Author: Carrie

  • Review: How I sold 1 million ebooks in 5 months, by John Locke

    It’s a safe bet that any book flogging a “marketing system” will contain a few nuggets of hard information surrounded by thousands of words of padding. John Locke’s how-to is no exception. It sticks closely to the business self-help template, which goes something like this: Page 1 In this book, you’ll discover the secrets of…

  • Don’t pay for my short story

    I decided to publish a short story in ebook format and give it away for free, partly because I think it’s fun and partly because it might help promote Coffin Dodgers. Unfortunately Amazon won’t let you price books at zero any more (it’s apparently part of Amazon’s so far unsuccessful plan to stop book spam),…

  • Faffing around in iMovie

    I’m told that ebook trailers are important, so I had a go at one. I’m easily amused.

  • Scottish blog roundup: trumping Trump, climate change and cBeebies

    I volunteered to do this week’s Scottish blogging roundup, which – as the name suggests – is a digest of interesting blog posts by or about Scots. You can’t accuse the Scottish blogosphere of parochialism: this week alone it’s been pondering matters of life and death, architectural vandalism, online identity, climate change, gender politics, coalition…

  • Coffin dodgers: a nice review and new places to buy it

    Cheery news on the book front: Malachi at allmetaphor.com has given Coffin Dodgers a really good review, and Smashwords has published the book to both Barnes & Noble and iBooks. The latter is a bit cheaper than everywhere else, and I have no idea why. When I find out, I’ll let you know. For now,…

  • The Booth at the End: genuinely gripping TV

    I know I’m late to this, but if you haven’t seen The Booth at the End, it’s well worth your time. The series is available in its entirety online, and I loved three things about it: the economy of the writing, Xander Berkeley’s acting, and the clever way separate strands begin to interleave. Here’s a…

  • SpiderMonster, the musical

    Sesame Street does it again:

  • Britain’s got ebooks

    A new study on behalf of KPMG suggests that the UK’s getting the hang of this ebook malarkey. Some interesting numbers: consumption of e-books has doubled since September 2009 as people increasingly purchase these products to use on tablets and e-readers like the Amazon Kindle. According to the research, monthly spend on these goods is…

  • “Sign up with Groupon if you’re going bankrupt”

    I wrote a column a few months ago where I suggested that any economy that reckons Groupon is worth $5 billion is about to go pop. In the few weeks since I wrote that, its valuation has skyrocketed past $30 billion (those are American billions, but still…) Most of the reporting of Groupon so far…

  • Facebook is the Windows of the Internet

    Oh yes it is. Me on Techradar: Social networks also benefit from lock-in. I hate Facebook: I hate its horrible UI, its overly complex privacy settings, its photo albums, the algorithm that seems hell-bent on hiding important and interesting updates. Given the choice, I wouldn’t use it. Unfortunately I don’t have a choice, because for…