Latest book roundup

Bought from Angry Robot Books:

• The Guild of Assassins, by Anna Kashina. This is Book 2 of her fantasy series The Majat Code, about which I’ll be doing a (delayed) Boosting the Signal post to go up tomorrow morning.

Pre-ordered from Kobo:

• Lock-In, by John Scalzi. I was going to get this anyway, since I’d read the preview chapters that Tor.com posted as well as the novella that does some introductory worldbuilding for the story. But I went ahead and pre-ordered after seeing Mr. Scalzi’s recent post on the Amazon/Hachette developments, and someone giving him shit about it and cancelling their Amazon pre-order with him. I decided pre-ordering from Kobo was appropriate balance.

Bought from Dark Horse:

• Spike: Into the Light, by James Marsters. This is a graphic novel purchase, and digital for that matter, but I’m counting it here since it’s a full graphic novel as opposed to individual comics. Wanted to grab this out of general interest in James Marsters actually writing the story. And I always did like Spike! It’s a story going into some of what happened to Spike after he got his soul back at the tail end of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.

Bought in print when I was in Qualicum for De Temps Antan, from a tiny little bookshop there called The Mulberry Bush, where I had a delightful conversation with the proprietors along the lines of “Tell me about something awesome I can buy by Canadian authors”:

• Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. I heard about the movie version of this, of course. And I’m sure I could have grabbed a copy of this in local bookstores. But I hadn’t known the author was Canadian, and hey, the bookstore successfully pitched it. And I do like to have a bookstore successfully pitch me a book I haven’t read before.
• The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick DeWitt. Again, Canadian author, and I liked the idea of the dark sort of noir-ish humor described to me as contained by this book.

105 for the year.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Latest book roundup

Bought from Angry Robot Books:

• The Guild of Assassins, by Anna Kashina. This is Book 2 of her fantasy series The Majat Code, about which I’ll be doing a (delayed) Boosting the Signal post to go up tomorrow morning.

Pre-ordered from Kobo:

• Lock-In, by John Scalzi. I was going to get this anyway, since I’d read the preview chapters that Tor.com posted as well as the novella that does some introductory worldbuilding for the story. But I went ahead and pre-ordered after seeing Mr. Scalzi’s recent post on the Amazon/Hachette developments, and someone giving him shit about it and cancelling their Amazon pre-order with him. I decided pre-ordering from Kobo was appropriate balance.

Bought from Dark Horse:

• Spike: Into the Light, by James Marsters. This is a graphic novel purchase, and digital for that matter, but I’m counting it here since it’s a full graphic novel as opposed to individual comics. Wanted to grab this out of general interest in James Marsters actually writing the story. And I always did like Spike! It’s a story going into some of what happened to Spike after he got his soul back at the tail end of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.

Bought in print when I was in Qualicum for De Temps Antan, from a tiny little bookshop there called The Mulberry Bush, where I had a delightful conversation with the proprietors along the lines of “Tell me about something awesome I can buy by Canadian authors”:

• Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. I heard about the movie version of this, of course. And I’m sure I could have grabbed a copy of this in local bookstores. But I hadn’t known the author was Canadian, and hey, the bookstore successfully pitched it. And I do like to have a bookstore successfully pitch me a book I haven’t read before.
• The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick DeWitt. Again, Canadian author, and I liked the idea of the dark sort of noir-ish humor described to me as contained by this book.

105 for the year.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Amazon vs. Disney: FIGHT!

Amazon is already not looking good on the Internet this weekend, thanks to trying to corral KDP authors into their slapfight with Hachette. BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

Dara discovered that Amazon is apparently ALSO in a dispute with Disney right now. So if you were looking to preorder copies of Muppets Most Wanted or Maleficent or Captain America: The Winter Soldier on disc from Amazon and found that you can’t, this would be why.

And I gotta say–seriously? I mean, picking a fight with a book publisher is one thing, but going up against the Mouse? And by extension, all the Disney and Marvel fans who want to order their movies? Captain America’s fandom, who have Winter Soldier about to drop on Blu-ray and DVD and who have the money to slurp up hundreds of thousands of copies? You want to piss all these customers off, Amazon?

Amazon even pulled this stunt with Warner earlier this year, too, according to the link above. And when you take all these examples together, and add in Amazon’s dispute with Macmillan a few years back as well, they start making quite the trend. If they keep it up, it’ll become a trend of making themselves unreliable to their customers.

‘Cause see my previous commentary on the Hachette post I put up yesterday. At the end of the day, if a customer comes to Amazon looking for Winter Soldier and sees that they can’t get it, if they REALLY want the movie right then, they’re going to go elsewhere to buy it. Target. Or Best Buy. Or Walmart. Or hell, even the video section of the nearest grocery store.

At the end of the day, all the customer knows is that they want to buy a thing. And if Amazon can’t provide that thing on a reliable, regular basis, eventually they’re going to start taking their business elsewhere.

Best comment I’ve seen on this was in the thread on james_nicoll‘s post about it, to wit:

Reports from Amazon distribution warehouses show massive Rodent Infestation chewing through stock.

Because YEAH. Pass the popcorn.

ETA: The NY Times has picked up the story!

Whedonesque has also noticed, which brought to my attention that yes, this impacts orders for the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., too.

Which of course leads to the obligatory second best comment I have now spotted, this time on Facebook: “Hail Hydra!”

ETA #2: The Mary Sue has the story now. And another NY Times article goes into both of the Amazon news items from over the weekend here.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Amazon vs. Disney: FIGHT!

Amazon is already not looking good on the Internet this weekend, thanks to trying to corral KDP authors into their slapfight with Hachette. BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

Dara discovered that Amazon is apparently ALSO in a dispute with Disney right now. So if you were looking to preorder copies of Muppets Most Wanted or Maleficent or Captain America: The Winter Soldier on disc from Amazon and found that you can’t, this would be why.

And I gotta say–seriously? I mean, picking a fight with a book publisher is one thing, but going up against the Mouse? And by extension, all the Disney and Marvel fans who want to order their movies? Captain America’s fandom, who have Winter Soldier about to drop on Blu-ray and DVD and who have the money to slurp up hundreds of thousands of copies? You want to piss all these customers off, Amazon?

Amazon even pulled this stunt with Warner earlier this year, too, according to the link above. And when you take all these examples together, and add in Amazon’s dispute with Macmillan a few years back as well, they start making quite the trend. If they keep it up, it’ll become a trend of making themselves unreliable to their customers.

‘Cause see my previous commentary on the Hachette post I put up yesterday. At the end of the day, if a customer comes to Amazon looking for Winter Soldier and sees that they can’t get it, if they REALLY want the movie right then, they’re going to go elsewhere to buy it. Target. Or Best Buy. Or Walmart. Or hell, even the video section of the nearest grocery store.

At the end of the day, all the customer knows is that they want to buy a thing. And if Amazon can’t provide that thing on a reliable, regular basis, eventually they’re going to start taking their business elsewhere.

Best comment I’ve seen on this was in the thread on james_nicoll‘s post about it, to wit:

Reports from Amazon distribution warehouses show massive Rodent Infestation chewing through stock.

Because YEAH. Pass the popcorn.

ETA: The NY Times has picked up the story!

Whedonesque has also noticed, which brought to my attention that yes, this impacts orders for the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., too.

Which of course leads to the obligatory second best comment I have now spotted, this time on Facebook: “Hail Hydra!”

ETA #2: The Mary Sue has the story now. And another NY Times article goes into both of the Amazon news items from over the weekend here.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.