch your breath after reading The Kruton Interface.

Ruth Dickson, author of the button-popping, clasp-unfastening sex guide Married Men Make the Best Lovers, isn’t through with you. It’s time for the advanced course in love-making, positions and tricks guaranteed to drive your lover up the wall but never out the door.

With her classic, breezy, entertaining style, she instructs the uninformed and enlightens the already educated with a bit of science and a lot of blunt truth about the hows, whys and special variations of sex for fun – in or out of wedlock. From “The Nitty Gritty” to “The Other Side of the Bed”, Now That You’ve Got me Here, What Are We Going to Do? is an advanced course in the art of love and the pleasures of sex.

If you seek cogency on digital publishing subjects you’ll always find it in Laura Hazard Owen’s postings.  A good example is a recent one on the implications for consumers of the settlement agreements with the Department of Justice in its conspiracy lawsuit against five major publishers and Apple.

What does the settlement mean for customers? Here’s a summary:

1. Let the Discounting Begin. “Readers are likely to see lower prices on e-books published by HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster — at least at Amazon, which expressed its glee over the settlement. But you won’t see those lower e-book prices until at least June…I wouldn’t be surprised to see some shockingly cheap bestsellers from those publishers — think massive summer promotions where big titles by authors like James Patterson, Jodi Picoult and Nicholas Sparks are $1.99.”

2. Amazon rivals will discount too. “Other e-book retailers, like Barnes & Noble and Kobo, are likely to want to enter into new contracts quickly as well so that they are on a more even playing field with Amazon.”

Owen points out that Amazon competitors “may not be able to afford to discount a wide range of e-books as deeply as Amazon can.” But that has not prevented Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and even the struggling Sony from maintaining a healthy market share of the e-book retail business.

3. Bundling of e-books, and e-book/p-book combo packages. “Justice notes that agency pricing ‘prevented e-book retailers from experimenting with innovative pricing strategies…such as offering e-books under an ‘all-you-can-read’ subscription model where consumers would pay a flat monthly fee,’ bundles or buy-one-get-one-free promotions. The settlement opens the door for those types of promotions on Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster titles.”

4. Less predatory loss-leader pricing. “When it comes time for Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Hachette to negotiate their new contracts, the settlement allows them to ‘negotiate a commitment from an e-book retailer that a retailer’s aggregate expenditure on discounts and promotions of the Settling Defendant’s e-books will not exceed the retailer’s aggregate commission under an agency agreement in which the publisher sets the e-book price and the retailer is compensated through a commission.’”

5. Will Apple now sell e-books at a discount? “If it simply removes Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins titles from its shelves without negotiating new contracts — yes, this would mean Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, published by Simon & Schuster, would no longer be available through iTunes — it will be losing a large part of its catalog. If Apple agrees to negotiate new contracts that don’t require agency pricing, it could also make agreements with the many publishers who have not been able to sell their books in the iBookstore before. That would mean a much wider book selection for iBookstore shoppers.’

Read details in What the DOJ e-book lawsuit means for readers now

Richard Curtis

To contemplate publishing books without partnering with Amazon is to lose a lot of sleep, weight,  hair or all of the above.  Luckily most of us steer well clear of any action that might provoke the behemoth to put the Big Chill on our Buy buttons.

To deliberately terminate one’s relationship with Amazon is almost inconceivable. Almost but not quite.  We have the example of an executive that did it and has lived to tell this David and Goliath tale.

His name is Randall White and he’s the head of a distributor called Educational Development Corporation that also has a publishing imprint of about 1800 titles like Everyone Poops and The Noisy Body Book. Now it is known as The Company that Opted Out of $1.5 Million in Amazon Sales. White simply got tired of Amazon’s practice of  buying EDC’s books from a distributor and drastically discounting them. “They were becoming showrooms for Amazon,” he complained to David Streitfeld, reporting his story for the New York Times (Daring to Cut Off Amazon).

White had another reason to be irritated.  His books are sold via a network of “independent sales agents,” ladies who market EDC books from their homes and were losing food off their table as a result of Amazon’s tactics. Seizing the “chance to make 7,000 women happy in one day,” he pulled the plug on Amazon, or perhaps Pressed Flush is a better metaphor. Yet he claims his firm is doing better than ever.

When we have more poop on EDC’s war with Amazon we’ll let you know.

Richard Curtis

Dave Duncan fans have been waiting and waiting for a decade for the fourth and final volume of his “Seventh Sword” quartet, and at last their hunger will be satisfied.  E-Reads is honored to bring The Death of Nnanji to the world for the first time anywhere.

***********

For fifteen years the truce has held. Swordsmen of the Tryst of Casr have kept the peace and extended the rule of law over half the World, but now sorcerers have started killing swordsmen again, and swordsmen traitors are aiding them.

Shonsu—who was Wallie Smith before he became a swordsman of the seventh rank and liege lord of the Tryst—must once more gird on the seventh sword of Chioxin, and this time he rides out to fight the war that he hoped would never come. As he leads his army forth, its two most junior members are Vixini, son of Shonsu, and Addis, son of Nnanji, who has an oath of vengeance to fulfill. Their failure or success will determine the fate of the World for the next thousand years.

***********

Those who read and enjoyed the original three volume of “The Seventh Sword” will remember a series of surprise endings, especially in the third volume, so those of you who are not familiar with them will understand why we’re a little cagey in relating the backstory – we don’t want to spoil it for you!  You will want to start with The Reluctant Swordsman, The Coming of Wisdom, and The Destiny of the Sword before taking up this breathtaking climactic work in the Seventh Sword quartet.

Click here for the complete collection of Dave Duncan’s E-Reads books

Pamela Sargent is everything but an underachiever.

It should be enough that she is one of fantasy and science fiction’s leading ladies. But she is so much more, and the Science Fiction Research Association has recognized her accomplishments as a scholar and editor by bestowing on her its Pilgrim Award for a lifetime of contributions to science fiction and fantasy scholarship.

Did we say she was a Nebula Award winner, a Locus Award winner, a Hugo finalist? Did we say that she is a distinguished editor of anthologies celebrating the contributions of women in the history of science fiction? Did we say the American Library Association selected her Earthseed one of the best books for young adults?

Did we say Earthseed and its sequels (Tor), about which blogger P. J. Hoover said “It’s like space and The Hunger Games all blended into one”,  have been optioned for film by Paramount?

Oh yes – did we say how proud E-Reads is to carry ten of her works, with more on the way?

In April 2010 we asked Can You Be Sued For Illegally Downloading a Book? The answer was yes – if publishers are willing to incur a lot of public relations heat for going after the likes of teenagers or old people. It would take an intolerable provocation or the loss of a lot of money to piracy – or both – for a publisher to seek damages in court from those whose crime was nothing more flagrant than sharing a file.

We cited the case of a music downloader sued by the recording industry who passed up the chance to settle for $4,000. When his case was finally adjudicated he was required to pay $675,000 to a plaintiff maddened like a stuck boar by the theft of its property. Though the Recording Industry Association of America incurred withering PR wrath, it sent a signal to all would-be music filesharers, however innocent or ignorant, to think twice before capturing that tune. (See He Should Have Paid the Two Dollars)

But surely that couldn’t happen in book publishing, that refined industry once known as The Gentleman’s Profession. Or could it?

John Wiley & Sons, one of the oldest and most distinguished publishers in America, finds itself in the role of that maddened boar. How deep is Wiley’s wound? Freeloaders are feasting on the publishers Dummies series. For instance, says Wiley, they purloined over 74,000 e-copies of its Photoshop CS5 All-in-one for Dummies.

According to BBC.co.uk, “Papers filed in New York and revealed by the Torrent Freak news site said four defendants were involved. The firm’s lawyer said that he believed this would be the first trial of its kind based on the use of Bittorrent. The peer-to-peer communications protocol allows users to upload and download files to each others’ computers. Wiley had previously filed 15 lawsuits to obtain the identities of about 200 people believed to have infringed the copyright of its titles. It said in papers filed last October that users had ‘engaged in the illegal copying and distribution of Wiley’s ‘For Dummies’ books through the peer-to-peer file sharing software known as Bittorrent’.”

Though Wiley seeks only the minimum statutory damages of $750, the Copyright Law allows as much as $150,000 if the accused fights the case and loses.

Details in ‘For Dummies’ guide publisher, Wiley, seeks piracy trial

Richard Curtis

If anyone starts a school for mistresses, Ruth Dickson will be its dean.

After years of personal research, Dickson offers pointed advice on becoming a happy and successful Other Woman, covering everything from the selection, capture and care of a married lover to his ultimate release. She leaves no stone unturned, discussing every aspect of the affair, up to and including the problematic Wife. Wrapping things up with an informative Q&A, Married Men Make the Best Lovers is must reading for any woman who treasures both her single status and the enjoyment of a rich, fulfilling sex life.

E-Reads re-releases this classic, smart and sassy advice book from the 1960′s. Published in the heyday of the sexual revolution, it’s as entertaining and pertinent as it was on publication date. And Dickson, one of the movement’s most outspoken leaders, still displays the same wicked mind, razor-edged wit and freewheeling attitude that made her one of the most popular writers of the day.

The rabbis and Jewish scholars who created that fountain of wisdom called the Talmud could not have imagined the force called electricity and the challenges it would one day create for modern Jews. Yet the same logic and common sense that used scripture to guide the perplexed of the fifth century or the twelfth is now being applied to the use of modern electronic devices – such as the Kindle.

When electricity was discovered and harnessed, Jews applied the strictures against working on the sabbath to electric appliances and determined that activating them was a form of work. Today, observant Jews will not flip a light switch, turn on a stove burner or press an elevator button. (Some hospitals and other institutions visited by Jews on the sabbath have elevators that automatically stop on every floor.)

Now consider the Kindle. Though it’s commonly referred to as an electronic device is it an electric one? The prevailing Jewish wisdom is that it is, and reading a book on it is the equivalent of turning on an electric light. But there’s more…

Because the screen of a reading device is not a fixed medium – it is a blank matrix on which words are produced by running a tiny electric current through it – orthodox Jews believe that the act of turning a page is a form of writing. And writing is prohibited on the Sabbath. But there’s still more…

Even if one were to read the Torah – the core Jewish scripture – on the Kindle on the sabbath, it would still be unacceptable. Why? Because Kindles, one modern orthodox rabbi pointed out in an article in The Atlantic, “in epitomizing our weekday existence, aren’t appropriate for the Sabbath.”

Thus blogger Morris Rosenthal’s brainstorm – “a special Kindle that can bypass Sabbath prohibitions by disabling its buttons, turning itself on at a preset time, and flipping through a book at a predetermined clip” – would not get past rabbinical scrutiny. You can read scripture on your e-book six days a week, but on the seventh you have to give it a rest and read the p-book instead. Sorry, Kindlach, you’re out of luck.

Of course, you don’t have to be Jewish to put your Kindle down on the sabbath. Many moderns of all faiths observe Internet Sabbath, a day off from the frenzy of electronic communications and social media. Blogger Nat Friedman tried it a year ago and wrote “After just a few minutes, it felt like a vacation.” Somewhere a rabbi is smiling with satisfaction.

Read People of the E-Book? Observant Jews Struggle With Sabbath in a Digital Age by Uri Friedman. And here’s a fascinating Wikipedia entry on use of electricity and appliances on the Sabbath.

Richard Curtis

“Is this a joke? Are we being punked?” That’s what we asked when we cautiously reprinted an alleged email thread setting up a dinner among executives of major publishing companies to discuss “The $9.99 Problem”, a coded reference to Apple’s entrance into the e-book business in competition with Amazon’s $9.99 e-book price ceiling. (See The Restaurant Wasn’t Kosher, and Neither Was the Conversation)

It looks like it was no joke.  The Justice Department’s brief against five publishers and Apple, accusing them of colluding to fix prices, alludes to “private meetings”. “Prior to the formation of and throughout Publisher Defendants’ agreement,” states the DoJ filing, “their CEOs and other high-level executives frequently communicated with each other in both formal and informal settings. From these communications emerged a pattern of Publisher Defendants improperly exchanging confidential, competitively sensitive information.” (If you’re a trial junkie you can read the complete brief here).

Though three publishers have settled with the government and two are fighting back, Apple’s role may hinge on whether Steve Jobs or another representative of Apple actually attended that dinner or any other group meeting of publishers to discuss pricing.  The legal principle seems to be that setting the same terms for everybody is fine if you deal with them unilaterally, but dealing with them as a group is conspiracy.

Says Bloomberg News: “Apple Inc.’s best defense against accusations it conspired to fix e-book prices may turn on its absence from meetings in Manhattan restaurants where publishing executives allegedly worked out the scheme.”

Details in Apple e-books defense may hinge on absence from dinner meetings

Richard Curtis