Don't give a blank e-book reader!

A friend asked me today whether the Rollo Hemphill comic novels are available in ebook versions. Decidedly yes, for both titles. Just make sure you get the right digital format:

Amazon Kindle My Inflatable Friend Rubber Babes

Adobe PDF (read it on your laptop, even) both titles available from Diesel E-Books

Smashwords (EPUB for Nook, also Sony Reader format, others): My Inflatable Friend (free) Rubber Babes (1.99) Also see "Rollo Will Do You for Free" post on the Boychik Lit blog.

Audio MP3 (excerpts) click here (all free downloads) for iPod and such.

So upload the devilish little device with laughter, why doncha. These are mercifully short, amusing books, just the right length for an airplane read, with bite-sized chapters easy to ingest while you're waiting for some cute elf to bring your holiday lunch.

Remember, too, there are at least three books in Rollo's unfortunate saga. The third comes out in 2010--Farnworth's Revenge: Rollo's End. (Spoiler alert: It's not necessarily the demise of Rollo, more like the target of the old man's ire?)

Of course, Amazon or Barnes & Noble will be happy to ship you paperbacks in case, like me, you're so bewildered by the profusion of ebook formats you don't know which to buy.

Gerald Everett Jones

Author of the Rollo Hemphill novels
- in paperback and ebook -
www.boychiklit.com

Pre-Christmas E-Reader Wars Heat Up

See also: It's Going To Be an E-Reader Christmas



Sony Reader is now (finally) running a consumer-oriented TV ad, and the NY Times reported yesterday on the iRex launch. You can bet Amazon will hype Kindle to the max in the coming weeks, along with its promotion of the Kindle 3 large format in the college textbook market.

Apple is conspicuously absent, although you can use apps like Stanza to read ebooks on your iPhone. But that's hardly a competitive strategy for Apple. I'm betting they come out with a docking screen for some or all of the iPod models.

I decided to join the club and beefed up my membership and presence on ebook distribution service Smashwords.com, which supports open-source EPUB and Sony LRF, as well as lots of the other formats.

And then of course there's the proliferation of more general-purpose netbooks, palmtops, PDAs, and tablets. (See Maggie Ball's previously posted article on this blog.)

I'm thinking a big consideration for ebook buyers should be the long-term cost of buying content. Prices of ebooks vary widely, but many Amazon Kindle versions are advertised at just under ten bucks. Lots of Smashwords EPUB versions range from free to a buck or two, although bestsellers typically cost more. Then too, there's the public domain library offered by Project Gutenberg, where everything is both free and about a hundred years old. But if you're looking for Charles Dickens rather than Dan Brown, you can find him and thousands of other famous authors there in EPUB, HTML, and "plain-text" formats.

My Inflatable Friend and Rubber Babes, the first two books in the Rollo Hemphill series of comic novels, have been available in Amazon Kindle, Mobipocket (PDA), and Adobe PDF (Ingram) formats since the day they came out in paperback.

I'm jumping into the other formats now on Smashwords by offering Rubber Babes for $1.99 in EPUB, Sony LRF, and a variety of other non-DRM versions.

Ebook sales (and free downloads) seem to be taking off. For example, I just read today that a healthy percentage, if not a huge one, of The Lost Symbol sales have been ebooks. Perhaps the dominant business models. platforms, and formats in this new marketplace will now emerge, and quite soon.