Traditional publishing, new media and e-books, the publishing world is gripped by unprecedented upheaval. In the middle of industry revolution, what's a working sci-fi author to do? For authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Vonda N. McIntyre, and their sci-fi and fantasy writers co-op, Book View Cafe, the answer is to band together and take charge. This group of twenty-six authors have elected to bypass traditional publishing and bring out their latest work directly on Amazon's Kindle and Sony's eReader. A new steampunk anthology is also planned to test the water… titled The Shadow Conspiracy.

All professionally published, and many currently under contract with traditional New York firms such as Random House, Tor Books and Simon & Schuster, the Book View Cafe authors first came together in 2008 to create bookviewcafe.com, a website for online fiction. Members include established authors like Ursula K. Le Guin and Vonda N. McIntyre, Sarah Smith and Laura Anne Gilman, as well as new talents like Seanan McGuire.



Book View Press titles will be created and edited by the BVC's members, and made available through the Kindle and Sony eReader stores, as well as at bookviewcafe.com. No outside publishing house will be involved and the profits go directly to the authors.

Book View Press's first project is an anthology of science fiction titles, Rocket Boy And The Geek Girls, which will include work by Vonda N. McIntyre, Katharine Kerr, and other writers including Amy Sterling Casil, Irene Radford, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, and C.L. Anderson.

The next project from Book View Press is more ambitious. An entirely original anthology of linked short stories titled The Shadow Conspiracy. With a release date of December 15th 2009, Shadow Conspiracy is set in a steampunk alternate Victorian age filled with airships, and automata where a human's soul can be stolen and a machine's soul can be born. As with Rocket Boy, the project will go straight to the Kindle, the eReader and the iPhone.

"The e-publishing infrastructure is now firmly in place," Project Manager Sarah Zettel told SFcrowsnest.com. "BVC authors have both content and the experience to take full advantage of it. Ebooks give us a fantastic opportunity to bring our best work straight to the readers. It's truly an exciting time to be an author."

More over at http://www.bookviewcafe.com/index.php/BVC-eBookstore