In Internet time, I’m extremely late to report it, but awesomeness has occurred. The Douglas County Library System in Colorado, which has been working with alternatives to the licensing of ebooks from publishers (also called purchasing them outright from publishers). And this week DCL signed a contract (called the Common Understanding) with Smashwords, in which they purchased 10,000 books outright. Califa, a library consortium in California, which has also been exploring alternatives to licensing ebooks through OverDrive, is expected to follow suit. Read Peter Brantley’s piece on this at PWxyz, where he does an excellent and thorough job of going over the whole thing. Hopefully other publishers are paying attention!
Ravenous for Reading?
A nifty little news article in Publishers Weekly mentioned that erotica ebook publisher Ravenous Romance has now been joined by a “thriller” line, Ravenous Shadows, with John Skipp as editorial director. Having read the very short summaries of the first few titles provided in the article, I’d say calling these books thrillers is a massive understatement. Skipp’s idea, according to the article, is to make it possible to read a book in the time it would take to watch a movie, so the books are short- 30,000-60,000 words.
One of our reviewers, David Agranoff, has often made positive comments about some of the excellent novellas that come his way that are just the right length for a plane ride. So I think Skipp is on to something here. Readers of ebooks consume them absolutely ravenously- I am guilty of it, for sure. It’s so easy to do, and ebooks are so accessible, while some physical novellas are available only in limited editions. I think Skipp has a winning concept here. With plans to publish 30-40 ebooks a year, this should open doors for writers as well as readers. It will be very interesting to see what comes of this.
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