Barnaby thinks small

The British economist E F Schumacher used the phrase 'Small is Beautiful' as the title to a series of essays he published in 1973 (The phrase itself is credited to his tutor, Leopold Kohr). The phrase is usually used to champion small design solutions that are reckoned to empower people more.

Barnaby has been wondering how this philosophy translates to books, where it seems that 'bigger is better' is often assumed. A look in any book shop window will reveal the latest blockbuster novels which are often four, five, or even six hundred pages long. Indeed it appears that these books are sometimes sold by the kilo rather than by the quality of the writing. Does this mean that a long novel is, therefore, superior to a short story?

Happily not, for the truth is that it is ultimately the quality of the ideas and the writing that will win out. There is a place for both the long and the short. The long novel allows plots to be developed further and characters to be explored in more depth. The short story allows single ideas to be presented in novel ways and is sometimes the jumping off point to be developed further at some later date. Many times, though, the short story exists simply to provide a few minutes entertainment, or to provoke a new thought.

To this end, Barnaby has been creating short stories for the last couple of years in what he calls 'coffee break' sized pieces. Each can be read in about ten or fifteen minutes, just long enough to accompany your morning coffee. (Of course they work just as well in the bath, on the train, or in bed).

Each book in the Barnaby's Shorts series contains ten short stories in a wide variety of genres. To get you started, Volume One is entirely FREE! here and, as it is an ebook download, it doesn't even weigh a fraction of a kilo.

You can find more of Barnaby's books at www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk

Apple makes it easy for ebook downloading

Apple's New iOS 8 is Game-Changer for eBook Retailing

Yesterday Apple unveiled iOS 8, the new Apple operating system upgrade that will come out this fall.

Buried in a slide during the live demo event referenced as "iOS 8 features we didn’t have time to talk about" was an ebook retailing bombshell:  iBooks will come pre-installed on iOS 8.

The iBooks app is Apple's ebook store.  Inside that app are over 250,000 books from Smashwords authors.

This is a game-changer for ebook retailing.

iBooks will come pre-loaded on every device with iOS 8.
Image modified from original sourced from BGR.com

According to the latest public information, there are over 800 million devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad) running prior versions of Apple's iOS.

The new iOS will be available as a free upgrade to users of the iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPod touch 5th generation, iPad 2, iPad with Retina display, iPad Air, iPad mini and iPad mini with Retina display.

Prior to iOS 8, readers who wanted to shop iBooks were forced to click to the Apple App store, search for the iBooks app, sign in with their email address and password, and then install it.

The absence of a pre-installed app created unnecessary friction. It means only a fraction of Apple's customer base today has convenient access to your books (which makes the enormous success of iBooks all the more impressive).  Yesterday's news means iBooks will become ubiquitous.

 

It'll be like having a bookstore in nearly one billion pockets and purses.  It's not a stretch to speculate that within a couple years, the iBooks app will be ever-present on over one billion devices around the world.

Apple's brilliant move will place Barnaby's books just one or two clicks from being discovered by readers.

 

Meantime, if you can't wait for iOS8, you can find all Barnaby's books from whichever online store you prefer (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Apple and many others) by visiting www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk including several FREE titles.

Two new titles

The first three volumes of Mercedes Drew Mysteries are now available in a single volume - Mercedes Drew the collection. This anthology contains nine complete Mercedes Drew stories, plus a preview of volume four Smile for the Camera.

You can find out more about the motorcycling Mercedes Drew, her biker mates and her boyfriend, Inspector Desmond Flowers at www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk

Flowers for Mercedes, Free Running and Flandra are also still available as single volumes as ebooks or print editions.
 



Also newly published is the latest title from the Top Writers Block group. Eight authors from around the world, with eight stories inspired around the theme PAIN.

As always, profits from sales of books by Top Writers Block will go to the charity Sea Shepherd.

For more information or to purchase the book click here

You can find all of Barnaby's books at Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Scribd, Smashwords and many other online ebook retailers. www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk

The irresistible rise of the short story

Why the short story is the perfect literary form for the 21st century.

The following paragraphs are extracted from an article in the Daily Telegraph 25th May 2014. The full article can be found here

There’s no doubt about it, the short story is having “a moment”. It started this time last year, when Lydia Davis, not so much a short-story writer as a short-short-story writer (some of her tales are only a sentence long) won the Man Booker International Prize, a decision that took the literary world by storm.
 

When Davis’ triumph was followed by a Nobel Prize for the Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro, people started to mutter that something significant was afoot. While two successive prizes could be coincidence, the renaissance of the short story was confirmed when the American George Saunders won the inaugural Folio Prize at the start of the year for Tenth of December.

Publishing wisdom says short-story collections don’t sell. But the prognosis is good. According to The Bookseller, the trade magazine of the publishing industry, short-story sales rose 35 per cent in 2013 – and that was before Saunders won the Folio. But it is technology that has cemented the short story’s popularity this century. Suddenly, after years out in the cold, the short story finds itself the perfect fit for our attention spans and our mobile devices.

Many people struggle to find the time to engage with a full-length novel when they’re dealing with emails every second of every day or having to meet deadlines or rush home to put the kids to bed. A short story offers the perfect antidote – it’s the equivalent of listening to a single track of music instead of the whole album.

At their best, ... (short stories) are a whole world in miniature, they are like perfect small gifts. Like a brief encounter, they can be transforming and transfixing, but, unlike long relationships, they never flag.

You can find all Barnaby's Short Stories here . 8 volumes, with ten complete stories in each,
in a wide variety of genres. Each story the perfect length to read during a coffee break, in the bath or on the train.

There is more information about Barnaby's short stories, full length novels or quirky poems on his website www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk

Is a picture worth a thousand words?

It's often claimed that 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. The exact origin of that phrase is uncertain, but the earliest known usage of a similar phrase (Use a picture. It's worth a thousand words) can be found in a 1911 newspaper article discussing journalism and publicity (Syracuse Post Standard (page 18). March 28, 1911). The meaning would appear to be fairly clear, that a complex idea can be conveyed with a single image, but Barnaby wonders, if that's true, why would anyone bother to write at all? It's so easy, nowadays, to create pictures, on a mobile phone for example, and to share them with the world at the press of a button, that labouring over a novel, or a piece of poetry would seem to be wasted labour. All those hours, agonising over the exact word or phrase to convey a moment, an emotion, an idea, could simply be expunged by a few clicks on your digital camera.

Instead of a hundred thousand word novel, you would simply have a one hundred frame picture strip.

The problem with this approach, it seems to Barnaby, is that you would only have access to the pictures that the author/photographer supplied, whereas we all know that the best pictures are the ones the reader constructs inside his/her head. Hence the enduring popularity of the radio, newspaper and the printed book.

So, Barnaby has resolved to keep placing one word after another, in order to construct a framework, be it short story, poem, or novel, onto which you, dear reader, may hang your own pictures. To get you started, though, he will continue to include one picture on the cover of each published book. A selection of which are printed below.

 

You can find information about the books in the pictures at www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk

 

Chameleons -- Sci fi anthology

A woman dreams of chameleons every night; a man in an orange jumpsuit finds himself marooned on a featureless plain; the first confirmed message from an extra terrestrial source; a cube with a mind of it's own and a bored space explorer all feature in this collection of sci fi short stories in the old style.


No magic, no wizards, no warlocks, no werewolves and not a vampire in sight.

What if aliens were really small? Is time travel possible? Who will be the last man standing? Ten stories plus a bonus glimpse of the next Sci fi novel from Barnaby Wilde. Tales with a hint of mystery, a touch of humour and a twist in the tail.

'Chameleons' is available now as an ebook in the format of your choice from Smashwords or Amazon

You can find out more about Barnaby Wilde's books at www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk , follow him on Twitter or read his blog.

Barnaby thinks about immortality

Barnaby's attention was caught by a newspaper headline this week concerning life expectancy in the UK. It seems that life expectancy for males has increased by 8 years during the last 30 years. That is, a baby born today has a life expectancy of 8 years more than one born in 1984.

This improvement is largely due to improvements in health care.

This astonishing increase means that life expectancy has increased by more than one year in every four, or three months in every year.
It occurs to Barnaby that this is the equivalent of an improvement in life expectancy of six hours every day, or fifteen minutes every hour, and he wonders if this means he will live for ever, since life expectancy will improve by fifteen seconds every minute?

Sadly, it does not and the only way that he will achieve immortality is through his books, should anyone choose to read them. He has resolved, therefore, to continue writing in the hope that this will keep him young forever.

You can find all his books at www.barnaby-wilde.co.uk including all eight volumes (80 stories) in the Barnaby's Shorts series.

So, why not slow down and use today's fifteen minutes increase in life expectancy to read one of Barnaby's short stories? It's a great way to use that extra time.