A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Nerd bought himself a Nook e-reader, and surprised me with one, too. Since we got new Android phones for Valentine's Day, too, we basically just leaped ahead about four years, technologically speaking, and it's awesome. Except when it's kind of disturbing. Since I have new gadgets, I've been poking around in unfamiliar corners of the Internet, and I am finding a lot of things that make me say: What the heck are these people thinking?
Self-published books
Apparently the proliferation of reading devices like the Kindle and Nook has created a huge market for these self-published ebooks. Mr. Nerd has spent a lot of time on the NookBooks section of barnesandnoble.com, looking for stuff to read. Here is one of his finds:
It's considered a "paranormal romance/urban fantasy anthology." If you check out the overview, it appears to be a mashup of Twilight/fairy/space/cat people-shape shifter/bodice-ripper romance, for 99 cents. And there are tons of these. I don't know whether I should laugh, or get busy thinking up stories for my new series about a scrappy part-dog/part-elf female ghost investigator and her on-again/off-again romance with a shape-shifting bad-boy cat/vampire named Chance. (Mr. Nerd would want me to let you know that he doesn't read these; he was looking for science fiction stories.)
I came across these next few when I did a search for cookbooks:
Cooking with Coolio. Cooking. With Coolio. Now I'm wondering: Are there a bunch of these out there, that just shove a rapper into some completely random how-to guide? Like, say, furniture repair with 50 Cent? Landscaping with Lil' Wayne? Embroidery with Eminem?
Is there a follow-up to this one, called Ten Great Recipes for when You Have the Munchies?
And were there supposed to be, like, 100 recipes, but Smokey (ha! I see what you did there) got too baked and ended up staring at his fingerprints for a few hours instead? I think the next installment would be a big seller, since you've already identified your target market. And it wouldn't require a whole lot of effort--list Dr. Pepper, Snickers bars, and Doritos, and the book is half-done already. Just sayin'.
Pardon me a moment while I try not to hurl:
100? Seriously? That stuff is nas-ty. I've never tasted jerky, and I pray that I never have to. We have dog treats in the cabinet that look AND smell better than this stuff.
And finally, check out the tagline on this one:
"Converting" makes it sound so...clinical. Like chemistry class. Do a few equations, gather up some test tubes, fire up the Bunsen burner and--voila!--venison dinner. Definitely no gutting involved here.
I meant to include some of the head-scratching-ly strange Android apps I've found, but I'm out of time for tonight. Be sure to check back for that!
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8 comments:
Nice! I might have to whip up a book I'm not too invested in to see if I can sell it for 99 cents.
Wait, you've never eaten jerky?
i really worry about these self published books. i worry that the quality of books will just fall apart. but what i really worry about is that i will fall in love with one of these self published authors (not Coolio or the jerky guy though) and then find out i'm a loser because this person was like in 3rd grade when they self published!! you've one upped them already because you thought of such cool titles and catchy things.
I see crap like this all the time when looking for new Kindle books. It's pretty sad what's out there. What's even worse is when some of these books have all these 5-star reviews that fool me into buying the book.
There's a lot of benefit's that we can get in reading a book. We gain our knowledge that we use in our daily life.
You actually make it seem really easy with your presentation however I in finding this matter to be really something that I feel I would never understand. It seems too complicated and very large for me. I am looking ahead for your next submit, I'll try to get the dangle of it!
Helpful info. Lucky me I discovered your site by accident, and I'm stunned why this twist of fate didn't took place earlier! I bookmarked it.
I like what you guys are up too. This kind of clever work and reporting! Keep up the good works guys I've included you guys to my blogroll.
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