Get your ebooks here, there, and everywhere

Have you visited the SUNY Press eBookStore lately? If not, then you may not realize we have 230 (and counting) downloadable books available, including Black Elk Speaks.

We also have a growing list of ebooks available for both the Kindle and the nook. So far there are over 500 1000 titles for the nook and around 50 for the Kindle, with many more to come for both, of course. So the next time you're looking at our books on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, check for the ebook version for your preferred device.

Author Spotlight: Annette Dunlap

We're happy to share with you that author Annette Dunlap set up her own author's page over at Amazon. Here's a bio she put together for the page:

When people ask me why I wrote a biography, I tell them it was on my "bucket list." Ever since I was a schoolgirl, I have enjoyed reading about other people's lives, and I determined that one day a book of mine would be in the biography section of the library. The decision to write about Frances Cleveland was made during my years as a marketing professor at a small, liberal arts college in North Carolina. The advertising textbook discussed the advent of mass marketing, and mentioned that a very attractive first lady's image was used, without her permission, to market a wide variety of products. That first lady was Frances Folsom Cleveland. I did a little background reading, and learned that she was our nation's youngest first lady, that her wedding took place in the White House, and that there was a 27 year age difference between her and her husband, Grover Cleveland. Such is the stuff of novels, but as is often the case, the facts may be more believable than if an author had used the same characters in a work of fiction. 

Frank is my first book, but it will not be my last. I am at work on a second book, again to be published by SUNY Press/Excelsior Editions.

You can track Annette's recent events related to her biography of Frances Folsom Cleveland, Frank. Annette's also listing her upcoming events, including one tonight in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Napsterizing the Book Industry

There's an interesting article on Slate about the book industry pushing Amazon to raise prices on e-books and how this could lead to the "Napsterization" of the book industry. We all remember Napster. Jack Shafer explains:

Right now, the electronic-book market finds itself roughly in the same place the market for MP3s was in 1999, the year after the release of the first portable MP3 player. First adopters of e-books, who are filling their devices with content and proselytizing to their friends, have it better than the early MP3 users. The iTunes store, which was established in early 2003, was among the first online sites where music fans could easily buy music files, a la carte, from a huge selection. The other commercial sites, wrote the New York Times, were "complex, expensive and limiting" and "failing because they were created to serve the interests of the record companies, not their customers." Basically, before iTunes arrived, if you wanted portable tracks, you had to rip your own, borrow collections from friends, or grab "free" tunes from the "pirates" at Napster or other file-sharing sites.

Shafer goes on to say that although relatively few people expect e-book content to be free,

...that could change in a matter of months if the book industry insists on 1) jacking up the price of e-books and 2) withholding potential best-sellers from the e-book market. Cool devices that make electronic reading painless are just around the corner, and the e-book market is about to explode. If publishers insist on pushing prices too high and curbing availability, consumers could rebel—as they did with the sharing of MP3s—and normalize the trafficking of infringing e-books.

Interesting points all, and a very worthwhile piece to check out. Highly recommended.