Krampus: A Christmas Tale Is Now On iTunes!

Story by Scott Mckenzie, Art by Phil Ives
Original Musical Score by Geoff Smith
Narrated by Paul Alves and Maja Santos 

Future Gains 75,000 New Subscribers In One Month On Apple's Newsstand App

UK magazine publisher Future made $1 million in new tablet magazine revenue within a month of debuting 65 of its titles on iTunes’ Newsstand.

104 days after Future debuted the titles with Newsstand’s September 12 launch, tablet editor-in-chief Mike Goldsmith revealed stats at the UK Association of Online Publishers’ tablet publishing forum in London on Wednesday…

• 75,000 subscriptions gained
• 40 percent of orders are for subscriptions
• 9.3 million free container apps downloads
• 8.5 million free issues
• 4.3 million opt-ins for push messages

Read the entire article here

CBC Canadian Non-Fiction Contest Deadline Approaches

All Canadian non-fiction writers are eligible for the CBC’s Canada Writes Creative Non-Fiction Prize.

This prize is awarded once a year to the best original, unpublished, work of Creative Nonfiction that is submitted to the competition. All Canadians can participate. 

Click to read more ...

Book Guys - Episode 024 "Microsoft Word Is A Big Hairy Beast" is on iTunes now!

This week we interview Mark Coker, C.E.O. of Smashwords.Com, Chris and Paul re-visit 11/22/63 by Stephen King, Jim The Book Guy Philips talks about the books-to-movies he’s been watching with his son, Sir Jimmy talks about the podcast Five Hundy in a night and more!

Your Hosts:  Chris Jagr, Jim Philips, Sir Jimmy, Paul Alves

Visit our web site at BookGuys.Ca

Our listeners get these special deals:

Get 25% off your order of a free hollow book just for mentioning “Book Guys” in a twitter to SirJimmy before you place your order at FreeHollowBooks

Star Wars Uncut Is Out Now! (Watch Below!)

Star Wars fans around the world were asked to recreate 15 seconds of Star Wars any way they wanted to.

Then it was pieced together into the FULL STAR WARS movie!

Watch it below!

Paulo Coelho On Piracy

That other Portugese speaking Paul who loves (and writes) books, Paulo Coelho (author of the Alchemist) spoke up about Piracy on his blog…

From his blog…

Pirate Coelho is a site that was hosted somewhere, with a collection of my texts in P2P pages. It was not me who put it there, but being adept of free contents, I put this URL here. I am just facilitating.

RULES OF THE GAME

A] I the case that you download a book and like it, please buy the book, so we can tell to the industry that sharing contents is not life threatening to the book business.
B] You can do a relevant service to your community. Print and handle FOR FREE to a local library in a small town, to a hospital, to a prison. The intention of Pirate Coelho (as well as my free web books) is first and foremost share thoughts with people who cannot afford buying books.

Obrigado/ Thank you

Paulo Coelho

Game of Thrones Season 2 Art Direction Video

HBO has released another film previwing some of the art direction for Season 2.

Can’t wait for April 1st.

iBooks Author Available NOW For Free For Mac.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibooks-author/id490152466?mt=12

I think Apple just released the easiest to use eBook creation tool.  Today marks a new day for eBooks.

Looks easy to use, and looks to be a must-use for any multimedia book author.

The Textbook Is Dead. Long Live The iTextbook From Apple.

Developing…

Apple announced it would update its iBooks platform to include textbook capabilities. It also added a new platform called iBooks Author, which lets anyone easily create and publish their own e-books. Apple’s late co-founder and chairman Steve Jobs had hoped to bring relief to the higher education masses in the late 80s and early 90s, but 20 years later, Jobs’s legacy lives on in Apple, which hopes to make yet another dent in the education industry.

At the start of Thursday’s presentation, Apple’s senior VP of marketing Phil Schiller told the audience several pitiful statistics about U.S. education. For one, 70 percent of freshmen graduate in four years, but the country is ranked 17th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math. Assuming the human race isn’t getting stupider, the statistics show that there is clearly a disconnect between students and their education.

Yet, the iPad offers a big opportunity for students to get excited about learning again. The iPad has already demonstrated it can help children with learning disabilities make leaps in bounds in their development, and schools have already invested heavily in Apple’s tablet. Roughly 1.5 million iPads are currently in use in educational institutions.

Read the rest of this BREAKING NEWS at The International Business Times

Rumor: Apple To Debut "GarageBand For eBooks"

Apple is preparing an interactive digital textbook creation toolkit described as “GarageBand for eBooks”, reports have suggested ahead of the company’s education-focused event later this week, with the project supposedly occupying Steve Jobs for several years before his death in 2011. Rather than the currently complex portfolio of tools required to author a truly interactive digital book at present, Apple is set to unveil a straightforward multimedia creation platform, Ars Technica‘s sources tell them, along with an upgraded distribution system that would position the iPhone and iPad as a student’s best friend.

If this is true, I’m glad I have taken so long to add the video and audio into the book I’m writing.  Looks like I may be one of the first to produce a book on the tool.