Occasional TeleRead contributor Robert Nagle passed me a link to a review he lately posted of our founder David Rothman’s small-press-published novel, The Solomon Scandals, which recounts a journalist’s investigation of a scandal in 1970s Washington. Nagle quite liked the book, giving it four stars, though noting that the tone could get a little preachy at times.
Ars Technica reports that Google will release the first e-ink reader optimized for Google Books in about a week. The iRiver Story HD, apparently a revision of iRiver’s 2009 Story e-reader, will include wifi and a qwerty keyboard, and cost $139.99 suggested retail when it hits the street July 17th. I’m not so sure I like the look of the page-turning button being in the middle of the device, with no apparent turning buttons to left and right. Still, we’ll see how it goes.
Business Wire reports that, thanks to the Nook Color and Amazon’s current lack of a color reader, Barnes & Noble actually sold more total e-book readers than Amazon in the first quarter of 2011. Market research company IDC reports that media tablets and e-readers saw the usual post-holiday sales fall-off, but e-reader sales show growth of 105% over last year. It will be interesting to see if the putative two-faced Amazon Android tablet helps Amazon recover sales momentum.
Thanks to Robert and Chris, but if The Solomon Scandals is self-published, that’s news to my wonderful publisher, Lida Quillen of Twilight Times Books. I think SP books can be great. But the publisher route was better for me. By the way, the UK phone hacking scandals make TSS all the more timely–the main theme of the novel is the conflict between duty and friendship (we know which mattered more in Murdoch’s inner circles!). David R. SolomonScandals.com davidrothman@pobox.com (now on Google+)