B. Justin Shier's Blog

What an awful week for industrial publishing.

Self-published titles in the Ebook prices at all time lows (avg. of $6.93, down from previous low of $7.21)Legendary author, and perennial cash machine, James Patterson  that US publishers may require government aidAgents having to issue  to Heck, even  was changing his tune
We may be witnessing an inflection point. The oft predicted drop...

The Supreme Court, in a rather far-reaching ruling on copyright law, just gave foreign buyers of things like books and movies the right to resell them in the United States without the permission of the copyright owner. The 6-3 decision involved a USC student from Thailand that figured out that he could make money by purchasing textbooks at lower costs in Thailand and re-selling them in the United States. The ruling also featured a dissent by Ginsburg, Kennedy and Scalia. (Yea, you read t...

As an end consumer of Facebook content, I feel Facebook's filtration algos have gotten a bit out of hand. I use a browser plug-in called to force the Facebook news feed to sort by "most recent," but I'm still not catching everything. For instance, a band I like announced a new album last week and that announcement wasn't pushed to my feed. I liked the band's page for a reason; I wanted to know when their next album was coming out. I was left wondering why I should have even bothered....

An unusual today. It's almost all textbooks.

So if you need a digital version of something like

 (my favorite)

or

or

Swing over to the . Some of the prices are still ridiculously high, but it's worth checking to see if they are offering books that cover any of the classes you might be taking in the next year or two.
B.

Aaron Swartz at a Creative Commons event
Photo taken by Fred Benenson,
and shared under a Creative Commons
Generic Attribution license Swartz helped promote
At the age of fourteen, Aaron Swartz co-authored the  protocol.
He founded .
He helped form the .
He participated in the creation of
He was one of the key figures behind
He helped kill /
And he was being prosecuted for "stealing" ....

B.

Quick heads up. Amazon is running a huge sale on ebooks to celebrate Cyber Monday. Lot's of the titles are from "indie" publisher . I picked up  by Octavia Butler. That and will be my Christmas reading.




Another sweet (but perhaps bad sign for Microsoft shareholders) deal is  for only 70 bucks. I don't really recommend upgrading from Windows 7, but if you are building a new PC...

You may have already heard from other authors like (|) or tycoons like that changes are afoot at Facebook. ( featured an article on the topic, as well.) The quick and dirty version is that when we used to make a post on FB, everyone that liked our pages would get to see that post. Now, if sources near and far are to be believed, only 15% of my audience do. If I wish to reach the once usual 100%, I must pay, and pay a lot. There is some variability to this phenom...

Found a few goodies in the  of Amazon under $3.99 titles.

Madeline Miller's for $3.99


Felix Gilman's for $2.99

Martha Wells's for $1.99

And a fun non-fiction title called by Amy Stewart for $2.99

Also, I noticed one title that I hadn't seen before called , written by Jim Melvin ($1.99). It's the first in a new fantasy series. The initial reviews look pretty good. Anyone read this one yet?

B.

You guys need to check this pianist out on YouTube. I just spent the entire day listening to his work. I especially liked his versions of "" and "." Enjoy!

B.