A geeky banner to Amazon Kindle Store which deserves its own blog post
Yesterday I’ve made this banner to draw attention of techies to my books at Kindle Store. I’m proud of it. It’s so shiny and beautiful – and links to short stories, which generally say shiny gadgets are not always perfect. You can read them on your Kindle, iPhone, iPad or BlackBerry.
From now on it’ll shine above comments on every blog post. Compare it to that boring Google stuff below. Oh my Geek, just move over the iPhones…
W tej reklamówce miała wystąpić moja książka…
…ale nie wystąpiła, więc po co w ogóle o tym piszę. Jest parę powodów. Motorola Droid to nie byle co, Verizon to nie pikuś, a reklama nie w Polsce, tylko w Stanach.
Najciekawszy jest jednak tryb, w jakim znalazłem się w ścisłej czołówce książek branych pod uwagę. Filmik prezentuje aplikację do czytania książek Aldiko, zresztą świetną, polecam wszystkim właścicielom telefonów z systemem Android. To właśnie ludzie z Aldiko skontaktowali się ze mną w sprawie reklamy Motoroli.
No dobrze, ale dlaczego akurat jakiś Password Incorrect jakiegoś łepka z Polski, który nie jest Danem Brownem, jego książka nie znajduje się na liście bestsellerów The New York Times, ani nawet eClicto. Nawet cioci w Verizonie łepek nie ma, więc o co chodzi? »»»
One Picture Stories: where to find them
Now you can find One Picture Stories in many sites across the internet as I did a perfectly insane job of autoposting with a help of Mobypicture and Posterous. They are the two services, where I send an original, freshly made story from an iPhone.
Please choose below your favourite source of One Picture Stories: »»»
Interview: Nick Name
It’s my pleasure to republish an interview we had in early 2009 with Adrian Graham for The Digital Fiction Show. The original blog is gone, but you can read Adrian’s great stuff at Small Stories project.
Who exactly is Nick Name or is his identity being kept secret for a creative reason?
Nick Name is a person or a team, rather, who wants to be a living example of something which is happenig in front of our eyes – people are getting more and more identities. In times of mighty Internet, people select, adjust, create who they want to be to what they want to achieve – and they are just using this possibility of being anonymous to put different faces around. Each one of us has several Internet nicknames, personalities. Nick Name is just the opposite – several people try to have/can have/have one personality. It’s an artistic experiment, early stage, we’ll see how it evolves. »»»
Interview: Mobile ebook author
Please read below an interview I had a great pleasure to give to a self-publishing guru, Joanna Penn. The original one can be found at her fantastic blog, The Creative Penn, a must read for every writer 2.0.
Continuing our series of interviews with inspirational authors, today we have Nick Name or Niżej Podpisany in Polish.
These are the pen names of Piotr Kowalczyk from Warsaw, Poland who I met on Twitter . Here is the interview with him which is basically unedited to preserve his unique (and brilliant) expression!
Tell us a bit about yourself
My real name is Piotr Kowalczyk. I love absurd fiction. Call myself a late follower of Roland Topor and an early follower of Etgar Keret:) My Polish nickname/pen name is Niżej Podpisany (Signed Below) – to spot the major characteristic of a human at the times of Web 2.0 – many identities you can use to sign your opinion, post, comment. It works even better in English, although I realize that it may sound obvious.
I started to write short stories about three years ago after an operation (backbone). Before that I worked as a copywriter and art director – and still continue – this is where not only satisfaction comes from;) 3 years ago I decided to start a publishing house to issue my books. This was a great experience with one single conclusion – if you’re not big, you’re basically dead. »»»
Book-hop music made with an iPhone
For two weeks now I’m using iSequence to compose music for a book trailer. It’s fun and it’s not GarageBand easy. Check the results below (I recognize even a style here, let’s call it book-hop). Read a kick-off post here.
One DIY author’s remark: writing a book is great, especially when you also have a chance to write something, others can literally hear.
Trailer music v.0.91beta
Trailer music v.1.50001A
Trailer music v.2.1/Ooops
Trailer music v.3.14/C-note
Interview: Published on Feedbooks #3 – Nick Name
A couple of weeks before I had a great pleasure to be interviewed via Google Wave by the founder of Feedbooks, Hadrien Gardeur. The interview had originally appeared at the Feedbooks Blog.
Feedbooks is my favourite website for self-published authors and mobile e-book fans. If you haven’t been there yet, it’s high time to do it right now!
Nick Name is a tech-absurdist from Poland. His ironic short stories show how deeply our lives depend on technology. Runs litexperimental projects including Twitter’s #hashtagstory and Google-translated fiction. Guest writer at TeleRead, Publetariat and Fiction Matters. Believes in mobile e-books. They can bring the joy of reading to those, who don’t feel like consuming books the old-fashioned way. His dream is to be a default fiction author for any mobile device with eReading capabilities.
Hello Nick Name, you write both in Polish and in English. How hard is it for an author to write in two languages ?
My mother tongue is Polish. Beautiful, rich, melodious language. On the other side I don’t think I’ll ever feel good enough to write stories in English. But web 2.0 opens so many doors for a writer, that I decided to spend some money on a professional English translation of my stories. This was after I discovered Feedbooks and all the great things an author can benefit from. So now I have two versions of the same book – in Polish and in English. This gives me one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compare chances of reaching readers at home and abroad. »»»
An iPhone made music for a book trailer
Modern self-publishing authors not only write books. They also design covers, record podcasts, run competitions, organize blog tours – everything they think is needed for the book to succeed. I imagine that every day every writer 2.0 is asking himself a question “what else can I do myself?”.
In my case, since last Sunday it’s also composing music. Last Sunday we went to a countryside, where there was wi-fi supposed to work. It was not. I had to do something to overcome the coming symptoms of a heavy Internet addiction. I started to play with iSequence on my iPhone. The feeling was fantastic, I’m pretty sure I’ve found the right tool to make a soundtrack music for a trailer of my two new books. I was trying Garage Band before, but it’s too easy, you just have to match together music loops. And it’s not from a mobile world.
With iSequence you are actually composing, so this is both a challenge and fun. To check how it works just watch this video tutorial. You can download the app here. And last thing: it’s just fantastic, that in our times we can plan to do things personally, as there’s surely at least one app for that.
PS. And if you want to try something completely new, a lack of wi-fi signal really helps.
Password Incorrect/Failure Confirmed – trailer music v.0.91beta
10 000 pobrań i co dalej?
Od jakiegoś czasu sprawdzałem częściej niż zwykle, jak sobie radzi Password Incorrect. Dzisiaj rano nastąpił ten moment – liczba pobrań przekroczyła 10 000! Dobrą stroną każdej książki elektronicznej jest to, że nigdy nie zabraknie jej w księgarni. Co więcej, książka z dnia na dzień staje się lepsza, bo liczba pobrań może tylko rosnąć. Jedyne pytanie – w jakim tempie. A takiego tempa po angielskiej wersji Hasła niepoprawnego się nie spodziewałem. Ta jedna książka wywróciła do góry nogami moje plany i marzenia, związane z pisaniem książek.
Zaczęło się od małego marzenia w podstawówce w Gubinie, żeby nie tylko pochłaniać książki ze szkolnej biblioteki, ale i jedną, swoją, tam umieścić. Potem wiele się wydarzyło, wystarczająco wiele, by nazwać mnie grafomanem.
Po wydaniu drukiem czterech tomów opowiadań, w październiku zeszłego roku wpadłem na pomysł, by opublikować ich promocyjną edycję – w wersji wyłącznie na iPhone’a. Tak powstało Hasło niepoprawne. Liczyłem na to, że fala zainteresowania wchodzącym do Polski iPhonem spowoduje zainteresowanie książką i osobą autora – a w efekcie wzrost sprzedaży wydań papierowych. Liczba pobrań po trzech tygodniach przekroczyła 1000. Po paru dniach gwałtownie spadła, a na dodatek moja główna hurtownia (Platon) parę tygodni później rozwiązała umowę, więc książki drukowane zostały wycofane z dystrybucji. »»»
E-book covers inspired by the design of mobile applications
I’m a mobile freak and here you have another prove of it. These are the brand new covers, I’ve designed with a help of my Twitter friends for two volumes of my short stories, which will be available in a couple of weeks through Smashwords/Barnes&Noble. In the meantime you can download a free edition here. I describe the stories as tech-absurd. The bot-behaving gadget-eating error-ready part of you will understand, what I mean.
The brief I issued to myself was simple: get an attention of geeks with a message: “technology is wonderful, but…” (oh, and check the bottom bar for options).
Recently updated Polish tech-absurdist and mobile fiction writer 3.0 beta. Addicted to ebooks and technology. Guest writer at 
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