In my ever-present quest to bring you the absolute most-cutting-edge news, Slate discusses ebook pricing and where pirates come into it…one month ago. Whoo, this news is so hot, it burns.

The International Digital Publishing Forum collects quarterly US trade retail eBook sales. The June 2009 stats shows big increase – and it’s only a handful of trade publishers. This might be a side benefit of the so-called global financial blah-blah-sick-of-hearing-about-it, or it could just be that the greater ease of use of ebooks is beginning to pay off.

District 9 shows that good old-fashioned storytelling still works when you pay attention to old rules about creating suspense, trimming the fat, and focusing on characters over gimmick. (and also: this movie rocks!)

The Guardian has an interesting article about creativity and hypochrondria (both the workings of the imagination).

Context 22 (love their tag: ‘we loved the movie, but the book was better’) is the annual convention focused on speculative fiction literature, and it’s on next weekend in Ohio.

The world writes a book. A ‘global’ collaborative effect being worked through Twitter. Now, this is interesting, as just a few days, independently, I considered the possibility of releasing my new book, The Frog Prince’s Daughters through Twitter, to wit:

  • Project: summarise my 200 page novel The Frog Prince’s Daughters in a series of tweets so that it still makes sense. And is still good.
  • Blurb: Anura is a fairytale princess whose prince won’t come. Her cousin Rana decides it’s time to stop waiting and go seeking. YA fantasy.
  • Prologue: remember the princess who kissed a frog? He turned into a prince and they lived happily ever after. And had children…
  • Ch1. Golden-haired Princess Anura turned sixteen, and the castle waited for her prince to come. But he did not and he did not and he did not
  • Rana took herself off the gazebo to avoid her cousin’s moping and to read the Book, the fairytale histories, for mention of late princes
  • Rana had to bite her tongue to stop from pointing out that someday Anura’s prince would come…but it didn’t have to be today
  • Anura caught her reading the Book: if you would let me near a spindle, or an apple, or even my own stepmother…my prince would come.
  • Rana, tartly: I’d rather not be ensorcelled into one hundred years of sleep just so you can have a wake-up kiss.
  • Anura smiled, then grew pensive: There’s a very pretty scullery maid working in the kitchen.
  • A scullery maid should not have worried her. But she was at the very zenith of her fairytale potential, and her prince had not yet come.
  • Rana, scoffing: It’s your turn, Anura. That’s how the Domain works. But Anura would only be appeased when she saw a frog – an omen.
  • Rana: you don’t need an omen. You just need to be patient.

More on this topic on Thursday… (by the way, if you want to compare my tweet efforts with the actual book, check out the excerpt).