The Ether App is like a Magic Book – one little thing with an endless number of stories, poems, essays – whatever you want to read, whenever and wherever, provided you have your little Apple gadget with you. It’s your own personal library- the special thing being it is pocket-sized and therefore portable and a whole lot easier to handle. No dusting the shelves, no loose pages coming out, no having to remember putting in naphthalene balls, it’s completely fuss-free. This is not to suggest you do away with your old library but it will be fun to have a little library on the go, won’t it?
And you can easily have one. All you need to do is get an i-phone or i-pad touch, download the FREE Ether Mobile App, and then choose whatever you want to read. A part of the contents is free – and that includes some amazing work by writers both famous and new. The remaining part, which is again from both established and upcoming authors, comes at a price, but think about it- you would pay to buy a magazine, wouldn’t you? You would also pay to buy a book of stories from a bookstore or on Amazon, so why not on Ether? Because the content on Ether is good, and the price is not really huge. Most stories come at ₤0.59 or $0.99 - and then there are special periods such as Easter Sales during which some of the relatively higher-priced content also come at the minimum rate.
So that is the technical bit. What else do I like about being an Ether Author? (Didn’t I mention I was one of them? Must have slipped my mind! :P) Well, apart from the fact that it sounds really impressive and cool, it makes me feel a part of something pioneering as well. The field of publishing has gone through a lot of changes in the past few years- to the extent that e-books are now almost as commonplace as the traditional printed volumes. And now many authors are opting to go the kindle way or may be an e-book or kindle edition on Amazon and a printed one on sites like Lulu or Blurb. The point is, the conventional tree-book as some call it is no longer the sole source of reading material for the book-buyers and book-lovers out there. And this opens up exciting possibilities for alternative modes of publishing. E-books and Kindle are great for longer reads- novels and such. But what about readers who want short content while waiting at the bus stop, or sitting in the train? This is the void that Ether Books fill. Poems, flash fiction, short stories- that’s the Ether fare for you. And every time you download a piece, the writer earns a bit of royalty. On a micro-scale this system sustains everyone- the writer, the reader, and the publisher. In a world that is increasingly beginning to depend on all-purpose gadgets for their facebook and twitter and music and phone calls, an i-phone library was bound to happen soon enough, wasn’t it?
And if you like an author on your i-phone and want to read more, look up the Ether website, because they promote other works from their writers.
And this is not all. The Ether App is yet young and developing. By next year, they hope to make their content available on mediums other than Apple gadgets.
Okay then- a little bit of shameless plug before I round it off. I’ve had travelogues, short stories and poems published in The Statesman, an Indian newspaper, in a Dorset magazine called First Edition (it’s not published any more though) and I’m also part of three wonderful anthologies – 50 Stories for Pakistan, Shambelurking and Other Stories, and the newly released 100 Stories for Queensland. In fact, it was via the writer friends I made through these projects that I first heard about Ether. And now I've got three stories on the Ether App. (Check the right-hand column on this page). Do please read, rate and review.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you enjoy using the Ether App, and reading all the wonderful stories up there. Give mine a chance too, be nice. :P
©Ruchira Mandal
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And you can easily have one. All you need to do is get an i-phone or i-pad touch, download the FREE Ether Mobile App, and then choose whatever you want to read. A part of the contents is free – and that includes some amazing work by writers both famous and new. The remaining part, which is again from both established and upcoming authors, comes at a price, but think about it- you would pay to buy a magazine, wouldn’t you? You would also pay to buy a book of stories from a bookstore or on Amazon, so why not on Ether? Because the content on Ether is good, and the price is not really huge. Most stories come at ₤0.59 or $0.99 - and then there are special periods such as Easter Sales during which some of the relatively higher-priced content also come at the minimum rate.
So that is the technical bit. What else do I like about being an Ether Author? (Didn’t I mention I was one of them? Must have slipped my mind! :P) Well, apart from the fact that it sounds really impressive and cool, it makes me feel a part of something pioneering as well. The field of publishing has gone through a lot of changes in the past few years- to the extent that e-books are now almost as commonplace as the traditional printed volumes. And now many authors are opting to go the kindle way or may be an e-book or kindle edition on Amazon and a printed one on sites like Lulu or Blurb. The point is, the conventional tree-book as some call it is no longer the sole source of reading material for the book-buyers and book-lovers out there. And this opens up exciting possibilities for alternative modes of publishing. E-books and Kindle are great for longer reads- novels and such. But what about readers who want short content while waiting at the bus stop, or sitting in the train? This is the void that Ether Books fill. Poems, flash fiction, short stories- that’s the Ether fare for you. And every time you download a piece, the writer earns a bit of royalty. On a micro-scale this system sustains everyone- the writer, the reader, and the publisher. In a world that is increasingly beginning to depend on all-purpose gadgets for their facebook and twitter and music and phone calls, an i-phone library was bound to happen soon enough, wasn’t it?
And if you like an author on your i-phone and want to read more, look up the Ether website, because they promote other works from their writers.
And this is not all. The Ether App is yet young and developing. By next year, they hope to make their content available on mediums other than Apple gadgets.
Okay then- a little bit of shameless plug before I round it off. I’ve had travelogues, short stories and poems published in The Statesman, an Indian newspaper, in a Dorset magazine called First Edition (it’s not published any more though) and I’m also part of three wonderful anthologies – 50 Stories for Pakistan, Shambelurking and Other Stories, and the newly released 100 Stories for Queensland. In fact, it was via the writer friends I made through these projects that I first heard about Ether. And now I've got three stories on the Ether App. (Check the right-hand column on this page). Do please read, rate and review.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you enjoy using the Ether App, and reading all the wonderful stories up there. Give mine a chance too, be nice. :P
©Ruchira Mandal
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Gud to U n Ether for saving Nature... :)
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