Pulp Magazine Authors and Literature Fans discussion
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Tree Pulp? Or E-Pulp?
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i have a kindle and my opinion is that it forces authors to make sure that their writing is up to quality because they now cant sell a book on graphics or visual stylings
I still prefer paperbacks, but don't really care all that much what format a story is in. I won't get anything with DRM on it. I've been burned too many times over the years by proprietary formats & consider DRM to be just one more.I have a Sony & use Calibre to convert formats, so pretty much anything without DRM will work on my ereader. The epaper only does gray shades so artwork needs to be viewed on the PC, which I usually do. I do like the art work. It was Frazetta's on the front of some Conan novels that really got me reading.
i love artwork too but i do find a hell of alot of authors concentrate on the artwork more than the actual content
Personally, I only read paper books. I don't like reading large blocs of text electronically; and as for the issue of damaging or wearing out a paper book, I think the problems posed by the planned obsolesence of the e-readers are far more real.
I'm the designer and art director at New Pulp Production Company Airship 27. We have begun doing PDF versions of all our books (airship27hangar.com) and are looking into Kindle and ePub versions as well. Since we have illustrations in our books the conversion to formats other than PDF is problematic. However, there are more and more tools coming online to make this easier, so it's only a matter of time. Kindle and iPads read PDFs, so we are out there for the biggest number of users...
I have just started reading on my phone and it really suits my "lifestyle." I've only been reading public domain books - I'm not a big fan of new books, and find it frustrating that authors I like from say the 1940s (like Jonathan Latimer) are not available (until they go public domain in twenty years...?) as e books. Anyway, there's a ton of free public domain stuff of course including stories from sci fi pulps - seems like there's been some research done into what PK Dick stories are uncopywrited. In the tangible world I've been making my way through the Black Lizard big book of Pulps, and boy is that thing awkward to read, giant, so subject to gravity ... I've been a booklover since I learned to read 29 years ago, but now I'm addicted to reading on my phone ... The future came so fast. Guess I'll hang onto the books in case there's a power outage.
Jim wrote: "I still prefer paperbacks, but don't really care all that much what format a story is in. I won't get anything with DRM on it. I've been burned too many times over the years by proprietary format..."Same here, Jim. I have a Sony Reader and use Calibre as well. So I am prefer epub format over all others. I have a huge comic book collection and cannot afford bookshelf space for more books.
But I do miss the covers from the old paperbacks. Frazetta got me hooked into Conan. James Bama got me hooked into Doc Savage and the Avenger. Jim Steranko on the Shadow.
Remy, I have the The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps: The Best Crime Stories from the Pulps During Their Golden Age--The '20s, '30s & '40s, too. It is so big & flimsy that I only read bits & pieces here & there because it's a pain. I have to sit with it in my lap (No room for a dog, oh my!) & that means I have to draw my knees up or it is too far away for my reading glasses to focus. The alternative is to read at a table. I might as well read on a PC, which I do too much of anyway. Anyway, it's just not a comfortable book to read. It would be better in eformat.I didn't like the case my Sony came in since it was soft. That meant I freaked it out if I closed it while on & then squeezed it a bit when I picked it up. What combination of buttons did I push?!!! Also, it was on the wrong side for keeping notes. So I made a wooden case for it & mounted it on the opposite side. Now I love it.
Wow, it is nice to see I'm not the only one who is looking towards the e-horizon on my book reading here. Those of you who are wondering if the art looks good on ebooks, I'd have to say a big yes to that. If you want proof, check out Airship27's lineup (by the way, Rob, I only bought one paper book at PulpFest, but I walked away with 8 of your books because I could read them on my iPad. Made it super easy for me to take them on a trip). The lack of color is apparent, but most interior art is in b&w and my experience with a kindle is it looks great anyway.
Richard, the problem with storing comic books is a big one I have too. In fact, it is the same problem that I have with regular books. That's my big reason to switch to ebooks and why I gave up comics for almost 10 years. Thanks to digital Dark Horse and Comixology, I'm going back to comics now, but storing comics have been the bane of my comic book collecting hobby for years.
I have a Kindle and it was great last week when I was traveling -- just bringing the one device rather than a backpack full of paperbacks. Also, I think it works fine for reading text -- better than reading on a backlit LCD screen, at least.Having said that, I still love my physical books and don't see that changing. And until further notice, I'm treating stuff I buy for the Kindle more as a "rental" than an actual purchase -- I'm only buying titles as I actually need them rather than filling it up with stuff for future consumption.
There's a lot of good free or inexpensive public domain stuff out there -- I got the complete works of Rider Haggard for a couple bucks, for example. (I could have tracked down the individual titles for free, I'm sure, but I was willing to pay for the convenience of having them all there together.) But there's also a lot of stuff (pretty much anything from the inception of copyright until the 1990's, I'd say as a ballpark range) that will _never_ be available in electronic format due to rights issues and the difficulty of converting a physical book into an etext version.
There really is a lot of good public domain stuff. Due to weird copyright laws, not as much as there should be, unfortunately. If you look around some, other countries often have different stuff posted. For instance, there is only one story by Robert E. Howard at:http://www.gutenberg.org
but you can find a bunch of his stories at:
http://gutenberg.net.au
Both Project Gutenberg, but different countries.
There are more stories here:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page
but you have to copy & paste them into a document to read later. Still, it's a great way of finding some great older stories without breaking the bank.
Good list, Jim. I'd also add an audiobook version of Gutenberg called librivox: www.librivox.orgRecordings are definitely not pro, but it is still a good way to find some decent public domain stuff on audio.
If you look hard enough, you find some old pulps on there.
I'm a recent eBook convert myself. I've got 100,000+ comics and a few thousand paperbacks cluttering up rooms in my house, so being able to read and archive prose work on my Nook has been awesome. I do prefer reading novels on the Nook over iPad because the e-ink is a lot easier on my eyes.
I'll read pulp where ever and however I can find it. I use my Kindle for travel or when I'm just out of the house, read mostly paper when I'm at home.
Hi, please let me introduce the Pulp Fiction Book Store at http://PulpFictionBook.Store We're producing pulp fiction eBooks in .epub and .mobi for all eReaders. We're taking the old pulp stories and editing together eBooks complete with all of the original illustrations.
Our latest publication is the complete, three volume, Adam Link: Robot stories by Eando Binder. Coming up are many more Sci-Fi, Mysteries, Westerns and Adventures, with authors such as J. Lane Linklater, Johnston McCulley, Edmond Hamilton, Jackson Cole and John Peter Drummond.
Please come by and check us out.
I read, and write it in both print and ebook form. There's nothing like pulp.
I would prefer to read in ebook format but I need to know about sites which will allow me to download pulp fiction books in epub/PDF format. Any one knows about such free websites ?
I've got everything by Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft on my kindle for about £1 each. . .which includes letters, essays and collaborative works, it's hard to argue with that. . .William Hope Hodgson too, though Clark Ashton Smith's stuff was scattered all over the kindle store which is no matter as I have the paperbacks! :)
I bring this up because I found when I went to PulpFest in Columbus last week, I found a lot of pulps I wanted to get, but I kept asking every vendor selling their wares, "is there an e version available?" Normally when I leave PulpFest, I've bought over a dozen new paper books from the guys, this year I bought one. Most vendors reprinting old pulps or making new ones are not interested in making ebook versions, so I've decided to go without since so many other new authors are embracing it.
My question is, how do you all feel about ebooks in the pulp tradition? The few I've experienced are just terrific. And I'm not worried about damaging or wearing out the book.