• Game Reviews,  Technology,  Writing Resources

    Priced to Die

    “Why We Should Fear Ourselves More Than Pirates” So now that I’m seeing reports of SOPA and PIPA having been defeated by overwhelming negative opinion many are breathing sighs of relief. And others are cursing violently (but generally silently). Among game developers and writers, my two primary areas of interaction, opinions are mixed. Many are worried about piracy eating into their revenues. For freelance writers and indie game developers it does not take a lot of piracy to put a stranglehold on their revenue stream. Still I think there’s a larger concern than pirates for content creators. Why We Should Fear The $0.99 App and Novel One interesting thing I’ve…

  • The Lazy Designer

    Lazy Designer

    I’m still on target for a late August/early September release of book 1 of the Lazy Designer. This first book will delve into getting a game development career and will include practical advice and a few anecdotes from my days at BioWare to help emphasize points. Anyways most of the content is already present on the blog (and organized on the Lazy Designer page) so I thought I should remind regular blog readers that they probably won’t get much value out of buying the first book in the series. The later books in the series will feature more original content but most of the topics I wanted to cover in…

  • Writing Resources

    Reprints on various eReaders

    I’ve added a few support pages to help those of you who would like to read my story reprints on your digital devices. iTunes Amazon (Kindle) Barnes and Noble (Nook) Kobo Sony Reader Let me know if you find any mistakes in the listings and if you read the stories please let me know what you thought of them!

  • Writing Resources

    Stories and Amazon Sales

    So something strange happened this week… one of my stories was priced ‘free’ on Amazon (I mentioned it briefly last post). So far my publishing short story reprints to Amazon… Smashwords… AnthologyBuilder has been mostly an experiment in ePublishing, testing the waters so to speak. Sales have been far from brisk :) But with ‘The Prophet‘ being free several thousand readers downloaded it in the span of a few days. And in those same two days I’ve had more sales of other stories than in the couple years I’ve been on Amazon. No, please, don’t be too happy for me. The sales are still rather puny and I wouldn’t be…

  • Apple - iPhone/iPad,  Writing Resources

    iBooks store

    So yeah demonstrating the extent of my geekiness I was very pleased to notice yesterday that most of my story reprints are now available in the iBook store for Apple devices. While not quite as cool as holding a new magazine with a story of mine in it, this comes a close second. Just go into the app and go to search and type ‘Brent Knowles’. There’s a half dozen or so stories available. The only title that isn’t showing up there yet is my Writers of the Future story ‘Digital Rights’. If you check any of them out (the Prophet is free!) and are inclined to do so, I’d…

  • eBook,  Writing Resources

    Digital Rights… free for a limited time

    To help readers with their Aurora Award nominations I’ve uploaded my Writers of the Future winning story ‘Digital Rights’ to Smashwords. Blurb: Izzy’s new job aboard a solar station orbiting Earth becomes more complicated when she begins receiving cryptic messages from a ghost. And if you use coupon HB67G on checkout you can have the story for free. If you enjoy ‘Digital Rights’ please consider nominating it for an Aurora award. Nominations are free and the deadline for them is April 30 2011. Not coincidentally that is also the day the coupon expires :) Thanks! Read the story Nominate the story – Brent p.s. I’ll be putting the story up…

  • eBook

    Publishers – get your eBooks right please

    My last post was a quick review of “Present at the Future”. I didn’t want to mar the review with complaints about eBooks because they aren’t relevant to the specific book (i.e., not the fault of the author). But the publisher (and all publishers) need to wake up and start doing a better job with their eBook editions (in their defense this version is a couple years old, it might be improved now). My complaints over the eBook of ‘Present at the Future’: – There were no illustrations in the eBook version of book and the text was NOT amended to explain their absence except for a short note at…

  • Writing Resources

    Black Gate has arrived!

    Received issue 14 of Black Gate and have started reading it. The magazine is a print magazine but given the expense of using the postal system, I elected to continue my subscription via PDF. So far happy with it. Formatting is good, I’ll test it on a variety of devices and give an update later. In other news, I had a solid weekend on Empire Avenue… my share price continues to increase. If you’d like an invite into this addictive game/social network/advertising platform, just let me know (I’ll need an e-mail address to invite you).

  • Writing Resources

    Randy Cohen — I agree with you!

    There’s been a *bit* of discussion in regards to Randy Cohen, writer of the “Ethicist” column at the New York Times who advised someone that had downloaded a pirated eBook of a Stephen King book he already owned that ethically he had done an ‘okay’ thing. Opinions vary, some like Victoria Strauss finding it objectionable, others not so much. I’m firmly in the not-so-much camp. Now I’m just starting out, so my opinion weighs little on this front, but if you buy writing of mine once, you can have it any other format you want. Period. That said, I don’t condone pirating or hosting pirated writing (or other stuff). I…