Two early stories by Octavia Butler, “A Necessary Being” and “Childfinder,” have been located and will be published as an e-book on June 24. Unexpected Stories will be published by Open Road Integrated Media with an introduction by Walter Mosley. The stories were discovered by Marilee Heifetz, Butler’s agent, while looking through Butler’s papers at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA.
British publisher Hodder Children’s has announced the creation of Hodder Silver, a series of classic children’s science fiction which will be reissued as e-books. The series is scheduled to launch in May with five titles by Richard Carpenter, Jean Ure, Nicholas Fisk, Jan Mark, and Louise Lawrence with plans to release a total of 21 titles by September.
Baen Books has announced that beginning on March 24, its e-0books will be available on the Kobo platform for download. Baen has been a leader in DRM free e-books for fifteen years.
Barnes and Noble, which purchased e-publisher Fictionwise is 2009, has announced that it will be closing Fictionwise in December. U.S. Fictionwise customers will cease to have access to their Fictionwise Bookshelf through the site after December 21, 2012. Customers outside the U.S. will cease to have access to their Fictionwise Bookshelf through the site after January 31, 2013. Fictionwise customers will be notified of this and U.S. and U.K. customers will be given an opportunity to move their customer accounts, including their eBooks purchased at the Fictionwise websites, to a Barnes & Noble NOOK Library.
Eight authors, including Cory Doctorow, Mercedes Lackey, Paolo Bacigalupi, Lauren Beukes, Kelly Link, John Scalzi, Neil Gaiman, and Dave McKean, are offering up a bundle of e-books. The books are available in DRM-Free versions for a donation which will go to the authors and a variety of charities. Six books by the first five authors are available to anyone making a donation. Two additional books by Scalzi and Gaiman & McKean are available to anyone who donates more than the average donation at the time of purchase. The titles included are Doctorow’s Pirate Cinema, Lackey’s Invasion, Bacigalupi’s Pump Six, Beukes’s Zoo City, and Link’s Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners. The addition books are Scalzi’s Old Man’s War and Gaiman & McKean’s Signal to Noise. The charities being helped include the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Child’s Play Charity.
The Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition has announced the nominees for the 2012 Epic Awards for e-published books. Categories with nominees of genre interest are listed below. The winners will be announced at EPICon in March, 2012.
Anthology
Fantasy
Horror
Paranormal
Science Fiction
Novella
Fantasy Romance
Horror Romance
Paranormal Romance
Science Fiction Romance
James Patrick Kelly has announced the launch of Strangeways, an e-zine available for Nook and Kindle for .99c per issue. Each issue will include reprints of two short stories, two essays, and bonus materials. The first issue, currently available, includes “Plus or Minus” and “The Propagation of Light in a Vacuum.”
Macmillan Publishers, which includes Tor Books, has announced that they will pay royalties to authors based on estimated lost sales from the period when Amazon.com removed the “buy” button from Macmillan books during a period of negotiations over the pricing of e-books for the Kindle. The payment is called the “Amazon Kindle Outage Adjustment.” In addition, many authors will receive royalties based on 25% of net receipts, instead of 15% of list price, which will work out to the authors’ benefit.
E-book vendor Wizard’s Tower, which was set up as a general e-book vendor, has added its first additional publisher, Lethe Press. Set up earlier this year, Wizard’s Tower has so far sold their own works and e-zines Dark Spires and Salon Futura, but with the plan to offer books by various other publishers. With the addition of four books by Lethe Press, a small press specializing in books written by members of the LGBT community, Wizard’s Tower begins its product expansion. Clarkesworld Magazine is also available through Wizard’s Tower.
Infinity Plus has announced the launch of an e-book imprint, which will go live with six titles, a collection of stories by Eric Brown and a five-volume collection fiction of Keith Brooke. The books, with more to follow, will be available in Kindle format for £2.18 or $3.44. Future books are scheduled by Molly Brown, Garry Kilworth, Anna Tambour, and John Grant.