I've been looking into book distribution--how to make an electronic book available to the widest market--and I learned something interesting.

Basically you have Amazon, Apple iBooks, and all the others (which distribute books in the ePub format). Amazon uses the mobi format. Apple uses the ePub format, but to upload directly to their store I would need a freakin Mac computer. Alternately, I could send my book to one of Apple's 8 "aggregators." Companies like Lulu. They will then make sure my book gets into Apple's iBooks store, for a fee. What a scam.

A way around this is to just upload your book to Barnes & Noble for free and then point out to people that there are applications that will allow them to read B&N books on Apple devices.

First I learn that a fee is charged for free ISBN numbers, then I learn that you have to pay a fee to get your book on Apple's "bookshelf," though Apple itself doesn't charge the fee. Somehow I was hoping the middlemen would get squeezed out of the new electronic publishing system, but I should've known better.

I'm currently working on a collection of stories that are too political in nature to be published. The only one I've had success in placing came out a couple of weeks ago, in a print magazine called Needle. I see on their website that they promote this quarter's magazine as 201 pages of, "Nothing but hard hitting stories. In your face and busting up your kiss-maker. Kapow." That's my story, all right. Leads off the issue too, which is good because it's reviewed by a couple of yearly anthologies. Might get this one reprinted, and even if I don't it'll go in my electronic collection. Political stuff. A real kick in the kiss-maker.