Publishing: The Agency publishers are being investigated for price-fixing in Europe, with offices being raided. In several countries the issue seems to me more who’s setting the prices, rather than the fact they’re being set. France, for example, voted to fix ebooks prices last year. The problem with an international market (and products sold through international retailers) is that laws vary from country to country. I don’t want to see more geographical restrictions being imposed, but I can’t see EC member states sitting down and agreeing on this one any time soon.

Evidence is beginning to pop up that Pubit!, B&N’s self-publishing service, is stripping sample chapters from erotic works. They’re perfectly within their rights to do so, under their own T&C, but if I were considering self-publishing Pubit! would not be my first choice as a result of this.

Interst-Piquing: Monica Valentinelli talks about why authors suck at marketing. She makes some good points, but personally I’m getting a little tired of seeing ‘all writers are introverts’ being trotted out with such regularity. Between the internet, writing groups and festivals writing contibutes to a big chunk of my social life. Even the hard graft of actually writing needs not be a solitary activity; look at all those co-writers out there!

Procrastination: Skygypsises, a graphical adaptation of the short story by  Timothy James Dimacali’s, first published in Philippine Speculative Fiction III. I didn’t realise the Philippine’s had such a rich traditional of spec fic, and I’m grateful to John Raymond Bumanglag for introducing me to it 🙂

Finally, it’s both International Women’s Day and pancake day today, and what better way to celebrate both than with a clip from a kid’s TV show with an awesome female protagonist?

Maid Marian and her Merry Men

(Can’t embed ::pouts:: )