fredlet

Little Library

Several thoughts immediately go through my head when I try to wrap my head around this whole situation:

I am a voracious reader. But I will do the same damn thing as I do with music and boycott the major assholes being greedy. I’ll buy directly from independent authors. I’ll only borrow from the library. I’ll only buy from small presses or people who don’t gouge you/their authors (moreover, I will offer my eBook skills to the press to help them…)

I hate greedy bullies with no imagination and I’m a stubborn, stubborn human.

Now, here’s the Washington Post opinion on the situation as well (read the article, its really good)

Readers want books that are plentiful and cheap, publishers want to preserve their profit, and authors want a larger share of revenue.

I do see both sides of this.
It costs money to write a book, it costs money to produce an eBook, to pay for the software that generates the DRM, rent for your offices, to host it on servers, blah blah blah. I even know that people need a salary and profits are nice. But gouging is not nice (neither is screwing your authors) and I will use my $ as my vote to say no to that crap. I will pay for what I receive-electronic or paper. But there can be various models to support the different delivery channels. Software manufacturers do it… you get a few dollars off of a download so that they don’t have to print up a CD and the packaging. You don’t have to pay shipping, but you are still getting the content.. happy right?
When you don’t have materials to wrangle you can focus on generating a eBook ONCE, then selling it multiple times then divvy up the profit after the bills are paid. Paper books will cost a bit more because you have to put more in to make them… so pay for that extra bit of material.
So pick a model and try it. Or pay clever people to invent a new system. Or partner with smart companies who like to invent new ways of looking at the world. In any case, its time to change. Cope with it.

But if the publishers want a role in the e-books business, they’ll need to get over it and get on with it, embracing lower-priced e-books with higher author royalties. That seems unlikely. Because it’s now clear that publishers just don’t want to listen to what their customers are telling them.

The WP mentions the publishers’ trying to keep their back list (which when they bring up the “out of print phrase” that makes my blood boil) to keep their revenue stream. It also talks about the author vs the publisher in terms of digital rights, but there’s only so long you can screw your content providers before it isn’t cost effective to be a writer with the current publishing world.

I know that change is hard and this is a substantial change. However, when you build an industry on wasteful behavior and you spawn parasitic industries on the waste, and when you finally streamline the process, there is inevitably going to be a collapse somewhere. Truthfully, the superstores out there need to scale it back a bit.

Here’s another pretty relevant take on the industry with actual numbers and cost per book…
What Should an E-book Cost?
But I don’t know that he has all the facts.
He doesn’t mention any of the “but what if it doesn’t sell?” options that I saw first hand working in a bookstore in college (and after) for 6 years. There’s a whole lot more to this whole situation.
The thing is, they need to treat eBooks differently than paper books. Both will have the initial overhead to bring to “press”, but after that, there is a substantial dip in costs that should be passed on.

Should be an interesting fight.

• external fold up keyboard (like this or this)
• large text editor [iWork covers this nicely]
• camera
• connection to internet
• quick on/off (no hibernating and logging in; computer OS's don't cut it.)

Basically, you need to mimic my existing (and almost perfect) setup such as you see here:

I need to be able to have this in a pocket or available for quick access to take pictures, write Twitter snark, be able to sit down and write an entire article for an editor or write and edit an entry for my travel log. Currently I can do all that on my Palm Centro (and have been able to do that for almost 10 years now – quite a few of my Zatz articles were written on my Palm device du jour. The interface on my iPod touch is pretty but I abandon it in a hot second if I have to write more than 5 words. Also, it doesn't always travel with me; I choose a nano and my Centro as my media/web combo for most trips for a variety of reasons.

Onward to what I do like about it.

The iPad seems to be more of a muscular internet appliance. I can see some folks who are only casual internet users (people who like to actually be in proximity with other people at a bar or a restaurant, parties, etc.. you know, weirdos) who can use this for most of their needs. I envision some sleek, minimalist office or living room with no clutter, clean lines or mid-century modern stuff with this up on a pedestal acting as their tv, their email portal, a digital picture frame/slideshow, surfing the web, reading books that they don't have bookshelves for, etc.
Something like the minimalist office here http://www.doorsixteen.com/2010/01/28/closet-office/ (and I'm not denigrating these folks at all, I admire their conviction for absolute style adherence, but I am generally distracted by shiny things and am inherently kind of a raccoon, so realistically I'll always live in a room that looks like this:

full of baskets of yarn and Toy Story aliens and cat hair.)
Ahem. Yes…
… though I can also see it being a great 85% machine (you'd need something with iTunes and a DVD drive somewhere to do the other 15% of grunt work) in a trailer or a tiny home. Energy efficient, small, multi-tasker… all good things.
Its not meant to be your primary machine, but if it did just a little bit more I could spend most of my time on it. (Mama, you probably will really like it but will most likely find it a bit big… Bud will be able to see it and will probably steal it from you. Fair warning.)

After all is said and done, I'm still thinking this is what I will want:

The Freescale Smartbook

image copyright engadget2010 | Read the article

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Also, McGraw Hill:WTF?
How did that yutz of a CEO get away with scooping Jobs on national telly the night before? Knowing Apple's hard line stance on
'"WE DO NOT COMMENT ON UNANNOUNCED PRODUCTS" I can't imagine that McGraw-Hill isn't on their shit list now… at the very least, they probably broke NDA by talking about it. Stupid.
On the other hand, if this was a planned leak by the Apple PR department, they've lost all my respect and I call bullshit.
Their follow up comments seem like damage control… but perhaps he is just that stupid.

"Sweet Sophie and her duck"

(photos copyright 2010 by my mama)

"TRANSIT POLICE

While of course I will continue my war against train wankers and petty thieves, I find myself branching out a bit lately when it comes to the public shaming of my fellow commuters. Last week I was coming home after a shitty day and the guy in front of me was vigorously picking his nose. Okay, fine. Everyone does it sometimes, most of us wait until we’re alone in the house, but whatever. I kept trying to read but the grossness was too compelling and the next time I glanced up, he was wiping his nostril-treasure on the bus window. MORE THAN ONCE. This grown man, with no visible mental defect or developmental delay, was picking stuff out of his nose and depositing it onto the bus, this bus right here, THE BUS THAT DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU, SIR BUTTMUNCH. I honestly could not stand it for one more minute, I felt like I was going to start screaming and cause a Bus Ruckus of my own, so I leaned forward and sort of punched him in the back of the shoulder. When he turned around, I pointed to the window, made the stern mom-face, and shook my head “no.” To his very minor credit he did not try to argue with me or deny his transgression (that would have been difficult with his BOOGERS STREAKING THE WINDOW), he just turned back around and we left it at that.

2. Later that same week I was on the train listening to two white guys have an odd quiet argument. At first I thought they were bickering lovers, that’s how bitchy and straining-not-to-be-overheard it all was, but gradually I realized that they were total strangers fighting about how the one guy had bumped the other guy’s arm while sitting down and NOT APOLOGIZED. Like, are you kidding me? You could tell they had been at it for a while, because the arm thing was only brought up occasionally and the rest was about “common courtesy” and “respect” and I thought my eyes were going to roll right out of my head. After two full subway stops of this shit I said, in a conversational tone and without taking my eyes off my book, “Personally I think you are both acting like douchebags.” Amazingly, that succeeded in embarrassing them where their own ridiculous behavior had failed, and they were quiet for the rest of my ride."

I'll check the catbox to see the progress when I get home (and I promise not to upload any photos). Frankly, I think the real trick to having her do well on a particular kind of food and like the aforementioned victuals is to be running critically low on supplies of it as well as just having placed a massive order of a different variety of food.

Well, at least its consistent with the way my universe works ;)