Brenda Cooper's Blog, page 36

Our Books Have Returned

And what a silly weekend it was.

At least at the moment, my books are once again available at Amazon. They remain unavailable on the Kindle.

I sell content.  I like to call that content stories.  In general, I don't control availability or format or price.

I want to wake up in a world where the stories I tell are available in print (via Amazon and my local Indie bookstore and in the local chain), on the Kindle, on the Sony eReader, on the Nook, on the iPad, in as many formats as possible.  This ...

My Books Cannot be Found on Amazon

If you are a fan and want a copy, try indie bookstores.  I know you can order through a number of them.  Powell's.com is one example.

I plan to strip links when I have time and re-point them to other stores or to Indie-bound.

In the meantime, I'm seriously saddened that the easiest place to find my books at this moment is not available to readers.

In general, the argument is about control of pricing (not about a particular price point for ebooks). It is between one of the largest publisher's of ...

Amazonfail: What Happens if the Distributor (Amazon or Apple) Controls Prices

The current #Amazonfail is about them pulling all of the Macmillan books off of Amazon (the last one -if you remember – was pulling a rankings off of gay and lesbian themed books).  The apparent issue is about price control.  For those who find this news new, John Scalzi has a good summary of the issue.  As an author, and someone who's always been loyal to Amazon,  I'm pretty pissed off.

Here are the business model points as  I understand them.

Today, in print, the publishers have full control ...

Geek Girl Goes Army

I was lucky enough to be an invited speaker and guest at the 2010 Mad Scientist Future Technology Center, put on by TRADOC G-2, which is part of the US Army.  Other attendees were from various armed forces (including some form different countries), other science fiction writers, and subject matter experts in various science and technology areas.  The primary purpose of the seminar was to provide input to the Army as they plan for future force development.   This took place Wednesday through F...

Linkages and Trivia

Congratulations to Cherie Priest for winning the Pacific Northwest Bookseller's Award for Boneshaker.  There is an article in the Seattle Times, and here is a link to my reading recommendation for the book.

The linkage between man and machine is growing every day.  I call it "The Tender Mashup" in this month's installment of my column, Today's Tomorrow's over at Futurismic.

I'll be heading to the east coast (Newport news, Virginia) next week for a conference, and stopping for a day in Arizona o...

I'll be at Rustycon this Saturday

Places you can find me at Rustycon (Seattle Airport Marriott) this Saturday:

10:00, Moderating the panel, Palaces and Prisons? Urban Development in the 22nd Century in Evergreen I
Is technology accelerating the divide between rich and poor? Will it make sense to live closer together in high-density zones optimized for transit and pedestrians, or will ever-longer commutes require even bigger and more comfortable cars? Will residential towers bring every indulgence to the wealthy, or simply...

An ordinary futurist reads her Seattle Times

I often get asked what makes me a futurist.  Fair question, since I don't have the formal training many futurists have.  Mostly I read, and then I think.  I talk to other people.  I am not an expert in any one field (except maybe writing science fiction) but being a generalist has it's uses.  Anyway, today's paper had some great futurist fodder.  Here goes:

The best – the must read – is a transcript of Paul Hawken's commencement address from May of last year to the University of Portland. ...

2010: What we could be doing

This is the third part of my futures post series for January 2010.  The first one evaluated my results for 2009. The second talked about what I think will happen in 2010.   This is the "what could we do" post.  There are a lot of things, but I'm going to pick four.

Reform the way we make decisions in this country.  Why?  We and many of our elected representatives are abysmal listeners, easily spun by the people with money (corporations, lobbyists). We are easily affected by sound-bites with...

An Ordinary Futurist Predicts 2010 Events

After evaluating my predictions from last year (which were in three separate posts to start with), I decided to keep it simple.  Remember that futurists have no crystal ball and I can no more tell you what a stock will be on a given day than a séance leader can.  We can see trends. We usually can't see the things that knock us off our expectations (like Twitter).  But hey, this is a bit of fun to have.  Put keep in mind – this an educated guess at what will happen, and it's not exactly what s...

Testing Last Year's Predictions

I'm not as much of a predictive futurist as some of my friends and colleagues, and I do like to play in the space once a year – right about now.  I'm going to do this in three steps. Evaluate last year's predictions, make this year's predictions, talk about what we need to do this year but that I'm not predicting we will do.  So here is step one, a look at what I predicted last year and how close I came.

What I said about the economy: Don't look for magic bullets.  There is no one bailout big ...