RocketFish LED book light

Rocketfish™ eReader Clip-On LED Light on Best Buy

I bought this to go along with my new Kindle and as soon as I took it out of the box I knew it was going back. I'd rate the quality of the materials used as comparable to something you'd get out of a gumball machine. But look and feel aside, I figured I'd try it. The thing doesn't even cast light on the ebook reader. It shines on you instead. The light that is cast on the reader is wavy and dim. Completely unacceptable.

Rocketfish is Best Buy's house brand. They knock off other company's products. I've bought a few Roctetfish products in the past and they've been OK. Best Buy should be ashamed of themselves for selling this piece of junk. For the same price you can buy something of better quality through Amazon. This product should be removed from the shelves. Immediately.

Pros: It's returnable.

Cons: The product.

CDBaby gets into the DIY book business.

So now worlds collide and CDBaby has gotten into the DIY book biz with BookBaby. I use CDBaby to get my records onto the various digital stores and now it looks like they're providing a similar service for ebooks.

I don't know how their service compares or if they're a day late and a dollar short when dealing with outlets like lulu and CreateSpace, but this'll be something that I look into.

In other news, I have a new draft of the novel that's been streamlined in a few places and I've sent it out again. We shall see how that goes. I've made a pact to send it out to at least three or four places each week and if there's nothing going on by June, I'm going to do the DIY thing.

And I've also vowed to take the word self-published out of my vocabulary when I talk about this stuff. I like DIY or indie a lot better.

Here's a link to the bookbaby site if you want to check out what they're offering. http://stuffidontneed.blogspot.com/2011/01/cdbaby-gets-into-diy-book-business.html

I'll look at it more closely soon. If nothing else, the fact that they've jumped into the fray means someone outside the DIY pub industry is seeing potential here. Or am I wrong? Thoughts?

Update:  I just did a little more research (I looked at their splash page). They want $99 to distribute your book. Sounds like a crap deal to me.

The Social Network

Just watched The Social Network. I'm left wondering if I should admire Mark Zuckerberg or feel sorry for him. Probably both.

In which I offer my headphone wisdom

My go-to cans

  There are millions of headphones out there today. Some really expensive, some really cheap, some free with your phone or iPod, but no matter where they came from or how much you've paid there's only one real requirement for a pair of cans: they have to sound good.

I have been searching for some good phones for a long time. And I've found some, so I thought let you all know what I've discovered. Maybe it'll help you out.

First off, let's get this out of the way: whatever phones came with whatever player you have are terrible. There's no wiggle room here. If you want decent fidelity, you're going to have to bu something else. The closest I've ever had to good free cans were the phones that came with my Samsung Captivate. They sounded really good, very flat and clean, but they aren't very well-made and didn't fit very well. Fit's almost as important as sound, so I tired of them pretty quickly.

You might also think that if you spend over a hundred bucks you'll be in good shape. Not so fast. You can spend a lot more than that and get some pretty terrible phones. I bought a pair of Dr. Dre Beats Solos on a whim once and tried them out before I left the parking lot of the Best Buy. They were terrible. I couldn't even listen to one full song. They were back in the box and I was in the return line within ten minutes. I didn't try the $250 Beats, but they seem more like a fashion statement and a money grab by the good Doctor than anything else.

So without further ado, I'm going to give you my picks for the best phones I've bought in different price ranges. I should tell you that I am not someone who likes hyped sound in anything I listen to. As someone who's worked in the studio for years, I know engineers work really hard to get records to sound the way they want them to, so who the hell are we to jack the bass to rump quaking levels. When I buy headphones I want to hear the music as intended, not artificially basements, so any set of phones that amplifies the bass is out for me.

Nice, long cord, Brillo pad earcups, great sound.

For sitting around the house and listening I pick the Grado SR80. I bought these moments after I returned the Beats. They are everything the Beats aren't; smooth, detailed and open sounding. They are also very open. That why I recommend them for home use, and preferably when your significant other isn't trying to sleep beside you. The Grados have what's called an open-backed design. This helps them get their open sound, but they are also very audible to anyone else in the room when you're listening. The other downside to the Grados is the ear cushions. They are like wearing Brillo pads on your ears. I got the old design. The newer ones (the SR80i) are more cushy, but just FYI. But they do sound fantastic.

Cheap, but effective. Not the best, but fine fit and sound for commuting.

In the earbud category, I have had a set of Shure se210s. They sounded really good, but they had phone controls they kept breaking. Totally unreliable. I've given up on phones with phone controls. I used the Samsung phones for awhile, but they started to fall apart. I bought an expensive set of klipsch earbuds that were highly recommended on other, more fancy review sites. They sounded terrible. And then on a whim I bought a set of skullcandy ink'd earbuds on a whim. They were on sale for ten bucks. Low and behold, they sound great. So much better than the klipsch that cost ninety dollars more. The bass in the ink'ds is a little hyped in the low mids, but not so much as to muddy the sound. For ten dollars, you'd be crazy not to try them.

Tried and true. The old workhorses.

But now, for the best headphones I've ever had: the Sony MDR 7506. I bought these in 2002 when I first started recording. They were a little bright when I first got them, but after a while they smoothed out and have been great ever since. I've had them for almost ten years. Wow. The faux leather on the ear cups has peeled, and I don't like the coiled cord, but longevity and fidelity can't be argued with. They are closed back, so you can wear them without disturbing anyone. And now they're under a hundred bucks. If you're looking for solid, all-purpose phones, these are hard to beat.

Now, this is by no means an exhaustive review of headphones. This is my experience with what has worked for me. I'm sure that hundreds of dollars would get you phones that would blow any of these away. But headphones aren't really worth spending hundreds of dollars on, if you ask me. They are secondary means of listening to music. There are more important things to spend your tech dollar on unless your in a more rarefied tax bracket. And most of us aren't.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Basement couch

Self-publishing continued...

OK, I've been researching this self-pub thing all week. I've order a test copy of my book through lulu.com (it arrives today. I'm actually really excited, even though it's only for me), I got a draft of the book ready to put on amazon.com in less than TEN minutes. I've also sent out the book to a couple more small presses and a couple more agents. But I just found this blog : A Newbie's Guide to Self-Publishing. It posts some pretty mind-boggling numbers. Like these:

"These are DECEMBER sales figures for some indie authors. In other words, they account for only 31 days of sales.

Are you ready to be blown away?
Blake Crouch - 2500+
Nathan Lowell - 2500+
Beth Orsoff - 2500+
Sandra Edwards - 2500+
Vianka Van Bokkem - 2500+
Maria Hooley - 2500+
C.S. Marks - 2500+
Lee Goldberg - 2500+
Lexi Revellian - 4000+
Zoe Winters - 4000+
Aaron Patterson - 4000+
Bella Andre - 5000+
Imogen Rose - 5000+
Ellen Fisher - 5000+
Tina Folsom - 5000+
Terri Reid - 5000+
David Dalglish - 5000+
Scott Nicholson - 10,000+
J.A. Konrath 10,000+
Victorine Lieske - 10,000+
L.J. Sellers - 10,000+
Michael R. Sullivan - 10,000+
H.P. Mallory - 20,000+
Selena Kitt - 20,000+
Stephen Leather - 40,000+
Amanda Hocking - 100,000+

For a more detailed breakdown, visit Derek J. Canyon's blog http://derekjcanyon.blogspot.com/2011/01/keys-to-epublishing-success.html. This was compiled by him, and Robin Sullivan."

Amanda Hocking, 100K+?!?!? I mean, that's hard to fathom.

There's one commonality amongst them all that gives me pause, however: They all write genre fiction of one kind or another. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a lover of good genre fiction, but the book I'm considering self-pubbing is not genre fiction. There's no niche market for this book, unless you count Appalachians, and we all know they can't read (I joke, I joke!). So can anyone out there point me toward numbers for self-pubbed literary fiction? I'll keep looking myself and report back.

In the meantime, I promise to post some tech stuff here too. I'm working on something about headphones and also thinking about the Motorola Atrix, which everyone seemed to be abuzz about during CES, but my question remains, when you have a computer, a TV, etc, why would you want to plug you phone into one of those devices and use it as the content provider. Stay tuned!

Self-published is a bad word, right?

I know, this is a tech blog, but bear with me, I have some stuff to work out.

Long story short, I have a novel that took me five years to write, and has been done since November 2009. And by done, I mean that I wrote six drafts of it (a few completely from scratch) and when I put the final period on the last draft, the book was the book that I wanted it to be, maybe not perfect, but the book I wanted to write.

Fast-forward to the present day: The book has been around to several agents and publishers, most of whom have had very nice things to say about the book and the writing, but no one has taken it. Some have blamed the market, some have said they liked it but didn't "connect" with it. The list goes on. These are common rejections if you sit around a table with writers and listen to them tell their stories. Let me say right now that, while these rejections have been disappointing, I wouldn't go as far to say they were disheartening or discouraging. In some cases they were quite the opposite. Rejection is part of the writer's life and I've been rejected a ton, so I'm as used to it as can be. A sage teacher once revealed that he sent his stuff out expecting rejection, in fact early in his career he set out to collect rejections.

As the new year arrived, I wanted to start thinking fresh about my book and where I am with my writing and my life. Not only do I have this book done, but I'm almost finished with the first draft my next novel and I have a couple more in various stages of planning and completion. I have a job that keeps me in touch with writing and teaching, so I don't need to support myself with my writing.

The question becomes why do I write, anyway? Well, a big reason, the simplest reason, is that I'm a writer. Writers write, as the saying goes. But it's not just the acting of sitting your ass in a chair and pounding out a few hundred words. I do it because I can't not do it. I'm compelled by a drive that goes beyond the need for recognition and accolade and rests somewhere in the pit of my stomach: I have to say something and I have to say it for me. I have to write or I'm not me. There's more to it than this, but I don't want to get all self-helpy.

So back to the self-publishing thing. Most of my "professional" life has been in advertising, marketing and publishing. I've been a proofreader, a copy editor, an editor, a graphic designer, a marketing manager, a copywriter; I've done just about everything there is to do when it comes to the creation and promotion of printed media. I looked into some of the self-publishing options available now and, honestly, I'm impressed, particularly with LULU.com. Lulu has everything necessary to create a professional-quality book, including ISBN numbers, voluminous print options, templates for design, eBook distribution to Amazon and elsewhere, and other promo opportunities...the list goes on.  And I have the knowledge and ability to use lulu or another service to its full extent. Do I just go for it?

The only thing that continuing to send my  book out to agents and publishers would get me is the satisfaction of knowing that someone who already does what I know how to do has told me that I'm worthy of the effort of putting my book out there, right? Do I need someone to tell me that? Am I making excuses and short-cutting if I self publish? If the reason I write is because I have something I need to say that I hope others will find merit in, then why continue to court the middle man, when their tools are available to all now?

Yes, writers write. And I am a writer. But writing is an art form that is in many ways incomplete without the other side of the equation: the reader. If a writer's job is to give a reader just enough of the world in his mind that the reader can complete the picture in theirs, then shouldn't I seek out readers for my work? I felt strongly enough about this book to spend more than half a decade with it. Don't I then owe the work an audience, no matter how small? To put this in perspective, I started it when my daughter was one and now she's seven. Her whole life has been me with this book. I've grown it and suffered with it and felt proud of it. Should it then live the rest of its life in a box because others haven't found the same wonder in it that I have?

So, in  a world where the publishing industry is failing according to many and the means of production are available at a high level to everyone, should I release my book into the world to see how it fares and move on with my new projects, or is there a reason to keep pounding away at the traditional structure in the hopes of acceptance?

Any thoughts would be most appreciated.

2011, the year of the batch install: Ninite

Happy New Year, everyone. I'm spending my new year at home this year, tucking my girls into bed and sipping some Diet Cherry 7up (it has antioxidants). I'm also breaking in a new PC. Actually, my third in two weeks (more on that later).

I just had to share this new site/installer I found called Ninite. What it does is gives you a list of about seventy or so programs (Chrome, Firefox, VLC, Skype, iTunes, etc.) and lets you tick a box next to the programs you want to install and then you hit the button at the bottom of the page and the thing installs all the programs you want. Mine was done in less the five minutes. Very cool.

Here's the link: http://ninite.com/installer/84a22594182e17127063200e91257e647660ea03

Check it out.