Professor Dave Mearns has written seven books on counselling and psychotherapy, including the best sellers ‘Person-Centred Counselling in Action’ and ‘Working at relational depth in Counselling and Psychotherapy’. His first fiction novel ‘Smoky Bacon Crisps: Finding the Edge of Life’ will be available later this year.
On a rain-swept night, Thomas Jaeger, a British agent, finds himself in a small hotel in Bosnia. He is burnt out, his life in ruins. The next day, two Austrian guests will visit a nearby town. Within four hours they will have been murdered. The town is Sarajevo. It is June 1914. “The Black Hand” is a new novel from bestselling author Anthony Conway.
Why producing ebooks can involve a lot of work. Work someone has to pay for.
Just in time for Christmas is Nacci’s Numbers by Gerald Conheady, which would make a good present for the maths-loving boy or girl in your life. It’s an ebook so they’ll need a device to read it on, but someone else can buy that…
Working on more book covers, and like most designers at some point in their career I’m shamelessly stealing from the work of Saul Bass.
Just finishing another batch of ebooks, and it’s a varied selection. We have rain-soaked, neon-lit urban squalor, strippers, murder, vampires terrorising a posh school, linguistics & the art/science divide, plus some recipes.
Amazon recently announced Kindle Format 8 (KF8), the new ebook file format they plan to use instead of Mobi 7. It’s a shame they didn’t switch to epub as rumoured, but KF8 offers much needed improvements to layout and typography. However, my heart sank when I read that only the latest Kindle devices will support KF8. The Kindle 3 or earlier will be stuck with Mobi format ebooks, which could make things difficult. Imagine the following scenario: A client comes to me with a proposal for a graphically rich title such as a cookery book. I think “Ah, KF8 provides the layout controls we need for this and it will look fantastic on the new Kindle Fire”. Quite reasonably, the client wants to sell as many copies of her book as possible so doesn’t like the idea of limiting it to owners of the latest Kindles. Therefore, I’ll have to create two versions of the ebook, doubling the time and cost for the project. Also, the version for older Kindles won’t look very good because of the limitations of the Mobi format. And that’s before we start looking at a version for the iPhone, iPad, Nook…
As expected Amazon announced new Kindle models today. The existing e-ink devices have been updated, with both models losing the physical keyboard and one of them gaining a touchscreen. As before, these models use a greyscale e-ink display and are designed specifically for reading. However, the new Kindle Fire is a 7 inch tablet device intended for reading, web browsing, game playing, music and more. Amazon clearly want some of the iPad market with this one, and the low price indicates they hope to sell millions and recoup their costs through content sales. However, I think there’s plenty of room for both Amazon and Apple. The direct competition is Barnes & Noble, and companies such as Samsung and RIM who tried to copy the iPad but couldn’t match it on cost, design, ease of use and content availability. (Of course, this is just me thinking out loud and I might change my mind when I get hold of a Kindle Fire. Just what you need, eh? Another blog with unqualified, unverified speculation on a product that isn’t available yet.)
Trick or Treat by John Gatehouse and Dave Windett is now available, so visit the Little Lemming Books site to help Neela stop those rampaging monsters! The ebook is currently available from Amazon and Lulu. The Amazon version can be viewed on the Kindle or the Kindle app for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and PC. The Lulu EPUB version can be viewed on a range of devices and apps such as the iPhone, iPad, Nook, Adobe Digital Editions and more.
‘Monsters from the closet, monsters from the back of beyond, and monsters from the fridge!’ I’m working on an ebook of ‘Trick or Treat’ by John Gatehouse and Dave Windett. Strictly speaking, I’m not in the target age range but the pictures of rampaging monsters make me laugh every time.