DC Comics Exclusively on Kindle Fire

Amazon announced today that 100 DC Comics will be made available on the Kindle Fire, some of them exclusively, including Watchmen, Batman: Arkham City, Superman: Earth One, and my personal favorite, V for Vendetta, none of which have been available in digital format before. What isn't know is what specific format the files will be presented in, but a few details are known.

First of all, Watchmen and Superman: Earth One are now available for pre-order at a price of $9.99, but with a file size listed as 11kb each, leading one to suspect they'll only be available as streaming content residing in the cloud, although downloads may still be possible for offline reading, as per Jeff Bezos' presentation comments.

Secondly, a short description given on each book's Amazon page under the heading "Kindle Fire: Comic Books" reads:

"Graphic novels come alive on Kindle Fire with Kindle Panel View. Double-tap on any region to see it magnified. You can also swipe forward or backward to be guided through the panels in the author’s own sequence for an immersive reading experience."

This sounds very much like the "Guided View" now used in apps by ComiXology, Dark Horse and the like, and as ComiXology was featured in the Kindle Fire promos one might speculate a partnership here. My guess is a DC Comics app will be packaged with the unit, or made available for free from the Amazon App Store.

And finally, here's the complete list of all 100 DC titles to be made available for the Kindle Fire on November 15th:

All Star Superman
All Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder, Vol. 1
American Vampire Vol. 1
Batman and Robin, Vol. 1: Batman Reborn
Batman and Robin, Vol. 2: Batman vs. Robin
Batman and Robin, Vol. 3: Batman Must Die!
Batman and Son
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Batman: Arkham City
Batman: Hush
Batman: R.I.P.
Batman: The Black Glove
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
Batman: The Long Halloween
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne
Batman: Year One
Blackest Night
Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps Vol. 1
Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps Vol. 2
Blackest Night: Rise of the Black Lanterns
Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps
Brightest Day, Vol. 1
Brightest Day, Vol. 2
Brightest Day, Vol. 3
Daytripper
Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile
Fables Vol. 2: Animal Farm
Fables Vol. 3: Storybook Love
Fables Vol. 4: March of the Wooden Soldiers
Fables Vol. 5: The Mean Seasons
Fables Vol. 6: Homeland
Fables Vol. 7: Arabian Nights (and Days)
Fables Vol. 8: Wolves
Fables Vol. 10: The Good Prince
Fables Vol. 11: War and Pieces
Fables Vol. 12: The Dark Ages
Fables Vol. 13: The Great Fables Crossover
Fables Vol. 14: Witches
Fables Vol. 15: Rose Red
Green Lantern Vol. 3: Wanted Hal Jordan
Green Lantern: Agent Orange
Green Lantern: Blackest Night
Green Lantern: Rage of the Red Lanterns
Green Lantern: Rebirth
Green Lantern: Secret Origin
Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War
How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less
Identity Crisis
Kingdom Come
MAD About Oscars
MAD About Superheroes
MAD About Superheroes
MAD About the 50′s
MAD About the 60′s
Marzi
Planetary Vol. 1: All Over the World and Other Stories
Planetary Vol. 2: The Fourth Man
Planetary Vol. 3: Leaving the 20th Century
Planetary Vol. 4: Spacetime Archaeology
Superman for All Seasons
Superman: Earth One
The Dark Knight Strikes Again
The Flash: Rebirth
The Joker
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Vol. 1)*
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Vol. 2 )*
The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes
The Sandman Vol. 2: The Doll’s House
The Sandman Vol. 3: Dream Country
The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists
The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You
The Sandman Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections
The Sandman Vol. 7: Brief Lives
The Sandman Vol. 8: World’s End
The Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones
The Sandman Vol. 10: The Wake
The Sandman: Dream Hunters
The Sandman: Dream Hunters (P. Craig Russell)
The Sandman: Endless Nights
The Unwritten Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity
The Unwritten Vol. 2: Inside Man
V for Vendetta
Watchmen
We3
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1: Unmanned
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 10: Whys and Wherefores
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 2: Cycles
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 3: One Small Step
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 4: Safeword
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 5: Ring of Truth
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 6: Girl on Girl
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 7: Paper Dolls
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 8: Kimono Dragons
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 9: Motherland

Kindle Videos & Comparison Chart

Here's a selection of videos that have shown up on the web since yesterday, giving more insight into the new Amazon ereader line. The first is Amazon's new "Kindle Friends" commercial for the $79 model...



Then there's the new "Quick Tour" ad for the Kindle Fire, which shows off the device quite nicely...



And this shorter television ad...



Check out this video for an insightful description of how the new Silk "split browser" has completely changed the future of Internet browsing....


 
Finally, here's the complete video for Jeff Bezos' presentation yesterday morning. It's nearly an hour long, but it's well worth a watch if you're at all interested in the details of what these new devices can do...



Lastly, here's a nice comparison chart I found today lining up the specs of the Kindle Fire against the iPad 2, and its more direct competitor, the NookColor, which it will all but replace in the market unless the NookColor 2 is utterly stunning - and more importantly, cheap. But don't expect huge price drops to happen across the board: experts are estimating that Amazon will lose $50 on each Kindle Fire sold, a business practice no other company out there can afford, and certainly not Barnes & Noble. And while the Fire has half the features of an iPad 2 (plus a few big ones the iPad doesn't have, like cloud computing and direct access to the biggest bookstore in the world), they're all the features that are used the most, for a fraction of the cost. And let's face it, even in good financial times, price is the biggest factor in almost any buying decision.

Big Day For the Digital Revolution

So the news is out at last, and it's a stunner: not one new Kindle, but FOUR of them are on the way, with prices ranging from $79 for a basic eInk model to -- not $300... not $250... but $199 for the Kindle Fire tablet. I nearly drove off the road when I heard it on NPR this afternoon. I could almost visualize Steve Jobs' big screen slide presentation of the then-amazing $499 iPad entry price being crushed to dust beneath a massive $199 price point graphic. THUD!!! The battle has begun.

Don't get me wrong, I love my iPad. Use it all the time, and will continue to do so. But the specs on Amazon's first entry into the tablet wars is the first significant shot across the bow of Apple's floating fortress. And frankly, the two devices aim at very different markets (albeit with a fair amount of overlap). Apple has done an utterly miserable job of satisfying my reading habit, and as far as I'm concerned the iBookstore is not far behind Borders in its success rate for digital conversion. The iPad is simply not a serious reading device for anything but comics and the handful of interactive graphic novels that have as yet found their way onto the market. Amazon, on the other hand, has almost single-handedly made digital literature a household trend. They own the market. And having that much content makes virtually giving away the necessary tool to use it a brilliant strategy. Now, for less than the price of three hardbacks you can have an eInk Kindle with immediate access to millions of books - 2 million of which are free. How is that not a stunning economic value? If you thought last holiday season was big for digital, just wait. You're about to see something truly amazing.

Last week, Apple cut its manufacturing orders for iPads by half, and one has to wonder if they got wind of what was coming today. Get this: you can buy all four of the new Kindle devices - or six base model Kindles - for less than the price of one entry level iPad. Not that you would likely want to, but it makes a serious point. For those considering an ereader (or two or three) as gift items this year, $79 is pretty appealing. It will certainly make it a possibility for a lot of shoppers for whom the iPad, or even a NookColor was just not a serious consideration. Seeing the price point of an ereader under $100 was a day I've been waiting for with much anticipation for a long, long time (I've been reading on pocket pc's and such for nearly twenty years now), but a price under $80 was not something I had expected to see. And today Amazon gave us two ereaders under $100.

So here's the scoop on the new Kindle devices. As you can see from the pics, there are three hardware layouts: one 7" tablet with a capacitive touchscreen (available in WiFi only at the moment), and two Kindle formats: one with with a standard 5-way controller and WiFi only ($79), and one with a new eInk touchscreen interface, available in WiFi ($99) or 3G models ($149). You can get all the specs on the relevant Amazon pages, so I won't go into that here. What I will point out are some of the more outstanding features that makes these truly amazing entries into the digital reading device market. So astounding was the announcement of the tablet price point that it virtually overshadowed the news of a Generation 4 Kindle with an eInk touchscreen. That alone is a huge step forward - not that this is a first, but on a Kindle it will be the first that is a success. As you can see from the spec shots, the new eInk models are far smaller than past Kindles, but with the same 6" screen size: the touchscreens are 11% smaller, while the base model is 18% smaller - small enough, in fact, to easily slip into the pocket of your jeans. In addition, the touchscreen is 8% lighter, while the base model is an astonishing 30% lighter at 5.98 ounces: far less than the weight of a single paperback. A new feature that is really exciting is X-Ray, which allows you to tap the screen once and access a virtual database of info on fictional or historical characters, places, phrases, topics, or what have you, as well as descriptions and reviews from Shelfari and Wikipedia.

But today was really the Kindle Fire's day. And it can really be summed up in one word: CLOUD. As nice as all the other features of the Fire are, the one that truly sets it apart is the cloud. The Kindle Fire comes with 8 gigs of storage, but you won't really need it (except maybe for games). Just as with the previous Kindles, anything you buy on Amazon is held in perpetual storage for you in their archive. But unlike before, now you can stream that content without ever downloading it onto your device (although you can do that too if you like, say, for when you'll be traveling and away from WiFi for awhile). The Fire's dual core processor is fast enough to stream music while browsing the web, or read a book while downloading videos. And with the Fire, Whispersync extends to video as well as books, so you can resume a movie on your TV where you left off on your tablet, and your place in ebooks is synced with any Kindle reader. Then there's the browser. Amazon put out a separate press release just for its new browser, dubbed Silk, which utilizes all of Amazon's substantial customer data and cloud resources to customize each user's experience and accelerate the browser speed (read more about that here).

The one drawback to the Kindle Fire (and it's potentially a big one, although for Kindle users its nothing new) is its lack of support for the ePub format. That's right: Amazon's tablet will NOT read ePubs natively, although as an Android device with a web broswer, you should be able to do so via apps (how easy this will be has yet to be seen, since its onboard app store is also Amazon's). Honestly, however, this is no real surprise, since Amazon wants you to buy your content from them, and can only sell the Kindles at these prices if you do. And to be fair, the lack of ePub support is offset quite nicely by the tablet's Flash support. With a color screen now in play for Kindle users, Amazon's propriety ebook format may well give ePub a run for its money where children's books and graphic novels are concerned (and for graphic novel fans, yes, that is the Watchmen on the tablet there: it will be available for the first time in digital exclusively on the Kindle). New Kindle formatting possibilities is something I plan to keep my eye on. I imagine some changes are on their way for the Kindle Direct Publishing program, and I'll let you know as soon as I know.

The Kindle Fire will sell out fast - very likely within a week, if not by this weekend - as Amazon only placed advanced orders for 900,000 units to be made. But since they won't ship until November 15th, that was a pretty wise idea: if they sell more they have plenty of time to crank up production, and if not, no loss. But I honestly can't imagine that will be the case. If people were willing to throw away a hundred bucks on an HP tablet - with virtually no content or plans for future support - you can bet they'll jump at a device which is nothing short of a window into a world of digital wonders: Amazon now has 18 million reasons to do so (and growing every day).

Click here to read an open letter from Jeff Bezos, or here to read the press release.

Kindle Library Lending Requirements

I mentioned last week that I had contacted Amazon regarding the requirements for inclusion in its Kindle library lending program, and that they had passed me on to OverDrive, their distribution partner, and the leading digital content service for libraries. Today I received their response, which included a link to a pdf brochure entitled "Intro to Digital Distribution" that lays out some very basic guidelines and provides a set of resources for various ebook creation/conversion services and news sources (at least two of which have incorrect hyperlinks). The email also contained the following statement:

As a smaller publisher to qualify for review of your account application you must offer a minimum of 20 unique titles by 5 authors. We do not review manuscripts and accept only market ready, professionally acquired, edited and packaged eBooks. We will evaluate self-published authors for individual accounts if the writer has been credibly published, the title(s) have registered credible sales ranking at leading retailers, and the title/author has received favorable reviews.

If you meet these minimum requirements you must complete an online application located at:
https://secure.contentreserve.com/publisherapplication.asp and wait for your petition to be reviewed.

No mention was made of author/publisher compensation, nor are any financial terms laid out in the above application. The only mention of monetary compensation was this bit on the OverDrive publisher info page:

Once a publisher has been approved and has accepted the Content Reserve Distribution and Publisher Service Account Agreement and fee structure, the publisher is granted access to Content Reserve via private login ID and password. OverDrive works with the publisher to confirm a wholesale discount (Distributor Cost) that will be used to determine the amount the publisher is paid for each digital product sold.

How author shares are paid out is very likely left up to the publisher to work out with the author's agent, and would be contained within the digital distribution section of the author's contract.

So essentially this means that few, if any, self-published authors are currently included in the Kindle library lending program, or likely to be anytime soon. With two of the big six publishers still withholding their catalogs from library lending (Macmillan and Simon & Schuster), as well as HarperCollins' 26-loan limitation on its titles, even many of the major authors are still unavailable to digital libraries. This will all change one day, but for now just write it off to growing pains.

Ring Saga I, Pages 17-18 - The Rhinegold Awakens

At last the long awaited moment arrives. This week's installment of The Ring Saga brings us to the crucial moment when the Rhinegold awakens. Just as Alberich has reached the limits of his
tolerance for the Rhinemaidens' trickery and guile, the morning sun breaks through the water's surface to illuminate the Rhinegold. The sister nymphs break out in joyous song, circling around the spire of rock on which the golden globe is enthroned as rays of gleaming sunlight shimmer in the flowing stream. Meanwhile, Alberich is caught in awe-struck wonder, enraptured by the wonder of the unexpected sight.

For this page layout I've finally been able to lighten up the background layers and shed some light upon the scene, so to speak. Because we're underwater there's still a lot of murkiness around the edges, which helps create a high degree of contrast with the brighter center. I've also given the whole page a nice burnished gold hue by overlaying a sheet of yellowed parchment and blending it with Soft Light in the Photoshop composite, as well as adding the golden light rays effects with brushes. I've added the usual notes to the art page on the Fantasy Castle Books website, so I won't go into it in detail here, except to say that it's really nice to be able to work with real light for a change. In fact, it took better than a dozen lights set up in Poser to get the right effect.

Also, for the first time here I've used a light font on a dark background for the text block on the right. This was not entirely on purpose, as I hadn't originally planned it that way, but I liked the effect of the greenish-gold lettering better than adding a light gold glow layer under black letters. The main reason is that it creates a nice shadowed side to the rocky pinnacle, which allows the light on the other side to stand out more, but I also think it nicely compliments the overall color scheme, and signals a shift in the sequence of events.

I welcome your feedback on the readability and aesthetic appeal of not just this page, but any or all of those I post. At some point down the line I'll be calling for beta test readers to give input and opinions on various aspects of the project, but any thoughts you might have as I post each page will certainly be welcome. It can only help me to fine tune and hone my craft as I progress, rather than having to go back and fix everything later. I will be printing up a limited edition set of chapbooks for each chapter, and anyone who gives me useful input will receive a complimentary autographed copy, and for those who provide reviews of the entire work once it is done, a signed edition of the final published book. You can leave comments here, or send your notes to: reviews(at)fantasycastlebooks.com.

Kindle Library Lending + Tablet News

By now I'm sure most of you have heard that Amazon has launched its public library lending program. As of Wednesday, the Kindle loan program went live at over 11,000 libraries throughout the U.S., with some 25,000+ titles available for immediate borrowing. While that figure was taken from the Seattle Public Library system (where the test program was first rolled out), a quick browse through my local public library showed just 4530 copyrighted titles available in the Kindle format, of which some 1200 were already checked out (The Help, for example, has all 8 "copies" out with 54 patrons on the wait list). However, another 34,000+ public domain titles are also available. And unlike the others, the public domain ebooks are available to anyone at any time, with no restrictions on the number of patrons who can check it out at one time, or on the length of time that they can keep it. These are essentially the best and most popular of the Project Gutenberg collection, the classics of literature, made available via your local library's virtual stacks. Of course, more and more contemporary titles will be added to the program as the various publishers and authors come on board.

One of the best things about the Kindle program over all the others is that any bookmarks, notes or highlights you make in your borrowed book (yes, it's now okay to write in your library book!) will be saved for future use if you should ever buy or borrow the book again, although no one else will see them except you. I'm an avid highlighter and note taker, so this is an exceptionally useful feature for me. In addition, there is no need to ever plug your reading device in, as all books are transferred via Amazon's Whispernet, so that once you check out a book from your library's website, it automatically shows up on your Kindle. Loan periods are the now standard 14 days, but if you check the same book out again (or purchase it), it will remember exactly where you left off reading last time. All the normal Kindle features are also active, such as public notes, social network sharing, and real page numbers for reference. For more info on the Kindle library lending program, visit this page at Amazon.

In related news, the new Kindle Tablet is due for launch seemingly very soon, with Amazon scheduling a New York press conference for this Wednesday, the 28th, where it is presumed the new device will be officially announced, with release coming shortly after. Pre-orders are expected to begin on Tuesday for the 1st generation 7" model, which will feature 6 gb of memory and a 2-finger touchscreen, driven by a single core processor in order to keep the price down to an expected $250 to compete with the NookColor. It will run on a custom Android OS tailored to utilize Amazon's extensive distribution channels (i.e. app store, cloud player, etc.), with no reference to Google anywhere in the picture. Somewhat confusingly, the Kindle tablet will be named simply the "Amazon Kindle" - as if they foresee a time in the not too distant future when it will be the only Kindle on the market. Original analyst expectations for the new tablet to sell 4 million units through the holidays have recently been cut in half due to the continued economic downturn, but last weekend's record-breaking sales of $85 million in Star Wars BluRay box sets proves that tech nerds and sci-fi geeks (like me) are more than willing to reallocate their food budget in order to be entertained. I'll be eating Ramen noodles for the next three months to pay for my Star Wars, and I'm guessing next month's rent will go to Amazon.

Amazon Kindle Tablet Mockup

ADDENDUM CONCERNING THE LIBRARY LOAN PROGRAM:

There has been a lot of talk and speculation (and complaining, as usual) on message boards and comment trails concerning how authors are to be compensated for the use of their intellectual work in the new library loan program, with no real factual substance to any of the arguments so far as I can tell. A lot of authors seem to think their books are simply being stolen, although I doubt any of them actually have any books in the program, as Amazon generally sends out a contract addendum notification regarding major changes in policy. However, Amazon's current contract does specifically state that ebooks netting the 70% royalty must be made available for loan, with no specifics given concerning modes of distribution. The fine print also stipulates that Amazon is allowed to add additional distribution channels and programs as it sees fit, so authors who have Kindle editions available at that rate really have no case for complaint. An email I sent to Amazon yesterday regarding author compensation and how to sign up for the library loan program redirected me to OverDrive, the operators of the public library lending system. Queries to them have yet to be answered, but I'll keep you posted. Regardless of whether any monetary compensation is forthcoming for authors, the whole point of libraries as a social program is to stimulate and improve overall literacy, which ultimately creates avid book readers. Additionally, the more exposure a book receives, the more buzz and word of mouth promotion is generated (assuming, of course, that the book is good), which itself ultimately results in sales. Good books will be bought, and bad ones will not. It's up to the readers to decide.

Ring Saga, Book I, Pages 15-16

This one's a little overdue, I know. In fact, the whole project's well past due, as I'm off my production schedule by quite a bit. But then, I've never been able to stick to a schedule, so I don't know why I bother making one. Still, I do. Sometimes it's just good to know how far behind you are. Helps to keep me from slacking, I suppose.

So here's the reason this one took so long. It wasn't a particularly difficult scene to do, and the background came together fairly quickly, all in all. Although I use entirely different background elements for every page, by now I've got the color scheme pretty well figured out for this sequence, so it's easy enough to blend blues and yellows and greens to get the desired effect. And the prop elements here have all been used before, so there's no surprises for me there.

The difficulty came in posing the main figures. For this one I initially wanted a more graphic novel, comic book style, with fairly extreme camera angles, looking down on Alberich from up high, while at the same time having the Rhinemaidens hovering above. With the water above and the ground below I thought I could push the perspective further. Had I done this as two separate pieces, with each one broken off in boxes like the comix do, it would have been easy enough. But as a single piece it just didn't gel. The background required a far more radical shift in the middle to accommodate the two perspectives, and that just made it look like Alberich was falling off the edge of the world.

So I pulled it back together with a front facing camera view and columns down the sides. Unfortunately, by then I had already spent several days rendering layers I ultimately couldn't use, and had to completely redo. But that's the great thing about working with digital: you can alter any single element without effecting any of the others. Had I been painting this with watercolor I would have had to start all over.

You can see the alternate Alberich pose over at the Fantasy Castle Books page, along with several other early renders and the individual background plates it took to make the layout. Click the image above to read the book online.

Tablet Sales Update

Following up on my prior post, a few new numbers are coming in that shed a bit more light on the digital impact. The figures given in that post were for the first six months of 2011, but some numbers from the Census Bureau are in for July as well which show brick and mortar bookstore sales dropping 4.2%, their largest loss for the year thus far. And this with the overall retail segment gaining 6.9% for July and 7.9% for the year to date, and Borders selling off large chunks of its inventory at greatly reduced prices, which does not bode well for August.

Meanwhile, tablet sales are skyrocketing well beyond expectations. As you may recall (if not, see my prior posts here and here), at the end of 2010 the IDC's predictions were for tablet sales for this year to reach some 45 million units by year's end. Revised projections now put that figure at 62.5 million, based on a second quarter jump of 88.9% over the first quarter of this year (which was down slightly due to Japan's earthquake causing supply chain problems, and many potential buyers waiting for the iPad 2's April launch), with 13.6 million tablets shipped in Q2 and slightly less than 5 million shipped in Q1, for a total thus far of 18.5 million or so. This represents a whopping 303.8% increase over the second quarter of 2010 - the iPad's first trimester of life when initial sales of 5 million iPads took everyone but Apple by surprise.

Apple's share of those Q2 numbers is 9.3 million, for a 68.3% share of the tablet market. Android tablets, by comparison, made up just 26.8% combined (Google, Samsung, Acer, etc.) with the BlackBerry PlayBook coming in third at 4.9% of the market. And while Apple is certain to retain the lion's share throughout the year, with Amazon's 7" & 10" tablets pending that ratio is bound to shrink, quite possibly by double digits through the holidays if Amazon enters the tablet market near the $250 mark as expected. You may also recall my prediction from those prior posts that the Kindle would be significantly revamped this year; and while the "Kindle Tablet" is planned as a companion device to the standard Kindle eReader, Amazon has most definitely revised their device strategy, with a new app store, a cloud service, and a proposed ebook subscription service pending publisher approval.

With regards to dedicated ebook reading devices, IDC's figures show a 167% increase over the same period last year, with 5.4 million units shipping in Q2 (down 9% over an impressively strong post-holiday first quarter). This has led the IDC to revise its projections for dedicated e-readers to 27 million for the year, up from 16.2. Dividing out the shares, Amazon held a respectable (but shrinking) lead with 51.7%, followed by Barnes & Noble's Nook, which increased to 21.2%.

All of this has put a damper on PC sales, which are virtually stagnant with a mere 2% growth for this year over last. And we all know what it's doing to the print book industry. Just ask anyone who worked for Borders.

E-book Sales Update



I haven't talked about the sales stats of digital versus print for awhile, but the figures for the first half of this year are in and they're frankly staggering. Even more dramatic than I had imagined, given the ongoing closures of all Borders stores throughout the U.S.

I had wondered how much and just what effect those store closings would have on book sales - whether sales would decline overall with fewer storefronts to stimulate impulse purchases, or if those sales would simply shift to another vendor (namely online). With ebooks now firmly in the picture, the answer is slightly more complicated than that.

I was talking to the owner of a used bookstore today, a guy who apparently makes a living by selling beat up paperbacks for two bucks each that he gets from yard sales for .25 cents, and I was taken aback when he stated unequivocally that ebooks were just a passing fad. No one in their right mind would actually want to read on a "computer screen" he said, when they could smell the musty stench of mildewing paper instead (okay, the adjectives are mine). As if smelling a book has anything to do with the actual literary experience - the intellectual and emotional pleasure derived from a compelling plot and fascinating characters. And while there are some who still prefer their vinyl records, frankly I don't miss the skips and scratches in my mp3's. That is to say, bookstores are going the way of the record store, whether they like it or not. And libraries are not far behind.

So here are the cold, hard facts...

Ebook sales are up 161% for the first six months of 2011, and 167% in June alone, to close the period just shy of a half billion dollars in revenue (this with ebooks being priced lower than their equivalent print editions, and in the midst of an ongoing economic slump). Meanwhile, trade paperbacks fell by a drastic 64%, with children's hardcovers down 31% and adult hardcovers losing 25%. Mass market sales declined by 22% and children's paperbacks by 13%.

Some of that may be due to Borders shutting its doors, but most of it would have happened anyway. I can tell you from personal experience that I sell close to a hundred ebooks for every print edition of my books. So why would I possibly want to promote my print editions with book signings or convention appearances? When you can buy a book from anywhere you happen to be, and start reading it immediately, convenience alone dictates that a lot of books will be acquired that way. After all, why go to the bookstore when the bookstore will come to you?

Ring Saga, Scene 1, Pages 13-14

Another new page is up today after a frenzied but productive four day weekend. I'm back to work at the day job tomorrow, so I wanted to get a jump start on this week's section, and it came together fairly fast. That's not to give myself too much credit, however, since it is a pretty simple scene, and I had it well in envisioned long before I started. The part that took the most time was just waiting for the renders to get done. That took fifteen hours to complete.

I did the usual dozen multipass renders at a pretty high resolution (3375x2000) to achieve as much detail as possible. The high resolution images I have posted up on the Fantasy Castle Books site are somewhat smaller than that (2000x1600 for the virgin art and 1280x1026 for the text layout), but large enough so you can see good detail. In print, of course, it will only be a 6x9" page, or 9x12" for the full layout, and smaller than that for the ebook, depending on your reader (although you'll be able to zoom in). But here for the first time you can really fully see the texture in the fishscale skin (and Flosshilda's is my favorite of the three), as well as the dirt and grunge on Alberich's clothes and skin. You can also clearly see the Viking torc he wears, and the ring on Flosshilda's finger.

Mainly this image was all about facial expressions. Faces are often really difficult to pin down, since every subtle shift somehow alters them in unexpected ways. The human face is made up of a myriad of tiny muscles, each of which add minute detail and meaning to a certain look. And it's almost impossible to define just what each movement does - why a lift of the brow makes one seem quizzical, or a twitch of the upper lip means something is funny. But these expressions came together almost exactly as I wanted right away, so it was only a matter of some fine-tuning to get the (hopefully) seduction look in Flosshilda's smile, and the wanton lust in Alberich's grin. Maybe I'm just seeing it because it's what I expect to see, so I can only hope you see it too.

The text again is pretty much straight out of my first draft, with only minor edits for space and pacing. I should say at this point that all of the text will ultimately be revised and edited once all the art layouts are finalized. There's not a lot of point in going over the text extensively right now, as I'm almost certain to want to change it later anyway. As a story progresses and characters evolve it often becomes necessary to go back and alter, add, or adjust what's gone before to make it more cohesive, or to set up minor subplots and twists that develop unexpectedly, and they tend to do. So while I'm fairly happy with the rough draft text (unusual in style though it is), if at times it seems redundant or stilted or just plain poorly written, bear with me as it will theoretically get fixed later. That is assuming, of course, my writing is any good in the first place. If not, I hope you like the pictures.

Ring Saga, Scene 1, Pages 11-12

We are now well into the "Rhinemaiden Seduction Sequence" which at around this point might better be dubbed the "Taunting of Alberich" scene. The page spreads have become intentionally darker as we have plunged into the lower depths of the Rhine, leaving the bluish hue of the surface behind. Where the waters were clear above we now see moss and murky haze below. I've also used some swirling Celtic patterns and caustic overlays to give a sense of churning motion as Alberich tumbles to the ground.

I've tightened up this section quite a bit from Wagner's sprawling opus, in which each Rhinemaiden would have pages to provoke our poor dwarf smith before dismissing him with howls of laughter. I had intended at first to give one page to each of the three, but ultimately it took a little more than that, so here the second siren gets the better part of two full pages, with Alberich still bitterly lamenting the loss of the first.

I've also given Voglinda an extended appearance here on Velgunda's page as she admires the craftsmanship of the "gift" the smith has brought. On that note, I have made some slight revisions to the text of the preceding page to better set up the "giving" of the necklace. And, as a minor clue as to who the gift was actually intended for you might consider the color of the gems and beads he used.

Despite its seeming simplicity, this was a rather difficult scene to compose visually. I wanted to move in close on the characters, but needed to give a sense of depth with Alberich laying on the bottom of a looming pinnacle of rock. Since there was no room for a lot of landscape props, I used a bit of rocky texture over the whole to give the feeling of high spires of stone rising from the depths. You'll have to decide for yourself whether or not it was successful.