For those of you that haven’t read my bio, I am a Star Wars fan. May 4th is the official unofficial day to celebrate. Why? Simple. May the 4th be with you…

The Wall Street Journal reports two Kindle tidbits.

The first is that the American Association of People with Disabilities and the National Federation or the Blind are raising cane (sic) over Amazon’s limiting of its text-to-speech feature. They were apparently insensed enough to show up at the Authors’ Guild Headquarters to stage a protest. The Authors’ Guild, if you recall, urged Amazon to curb the text-to-speech feature - which Amazon did. 

The second part of the report highlighted a price rebellion by Kindle users due to the upcreep in eBook prices. (Please go to the WSJ site for the full enlightening article.)

Both of these items illustrate a healthy dose of consumer wrath from those pesky unintended consequences that always appear. Curb a feature to satisfy one group and you upset another group.  Price up eBooks and you invite protest. 

The Information Technology professional in me questions why some eBooks are as pricey as they are. (Remember that publishers set the price, not Amazon.) They require no printing presses, paper, ink, shelf space, overproduction, inventory,  remaindering, or returns to deal with. Distribution is Delivery on Demand - a publisher’s golden goose. But the price creep tempts consumers to the dark side to find ways around the security and protection schemes. Keeping the price reasonable will encourage consumers to stay legal, buy more, keep the writing business a paying profession.

Hopefully, publishers will hear the will of the people and not get their golden goose made in to pate’.

All Things Digital interviewed none other than media mogul Rupert Murdock recently. The publishing giant told the reporter that his techies were mulling a 4-color eReader to enter the competitive fray led by Sony and Amazon.

Add to that a similar move by Hearst Publishing and you have some new and unlikely players in the eReader market.

The real question here is just which part of the market are they trying to reach? After all, both Murdock and Hearst sell news. Will consumers flock to eReaders built by said companies? Or, will consumers look to as-yet-unnamed tech companies offering the best bang for the buck?  The future is cloudy at best. It remains to be seen that media companies like Hearst and Murdock can lure readers onto their platforms when there are so many alternatives including low-cost netbooks and smartphones. If nothing else, their entry could spawn the same kind of lower-cost and richer feature set that other technologies have already experienced.

Officals of the renowned Non Booker Award for Fiction gave the coveted honor today to author Mike Silvestri for not publishing his first attempt at fiction titled Children of the Clouds. Margaret Atwood, (The Handmaid’s Tale) said, “The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.”  Stephen King (The Stand) was also quoted saying, ” The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” And President Barak Obama chimed in saying, “Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.”

The author could not be reached for immediate comment though it is rumored he was dusting off the twenty-five-year-old manuscript just to spite his critique partners at their next meeting.

Medallion Press airs its first live internet radio show this Saturday, April 4, 2009, at 8:00 p.m. EST. On tap to discuss “Writing a Great Manuscript and Getting It Published,” are Medallion authors Beth Ciotta, Kathy Steffen, and fellow Pennwriter Don Helin. Listeners can call in or text in their questions to Medallion Press Radio to hear how these authors made it in this ever-so-tough climate.

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When two sides enter a conflict, much can be told about each combatant by what they stockpile before a battle.

Case in point is an Associated Press report stating that Google is making available over 500,000 out-of-copyright books in unencrypted EPUB format for the Sony eReader. (EPUB is the de facto industry standard for eInk style devices.) This catapults the Sony eReader into the lead of available titles and it looks like these books will be available for free. What’s more is that these books aren’t just available for the Sony, they are available on pretty much any gadget that can handle a PDF.

The Amazon Kindle can handle unencrypted EPUB files, but the must be sent through a conversion where a fee is charged to transmit it to your device.

So eReaders, there you have it - Sony/Google on one side stockpiling 500,000+ older books versus Amazon’s 250,000+ inventory of more current & popular titles. Free or fee? Where will you read it - computer, eReader, or Smartphone?

And to think - it’s all just beginning…

Hot on the heels of her Amazon Breakthrough Novel announcement, Cathy Ennis (writing as (aka Cate Masters) ) debuts a romance eBook under the respected Wild Rose Press banner called, Seventh Heaven, set in New Jersey during the turbulent 60’s.

Cathy Ennis’s (aka Cate Masters) urban fantasy, Surfacing, made the quarter-finalist cut in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award Contest.

While Cathy is both surprised and quite happy to have made the cut, I’m not. Cathy is a fine writer with a great story about loss, love, and Rock & Roll set in a delightfully kitschy setting. Click on the title above to take in the first 20 pages and you’ll see why.

Mobileread, a seller of eBooks, announced on one of its user forums that it received a nasty notice from book giant Amazon. Apparently, someone on the user forum posted a bit of hacking software that allowed Amazon Kindle users to purchase books from vendors other than Amazon - like Mobileread. Amazon invoked the Digial Millenium Copyright Act to get the hack taken down. Mobileread, of course, complied and went on to post a notice on the forum saying they would remove any customer content that directly linked to information regarding hacking the Kindle.

As an Information Technology guy and a writer, I’m amazed that there are already hacks for the Kindle. Then again, I’m not. We’ve seen this all before in the world of digital music. It doesn’t take too many Google Searches to find software to do all sorts of things the manufacturer/retailer doesn’t want you to do.

In a broader sense, this episode stirs up a bunch of questions. Who really owns their eReader - the customer or the manufacturer? Which books can eReader owners buy? Will eReader owners someday demand wider access? Beyond that, fellow writers, I have a greater concern. Just how safe is my Great American Novel when it’s in electronic format? If there are hacks to the Kindle that allow various and sundry access to competing marketplaces, there will be hacks to allow unscrupulous eBook buyers to pass around their eBooks for free — making writing for a living a dying art.

Fellow writers, want to get published? Okay, silly question. But answers to that most vexing question of just how to get published might be on the horizon. Medallion Press Authors invites listeners to a live edition of Medallion Press Radio on April 4, from 7 p.m.–9 p.m. CST. This is a live, round-table discussion about writing a great manuscript and getting it published. Plus, listeners can call in and ask questions of Medallion Press authors including Don Helin, live, on air, or text in questions via chatroom.