Now is the Time to Buy a First Generation E-Reader
Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Sony, and many others have recently released large color Android tablets/e-book readers out into the wild. Effectively the third generation of e-book readers, these tablets priced at 150-250$ USD represent the current pinnacle of our e-book world. But I'm not telling you to go buy them. Oh no. The value may be there but the price isn't right and the technology isn't optimum for reading books.
I'm telling you to buy a first generation Kindle, Nook, Kobo, or Sony Pocket e-Reader. Why? Besides all being based on superior e-ink screens that won't kill your eyes for reading, they have each and every one reached that oh so sweet 40-50$ price point on eBay.
Yep! 40-50$. For the same cost of a video game, a night out at the movies, a dinner (a cheap dinner here in Los Angeles), a pair of slacks, or two weeks of Starbucks blended drinks you can have an e-reader. Many first generation e-readers come with Wifi and some come with free 2g internet. Heck buy an extra or two to keep in a drawer at home. Take them on the bus. Take them to the beach or rock climbing. Whip them out at the bus stop or in sketchy neighborhoods. Treat them like a book. And when they are lost or stolen or drop and crack or die as all electronics invariably do, simply pull another from the drawer and move on.
Apparently people are buying my book on the Apple book store
I hadn't logged into my account in some time (I'm registered with so many publishers and sites etc I end up checking them twice a year or something) Turns out people have been buying my books on the Apple book store. That's cool, and an extra little bump in income I wasn't expecting. Not as many sales on Google books though, I wonder if that speaks to the breath of market penetration or perhaps the percentage of book readers per platform. At any rate, I'll try and post up a preview of my fourth book sometime soon.
Want to see more Hacks in Action? Follow me on Google+
I never quite got into Twitter. The value proposition just wasn't there for me and it always seemed like a passing thing. Google+ on the other hand has already given me infinite photo storage, I can put animated gifs in my stream (oh the opportunity for last-frame gif bombs!), and I can choose exactly what messages go out to which subscribers based on circles. So I'm on Google+, and that's where I post a good chunk of my smaller hacks and tidbits of life. Want to know what I've been up to between posts? Curious to see my hacks in action? Want to get a sneak peek at my hacks before they're available to the public? Then you'd better start following me on Google+ hadn't you? Just head over to profiles.google.com/huntergdavis and add me to a circle today! Need an invite to Google+? Just ask!
The Retrode2 Console Needs You! Contest!
OK first of all, if any of you haven't preordered a retrode2 cartridge adapter you missed out on the first batch! I'm pretty excited at the prospect of getting mine in. However, there's other news to be excited about! Matthias has put up a call to arms, essentially tasking us with taking the retrode from cartridge adapter to full on console. They're talking about shoving a micro arm board in there and running emulators on it. Sound familiar to anybody? So I highly encourage everyone who has been itching to get into a new console scene or hacking project to consider this one. I can personally help anyone who gets stuck, and we've got about 2500 comments worth of good info on arm porting still floating around all of my porting, zipit, and dockstar articles. Anyone who received an arm board from me in the past this would be a great time to pay back some karma. Still reading? Good! They are also running a bit of a contest over at retrode.org for this. The hacker chosen will get a couple of free retrodes and a gumstix dev board! Pretty sweet deal for an enterprising hacker out there!
So what are you waiting for? Head over to the retrode community forums and make yourself known!
Splitting It Down The Middle – Book Prices at 4.99 Starting Midnight August 2nd
So after my decision to up my book prices to 9.99, sales dropped by more than 70 percent. While monetarily this made sense, (I am still making more $$ because of the increased royalty), emotionally it doesn't sit well with me. That's potentially hundreds of people that would have bought my books that now will never read them. As my sales numbers for the Smashwords sale were pretty decent, I'm going to split the difference and start selling the books at 4.99. Anyone who bought one at 9.99 will receive an automatic credit to their account through whatever store they purchased from. This shouldn't cost me more than a few hundred bucks in returns, and I am hoping the lower price helps drive the sales back up nearer to the .99c levels. As usual students who can't pay can get a free copy by emailing me.
ALSO -- There are some limited run hardback print editions of Live For Free hitting a few select stores and corner shops near you. If you're interested, or if they sell enough, I can make them available for purchase online without too much trouble. Just let me know!
PLUS -- Live For Free should be hitting the Apple eBook store sometime this week! Ipad/idevice owners keep an eye out for it in the new content section.
My Books 75% off this week for Smashwords Summer Sale!
That's right, to kick off the availability of my books on premium networks they've been added to the Smashwords Summer Sale. You can pick them up till August for 2.50$ apiece, 75% off the list cover price!!
You can view all of my current books which qualify for this promotion at my Smashwords author page here.
eBooks Update – Now Available In More Stores And Countries!
Yep. Due to the continued success of my books after the price increase, I've made them available at more places. You can now preview and purchase Hacks, Distributed Compilers, and Live For Free at new store locations! The permalink pages for each have been updated with all the new info! This will also put these titles on eReaders and in stores all over the world in many new markets. These will all trickle out over the next few weeks, so stay tuned! A few highlights:
- You can now preview, purchase, and rent my books from Google Books in all territories (NO DRM, full copy-paste support).
- Sony eBook Store
- Kobo Store
- Android Market
- Apple and Apple App Store
- Diesel eBook Store
- Scrollmotion eBook Store
- Smashwords eBook Store
Book Prices Rise at Midnight!
People (not just publishers) have been hounding me to up my book prices for some time now. While I'd like to give away everything for free, the current economy has not been good to me as an author. While I have a respectable influx of book sales each month, at 30 cents per book it's not adding up. Every couple of months "Build Your Own Distributed Compiler" will see a quick boost in sales followed by a couple of months lull. Anecdotally, it appears that my compilers guide is helpful to some subset of graduate students. This isn't specific to the Amazon or B&N bookstore either, so I can't really make any inferences as to which school(s) are using it. Along with a few good reviews (and loads of support from other authors), I've decided to up my book prices to the industry standard 9.99. If you purchase any of these books are are not satisfied with the new pricing, send me an email and let me know. I think a tenner is an exceedingly reasonable price for a textbook/guide. As always if you're a student and find yourself unable to pay I'll donate you a copy. I'll even autograph it.
You can see their permalink pages below:
Hacks
Live For Free
Build Your Own Distributed Compilation Cluster
Pixel Qi Netbook With 14 hr Battery Life On Sale Today (on my eBay page)
In case any of you have been meaning to pick up a Pixel Qi display and install it into the best possible netbook out there, allow me to save you the trouble. Now that I've got a top-secret e-Ink project in the works, I'm letting go of my Samsung N210 netbook that's got a Pixel Qi screen installed (the one featured in my third book Hacks..). It's fully loaded, stacked, and just like you'd get straight from the factory...except that there's a frikkin Pixel Qi screen installed! It's the only one I've ever seen for sale on eBay, ever. Spread the word if you know any cutting edge gadget loving folks that don't fancy cracking open a screen bezel.
Here's the link to the auction, it'll be running till March 24th. Good luck!
If anyone here ends up being the winning bidder, do let me know if you'd like me to sign your case 
Hacks.. Now Available to Purchase Online
Hacks is a collection of my most popular tutorials, scripts, tweaks, Zipit Z2 work, and source code. Within these forty some chapters reside some of my most interesting work, and certainly some of the most viewed tutorials and hacks on the Internet today. Featured on Hackaday, Engadget, Make online, and hundreds of other blogs and forums, these hacks are meant to enlighten and entertain while providing the reader with concrete examples and launching platforms for future work. Whether you are wanting to reorganize your desktop, reboot your modem, port software to a new platform, administer a Linux box, or just entertain yourself on a lazy sunday, you’ll find something of interest in the chapters ahead. At just over 200 pages on most eReader devices at 1.99$ it’s a terrific bargain and an excellent reference guide. I'll be updating the permalink page (top left in my WordPress theme) when the Amazon and B&N links go live sometime this evening or tomorrow morning.
