Thursday 8 August 2013

Articles

The Final UK Cover Art For Solo Is Here!
by John Cox (from The Book Bond)

This news about the new James Bond novel was announced on August 1st, but somehow I missed it until last night. Personally, I think the cover looks great, and the dust jacket / underneath combo looks like it will work really well. The new Bond novels are pretty much the only things I buy in hardback, because I want to read them quickly, but work like this banishes any consideration of possibly switching to the ebook -- it's the kind of thing I want to collect.


Click the image above for a huge version. Also follow the link for more pack shots (albeit weirdly compressed and looking noisier than the real thing is likely to be), plus a long bit by the cover's designer on her thinking. It's quite fascinating. You can also see the US art there, which is alright but nowhere near as good.



Doctor Who StoryBundle - Pay What You Want Offer
by Marcus (from Doctor Who News)

Talking of ebooks, here's some Doctor Who ones at a bargain price! Put simply, you pay what you want and in exchange you get DRM-free copies of several Who-related ebooks.

Minimum amount is $3 (c.£2), which gets you fan memoir Dalek I Loved You (if you happen to have the original from 2008, this is an expanded '50th Anniversary Edition'), Barry Letts autobiography Who & Me, critical history of the Second Doctor TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 2, and recipe book Dining With The Doctor: An Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook. That last one has one recipe from every nuWho episode up until the end of series six, plus a bunch of extra ones for fish fingers & custard. Kinda scary...

However, if you choose to pay $10 (c.£6.66) or more you get all that plus VWORP!, "a key primer to the Doctor Who canon from 1963 through to the 2011 Xmas special, for both novices and experts alike", and The Best of TARDIS Eruditorum, "twenty-one of the best and most popular essays from Philip Sandifer's acclaimed blog", compiled exclusively for this bundle. I was going to do a price comparison with buying the other five as ebooks from Amazon, but only three are there... though even that adds up to £8.34.

Plus, as well as picking how much to pay, you can set what percentage goes to the authors and what to running StoryBundle; and you can choose to give 10% to charity too (they offer two appropriate options). The books can either be flat-out downloaded or, if you have a Kindle device/app, be sent directly there (so long as you're prepared to quickly fiddle with a few online settings first).

Do note that there's a time limit to this offer: the ability to buy the bundle expires in about 12 days. If ebooks interest you, they've done this before and I'm sure will again. A list of their previous offers can be perused here.

No comments: