Although we work exclusively with ebooks, we at Cenolithic firmly believe in the primacy of content. Format certainly has an effect on how content is received, but a book is a book is a book. Format is, and always will be, secondary.

I was talking to Nelson the other day about one of his many interests, ancient holy books. He’s reading some scholarly analysis on the Book of Enoch. One thing he said struck me, that Enoch was originally a scroll, like so many pre-Christian books. He reminded me that our current concept of “book” is actually based on a new way to organize books introduced during the early Christian era, as leaves of paper bound along one side.  This is technically called a “codex.”

Today, Enoch is available in a third form: the ebook.  Who knows, there might even be an audiobook version out there somewhere!

Our friends over at Melville House have an intriguing take on the recent decision by the New York Times Book Review to stop listing the prices of bestsellers:

It’s a flag that the format of a given book is of less importance now. List price is an important indicator of how a book is packaged. Now that we are able to rid our books of anything so cumbersome as different types of binding, why bother differentiating between them any longer? All editions of a book are the same, this change seems to say, and if you are fool enough to want to hold one in your hand you can deal with questions of price, but for the rest of us it is no longer relevant.

If this is true, it’s a good development, even if codex purists lament the fact that “real books” made of paper seem to be taking a back seat to their electronic grandchildren.

Melville House brings an important struggle to our attention. It seems that creative types seem to be excluded from the debate on how to reform copyright law. Not a good sign when lawyers and businessmen are deciding the fate of artists.

Cenolithic staff favorite Kim Stanley Robinson has won the Nebula award for best novel for 2312, a story set largely in a mobile city on the planet Mercury. (Read Galley Cat‘s write-up here.) The ironically named After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall: A Novel by Nancy Kress won the Nebula award for best novella.

Galley Cat also brings us some intriguing news about the self-published science fiction best-sellers.

The ever-fun website WHATCULTURE! (we assume it’s intended to be capitalized) offers us its list of the five best and five worst science fiction romances. Yes, many of the examples are from comic book milieus, but it’s still an entertaining ride.

J. Nelson Leith has informed Cenolithic that the 2nd edition of the supernatural noir novel On The Head Of A Pin will be ready for release on July Fourth! Even better, he has the rough concepts for a pair of sequels that will bring Nur Lucas’s world of hardboiled angels to the attention of brand new investigators.

Thinking he’s taking another safe and easy missing person case, private detective Charles Oliver learns of a secret technique that could protect him from all the legions of Heaven and Hell; but when the angel of Death threatens his investigation, he must steel himself against the rough, dangerous realities of life before an Apocalypse of despair swallows civilization.

The national Winterfest holiday promoted in J. Nelson Leith‘s Winterfesto (available on Kindle and Nook) now has a petition before the White House!

Sign the petition and share it with your friends!

The text of the petition:

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
Create a Federal Winterfest celebrating the arts, sports, food, & other joys of winter, & combating the “winter blues.”

The emotional & economic impact of the post-holiday season is well established, with Blue Monday (the third Monday of the year, & your second inauguration date!) confirmed as the most stressful day of the year.

However, as December proves every year, winter can be as festive & prosperous as any season, if only we would continue to celebrate it beyond Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, & New Year’s Day.

To boost the country through the dark days of January, the President & Congress should establish a federal Winterfest weekend holiday kicking off on the fifth Thursday of the year—but officially observed on Friday & the following weekend—filled with concerts, feasting, sports (the Super Bowl could be pinned to Winterfest Sunday, if the NFL cooperates), & other winter-themed events!

Per the author’s request, Cenolithic will be removing all titles by J. Nelson Leith from the Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites before the end of December 2012. A statement from the author:

I experimented with ebooks in 2012 at the urging of friends and fans of my writing website, sold some stories, got some good reviews and ratings.  But ultimately, the primary result of the experiment was to complicate my 2012 taxes.

This wouldn’t necessarily be an issue except that, while I deeply enjoy the act of writing itself, my drive to be read is comparatively shallow. I have neither the desire for fame nor a fear of it.   I have no hunger for affirmation, no proverbial hole to be filled, no self-esteem issues for fans to assuage.  I have a secure income and no need or lust for money; if there were a reasonable expectation that writing might replace that income, I would commit 100 percent.

As it is, however, there is very little pressing me to expend vast amounts of time and resources marketing my writing to readers, and that is simply a bad fit for a publishing business that increasingly leans on author self-promotion.

-J. Nelson Leith
Washington, DC

Per the author’s request, Cenolithic will be removing all titles by J. Nelson Leith from the Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites before the end of December 2012.  A statement from the author may be forthcoming.

Cenolithic author J. Nelson Leith reviews the sci-fi short story anthology Diverse Energies at his website, j.nelsonleith.com.  An excerpt:

The guiding principle behind Diverse Energies (don’t all anthologies have one?) is to present characters of “non-traditional” backgrounds and ethnic/sexual identities. Now, this might raise red flags as a possible PC polemic disguised as sci-fi but, as no friend of political correctness myself, let me reassure the reader that the best thing about how Diverse Energies fulfills its promise is that the stories have characters of diverse backgrounds and ethnic/sexual identities, but the stories are not themselves necessarily about diversity.

As Tobias Buckell explains the anthology in the preface: “Why? It’s the future face of the world.” No political bone to pick, just sci-fi writers being honest about their setting.

Check it out!

Cenolithic author J. Nelson Leith has a few quick reads with just a dash of horror, perfect for Halloween reading!

In the hard-boiled fantasy novella On The Head Of A Pin, detective Chuck Oliver is hired for an unusual missing-person case: to find the long-lost angel of Despair.  But, during his investigation, he stumbles into the intrigues of Death Herself.  Could a spiritual secret he learns from the daughter of one of the Seven Sins show him a way to cheat Death and become the ultimate detective?  Or will his quest lead to a global apocalypse of Babylonian excess?

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Available on Nook and Kindle.

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When hard-working Will first met Heather, he thought she was just a curious stranger with a playful demeanor … or perhaps a very vivid dream. But then, Will’s room-mate warns him that she’s being hunted by the authorities. Is she a stress-induced hallucination? A mass delusion? Or a seductive chimæra from the ancient past? In an unusual excursion into mainstream horror, Leith straddles the border between the real world and nightmares.

Amazon review: “Creepy. How do you get someone to stop stalking you if you don’t even know if they are real or not? Take a journey on a psychological mind-trip to find out. Once again, I give J. Nelson Leith five stars for his mastery of words. I’m just wowed, by his ability to write strange things and make you wonder if they could be real. Awesome!”

Available on Nook and Kindle.

In a story that could be described as a gaslight fantasy or gunpowderpunk, Leith puts a dark twist on the vampire meme, tracing the origin of the undead back to a primordial act of murder among the Children of God.  When a “woman who wouldn’t die” comes to to port of Lemaigne, hunting a girl of mixed blood, the Security Corps Observer assigned to the city has to overcome his skepticism to keep his commanding officer’s family safe.

Amazon review: “I don’t know about you, but I am a fan of the dark and twisted. J. Nelson Leith has the ability to bring you right into the story … I found myself moving along, trying to solve the mystery of a unknown woman who shows up in town … Who is this woman? And what does she want with the young girls she is stalking? Read this!”

Available on Nook and Kindle.

Another episode in the Observer’s adventures has the Security Corps officer abandoning his post to investigate a string of mysterious killings in the back country above the port of Lemaigne.  In a Hawthornesque fable of frontier mystery, Leith pits man against nature in an eery monster tale that (according to an Amazon reviewer) “keep(s) you on the edge of your seat!”

Available on Nook and Kindle.

Based on demand, list prices for Cenolithic fiction titles are now at $1.99, both at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.   (Of course, retailers can set sale prices below list.)