Phil Bradley's weblog

Readly, the Spotify for magazines

I try not to review paid products too much, but I'll make an exception for Readly, which I've described as the Spotify for magazines. Basically, you take out a subscription for £7.99 a month and you can read as many magazines as they have available. That is to say 30,240 issues. That's a total of 1515 magazines, including back issues, with one single subscription. The magazines are not ones that you've never heard of either, they are the kind that you'd probably buy in Smiths or the supermarket. In particular I read computer magazines, movie mags, photography, politics, comics, history and so on. I've taken a screenshot of a few of the magazines that are available to you:

There are options to also read magazines published in other countries, so as I'm a keen historian of the American Civil War I found 3 that I wanted to read within moments.

Not only do you get the current edition, but you also get a back run, and you can simply view any of these directly, or you can download them onto your device to read later. It's worth saying that it's the actual magazine itself, not a cut down version. 

However, it also gets better. You can download the app and read magazines on your phone, tablet, laptop or desktop; it's device independent. It gets better again, because for the same price you can have up to 5 profiles; so you can put your partner, children and so on onto your account and they can set their own profiles to read what they want to read. You can cancel a subscription at any time, although obviously you won't get to keep the magazines that you've downloaded, so think of it as an ongoing subscription service in exactly the same way that Spotify is. 

If you want to try it follow this link: 

https://get.readly.com/VtbbQKfPBXV9EauI

You'll get a month free to try it out, rather than the shorter trial version that you get with the normal download of the app (and in the interests of transparency, if you then subscribe I also get a month free as well). So as I said I don't normally push or try and 'sell' resources that cost money, but I'm really impressed with this, and if you buy a lot of magazines anyway, this will probably end up saving you money!

 Edited to add: I was asked about how easy it was to read what's on the screen. I wouldn't recommend a phone to try and read on, but I have tried it out on a 7" tablet, an iPad Air and an iPad Pro, and have absolutely no problems - it's as easy to read as reading the physical magazine. 

This is what a page looks like on an iPad Air in profile view.

The above image is a 2 page view in landscape. It's actually sharper than it appears here, and is certainly easy to read.

 

 I've zoomed right into the page for this shot - I could have got closer if I had wanted to. So it's actually far better than reading the printed version - unless you have a magnifying glass to hand!

Fantastic Fiction

They say of themselves: Welcome to Fantastic Fiction Bibliographies for over 30,000 authors and  book information on over 350,000 books. Throughout the site, just click on a book to see its cover picture, description and publication details.

This is a really nice resource - it gives full summaries of each book, and you can see the titles in the correct order. There are links through to similar authors, similar stories, links to second hand online bookshops where you can buy copies of particular books and so on. Of interest to librarians - there are links to librarian jobs, although when I clicked through I was coming up with library jobs in Wales, so I'm doubtful of the value of that particular part of the site. 

Terry Deary the idiot

I try not get angry; it doesn't do much good and it's a pretty negative emotion. However there are times when it's actually worth it. I heard the interview on Radio 5 Live that Deary gave to Richard Bacon and I've read the Telegraph article now. My first feeling, and I still think that it's the correct one, is that the guy is desperate for publicity for his new book. That's certainly why he was on the radio programme, and it's a fairly cheap and transparent approach; say something controversial that will get hackles to rise and flog a cheap book on the back of it. So I know that I'm doing exactly what the sad little man wants, but this time - I really don't care.

The statements that he's made simply don't stack up - he can't even manage internal consistency with his nonsense. He wants to give 'poor people' and the 'impoverished' (how's that for patronising?) Kindles. That provides access to books, but it doesn't actually give them books. They would still have to *buy* the books, and of course, if it's a Kindle that they've been given - where do they go? Why... to Amazon of course. Where Deary sells his books. I love the fact that Deary is selling his books on Amazon, while at the same time decrying the closure of bookshops. Here's a clue Mr Deary - if you want to try and keep bookshops open don't allow you books to be sold on Amazon - make people go to a bookshop to buy them. But of course, that would mean you make less money wouldn't it, and we couldn't have that!

This entirely ignores that fact that he's too thick to actually work out what libraries are *for*. His idea of what a library is - a glorified bookshop that gives his work away for free - is so outdated that it would be laughable if he wasn't so pathetic. How does a Kindle help a child with its literacy? How does it help someone research a job? How does it help someone get legal advice? How does it help a community? Of course it does none of those things - it just helps Deary make money, and that's really all that he is concerned with.

Deary is a sad man, desperate for publicity - any publicity - in order to sell his books. When I think about other authors - Alan Gibbons, Neil Gaiman, Terry Prachett - all of whom support libraries he is not worthy to be considered in the same category.

Agatha Christie - The official information and community site

www.agathachristie.com is an excellent site for anyone interested in the author or her works. It's really jam packed with content, a lively forum, plot details, location maps and so on. As author/genre sites go, this is one of the very best.

Free or cheap Kindle eBooks

If you're happy to sell your soul to Amazon, or you're not bothered about them not paying the tax that they should, you're going to want to know about the books you can get for free or for a small sum of money to read on your Kindle or Kindle app device. If that's the case, you might want to try BookDip which says of itself "Daily Deals on Bestselling Kindle eBooks from Big Name Authors" Basically you just sign up and tell them what sort of category of books you're interested in, and then they send you a daily email with hand picked free or heavily discounted titles. They only send information on books by wel known authors and/or which have got very positive reviews. I'm not entirely sure how they work that out, or what their criteria is, so you may find that they're bang on the money for you or totally off the wall.

Alternatively, if you don't fancy BookDip, try Book Gorilla which does something very similar. This one says of itself "BookGorilla sends you a single daily email alert with the best deals on books that match your reading preferences, including bestsellers and freebies!" I've tried this one, but not BookDip, and it does send an email a day. The only problem that I have with this is that you do tend to glaze over very quickly; I only have a couple of categories chosen, and they send huge numbers of suggestions every day, though to be fair, you can limit to 12, 25 or 50 - I've set a limit of 25, but it seems so many more! However, you can of course unsubscribe whenever you like.

I do know that there are more services than this - these are just a couple that I've discovered recently - if you have others that you know, or want to suggest your own, please add details in the comments.

Iain Banks - thank you.

Today we learned the sad news that Iain Banks has terminal cancer, or with his usual understated manner he is "officially Very Poorly". I first came to the attention of his back in the 1980s - I picked up a copy of the Wasp Factory, and was so taken with the inclusion of all the negative reviews I simply had to read it. Within the first few pages I was completely hooked - I had never read anything quite like it before (or since). It was powerful, macabre, funny and sickening, and it remains one of the best books that I have ever read in my life. I have always looked forward to the new Banksy; science fiction then mainstream and back again.

His science fiction has been epic, in every sense of the word, and shows remarkable vision and story telling powers - he has made space opera his own playground and his work easily puts him on a par with Asimov, Clarke, Wells; any science fiction writer you care to name. His 'mainstream' material has equally been stunning; 'It was the day my grandmother exploded' has surely to be one of the very best opening lines in literature.

Apart from all of that, Iain is just such a nice person. I've been very fortunate to have had the opportunity of sitting with him at science fiction conventions, chatting and having drinks. One of my endearing memories is when he turned up an hour late to give an author reading, and read in a very thick Scottish accent; you had to have read the book to get what he was saying, and lots of people were sitting around entirely confused, while the rest of us were in tears of laughter. I remember how he got hauled down from a hotel scaffolding at 4am by the police - he thought it would be fun to climb it. I recall seeing him striding across a hotel room with a fixed expression on his face, carrying a fire extinguisher, only to be followed a couple of minutes later by several conference 'gofers'. "Where's Banks?" they said. We pointed and said "That way, carrying a fire extinguisher". The reply was lost in their rush for the door, but I believe it contained several profanities.

Iain is a fan's fan. That's to say, he's always turned up at conventions, mingled in with everyone else and has never taken the aloof 'I am a *writer*, kneel to me' that some authors have been inclined to do. He's sat on panels, awarded things, made fun of himself and has generally just been a really nice person. He is one of those people who have left the world a better place than they found it, and we are fortunate enough to have a good body of his work to enjoy. But that of course doesn't make up for the loss we will have.

Iain - it's highly unlikely that you'll read this, but if you do - thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the books, the stories, the fun, the laughter and the pleasure of just being in the same location as you. You're quite simply one of the very best.

QuietThyme

QuietThyme - Home is an ebook management system. You buy or download your eBooks from a variety of different sources, then sync them with your QuietThyme account, storing them in the cloud, and then you can download them onto your other devices. Upload via DropBox or their interface and then pull down onto a variety of readers such as: QuickReader, Megareader, eBook search, Moon+, Mantano, IBIS Reader.

The free version allows you to keep 100 books stored, the Catalog edition costs $10 a month for 500 books plus associated services, the Library Edition 20,000 books for $25. All well and good of course, except... why? I really don't see why you'd want to spend that amount of money storing that many books when you're most likely never going to read the majority of them again. Surely it makes more sense just to keep 100 at hand which are 'must re-read', or which haven't been read yet. I'm also keen to find out how they ensure that I can't upload a copy of my book, give my account details to a friend, and let them download it onto their device...

Libraries and bookshops/stores

Two interesting news items have recently caught my eye. One from the New York Times "Libraries See Opening as Bookstores Close" and one from the Daily Telegraph "Bookshop numbers halve in just seven years" I don't think there should be any surprise that bookshops are continuing their decline - over 1 per day in the UK would seem to be the average, and there are a variety of reasons that are being given for it. Amazon is blamed of course, as are supermarkets, and eBooks come in for a fair amount of stick as well. The Telegraph quotes the figures that British consumers spent £261 million on e-books this year, almost double the £138 million spent in 2011. At the same time physical book sales fell from £3.3 billion last year to £3.1 billion this year.

The Telegraph article doesn't mention libraries, while the NYT is almost exclusively focussed on them, taking the view that libraries are replacing bookstores. The point is however being almost entirely being missed. The only thing that bookshops and libraries have really got in common is that both of them use the printed word as a coin of activity. For bookshops, that's their only coin - they just exist to sell books, and there's nothing wrong with that - it's what they've always done, and it's what they'll always do, until the final one closes its door. Or they diversify within their niche. A good example of this is Forbidden Planet - which I've been visiting for years. I just visited the website and it's branding itself as a cult entertainment megastore, and that's a pretty good description, since it sells books, comics, games, models, clothing, posters, toys and so on around the area of science fiction. I visit it every time I'm in London, and I'll usually find something to buy. However, thinking about it, I don't tend to visit it *as a bookshop* I visit because I want to see what's going on. I'm very unlikely to buy a Dr Who model, but I like to see what's there, but in getting me there, I'm going to see what's available in the way of Dr Who books. comics and other merchandise. FP as it is fondly known caters to a very specific community - of science fiction and fantasy fans, as well as general book readers and comic consumers. It also has a very nice website to back up the stores, and it has very knowledgable staff. In actual fact, it sounds to me as though it's more like a library than a bookshop really - because what it's really doing is providing a service to a community.

Libraries do not provide books. I'll say it again. Libraries do not provide books. They provide access to entertainment, they provide formatting options that members can use to read what interests them. They provide access to computers and so on. But that's just the trappings, and it's all too easy to confuse that with the real purpose of the library, which is to serve and hopefully improve the community that it it is in, and the people of that community which make up its members. I go into a bookshop and I buy a book, then I leave. Sure, I might wander around a bit, but it's a pretty cold and calculating transaction. If I come out without a book, the bookshop has essentially failed in its primary purpose, which is to make money out of my purchase of a book. However, I can walk out of a library empty handed, but I could have used a computer, been taught something, had an opportunity to work with a librarian to research something, have filled out an online form, have discovered how to take an ex employer to a tribunal, have got a lead for a new job and so on.

I really rather hope that libraries DON'T replace bookshops, because I wouldn't want them to dilute their offerings to me. It's much more important to a community that we protect the library than the bookshop, because sad to say, we can manage more easily without bookshops than we can without libraries. A bookshop is for the few, a library is for everyone. Of course, I hate the idea of bookshops closing - I can't resist peeking into them whenever I can, but if a bookshop is to survive it needs to change - the bookshop needs to become more like a library, a library doesn't need to become more like a bookshop.

 

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eBooks and bookshops

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Bookshop numbers halve in just seven years

Book recommendations based on your Twitter activity

How much do your tweets say about you and your interests? BookRx recommends books and categories that you might find interesting by analyzing your Twitter activity. Just pop in a Twitter handle (no registration or linking to your account needed, so you can try this out with anyone - may be really helpful if you're desperate for a last minute present!) and it will come back with suggestions for you. I hadn't read any of the books that it suggested for me, but there were several there which did look interesting. It did however get my interests fairly close - Business, Sports, Science Fiction, Technology and Politics.

It worked very quickly and links you to the books on Amazon.com if you're interested in looking at them in more detail.

eBooks and bookshops

The eBooks saga is continuing to run and run, as we all knew that it would. The latest entrant into the field is the Booksellers Association chief executive Tim Godfray. Apparently, libraries are once again targeted as a major enemy - who knew that we had such power? He is quoted in a Bookseller article as saying "The BA has campaigned for several years to mitigate the potential damage that library e-book lending could have on our book retailing sector." He is very concerned that if libraries end up charging for eBooks (as Justin Tomlinson suggests) the money might be used to finance a variety of library services. He is of the opinion that the money raised should be used to buy books.

Now, before I actually respond to this bizarre Alice in Wonderland suggestion, let's get a few things clear shall we? First of all, libraries are not the reason why bookshops are having problems. Libraries INCREASE book sales, they don't decrease them. A recent study by Library Journal and Bowker PubTrack Consumer reports

"Our data show that over 50% of all library users report purchasing books by an author they were introduced to in the library,” Miller noted. “This debunks the myth that when a library buys a book the publisher loses future sales. Instead, it confirms that the public library does not only incubate and support literacy, as is well understood in our culture, but it is an active partner with the publishing industry in building the book market, not to mention the burgeoning e-book market.

Moreover, if we look at a recent report from Pew, they are quite clear that Device owners are more likely to buy books. Some 61% of e-reading device owners said they purchased the most recent book they read, compared with 48% of all readers. Another 15% said they had borrowed their most recent book from a friend or family member (vs. 24% of all readers), and 10% said they borrowed it from a library (vs.14% of all readers). Asked their preference for obtaining books in all formats, e-book reading device owners were more likely to say they prefer to purchase than to borrow books in any format – print, digital, or audio. In related fashion, they are also more likely to say they start their searches for e-books at online bookstores.

And again, if we look at statistics from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, we see that inclusion in their collection increases sales of authors other work - 24% of customers who borrowed the Hungar Games bought 'Catching Fire' and 24% also bought Mockingjay, despite the fact that the entire series was available to borrow for free. Since the launch of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library in November 2011, the paid retail sales of backlist trade titles in the library have seen 229% higher growth than corresponding titles that are not enrolled.

It is clear that readers and borrowers also buy books, in significantly large numbers. I am getting sick and tired of both publishers and booksellers trying to pin the blame for their failures on libraries. So, let's take a look at failure in more detail, and where better to start than with the bookshops. Figures from the Booksellers Association show that the number of independent booksellers stands at 1.094 at the end of 2011. This is down from 1,159 in 2010 and 1,289 in 2009.That is a bookshop a week closing.

According to Godfray it's because of competition from the internet and eBooks. This willful blindness is quite astonishing, since he seems incapable of thinking it could, in any way, be the fault of bookshops. Now, I go into bookshops a lot because - unsurprisingly, I like to buy books in a print form as well as in a eBook form as well as borrow them from my library. My knowledge of the stock of Forbidden Planet is as good as of my local library - and probably better if I'm to be honest. However, I can't recall the last time that I saw any real innovations in a bookshop - can you? Oh, apart from the nice little handwritten staff pick notes that I see in Waterstones. If I grabbed someone from 100, or even 200 years ago who frequented bookshops and put them in any bookshop you care to name today they probably wouldn't blink that much, and certainly wouldn't have any difficulty in working out what to do.

Let's take a case in point. I'm reading a series of graphic novels at the moment called Fables. Volume 14 in Forbidden Planet was priced at £14.99, but had been reduced to £10.99. On their website it was available for a web price of £9.32. In Amazon, it's available for £7.00 as a print publication, and as a Kindle publication it's actually £8.52. In a library it's going to be free of course, but this is a collection that I want to own, not just to read. Now, in what world, Mr Godfray are libraries or eBooks responsible for this situation? I'll tell you - they're not. I could have saved myself £3.99 by buying via Amazon. This little tale replicates itself over and over again, and then when we start to factor in the price of books in supermarkets, we're entering an entirely different league again.

Bookshops are failing - not because of libraries or eBooks - but because they have proved themselves totally incapable of adapting to the current market. They are trading (and trading badly) on past success, and the emotional ties that people have to them, which overcome their inclination to get books more cheaply. That's where the issue is, Mr Godfray. You need to look no further than your inability to move with the times, and the unedifying spectacle of you expecting 'a seat at the table' of Ed Vaizey's review of eBook lending would be laughable if it wasn't so pathetic.

I'm sick of libraries being tied to the whipping post, and being seen as the enemy by publishers and booksellers alike. We're an easy target, and because of that it leads to sloppy and lazy thinking. It's far easier to blame someone else, rather than look at your own failures and shortcomings, but if bookshops want to exist in a world of eBooks, supermarket sales and online vendors then quite frankly, they'd better buck their ideas up and pronto.