This isn’t necessarily e-book related but I saw this posting on our friends from Mornin Paper and wanted to pass it along.

A company called Big Cozy Books has created a whole line of book themed furniture.

As we continue to work on getting “Natty McGum and the Lazette Street Gazette” ready, I wanted to share a little gem of a website /service I found that has me doing even more reading.

FreeBookExcerpts.com is just like the name sounds, a nice site that will send you an excerpt of new books for free. Every time an author post to the site, you can sign up to get an e-mail with the sample or samples.

I’m finding it is a great way to discover little known and especially first time authors. The one that really caught my eye most recently was “Madapple” by Christina Meldrum. After being able to read the first chapter, I am really looking forward to getting this book in the very near future.

The good thing about Free Book Excerpts is its ability to bring some hidden gems your way. The site covers all genre’s in a very concise way. But as Amazon is discovering with the Kindle and independent e-publishers have known for awhile, if you offer a sample, you end of with more people choosing to purchase the book.

I’d recommend anyone who wants to find out about books that are overlooked to visit the site and subscribe to their e-mail alerts.

You’ll be happy you did.

AJW

I got a nice e-mail from the folks at Adobe saying there is a new version of Digital Editions ready for download.

Here’s the link:

http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/#download

We here at Walk Broad highly recommend Digital Editions for reading “Good Morning, Friend Moon” in the PDF format. We find it is the best solution for displaying the book as it was created to be viewed.

Hope you enjoy and remember to keep e-reading.

AJW

I wanted to share with all our readers that MorninPaper has written a great review of “Good Morning, Friend Moon” that you can find here.

I’ve got to hand it to Mr. Sheldon Strickland, Editor-In-Chief of Mornin Paper, that was a very nice review, especially from someone who is very upfront of not being a lover of e-books.

Here’s a quote from the review:

I really enjoyed this book, and I don’t have kids.  The approach that Aaron took with the drawings is really appealing.  I can imagine being a parent and getting caught up in the pictures when your supposed to be reading to your kids.  But your small children will absolutely be engaged.  We all wondered what was up with the sun and the moon when we were tiny ones.

Thanks Sheldon, that’s what we are aiming for with Walk Broad Publishing.

Make sure to visit MorninPaper often. A great site, filled with great tech news and great writers. I should know, I’ll be returning to the fold again real soon!

Also, “Good Morning, Friend Moon” is now available for sale on Mobipocket.com. You can still purchase the book directly from Walk Broad Publishing, of course, but we want to make sure as many people can discover the magic of “Good Morning, Friend Moon” as possible. Additionally, being available on Mobipocket also makes the book easier to transfer to the Amazon Kindle along with the PDF version.

Look forward to catching up again real soon.

Happy e-reading!

AJW

We took a little while going back and forth with this idea: opening a shop for Walk Broad Publishing with CafePress. Ultimately, we decided it was worth it.

Now, we have another way to connect with our readers and fans for “Good Morning, Friend Moon” and all of our upcoming e-books. Currently choices include the above pictured t-shirts, magnets and large and small mugs. All kept to the same value pricing you expect from Walk Broad Publishing.

We’ll start adding covers and images from all of our books as they become available.

Visit Walk Broad Publishing at CafePress now to bring the joy of “Good Morning, Friend Moon” home to your special e-readers. 

Today, “Good Morning, Friend Moon” was featured on Gotta Be Mobile by my good friend Rob Bushway. Rob got a review copy of the book and shared it with his children who really liked it. The he shared it with the entire Gotta Be Mobile readership.

Here’s an excerpt:

“I recently had the pleasure of reading “Good Morning, Friend Moon” to my children the other night and they absolutely loved it. The illustrations really brought the story to life.”

We consider that high praise (and mission accomplished) around here. Thanks Rob!

(Rob is also an Amazon Kindle owner.)

To read the whole story, here’s the link.

Well, it’s still busy here at Walk Broad Publishing. We are still working to let everyone know about “Good Morning, Friend Moon” so far, the reception has been very good.

After some initial feedback, we’ve optimized the book further for reading on devices like the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader. Those updates have made it especially nice in Adobe Digital Editions as well. We are happy that our readers have more choices that look better than many other ebook publishers.

But, I know, you aren’t here for a progress report. You want to see what we’ve been working on next, right? Well, here it is!

-AJW

As word starts to get out about Walk Broad Publishing and our first book, “Good Morning, Friend Moon” James Kendrick from jkontherun.com passed the information on to Bob Russell at Mobile Read. It is nice that people will still go out of their way to help.

Bob had some interesting things to say, you can read the full post here.

There’s a lot of talk about DRM (digital rights management) and e-books, one of the things we are very careful of here at Walk Broad. Just about all of the commercial e-book sites employ some sort of digital rights management, usually tied with their service or their device. Even though MP3s may be moving toward being DRM free, publishers and certainly Amazon / Sony haven’t.

The whole purpose is following the Apple model, hardware sells software. It usually doesn’t go the other way around. The more people buy iPods, the more they will likely use iTunes. The more Kindle’s Amazon sells, the more you will likely continue to buy books from Amazon.

I do believe you should be able to read any book you like on any device. Sony agreeing to include Adobe Digitial Editions as a software upgrade to the Sony Reader is a very encouraging step toward any book on any device. It hasn’t happened yet, but at least their intentions are being made clear. At that point, I think more e-book sellers, authors and sellers will move back to the pdf format or continue the growth of ePub.

And growth is always a good thing.

Speaking of growth, Bob Russell had some good wishes for us here as we start to try and make Walk Broad Publishing a success for children, parents and people in general:

“And it’s a long road from starting point to success, so I’m sure we’ll see a lot of evolution in your web site, marketing and products over time. Good luck to you!”

Thanks Bob, you’ll be hearing more from Walk Broad Publishing.

-AJW

Well, after a lot of work behind the scenes, Walk Broad Publishing is now open for delivering quality children’s illustrated e-books and we couldn’t be happier.

It’s not always easy following through on a dream, but the journey is always worth the effort. Many months, weeks and days (and pulling a lot of late nighters) went into the completion of getting Walk Broad Publishing up and running. 

We trust you’ll happily share our books with your children and come back often for more as we add new publications to our book list.

Our next step is making sure they are available at some of the places e-book readers frequent like eReader.com and Mobipocket. We’ll keep all of our readers up to date as soon as that all happens.

In the meantime, enjoy the first fruits of our labor!

AJW – Publisher

Walk Broad Publishing is gearing up to begin offering quality and affordable e-book publications for children.

Our first book, “Good Morning, Friend Moon” will soon be available as both a PDF download readable on a variety of devices as well as for your desktop, laptop or tablet PC. We are also working to have all of our publications available eventually using Mobipocket for compatibility with the Amazon Kindle and on eReader.com.

We’ve also will have two other books available within the next few months. “Natty McGum and the Lazette Street Gazette” as well as “Operation: Tooth Fairy.”

We’ll be keeping everything and everyone up to date and letting all of our readers know when all of our publications become available.

Stay tuned!

-AJW, Publisher