Day: January 15, 2009

Why I HATE One Dollar Orbit

~ Eoin Purcell ~ 4 Comments

Eoin Purcell

OneDollarOrbit.com
You might wonder why I hate something that is such good value. E-books of sci-fi books I am almost sure to enjoy for the startlingly low price of $1?

Simply put, because I cannot buy them
I know its selfish, it is hardly Orbit US’ fault, but I was so excited by the idea I went straight to the website and tried to buy something, I mean ONE DOllAR. I am technically banned from buying any books until I read nine books from my newly acquired list of TBR, but an e-book is not a paper book and a dollar is nothing! And then the book was one I have spied in several places and thought “now that looks good”. BUT I couldn’t buy it, I was restricted by territoriality!

Funnily enough this is touched on today by bigger news here & here.

As a publisher I should care about this but as a consumer I just think what a freaking waste of my time, effort, attention and interest. Now I hate a thing that I should have loved! This nonsense will just have to stop, I cannot see territoriality of e-books lasting very long but that probably means it will last for ever!

Annoyed,
Eoin

Great advice for budding authors from Niamh Sharkey

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

Eoin Purcell

Ravenous Beast Spread (©Niamh Sharkey)
Ravenous Beast Spread (©Niamh Sharkey)

Niamh Sharkey, who I am happy to say wrote a book and designed some wonderful covers for Mercier before she went onto mega-stardom (and before I started here), keeps a nice blog here. Today she posted a wonderful note about keeping ideas in notebooks with some really excellent examples given:

If I am starting a new project and looking for ideas and I get stuck I go back and look through my old notebooks. The Ravenous Beast started as a card design called Ravenous Monsters I painted in 1994. When I first went to Walker Books they spent most of the time looking through my notebooks. Amelia the head designer saw this painting and said mmm… interesting. It started from there.

Definitely worth reading!
Eoin