Star Wars Coming! Print Books Coming!

Did I say that I was preparing to launch a new website? Yes, I did. And I am.

But I am also launching new print editions! That’s on paper! Tree-books. Can you believe?  It’s true!

First to appear will be Neptune Crossing, in a nice trade paperback. Perfect, now that I think about it, for giving to a loved one for Christmas! Or Hanukah! Or Solstice! Really, now that I think about it, the recipient doesn’t even have to be a loved one. It can be a liked one. Or a tolerated one. Or even someone you’d like to get rid of—someone you hope will turn back from the dark side. How about that? What better way to celebrate the new Star Wars movie?

Why else put “Star Wars” in the title of this post?

And yes, more titles will follow. Watch this space for an announcement. Soon!

What I want on My Gravestone

THE TYPOS ARE YOUR PROBLEM NOW!

Oh, how I want that to be true!

I’ve just finished spending a lot of time over several days fixing typos that a reader found in the three-book omnibus of The Chaos Chronicles. The irony is that I had just put up a new version of The Infinite Sea, with a new cover—and with several typos (or formattos) fixed that I had found myself while rereading the book. (I’ve been reading through all the Chaos series, to refresh my memory on the story details as I write the fifth book.) The very next morning, I received an email from Kindle support, listing four typos that “readers” had reported in the Chaos omnibus. I checked, and sure enough, they were real typos. They were also spread across all three books—so I had to correct, not only the omnibus volume, but all of the individual novels as well. (The two in The Infinite Sea were different from the ones that I had found in my own reading.)

I have no idea how many times these books have been gone through, by me and by others, trying to catch any lingering mistakes. It just goes to prove how blasted hard it is to catch everything.

I’ve written before about how time-consuming it can be to fix typos in ebooks, especially when you have several slightly different versions distributed across a bunch of different outlets, in two different ebook formats. I took the opportunity this time to fix something that was already on my to-do list, and that was to change all the quotation marks from straight quotes to curly quotes. When I first created these books, ebook reading devices could not be counted upon to display curly quotes correctly, and I avoided them like the plague. Now, though, it’s normal to have curly quotes in ebooks, and the lack of them in these books made them look a little less professional than I would have liked. So, that’s done now. (Changing them is quick—a simple Find and Replace in Word. Checking for all the insidious ways in which Word can screw it up is not nearly so quick.)

If you own any of the first three Chaos Chronicles ebooks, you should be able to go back to the store where you got them and download updated versions.

And if you’re one of the readers who reported the typos to Kindle support . . . (sigh) . . . thanks. I really do want the books to be as error-free as humanly possible.

Star Rigger’s Way Finds Its Way

Dell paperback (first edition)

...back into ebook, for the first time since June!  Yes, the long wait is over. Star Rigger’s Way is now available in all-new clothes, in its long-awaited Starstream edition. Completely reformatted and with a new cover, this is not one to miss! (Wait—have any of my offerings been ones to miss? I hope not.)

Star Rigger’s Way was not my first star rigger novel (that distinction belongs to Seas of Ernathe), but it grew out of my first star rigger story, which was called “Alien Persuasion,” and appeared in Galaxy during the twilight years of that esteemed magazine. (If you want to read the story, you can find it in my collection, Going Alien, along with a cool illustration of the alien, Cephean, by Freff.) In its first edition, Star Rigger’s Way was published by Dell Books, during the twilight years of that publisher’s esteemed science fiction line. (Do you detect a pattern here?) Later, I revised it for a new edition from Tor Books, and that’s the version that’s in this ebook.

Within the Star Rigger Universe chronology, this book falls in the middle. Panglor sets the stage, with the discovery of certain properties of space-time that lead to the development of starship rigging through the Flux. The two dragon books (combined in Dragon Space) come next, well into the era of rigging but before the RiggerGuild, an institution created to protect the well-being of riggers, who are pilots with extreme sensitivity in certain areas of perception and imagination, and often vulnerable personality types. Eternity’s End follows close on the heels of Star Rigger’s Way, picking up the story of Legroeder, a minor character in this book. Seas of Ernathe jumps way into the future, at a time when the rigging techniques have been lost or forgotten.

Here’s the e-jacket copy for the new edition of Star Rigger’s Way:

His shipmates dead, star rigger Gev Carlyle is adrift in the Flux, the subjective hyperspace that carries ships between the stars. His lone companion, and sole hope for survival, is a suicidal catlike alien named Cephean. Only a compatible rigger team, their visions meshed in psychic unity, can safely harness the turbulent currents of the Flux—and Carlyle's ship is sailing inexorably toward the deadly maelstrom of the Hurricane Flume. For even a chance at survival, he needs Cephean's help. But the price for that is a complete merging of minds and memories. And Carlyle, at war with his own past, dreads that union more than death itself.

A grand space adventure, from the Nebula-nominated author of Eternity’s End and The Chaos Chronicles. (Etc.)

Available, of course, wherever fine bits and bytes are sold.

Starstream Publications ebook

Kindle | Nook | Smashwords | Kobo | iTunes | Book View Cafe

 

New Covers, Going Free, and Like That

My friend Rich Bowker blogged recently on the reasons for making a book free for a limited time. He doesn't mention what I think is the main reason for giving away books, which is to introduce your work to new readers who you hope will become returning regulars. But he makes a good case for doing it for the reviews you hope the giveaway will generate.

I've had Neptune Crossing free for a long time now, in hopes of introducing new readers to The Chaos Chronicles—and there are three more books already available for said new readers to spend their hard-earned money on (with one more in the writing, and one last book planned). And it seems to be working. But reviews are definitely important, too, and if you've read and enjoyed any of my books, I hope you'll take a few moments to post a review (or several!) at the store where you shopped, or Goodreads, or another social networking site. Careful readers (or maybe I should say, compulsive readers) may note that I've been gradually updating my ebooks with requests at the ends for the appreciative reader to click a link and post such a review. They really make a difference—partly in guiding other potential readers, and partly because they can affect sales algorithms and whether a particular book will be accepted into a promotion such as Bookbub or The Fussy Librarian. Your vote counts!

Another thing I've been doing lately is getting some new covers made, to replace my early and rather crude efforts on the Chaos books. Here's the new one I've just uploaded for Strange Attractors!

I still have The Infinite Sea to do. I'm still searching for the right image.

Fussy, Fussy Librarians

Okay, I've been absent here for a while, I know. I've been exceptionally busy with life—including but not limited to getting some new book covers done, preparing for some writing workshops, making some minor but important changes to ebook files, and, of course, working on The Reefs of Time. You'll probably get a rash of posts from me with updates on a lot of this. And then I'll probably go silent again for a while, because the outlook for the next couple of months is Crazy Busy, with Intermittent Chance of Madness.

My reason for emerging? I have a little promotion running today through a service called The Fussy Librarian. It's a site that offers you a selection of discounted books, filtered by reviews and by your (the reader's) personal preferences, such as genre and amount of sex and violence. They asked me to post today's list of daily deals, so I am—but there are no links, so if something catches your eye, you'll need to do a quick search. (Visit The Fussy Librarian if you would like to get your own daily email of new deals, which will have links.)

I had to chuckle when I saw the last book in the list.

Mysteries:
The Case of the Not-So-Fair Trader (A Richard Sherlock Whodunit)
Jim Stevens
Price: $0.99

Thrillers:
Death of Secrets
Bowen Greenwood
Price: $2.99

Science fiction:
Neptune Crossing
Jeffrey A. Carver
Price: Free
(Okay, if you read this blog, you probably already know that Neptune Crossing is free. But the purpose of the ad is to draw new members readers into the cult fold.) 

Young adult:
Life's What You Make It
Theresa Troutman
Price: $2.99

Romance-contemporary:
Dangerous
Suzannah Daniels
Price: Free

The Start of Something Good
Renee Vincent
Price: Free

Fantasy-epic:
Two (The Godslayer Cycle)
Ron Glick
Price: $0.99

Romance-suspense:
Savage Secrets
Cristin Harber
Price: $0.99

Romance-historical:
The Marquess (Regency Nobles Series, Book 2)
Patricia Rice
Price: $4.99

Fantasy-urban:
A Witch's Tale
Rue Volley
Price: $0.99

Stormrage
Skye Knizley
Price: $2.99

Mysteries-Female sleuths:
A Dead Red Heart
RP Dahlke
Price: $2.99

Horror:
Unholy Testament - Full Circle
Carole Gill
Price: $0.99

Children's / Middle Grade:
Keeper of Reign (Reign Fantasy, Book 1)
Emma Right
Price: $1.99

Romance-western:
Jaded
Chelle Chelle
Price: $0.99

Gay / Lesbian:
Somebody to Love
Merry Farmer
Price: $4.99

How-to:
Jump Start Your Book Promotions
RP Dahlke
Price: $0.99
(Starting, one presumes, with advertising on The Fussy Librarian?)

The BookBub Promotion Went Great

If you were reading here last week, you know I marked down my omnibus ebook of The Chaos Chronicles: Books 1-3 for a week, in conjunction with a promotion on Bookbub.com. The sale went amazingly, gratifyingly well. Better than I expected or dreamed. In fact, there are more than 2500 people out there with shiny new copies of my omnibus on their Kindles, Nooks, iPads, whatever. More than 1500 people grabbed it on the first day alone. We broke into the top 100 sellers of all books in the Kindle store, and briefly lingered at #65 among all Kindle ebooks. More importantly, I've already heard from one new reader who discovered my work through the sale and has already ripped through it happily and gone on to download Sunborn.

That's the most gratifying thing about it, is the new readers. The extra income is nice, too, of course.

If you're one of those readers, I hope you enjoy the book! And if you do, I'd be eternally grateful if you'd take a moment to post a review wherever you bought it, or at Goodreads, or anywhere, really. Word of mouth means everything. And thanks!

E-Reads to Become a Part of Open Road Media

Nine of my backlist books are currently published by E-Reads, founded in 1999 by my agent, Richard Curtis. E-Reads was a pioneering enterprise in the ebooks business, putting books up for sale when hardly anyone knew what an ebook was.

E-Reads is about to become a part of Open Road Media, and in the coming months my E-reads titles will become Open Road titles. Beyond a long-time acquaintance with Open Road editor Betsy Mitchell, who got her start in publishing at Dell at around the same time I was getting my start at Dell, I don't know too much about the company. I guess I'm about to learn, though!

Here's the detailed announcement from Open Road, and a summary by Publishers Weekly.

The times they are a'changing.

New Ebooks You Should Check Out — Chris Howard

Continuing my series on new books by author friends, I want to highlight Salvage, by Chris Howard. Chris was an early participant in the Ultimate Science Fiction Writing Workshop that I've run with Craig Gardner. Chris immediately stood out as a student; the man is basically a geyser of creativity and imagination. Some students need coaching in bringing out their muses. With Chris, it was always more a matter of helping him direct the fountain. He's a highly talented visual artist as well as a writer, and he always illustrates his own work. (He's also a prodigious blogger and app-builder. He also works full time at a job doing things with software that I don't understand. But let's leave all that aside for now.)

Salvage, from Masque Books, continues the world introduced in Chris's Seaborn series, set around and in the ocean. He describes it as a techno-thriller/fantasy. You can read all about it here on his book's website.

So many books! So little time! Better get reading!

Frederik Pohl, 1919-2013

We've lost another giant—maybe the last of his generation of Golden Age science fiction. Frederik Pohl, along with Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov, occupied a central position in my formative years as a lover of science fiction. More than any of the others, he kept growing in maturity and ambition as a writer—showing a burst of enormous creativity in his late 50s, with two of his finest books, Man Plus (1976) and Gateway (1977). I consider Gateway one of the top five books in all of science fiction, and I'm not sure what the other four would be.

I first encountered his work, I believe, in The Space Merchants, which he coauthored in 1953 with C.M. Kornbluth. (I didn't read it in 1953; I was only four years old at the time. I started reading him in my teens.) I still have many old paperbacks of his earlier work on my shelf. Just scanning a list of his titles evokes all kinds of feelings of golden-age sense of wonder: Search the Sky, Gladiator-At-Law, Drunkard's Walk (which I was especially fond of as a teenager because of the tastefully drawn naked woman on the cover), Starchild, Rogue Star, Turn Left at Thursday, Starburst, The Siege of Eternity, The Case Against Tomorrow....

And yes, the title of my own work in progress, The Reefs of Time, is a knowing echo of his The Reefs of Space.

Pohl did just about everything there was to do in the SF world. He was an editor (Galaxy magazine), an agent, a solo writer, a collaborative writer, a futurist, a columnist and blogger, a president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and a SFWA Grandmaster. He was also a perfect gentleman, and a fascinating speaker. I only met him once or twice, but he treated me, a fresh upstart, with graciousness and warmth.

You can read more about his life and work at the New York Times and the Guardian.

I hope he's enjoying a perfect view of the stars from where he is right now, perhaps sitting around a table with some of the other departed greats, in the observation lounge of a heavenly starship. Godspeed, Frederik Pohl, and thank you for all of the visions.

New Ebooks You Should Check Out — Richard Bowker

My friend Richard Bowker was away from publishing for many years, prior to his recent resurgence in ebook. He is a fine writer, whose mystery/thrillers (Replica, Senator, etc.) earned him considerable notice when they were published by houses like Bantam and Morrow. The winds of publishing turned against him for a while, but in the last year, he's returned with a vengeance, bringing all of his backlist into ebook, and publishing several excellent novels that his old publishers idiotically passed on.

His latest is The Portal, an alternate history of a New England that might have been, if a lot of things had happened differently. War between New England and Canada? Late 18th Century technology in the "present"? Like the Harry Potter books, this one has young protagonists, and can be viewed as either an adult novel or a YA novel. I was privileged to read it in manuscript, and am delighted to see it appear at last as an ebook and, still to come, a print-on-demand p-book.

Kindle | Nook

(Hm, doesn't seem to be in the Nook store yet. Should be, soon.)

Why not take a ride into an America that might have been?

New Ebooks You Should Check Out — Craig Shaw Gardner

My friend Craig Gardner, well known as a writer of funny fantasy (among other genres), has indie-repubbed the fantasy trilogy that made his reputation: The Ebenezum Series, concerning a wizard who is allergic to magic and his bumbling young apprentice, Wuntvor. The books are great fun, and recommended for young readers of all ages. I especially love how our heroes escape being eaten by a kraken. Here they are:

Kindle | Nook

Kindle | Nook

Kindle | Nook

You can even pre-order his forthcoming new book, Temporary Monsters!

Kindle | Nook

Kick back and have a little fun.

Pen-Ultimate Anthology!

A bunch of my workshop graduates have gotten together to do a very cool thing. They've published an anthology of some of their best short stories—and on top of that, all the earnings are going straight to a great cause: the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund.

Here's how it happened:

The Earth formed, and the rocks cooled. Shortly afterward, Craig Gardner and I got started in our writing careers. Fast forward to a few years ago, when we ran a series of workshops called the Ultimate SF Writing Workshop. A bunch of talented new writers attended, and we all became friends, and many of them are now becoming established as published writers in their own right. We stay in touch through an online group, and get together at local conventions. At last year's Readercon, one of them—I think it was Lisa (LJ) Cohen—said over dinner with the group, "Why don't we get together and publish a collection of our best stories?" The crowd rumbled approval, and with that, the project was born.

Pen-Ultimate: A Speculative Fiction Anthology has just been published, a year later. The workshoppers (my workshoppers!) did all the writing, selecting, editing, cover art, book design, and ebook formatting. Craig and I wrote the intro and outro, but other than that, it's all the work of these fine new writers.

Check it out!  The stories are great, and it's only $2.99 in ebook. It's also available in print for $8.50. Every penny earned is going to a medical fund that helps SF/F writers who have fallen on hard times medically and financially. What could be a better cause than that? 

I feel like a proud father, all over again!


Here's where you can get it:

Paperback:
Amazon
CreateSpace

Ebook:
Amazon
Smashwords

Coming:
Barnes and Noble
Apple
Kobo

Damned Typos! (And Other Myths of Easy Ebook Corrections)

I was barely home from my trip when I got an email from Amazon Kindle support, telling me that a reader had contacted them about two typos they had found in the (free) ebook edition of Neptune Crossing. Would I please correct them? Hell's bells, I thought. There goes my day. And I was right.

There's this widespread misconception that because ebooks are digital, mistakes can be corrected in a jiffy and the revised edition put up before your coffee has time to cool. Sounds good. And oh, how I wish it were true. Let's see how it plays out in real life.

First, I checked the ebook, which exists in multiple formats, to see if there really were typos. Sometimes people mistake colloquialisms, or sounds, or alien words, or made-up words, or unusual usage for typos. Alas, the typos were real. They were mistakes, and they had to be fixed.

The first challenge was that I maintain multiple "master source" documents—Word docs that have all the latest corrections and styles and so forth. Docs from which new ebooks, or print-on-demand paper books, can be created. The reason there are several is that there's different front and end material, depending on the store. For example, "Buy the next book in the series from the Kindle store," with a link. Or from the Nook store. Each store allows links only back to itself, or to the author website. So when something needs to be corrected, it has to be corrected in all the master documents.

After the source docs are corrected, it's time to correct the ebooks. In the case of epub books (Nook, iBooks, everything but Kindle), the easiest way to fix something simple like a misspelled word is to open the ebook in a program called Sigil, which lets you edit the underlying text and code. Do a search, fix it, rerun validation checks, and close it up again. Then test it in a few viewers to make sure you didn't screw something else up while fixing the little thing. (You might be surprised how often this happens.) For a Kindle file, you can't use Sigil, so it's easiest to recreate the ebook from the source file in Calibre, another essential program. Then test, retest, etc.

Done? Time to upload the new versions. Easy, right? Maybe. About half the stores have changed the requirements for cover illustration size since the last upload, so you have to go back to your master cover images and hope you have a big enough one to meet the upgraded requirements. Oops, now you need to run the book through Calibre again to incorporate the larger cover image in the book. Then test again.

Time to upload (again). Kindle first, because more books sell there than anywhere else. Also, they also have the most sophisticated checking system. It now presents you with a list of possible typos. See the above list of things that are often mistaken for typos. Most the flagged words are just that. But you need to look at them anyway, to see. Okay, good, upload done. One store out of the way, now on to the next. Oops, Smashwords accepts epub uploads now, but gives a bizarre error from Firefox. Better try again, using Chrome. That works—but with about six other annoying little glitches that cause the upload to take an hour instead of a minute. The Nook store should go faster, right? Maybe, except they've changed catalog description requirements, so you have to fix those bits. Finally, Book View Café, which is a simple FTP upload. Yay!

Oops—wait. If the typos were in Neptune Crossing, then they're probably also in The Chaos Chronicles Omnibus volume, which contains the first three books. Better check. Yes, blast it, they are. Repeat steps 1-60 above, with the omnibus. Go to upload.

The Kindle spell-checker flags something like 200 words, most of them as noted above. But wouldn't you know it? It finds a real typo in Strange Attractors (Book 2), and two in The Infinite Sea (Book 3). Augghh! These books have been checked over so many times, how can that be? Nevertheless, there they are.

Go through it all again, fixing the typos in the omnibus, and then again in each edition of the individual novels. Check the results. What's this? Why is the first line of Chapter 19 of Strange Attractors indented, while all the others are flush left? Wrong style applied to that paragraph. Frakkin', frakkin', frak. Go fix it. In all the versions. Be sure and get them all. Oh wait—I need a bigger cover image for this book now, too.

Repeat as needed. Try not to go mad.

Those two typos took an entire day, and I still haven't finished with The Infinite Sea. When that's done, there's a typo a friend pointed out in Dragon Space. Aaaeeiii. 

Tell you what. The next time you find a typo or two in a book, please consider cutting the author (or publisher) a little slack. It's harder than it looks to get rid of those things! (If you find more than a few, that's just carelessness. Go ahead and give the publisher hell.)

Is Some Club Reading My Book?

Most days I sell between zero and a few ebooks total in the Barnes and Noble Nook store, a steady drip-drip-drip of sales. (I do better, thankfully, in the Kindle store, and even better for some reason in the Kindle UK store. Still, even there, sales have lagged in the last month or so.) But the other day, there was an abrupt spike in the Nook store: 19 sales for the day, almost all of which were The Chaos Chronicles, Books 1-3. The next day was less, but still better than usual. What's up with that? I wondered, marveling happily. (I should note that, for many writers, these numbers would be reason for scowling, not smiling. But I was smiling.)

I still wonder what was behind it, but my best guess is that some reading club has decided to try my Chaos books, and they all ordered from the Nook store and not the Kindle store or Book View Cafe (and I wouldn't know about the Apple/Sony/Kobo stores, because reporting is slow there). Is this true? Does somebody know? Or is it just one of those unexplainable synchronicity things?

Everyone* in my vast organization wants to know. And we hope that all the rest of you will follow suit, or encourage someone else to.

*My wife, and me.

Good Time to Buy an Ereader/Tablet?

In case you haven't seen the ads, Barnes and Noble is running a Father's Day sale on their Nook HD (for high-definition screen) and the larger Nook HD+, marking both down significantly. The best discount is on the HD+, which is almost half off (from $269 down to $149). I'm going to get one myself, even though I already have a tablet, because it will be useful to have as a test platform for ebook formatting.

If you haven't taken the plunge yet, this might be a good time.

Hugh Howey on Self Publishing

By now, most people interested in books and publishing have heard of Hugh Howey, a self-published SF writer whose eighth (I think) book Wool hit gold and became a runaway bestseller in ebook. It made a millionaire of the author, and led in the course of time to an extraordinary print contract with a major New York publisher, in which the publisher offered a large six-figure advance for print rights only, allowing the author to continue to mine his own ebook rights to the tune of six figures monthly.


[Deep breath, and expel the envy. All together, now...]

Anyway, Hugh Howey writes on Salon.com about his views of traditional versus self-publishing. It's pretty interesting, although I don't necessarily agree with everything he says. (For one thing, he doesn't mention the role that traditional publishers play in helping writers, especially new writers, improve their craft and produce better books. Some say that that role is diminishing these days, but I think it really depends on the publisher and the editor.) Still, it's hard to argue with Howey's success.

I write this as I'm taking a break from working on my taxes, wherein I discover that I sort of seriously underestimated the effect my own improved ebook sales would have on my tax bottom line. Ow. I'm not remotely in the same universe as Howey, sales-wise. Nevertheless, last year was one of the best years I've  had in my modest career in terms of book income, and it was all from my backlist. The paradigms, they are a-shiftin'.

More Live Audiobooks!

Once again, I was surprised to discover that more of my books are up on Audible.com!  Five Star Rigger books were released in February. That's Panglor, Dragons in the Stars, Dragon Rigger, Star Rigger's Way, and Seas of Ernathe—all of the Star Rigger books except Eternity's End.

You can see the lot of them on my author page, or go straight to the individual titles.  I'm still working with the Audible people to get the descriptions corrected (Panglor has the wrong plot description altogether), and not all of the sample buttons are working. But the books are all available. They're also for sale in the iTunes store.

The titles that went up in October are all listed now as being enabled for "Whispersync for voice," which means if you have a Kindle edition you can switch back and forth between reading the ebook and listening to the audiobook without losing your place.

Panglor audiobook

Dragons in the Stars audiobook

Dragon Rigger audiobook

Star Rigger's Way audiobook

Seas of Ernathe audiobook

Off to Arisia

I'm heading off shortly to Boston's Westin Hotel on the waterfront to spend some time at Arisia, currently New England's largest regional SF/F convention. I'll be on a bunch of panels related to writing and ebook publishing. Tonight at 10, the subject is "Self-editing your SF/F Novel" —self-editing being the first step in rewriting a manuscript, to be combined (preferably) with critique from trusted readers, followed by more revision as needed. I happen to have a self-edit checklist just for the purpose! (If you don't catch the panel, you can always read my checklist at writesf.com—click the link for Rewriting.)

Tomorrow, I'll be talking about "Punching Up the Action," "Self-publishing" (particularly, from my point of view, as it relates to self-publishing one's backlist), and "Plot and Structure." If you're in the area, come on down!

I'm also eagerly looking forward to seeing the art show. The artist Guest of Honor is Roger Dean, creator of all those wonderful Yes album covers (which were in fact one inspiration for my novel Panglor)!

A Book Trailer I Can Relate To

One of the hardest things for many writers—beyond, you know, actually writing—is trying to describe your book in just a few words. Here's a funny book trailer that tackles the question head on.The author in this trailer reminds me of my sister-in-law, Suzanne.

Discovered courtesy of The Passive Voice.

Halloween Scare: Disney Buys Star Wars!

Actually, all of Lucasfilm, including Industrial Light and Magic. They're planning to have a new Star Wars movie for us by 2015. And if that doesn't scare you, I don't know what will. (Well, okay, maybe a hurricane.) In the last few years, Disney has acquired Pixar, Marvel, and now Lucasfilm. That's a lot of heavy lifting, money-wise (over $4 billion  for Lucasfilm alone), and gives you some idea of how much gold the Mouse is carrying around.

But is it a bad thing, or a good one? Well, the Disney ownerships doesn't seem to have hurt Pixar too much. And Marvel seems to be doing okay, judging by The Avengers. But Star Wars? Will we be glad to have another episode, and then another? Certainly the empire has been faltering creatively for decades, so it may be that new blood in the driver's seat will be just what we need. But here’s some perspective offered by Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr:

The new “Star Wars” will come in 3D, IMAX, and someday -- who knows? -- holo-vision and jack-in brain cinema. But Disney CEO Iger’s announcement of the Lucasfilm acquisition is telling. “This transaction combines a world-class portfolio of content including ‘Star Wars,’ one of the greatest family entertainment franchises of all time, with Disney’s unique and unparalleled creativity across multiple platforms, businesses and markets to generate sustained growth and drive significant long-term value.”

There are certain things missing from that sentence, words like movie and story and characters.

Yeah, there is that. 

Meanwhile, in book publishing, Random House and Penguin are merging, and I can't  think of too many examples of giant publishers merging that have been good for either writers or readers. Will this merger better enable them to meet the challenges of ebooks, and promotion through social networking? Well... Richard Bowker has some thoughts on the question. They pretty much mirror my own, so I'll give him the floor.