Today POD; tomorrow the world

Amazon.com has decided to squeeze print-on-demand publishers, who in turn will squeeze authors. (Not that some don't already.)

I'm not part of the POD world, but it's easy to see where this goes next. This is the take from Writers Weekly (which has personal connections as a POD publisher):

Amazon.com Telling POD Publishers
- Let BookSurge Print Your Books, or Else...

Some Print on Demand (POD) publishers are privately screaming "Monopoly!" while others are seething with rage over startling phone conversations they're having with Amazon/BookSurge representatives. Why isn't anybody talking about it openly? Because they're afraid - very, very afraid.

Amazon.com purchased BookSurge, a small POD publisher/printer back in 2005. Amazon also lists and sells titles for the largest POD printer, Lightning Source, which is owned by Ingram (the large book distributor). According to their website, Lightning Source serves more than 4,300 publisher clients and has more than 400,000 titles in their system.

The whole story:


http://www.writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/004597_03272008.html

More planes


And now, the next-next-next generation of fighter jet after the Mustang.

While the falling 180/360 turns steal the show, the loops are incredibly tight. Visually, they rival WWI era biplanes.




The url:

http://www.f22-raptor.com/media/video_gallery/videos/F22_AirShow_Langley.wmv

Mustang heaven



The whole story:

http://www.grayeagles.org/video.htm

Traffic problems

So Dogboy is on his way to play poker or drink beer - as if there's a difference - up in God's country. He goes down this country highway and finds an intersection blocked by a car. He pulls up, thinking he's going to finally use some of his medic training. Turns out the guy is stopped in the middle of both roads, talking on his cell phone.

"Nothing wrong with the car?"
"No shit. Guy's OK, car's fine. He's just talking. Sitting there like he's in his driveway. Blocking the road," said Dogboy.
"So what'd you do?"
"I went to the pickup, reached in the back and got my baseball bat. Then I opened his back windows for him."
"Ouch."
"He's lucky I wasn't in a bad mood. I woulda taken out the windshield, too."

Reason 3 to write fiction


Jill Lepore recently wrote an excellent article in the New Yorker about some of the differences between fiction and nonfiction, highlighting the historical connections. Change the word "history" in her article to "nonfiction," and it's right along the lines of what I've been talking about.

The url:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/03/24/080324crat_atlarge_lepore

But the final word on why anyone writes fiction - or nonfiction for that matter - belongs to Samuel Johnson:

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."

Reason 2 to write fiction: Entertainment

A second reason, among the many, to write fiction has to do with entertainment.

I’m old school maybe, but my concept of fiction is that its primary purpose is to entertain. That entertainment can happen on many different levels and in many different ways – Proust and Zane Gray both have entertainment value, though usually not for the same person.

Entertainment should not be the primary purpose of nonfiction. That may be even quaint notion these days, and it may certainly seem odd coming from someone who writes narrative nonfiction (which Rangers at Dieppe was), since by definition narrative nonfiction employs the strategies of fiction. But it goes back to my belief that nonfiction has to hew to the truth of the specific reality it deals with. If entertainment becomes more important than that reality, then it ceases to be nonfiction.

Leopards Kill was a pretty dark book through a lot of stretches, but I hope the story was entertaining to read throughout. If it had been nonfiction, I think readers would have come away with a very different experience, probably not one as hopeful, and I know not as clear cut.

(To be continued . . .)

Murder is the answer

Reason 1 to write fiction: The truth

A few weeks ago on his late-night talk show, Joey Reynolds and I had a friendly discussion about why I write fiction. It went something like this:

Joey: Why write fiction? Fiction sucks.
Me: Except for mine.
Joey: Well yeah. But other fiction sucks.

Having written nonfiction, it would be kind of crazy to attack it. (And since I was on his show promoting Rangers at Dieppe, a nonfiction book, it would have been really stupid, even at like three in the morning.) A good nonfiction story or book is a good story or a book.

But you can do things in fiction that are either impossible or very hard in nonfiction. Nonfiction requires a strict adherence to the truth of specific, surface things. The story is limited by what is in front of you.

Fiction lets you tell the truth in a much deeper way. If it’s a well-written book, it’s the only way to tell that story.

To use one of my books as an example, Leopards Kill talked about what was going on in Afghanistan several years before it was possible, let alone fashionable, to do so. (I wrote it two years before it was published; it’s only in the last few months that what is going on there has started to come out.) That book is about a lot of other things besides Afghanistan, but if I’d done a nonfiction book on that topic – as I’d once been considering – I wouldn’t have been able to say what I did there. Unless I distorted the surface reality to the point where it was no longer nonfiction.

(to be continued)

Facedown . . .

. . . is one word.

Rogue Warrior update

Because readers asked:

The next Rogue Warrior is being published by Tor/Forge and is coming out sometime this fall, though for some reason the actual pub date seems to be a state secret which even the authors are not allowed to know. It'll be called Dictator's Ransom. (Unless it gets changed again by the title gnome, or whoever the F it is who's in charge of picking titles along with their nose.)

As usual, the hook mixes a lot of fact with fiction. There's a lot of Dick's over-the-top and very non-PC humor in this, kind of like the very first book he did (with John Weisman, not me. An excellent book, by the way. And you should check out Weisman's solo stuff as well.)

There's a lot of bs secrecy attached to the book because much of it is set in North Korea. Since the series is known for being based (sometimes more, sometimes less) on real life, with a lot of things that really happened and a lot of "on-the-spot" research mixed in, the lawyers are having fits. They say that Dick is not supposed to have gone there, being that he's an American citizen (according to rumor; I've never seen the papers myself).

So the official word is that he hasn't gone there, and neither did anyone else connected to the book, including moi.

I'm also not supposed to say that anyone was hurt making the book. The official thing there is some sort of formulation along the lines of "any injuries, damages, etc., that may have occurred, were incidental."

I love the etc.

WTF, right?

Anyway, the publisher has screwed around with the pub date for various reasons. The general date they've been using - early fall - "happens" to coincide with the general date for the planned release of the new Rogue Warrior game which, by "coincidence," is also set in Korea. No one went to North Korea for that either. And I don't think any of the dweebs - uh, exalted and honored technical experts - got hurt. That's for real, since I know they weren't there.

Questions?

Taking joe to a whole new level





That's an $11,000 coffee machine.

Here's the quest: http://www.slate.com/id/2185655/

You have to admire the sheer audacity.

Copy editing etiquette

Is it considered proper to answer a copy editor's query with "fuck you"? Or is the more nuanced "fuck yourself" preferred?

The future of publishing (part four)

[This series started on 2/20/08]

So why will authors need publishers in an all-electronic, all-digital world?

First of all, I think physical books will continue being sold for a long time, just as CDs are. While paperbacks won't last once a good ebook reader comes along, hard cover books will continue to be important for a number of reasons. Still, their sales (and the profit from them) will pale compared to the cheaper and more easily produced ebooks of the future. And for publishers, this is an enormous problem.

Individual authors can set up their own web sites and, in an environment where the ebook dominates, cut their own deals either with the customer directly or retail channels. Stephen King essentially did this several years ago. Most analyses of his experiment grade it a failure, and in one sense if clearly was: King could have made more money by going through traditional channels.

But that experiment shouldn’t necessarily be judged by that standard alone. King couldn’t achieve mega-author status on the internet alone – but he could still sell a significant amount of “product” at a time when the technology was far from perfect, and the tools for exploiting the technology (marketing on the web, etc.) were not yet (and are not yet) fully developed.

I don’t think that authors working alone will be able to reach mega-sale status, and that’s one area that traditional publishers can continue to leverage. They can also still deliver some amount of prestige and, at least in theory, increase the quality and therefore value of the book by careful editing. (Of course, if they're not doing these things to begin with - but that's another topic . . .)

But those are things that publishers can offer to writers – what can they offer readers?

1) A convenient place to acquire books. To do that, they have to control the distribution – their websites, etc., have to be the only place to get the product.

2) When they’re selling a book, publishers are really selling an experience. That experience is not just that one story, but the feeling of belonging to a community of readers that has experienced that story, and wants to experience similar stories or adventures. By collecting a number of authors together, the publisher enhances and expands the experience and community – and not coincidentally, sells more books. The web offers publishers a chance to create mini-salons and cyber cafes that complement and add to the experience of reading the book.

3) Publishers can use their resources to enhance e-books, adding to the virtual experience. While authors can do this on their own, the ability to finance better productions and thus raise the readers’ expectations can benefit the publishers, marking their product as more professional and therefore desirable.

Note that none of these things necessarily help writers, at least not directly. Even if they were all done successfully, the changes in technology are so fundamental that publishers may not be successful. But if they don’t at least start thinking along those lines, I think they’ll all be out of business by 2020.

* * *

The interests of publishers and writers are not precisely parallel, but they don't have to be diametrically opposed. One often gets the feeling these days that they are - not so much from the editors, but from corporate-centric decisions that harm the product and the industry in general.

As traumatic as the changes in technology have been and will continue to be, people will still want a good story, will still want usable information, will still long for the sort of reality-suspending experience books currently provide. The question is, how and who will provide them in the future.

Rogue Warrior



The new book and the game are coming out together (well, almost together) this fall. There's supposed to be some sort of press stuff and information in March (??) and a regular promo campaign and all that crap, but wtf. Bob Gleason is the editor at Tor/Forge who's now shepherding Rogue Warrior . . . as much as anyone can "shepherd" Dick . . .

There was a typo in one of the titles on this vid that no one picked up on for, I don't know, a month? . . . I musta missed it a million times myself. Finally the video got around to one of our agents, who pointed it out right away. Obviously it pays to have someone on the team who can read.

Why does Hillary take it on the butt?





I'm not a Hillary Clinton supporter and not a Democrat, but it's really interesting to hear the spin she gets in supposedly neutral reports on the election.

You expect people on the right to be against her (Ann Coulter aside), though the vitriol from people on the left is even worse. (If I didn't know better I'd swear Frank Rich thinks she's an ex-wife.) But their comments are generally labeled as opinion.

I was listening to a radio news spot the other day that started out with the headline that Hillary had strongly criticized Barak Obama at the latest debate. The newscaster then played an actuality (if they still call it that) of Obama speaking at the debate that neither responded to the point or even mentioned Clinton. Next sentence, John McCain got some licks in - not about either Democrat - and then the piece ended by making fun of Mike Huckabee making fun of himself on Saturday Night Live.

Clinton's points, ostensibly the "lead" and most important news of the piece, were not so much dismissed as completely ignored. And that's probably the gentlest spin she gets.
I don't think it's just because she's a woman, but I think that's a big part of the reason. She's in a full-spin zone that has very little to do with her positions or even who she is, and everything to do with the prejudices and preconceived notions of the media and the people who consume it.

As are we all, I suppose.

The future of publishing (part three) . . .

. . . giving it away

Book publishers are where the record companies were before the Ipod & Itunes were announced. The technology for a revolutionary music machine was almost there. People could almost see it. And then, within a year or two, it was the way that a large number of people were getting their music. It didn’t eliminate CDs or record stores, but Apple (and of course everyone on the same bandwagon) changed the business dramatically, cutting those sales dramatically.

Recently, a number of book publishers created a mini-flurry inside the industry by giving away ebooks. All of the reported comments that I’ve seen have been positive. None of the authors I’ve spoken to about it, however, think it’s anything like a good idea. They don’t blame the other writers for going along with it – and that’s the way they tend to put it – but to a person they believe the thinking behind the program is flawed. As do I.

It may be argued that giving away ebooks will help publishers do #2, make the publishers known to their customers. It would be a good argument if the giveaway was part of a comprehensive program to drive readers to their site. As it stands now, the activity is very passive – you go once, give them your email address, and have no reason to return, even if you like the books. The publisher’s identity is not going to stick in the reader/user’s head, or even necessarily their favorites list.

Worse, they’re teaching readers that ebooks should be free.

One illustration of how flawed the thinking is on so-called “new” media and how to deal with it was the reporting on the effects of giving away Suze Orman’s book as an ebook as part of-in the wake of publicity from Oprah. The stories claimed that there had been no decline in sales – and they did this by citing the book’s ranking on Amazon.

Of course, anyone who has ever sold a book through Amazon knows that the numbers are not exactly a scientific measure of anything in the real world. Putting that aside, the fact of the matter is that Orman’s book benefited first from the Oprah connection, and secondly from the wave of publicity relating to the giveaway. Surely those are the reasons it sold well.

(to be continued)

The future of publishing (part two)

What's happened to the music and newspaper industries in the last ten years is admittedly very complex, and neither is an exact model for publishers. But it does seem to me that some lessons can be drawn from them:

1. You need to have an identity with your customers in order to survive.

2. If you devalue the product you’re selling, it’ll eventually catch up to you.

There are three things publishers can do to meet the challenge of the changing technology:

1. Increase the value of the product they are selling. They can do this by paying more attention to editing above all, but in other areas related to the books as well. Part of this probably means they should decrease the number of books they publish as well, allowing them to concentrate their resources to do a better job on the books they do publish. But it primarily means that they should pay more attention the quality of the talent they have working for them. Every editor I know is underpaid by a good mile, especially the young ones. Anyone entering the profession basically has to swear an oath of poverty and work under ridiculous pressure. Editing is a difficult art to master; many if not most publishers make it even harder with their work conditions.

2. Make themselves known to their real customer. Most readers don’t have a clue who publishes a book. There’s a legitimate reason for this: For years, the publishers’ customers have actually been the bookstores, and the people who deal with them. But the internet and other facets of modern commerce have weakened these middlemen, in some cases making them irrelevant. The publishers have to build a brand identity with the end customer, so that the house name means something. “We’re the people who bring you Stephen King and all those other writers you like...”

3. The publishers have to take back control of the distribution channel. If that sounds a little antagonistic, it is. The big mistake the record companies made was following the old model of letting the middlemen sell their music. Yes, the first threat was to record stores, etc., but the ultimate victim were the companies that depended on those stores for their sales. Why should I go to Itunes to buy music? If I’m buying my music on-line, it’s just as easy – or rather, it could be just as easy – to buy it from XYZ as it is from them.

. . . (to be continued)

It works






The official word:

During a Pentagon news conference Thursday morning, General Cartwright rebuffed those who said the mission was, at least in part, organized to showcase American missile defense or anti-satellite capabilities.

He said the missile itself had to be reconfigured from its task of tracking and hitting an adversary’s warhead to instead find a cold, tumbling satellite. “This was a one-time modification,” General Cartwright said.

Yeah.

Anti-missile technology, though it can never be the only defense against enemies who possess missiles (including terrorists and terrorist states), can work and is important, and why don't we admit it?

Good job, Navy. And everyone else who helped.

(The quote is from the NYT.)

The future of publishing . . .

. . . or at least publishers (part 1)

A few people have been talking with me about ebooks, giveaways, and publishing, and suggested that rather than being my usual wise-ass, I take a more serious approach.

Heh.

If I were a publisher, I would be very worried about the direction of the industry. So many things have changed over the past two decades – the loss of independent stores and regional distributors among them – that it’s very easy to overlook the potential impact of the web, ebooks, and alternative delivery systems for books. Or not so much ignore it, but not position myself to deal with the revolutionary change that is coming.

But it’s an absolute necessity. What has happened to two other media – record companies and newspapers – are frightening examples. The music industry has been devastated by the technological changes in the way music is delivered to listeners. Large record companies, which had very little identity to listeners, once were able to have dominant positions because they added value to the music “product” – recording and making it into a format that could be consumed easily – and controlled the distribution. They no longer do the latter, and have seen their role in the former steadily reduced.

Newspapers were in a somewhat different position. Well ahead of the arrival of the internet, they had consolidated and achieved, in most markets, a competitive monopoly. Once that happened, they met any new economic pressures by taking a relatively easy route to maintaining profit levels – they cut staff and, in turn, harmed their product. There has been a steady erosion of not only quality but volume of news coverage in print newspapers over the past two decades. (While this is an industry-wide trend, it is not the inevitable result of inroads from television and radio, or the general decline of literacy, as is often claimed. Magazine pages have increased over the same period.)

To be continued . . .

Hitchcock knew


Get them before they get us . . .

Parks staffer goes on golf cart rampage in Lower Manhattan, kills 5 birds

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Police say a Parks Department employee took his city-issued golf cart on a rampage, running over and killing five birds in a public park.

Police say they arrested the 45-year-old employee Friday evening after receiving complaints that he was driving erratically in the park in Lower Manhattan.

He faces charges of reckless endangerment and intentional injury to an animal.

Three pigeons and two seagulls were killed.

The arrested man had no listed phone number, and information was not immediately available on whether he had a lawyer.