The Conclusion Of Mike Cane 2008

Pull the strings! Pull the strings!

And for a year, I have.

I had no frikkin idea what nearly a solid year of blogging would be like.



Dear God. I am wiped out!



Some days made me absolutely fucking insane. Even without Simvastatin rotting my mind!

And now I have reached the end.



Two bits of advice before I go.

The first for dealing with the financial chaos of 2009:



The second for every writer and would-be writer out there:



And that's all there is.

Thanks to everyone who stalked this blog, irregularly popped in, and also linked to it.

My online presence will now flatline. I'll likely -- maybe -- pop up on Twitter for reaction to MacWorld Expo and CES introductions.

But a new blog? I have no plans for one.

I need rest!

Leverage: The Bank Shot Job

See this post at the WordPress blog.

Writer Jeff Schult Has A New Blog

Into Temptation: Sexual Networks, Culture and Society

"Into Temptation" is a not-necessarily safe-for-work (or anywhere else) forum about evolving social-sexual networks and how they have changed and are changing lives. It will also loosely chronicle the research, writing and publication, I hope in 2010, of a book by the same name.

Jeff was ahead of the curve with medical tourism (see below links).

I wonder if he's read Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis?

That might be news for him!

Previously here:

Jeff Schult: New Medical Tourism Site
Spitzer: The Last Drop
Meet Jeff Schult (And His Teeth!)

But It's Still A Fine Madness

Some Days Are Better Than Others

I'm sure that all of you who write have experienced it.

Things seem to be going well. The words are coming out smoothly. You're in the flow. And then...

You hit that place, that certain point, where you can't seem to go any further. The words and ideas have suddenly stopped. It's like beating the bottom of that damn ketchup bottle, and nothing, but nothing, will come out!

Oh yeah.

But it's still a fine madness ...



... even when it makes us feel like that!

Follow Arjun Basu On Twitter

And you'll get a wonderful story in a tweet. He calls these "Twisters."

This is a collection of some from the past few days:

Click below to make readable!


Follow Arjun Basu on Twitter.

Reading Is An Investment In Thinking

The Long Decline of Reading

It takes hours to finish a book, even for the fastest readers. This wasn’t a problem when books had less competition, but with the three massive timesinks of cable TV, videogames, and the internet, people look at that massive time investment, and they get apprehensive. Sure, they know that books can be just as enjoyable as movies or games, if not more. They may even feel guilty about not reading. But what if this book is no good? What if I end up hating it? What if I can’t understand it? Imagine all the time wasted! And so they stop before they even start.

A long, detailed, and excellent article.

Strangely, public libraries aren't mentioned at all.

Interster Episode Two: Saboteur

See this post at the WordPress blog.

Blog Notes: 1

We race towards Zero Hour here!



There are less than twenty-four hours left to this blog!

"But," people ask, "What will you do after this?"

My fingers will still be busy:



With a series of children's books!

The Happy Stabby Family!



There's Junior Stabby:



Papa Stabby:



And Uncle Fun Stabby:



Oh, I just know you're all waiting for this! I can tell.

I can feel your reaction through my screen:



All of this is my kindly way of saying:



Avanti!

The Horror Of Paper Books

This is a post I've kept putting off. Things happen.

Then Wayne MacPhail tweeted this photo he took inside a bookstore:



It gave me a feeling of absolute horror -- and I knew the time had come to actually do this post.

There I was several months ago in a bookstore. One of the few still remaining in Manhattan that offers overstock at incredibly-reduced prices.

And I found a book I would have liked to have.

But I couldn't bring myself to buy it.

I kept having flashbacks to all the times I've had to get boxes, put the books in boxes, carry the damned boxes, move the damn boxes, unpack the damn boxes, and again arrange the damn hundreds and hundreds of pounds of printed paper books.

That book would have been another pound to lug around. Another frikkin object hanging like an albatross around my neck, limiting my mobility, weighing me down, reminding me that it will remain when I'm gone.

Let me say again: I really wanted the book.

But I physically could not buy it.

I've developed a bizarre allergy to printed books -- of the kind that are bought and owned and have to be moved around and that are always looked at and that are also a reminder of one's mortality.

Library books I don't have that problem with.

I can temporarily lug them home, even have a pile, read them, and then poof! back to the library they go.

But I want to own books.

I feel a guilt at not giving writers their rightful payment for reading.

Plus, with things being the way they are -- and have been -- I can no longer count on any public library having a copy of anything on its shelves. I once had to go to the Northern part of Manhattan just to read a short story by Barry N. Malzberg because only the City University had a back issue of the pulp magazine it was printed in!

This is another reason why I am an eBook militant.

I've never been a paper fetishist. My first collection of books were mass-market paperbacks. I never liked the size and weight of trade paperbacks and hardcovers. But I eventually amassed a collection of those too. I couldn't help it: Publishing had changed and there was no longer a guarantee of anything in hardcover or trade paper moving down to cheap paperback!

But the book as an object I came to see for what it is: A cage for the words within it.

It's the words -- it's always been the words -- that interested me. Never the packagaing, never the jail the words were locked-up in.

I can't be the only one out there who feels a sense of material liberation with eBooks.

Recently, a writer I've written about in this blog left a Comment offering to ship me a whole big bunch of books I'd blogged about. I never published that Comment because I couldn't explain why I couldn't accept more printed books. Even free ones. Even free ones from a writer whose work I admire!

So, this post has been something I've needed to do, in reply to that writer.

And to also explain why I have come to absolutely hate printed books.



Yes: But they're better weapons as eBooks!

ECTACO jetBook: Built-In WiFi Coming?

I'm asking ECTACO directly about this.

I got a bit of a shock with YahooMail moments ago. Not one of their usual useless banner ads. This one was aimed right at me:


Composite image. Click = big.

Of course I had to click on that M218!


Click = big

I knew as of last night that this was being sold in China. I never thought it'd be sold here in America.

And yet here it is listed on ECTACO's American store!

This is the paragraph to note, the built-in WiFi and its unique feature:


Click = big

The text of that:

With built in high-speed Wi-Fi, Chinese eBook reader M218B can easily connect to wireless network. Then you can immediately search and download numerous eBook, Pdf files and music. Another exciting feature of Chinese eBook reader M218B is that it supports end-to-end transmission. You can copy and exchange files, music, picture with another user, who can be your friend or just another "eBook-pal".

Emphasis added by me.

I can hear the nascent heart attacks of the dying dinosaurs of print out there!

Alas, the beauty photo of the M218 highlights the calculator-like nature of its screen, and not its ability to be mistaken for eInk under direct lighting:



But I have to wonder: Will ECTACO be releasing an English-language jetBook version of this?

Would WiFi then justify its $299 price tag? Well, not just WiFi -- but its upcoming ePub and MobiPocket capability too!

An ePub/MobiPocket WiFi eBook reader would suddenly help shake things up.

Both Amazon and Sony would have a formidable new competitor, I think.

Previously here:

ECTACO jetBook And ePub
Eejit Geeks. Things Should Just Work!
Micro Fondle 2: ECTACO jetBook eBook Reader
ECTACO jetBook Ups ePub Stakes
ECTACO jetBook At Blowout Price!
More About That ECTACO jetBook eBook Reader
Micro Fondle: ECTACO jetBook eBook Reader

eBooks Search Milestone

Five of the ten terms that have led people to this blog (at WordPress) today are eBook-related:



This has special significance because this is the holiday gift-giving aftermath.

I've already seen stats in search for this blog this week that show an incredible number of people got either an iPhone or iPod Touch as gifts. The number towers over those for the Sony Reader -- but the Sony Reader has not given up the fight yet and has made a consistent good showing.

Dying dinosaurs of print: You better heed this milestone and amp up eBooks to Setting 11 in 2009.

Philadelphia Is Destroying Its Public Libraries

Some targeted library branches may be saved

Mayor Nutter said yesterday that five of the 11 library branches once scheduled to close permanently on Thursday are instead on track to be taken over by private foundations, wealthy individuals, companies, and community development corporations.

It was not immediately clear which branches have sponsors and the mayor did not identify the benefactors.

But Nutter expressed confidence that in time private operators could convert each of the branches now on his budget chopping block into community "knowledge centers" that would offer similar or perhaps even superior services to those now available. Though the services would vary from branch to branch, Nutter said the centers would likely retain book collections, computers, and perhaps even trained librarians.

Emphasis added by me.

This guy is certainly true to form to his surname: Nutter.

Hey, how'd you like to have to rely on, say, the Exxon-Mobil Knowledge Center for information about the oil companies?

I could go on in that vein and get really inflammatory, but fuck it, this blog dies tomorrow and I'm burned out as it is doing this.

This is the systematic destruction of the world as we have known it by the same bastards who brought us to this brink.

Are there any men left in America to stop this shit?

Free eBook By Ken Wohlrob

"Happy Bus" now available as a free eBook for iPhone, Sony Reader and more.

I'm proud to announce that I've made "Taking the Happy Bus on Home," a short story from my collection The Love Book, available as a free eBook for the iPhone, Sony Reader, Kindle and a just about every other device on the planet.

At FeedBooks for ePub, Mobipocket/Kindle, PDF, Sony Reader, iLiad, Custom PDF (the last option requires registration; all others do not):

One of the short stories from Ken Wohlrob's new collection, The Love Book. An epidemic of suicide hits a retirement community in Ohio and one couple begins to question the value of their final days together. These are very modern fables, with a great heart, a very biting sense of humor, and fully-fleshed out characters that you can sink your teeth into.

Buy a copy of the book or learn more about the author at www.kenwohlrob.com

iPhone/iPod Touch users can grab it using Stanza. See details here.

Zig Ziglar

He's led some life.

When I was born, the doctor handed me to my mother and said, "Mrs. Ziglar, you have a perfectly fine, healthy baby boy." Nine days later he picked me up and sadly shook his head, indicating that I was dead. Yes, I died when I was nine days old. However, my family has told me that my grandmother walked to me, picked me up, held me in her hands, and started talking to me. Of course, we all know that she was not really talking to me . . and in a matter of seconds breath came back into my body; at age seventy-five it's obvious I lived.

My friends, it's been like that ever since.

-- Zig: The Autobiography of Zig Ziglar by Zig Ziglar; pg. 1

And here's a lesson that was swept aside in the Rush to Greed from the 1980s on ...

Coach Jobie Harris was my history teacher, and in many ways he changed and enriched my life. He taught me more than American history. He once said, "If you have an ability that goes beyond providing for your own needs, you have a responsibility to use that ability to reach down and help those up who do not have that capacity. As a matter of fact, if you don't reach down and help lift up those less fortunate, the day will come when due to sheer weight of numbers, they will reach up and pull you down."

-- Zig: The Autobiography of Zig Ziglar by Zig Ziglar; pg. 71

Emphasis added by me.

I Get A Request To Provide … Leverage!

See this post at the WordPress blog.

Blog Notes: 2

Look at time flying!


(Yes, it's earlier than last night's post. So I messed up! Shut up!)

There are now just two days left to this blog!



Soon my frenetic fingers will cease.



Soon!



Wait until Wednesday before midnight!

ECTACO jetBook And ePub

My curiosity won't let me rest, of course.

I found out the jetBook is also in China, called the Dr. Yi. (I don't, however, know if this means the jetBook is of Chinese creation. But I wouldn't be surprised.)




Of particular interest to me is this:

CPU: ARM9 200MHz

Because look at this for the Sony Reader 505:

CPU: Freescale i.MXL, ARM920T core, 150-200 MHz

That says to me the jetBook should have the horsepower needed to deal with ePub files. I had been wondering about that.

Reference: GutenMark

GutenMark Home Page
Attractively formatting Project Gutenberg texts

What is GutenMark?

GutenMark is a command-line tool for automatically creating high-quality HTML or LaTeX markup from Project Gutenberg etexts. As of April 2008, there is also a graphical front-end called GUItenMark that greatly simplifies usage for casual users. Both Windows and Linux 'x86 are supported. Mac OS X is also supported, though in some respects it lags the others. Limited iPhone support is also possible.

In combination with other freely-available conversion tools GutenMark aims to convert Project Gutenberg etexts into publication-quality Postscript or PDF, for print-on-demand applications. The goal is for this conversion to be completely automatic, without manual markup or editing, but for the forseeable future some manual intervention will almost always be needed—at least, if your standards are at least as high as mine.

I took the Project Gutenberg plain text file of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and ran it through this.

Amazingly, this:

To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman.

was transformed to this:

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.

As it should be!

I was impressed with the available options and did some light testing. It could be a very useful tool for Project Gutenberg etexts that have only a plain text version available.

On the other hand, I also downloaded the Project Gutenberg HTML of the same Holmes and it was superior.

But this tool remains a very painless way of changing those text files into a format that can then go on to further processing to create an eBook.

Eejit Geeks. Things Should Just Work!

Ectaco Jetbook downloads

I do not know what a line feed, text editor or DRM is, nor do I know how to convert!

I've just wasted a good part of two days playing around with various "tools" to create an FB2 (FictionBook) file format eBook.

I'm no novice, but the task defeated me.

The tools were shit.

1) One converter from HTML to FB2 ignored photos and styled text weirdly.

2) An entire program devoted to creating FB2 eBooks was buggy as hell and the files I thought were perfect turned out all FAIL!

3) A desktop FB2 file reader couldn't display italic text (but it could display JPEGs -- go figure!).

All I wanted to do was see one -- just one! -- FB2 eBook, even if I had to create it myself!

And here, in the above thread, eBook geeks are trying to convince a member of the general reading public to develop some g33k ski77z in order to do some eBook reading.

That's just half-assed stupid.

That's like everyone having to be a frikkin financial expert (and I choose that example to rub your FAIL 401K in your face!).

Now just imagine the general public encountering that Zero-G Toilet of Adobe ePub DRM!

That's just another formula for FAIL!

TNT's Leverage: The Team

The introductory character titles I couldn't show in my original post because of the funny revisionism they did with Parker. That would have been a spoiler.









All this for three reasons:

1) You should be watching the series: TNT Tuesdays at 10PM EST

2) In case I'm not able to post this week's episode on Wednesday

3) To get you to go to producer/creator's John Rogers' blog to read the latest post about the series.

Previously here:

Leverage: The Miracle Job
Leverage: The Two Horse Job
Leverage For TNT Has Wrapped!
New Promos For TNT’s Leverage!
Leverage: TNT December 2008
TV Networks Are Using A Leaking Service?
Leverage: The (Leaked) TNT Pilot
Leverage: Coming Soon To TNT
The Lever That Is The Internet

The Monthly Digital Lifeline Bill

Numbers to keep in mind

$260 a month. That’s how much the average US household is spending each month on digital services that did not exist a generation ago. They include: mobile phone, broadband access, cable or satellite television, personal video recording. This number comes from a survey by the Center for Digital Future, a department of the University of Southern California. Even more interesting is the amount of money spent by the poorest households: their monthly bill of digital services isn’t as low as one would imagine: $180. This suggests two thoughts: one, these services are no longer a luxury but have become as basic as a car; two, given this amount of money, hoping to squeeze a few dozens of dollars more per month for content services is unrealistic. Except for highly specialized premium services (almost never paid by the end-user), editorial on the Internet is very likely to remain free. European spending is lower, but catching up. — FF

Emphasis in the original.

Yeah, I can see that.

I know my book spending will go stratospheric when I go all-e.

Why?

That will end the days of my picking up used paperbacks for cheap. Even if eBooks level out to an impulse-buy price, there'd still be no matching a fifty-cent paperback!

Gerry Anderson: Still Screwed By ITV

Gerry Anderson - ''ITV Has Not Supported Me'' wmv

Gerry Anderson interviewed on 'bbc breakfast'

They just did a retrospective of Thunderbirds -- showing All About Thunderbirds again -- and kicked off a repeat of the entire series itself.

On BBC.

Not on ITV, which owns the series.

How fucked-up is that?

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #482: Keiser

Max Keiser: Predicting the collapse of Iceland

Aljazeera re-aired Max's 2007 prediction of a collapse of the Icelandic economy.

While the program aired in August 2007, it was filmed in April 2007.

Watch for the scene in the Blue Lagoon in which Max predicts a global Depression to be caused when all these debts driven by low interest rates burst.

Emphasis added by me.



It wasn't just debt -- it was outright fraud. Isn't that correct, Bernie Madoff, you bastard?

Things will get dramatically worse between now and Obama's Inauguration.

You'll have to find your Doom fixes elsewhere, however. I won't be blogging after Wednesday.

Blog Notes: 3

Time is running out here.



It's Sunday. This blog dies before midnight Wednesday.



Do the math.

Apex Book Company Needs Some Sales!

Brother, can you spare $15.95?

The economy has taken a huge bite out of Apex Publications. Starting with Bear Stearns dying, you can see an immediate drop in our revenue (September/October/November/December). December has been the worst with a drop of 75% in revenue compared to the August numbers.

The recession hit at the worst time possible. I literally have spent every penny in the coffers doing things like: reimbursing old lifetime subscribers (and yes, there are a couple of you still waiting on money), paying back the Apex Digest printer $12,000 (done, huzzah!), reprinting and reshipping stolen copies of I REMEMBER THE FUTURE (goodbye $600), replacing almost 90 USPS damaged ORGY OF SOULS hardcovers to Horror-Mall (goodbye $2000). I'm not asking for pity. This stuff happens to good people and bad. But stuff happening with the downturn in the economy has the Apex bank account crying for mercy.

What this means is that Apex Publications needs an influx of revenue. Quick.

What this means is that if you've ever thought of buying an Apex book, now would be a damn good time to do so.

The most effective, easiest and most fun way to pump some blood into Apex is to buy a book directly from our store. You get damn fine literature (and free media shipping if your order is $25 or more (applies to US orders only)).

If you're strapped of cash, then blog about our books or authors and try to coerce people into giving us a try.

I figure we need about $2500 in revenue over the next two weeks.

Remember:
We're taking pre-orders on The Convent of the Pure by Sara M. Harvey, Open Your Eyes by Paul Jessup, and The Monster Within Idea by R. Thomas Riley.

Catacombs and Photographs by Brandy Schwan is now available and all pre-orders have been shipped.

All back issues of Apex Digest are half-priced.

Emphasis added by me.

Apex is a small publisher. The kind of publisher we'll all count on in the eBook future, so give them some sales love.

Apex Book Company store
Apex Book company eBooks at Fictionwise (which look to be mostly DRM free as well as being in lots of formats -- including Sony Reader!)

Speakers UP! Creaky Boards

There are now only four days left to this blog.

I'm in the mood for something triumphant yet melancholic.

This Creaky Boards song fits: The Songs I Didn't Write.

Amp up your speakers!



Creaky Boards MySpace

Reference: Public Libraries And eBooks

The fine folks over at MobileRead have put together a wiki for public libraries that offer eBooks.

I live in New York City, so I don't have to pay the $100/year fee to get an NYPL card.

Suck it up, baby!

Besides, for that $100 fee, you are competing against my domestic borrowing rights!

I hate you for doing that. You know that, don't you?

The Zero-Gravity Toilet Of Adobe DRMed ePub

There's a classic shot in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey when the main character has to first consult instructions on how to use a zero-gravity toilet:



Imagine having to through all that!

And yet -- there is something actually worse than that.

It's the instructions on how to go about using Adobe DRMed ePub eBooks!

Here are the Zero-Gravity toilet instructions:



Now contrast the amount of text there to instructions for using Adobe DRMed ePub:




Can you imagine the poor technically unsophisticated schmo having to deal with all that?

"For God's sake, all I want to do is read eBooks!!!"

Really, it turns out it's easier to take a shit in space than to deal with Adobe DRMed ePub eBooks!

Micro Fondle 2: ECTACO jetBook eBook Reader

Ever since ECTACO emailed me about upcoming ePub capability for its jetBook eBook reader, I've gotten a renewed interest in it.

So yesterday morning, since I was in the area anyway, I made it a point to stop in at J&R to give it yet another fondle. This did not put me in good stead with the hapless salesman, who had to cycle through all four display models (in colors red, black, white, and gray!) to find the one that had a charge on its battery! As it turned out, he had to plug it into AC for a moment to get one to work.

All of what follows is from my memory. I didn't take notes and I didn't pull out the crapcam (I was feeling sorry for the salesman!). The above photo is from the original micro fondle.

Again: the hardware is just solid. Even though the case is all plastic, it has a thick, industrial-like feel to it. Not any part of it feels cheap or flimsy. The casing has a pebbled finish, so it's not likely to easily slip out of the hand. All of the buttons feel solid and do not wobble.

Also again: in direct-lighting conditions, the backlight-less LCD screen can be mistaken for eInk -- except, being LCD, there is no flashing when turning pages.

I went through Settings and discovered there are six font sizes, ranging from 12 point all the way to 32. This is one more size than the newest Sony Reader, the 700, offers.

There are, however, only two built-in fonts, and both are sadly sans-serif: Arial and Verdana. I would have liked at least one serifed font, even if it was simply Times or a variant thereof. I don't know if it's possible to add fonts.

There's a built-in dictionary! The Sony Reader still lacks this. I don't know how extensive the dictionary is, but I'll give ECTACO the benefit of the doubt here because its main business has been electronic dictionaries and translators. I have to think the dictionary is good. In fact, I just went to look at the User Manual (PDF link; with another PDF version too), and it states:

The English/Russian, English/Polish, and English explanatory dictionaries built into ECTACO jetBook allow you to instantly translate an unfamiliar word.

So, yeah, the dictionary is solid.

Unlike both the Sony Reader and the abominable Kindle, eBooks can be grouped together into folders (the new Sony Reader 700 offers Collections, but it's not quite the same). There is also access to the filesystem with a directory display. I'm not sure, however, if any file commands can be carried out on the device itself. Again, looking at the User Manual, apparently so:

Files

Select the Books folder, Music folder, or Pictures folder and then press OK. You will see the Files menu which has the following options: Open, Copy, Delete, and Rename. Select the desired option and then press OK.

The jetBook had one image on it. A 600K-plus JPEG that was a flyer for the jetBook itself. It took a few seconds to open but was worth the minor wait because it looked gorgeous. Since it was most likely shrunk down from an 8.5 x 11-inch size to fit the 5-inch diagonal screen, text was very tiny.

The screen can be rotated ninety-degrees. This worked well and was fast.

I had two problems. When moving backward through the menus, I encountered one in Russian. This seemed to be the list of eBooks, which a moment ago had actually been listed in English! I don't know how that happened.

The other thing was the slider on the left side, which can be used to page forward and page back. It was the one weak link on the device. I couldn't see how to use it with one hand without threatening to have the jetBook slip out of my hand to the ground. At least, unlike the abominable Kindle, it's a button that can easily be ignored and I doubt it can be accidentally invoked.

Operation of the unit had an acceptable speed. It didn't have the horsepower pop I felt with the Sony Reader 700, but it didn't feel altogether sluggish, either.

I wouldn't rely on the jetBook for MP3s, however. User reviews over at newegg give MP3 playback a FAIL:

The MP3 player is a joke. It can be suitable for listening some spoken word lower quailty audio, but if you want to play music, expect poor sound quality. It seems like it doesn't have enough power to play higher bitrate MP3's.

I don't see the point of putting MP3s on a reading device, anyway, so this feature is superfluous to me.

It seems the user reviewers at newegg bought the jetBook primarily to deal with PDFs. PDF is the File Format Of The Damned. It's best for reading on monitors or even perhaps on that upcoming ginormous Plastic Logic reader. I can't see the sense of trying to deal with a file formatted for 8.5 x 11-inch paper on a 5- or 6-inch screen. PDFs can be optimized for eBook devices -- but I don't think most PDF publishers will do that. They're likely to figure such problems are a piracy speedbump (and I'd actually tend to agree).

The jetBook doesn't require a desktop client for eBooks. Simply plug it into a USB port and it appears as a Removable Drive. Drag and drop eBooks, MP3s (bleh!), and graphics onto it.

Two questions I have and don't know the answers to:

1) What is the CPU and its speed? I'm wondering if the current hardware will have the necessary horsepower to deal with ePub and MobiPocket files. As for non-DRMed MobiPocket, I expect so, because even Palm PDAs could do those. But even non-DRMed ePub? I don't know.

2) Since no desktop client is being used, does that rule out DRMed ePub and DRMed MobiPocket files? Someone who knows, leave a Comment!

It's too bad the price of the jetBook is so high. It's perceived value just isn't equivalent to that of the Sony Reader. It's not. I still think slashing the price by a third could excite interest in it -- especially if it will actually be able to do DRMed ePub and DRMed MobiPocket files.

I'd like to see a second dedicated eBook reader that can do ePub. That'd put further pressure on Amazon and its abominable Kindle file format lock-in. It'd also offer an alternative for people who foolishly believe they can't deal with the page-turn flashing of eInk. And if the jetBook underwent a price cut, it could increase the potential audience for eBooks.

Supplemental:

ECTACO jetBook photos on Flickr
MobileRead jetBook review and discussion thread
MobileRead jetBook owner photo

Previously here:

ECTACO jetBook Ups ePub Stakes
ECTACO jetBook At Blowout Price!
More About That ECTACO jetBook eBook Reader
Micro Fondle: ECTACO jetBook eBook Reader

Flickr Slideshow: Sony Reader 505 And 700

Another one found via TwitteRel:

An excellent Flickr slideshow of someone who -- via Xmas gift -- is upgrading from a silver Sony Reader 505 to the new 700.

Give particular attention to the last photo. It shows the Zoom and Pan options for dealing with images and text/PDF files.

eBooks And Pricing: No Argument Now!

I was going through my LifeDrive memos and came across a Stephen Levy column from Newsweek that nails the argument for lower-than-print pricing of eBooks.

This column is from 2004 -- four years ago!

FORECAST: SONG COSTS MAY FALL LIKE RAIN
MEMO TO MUSIC LABELS: LOWERING PRICES WILL GET YOU MORE SALES

This is the key point:

This summer [2004] provided a clue to further harnessing the force of digital nature. For three weeks, Real Networks tried to lure new customers by slashing prices to 49 cents a song and $4.99 per album. Since Real paid the full royalty load to the labels (almost 70 cents a tune), the company lost money on every transaction. CEO Rob Glaser says that the company did get new customers, but here's the real news: Real sold six times as much music and took in three times as much money.

This reflected the experience of Audible, which sells audiobooks on the iTunes Store. Working in conjunction with publishers and Apple, Audible offered some online titles at a fraction of the normal price. One of those buyers was me -- I had been thinking of getting a David Sedaris audiobook to entertain my family on a summer drive, but balked at paying $11 for something I might play just once. After I got an e-mail informing me I could get it for $2, I snapped it up. Audible CEO Don Katz says the featured books on that single e-mail were downloaded at 60 times the previous rate.

Emphasis added by me.

Let me hammer down the point.

Audible was selling an audio-eBook. It sold at sixty times the previous sales rate once the price was slashed.

Let me run some math, and I'll use simple numbers because math usually gets me in trouble!

An eBook at $10.00 with a 10% royalty, one copy sold = $1.00

OK, that's the "normal" rate of sale.

Now let's do the Audible price cut numbers.

An eBook at $2.00 with a 10% royalty, sixty copies sold = $12.00

Which would a writer rather have? A guarantee of $1.00 per copy with an increased risk of piracy?

Or sixty copies sold at a piracy-prevention price that makes him twelve times as much money than expected sales?

I will keep hammering this point home again and again, dammit.

I want to walk into a printed bookstore and witness this conversation:

Shopper 1: "Oh, this book I want to buy!"
Shopper 2: "Me too. But it's cheaper as an eBook for my Sony Reader!"

That is the Marketing Point for eBooks, the one that will drive hardware sales and then increase eBook sales exponentially:

If you buy it as an eBook, it's cheaper.

Remember: eBooks are not like music. People will listen repeatedly to a song. But people don't read an eBook over and over again. Once it's been read, people want to buy something else.

And the resistance to eBooks is not as strong as anyone believes. See Vox Populi: eBooks.

Vox Populi: eBooks

Found via TwitteRel (which I recommend):

Doctor Who Christmas Special 2008: The Next Doctor

See this post at the WordPress blog.

Interster Episode One: Proxima Clash

I got an absolutely amazing Christmas gift from a reader in South Africa who spotted -- and then bought -- the DVD boxed set of the very rare TV puppet series Interster.

He digitized and uploaded the first episode for me to see!

And he's posted the URL for everyone else to get it too.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't approve of this. Creators should be paid for their work.

This is an exception on several counts:

1) It is 99.9% unlikely this will ever be sold outside of South Africa, so no royalty money is being stolen here

2) Currency exchange rates make it prohibitive to buy internationally

3) There is worldwide interest in this series from fans of Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation TV series

In additional to the download, the reader has now started an Interster blog where, I'm sure, a great deal more information will be found in coming days.

I hope the interest being shown in this series will prompt the rightsholder to offer the series for sale in the iTunes Store here in America (and elsewhere). I'd buy it! And I'm sure other Anderson -- and puppetry -- fans will too.

There are some notes about to best view the video as well as over ninety screensnaps with some commentary at the WordPress blog.

Merry Christmas 2008

"To my big brother, George. The richest man in town!"




I don't care what anyone says.

This is the greatest movie America has ever made.

Merry Christmas to all of you.

No more posts until Friday.

Leverage: The Miracle Job

See this post at the WordPress blog.

Pieces On Earth, Good Will To All Maim

ECTACO jetBook Ups ePub Stakes

This news caught my eye a while back.

ECTACO jetBook Now Includes Fodor's Travel Guide

With The International Digital Publishing Forum newly released EPUB specification format based on XML, this is the new standard for eBook production and leading eBook device manufacturers.

Ectaco announced that the jetBook eBook reader will support both - most popular in US MobiPocket format and open EPUB format in Q1,2009.

No one ever did a follow-up and it nagged at me. I'd forgotten about the MobiPocket support (and frankly, that doesn't interest me, being a legacy file format), and only inquired about the addition of the ePub capability.

I wondered if current jetBook owners would have to buy a new unit for ePub. This is what I got in reply via email moments ago:

The latest version of firmware is expected for release in the first quarter of 2009.

You will not have to exchange Your hardware at this point. You will need to obtain the link from ECTACO Technical Support Department and the link would be provided free of charge.

So it seems the current jetBook is go for that!

However ... I'm skeptical after having gotten excited over past tech developments that turned out crap.

I'll remain this way on this development until I can try it for myself.

What needs to successfully happen:

1) It can do Adobe-DRMed ePub (Adobe Digital Editions)

2) It can do eBook borrows from public libraries

This is what the jetBook looks like:



More pictures at the last link below.

The hardware feels solid. The screen can, in certain light, be mistaken for eInk. And it's already damned better than that upcoming eejitastic eSlick reader.

I just wish ECTACO could drop the price by $100. It's being sold for $199 at newegg (see below). If that price could be made permanent, they'd make some serious sales -- especially with both MobiPocket and ePub!

Previously here:

ECTACO jetBook At Blowout Price!
More About That ECTACO jetBook eBook Reader
Micro Fondle: ECTACO jetBook eBook Reader

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #481: Unrest

Russia, China warn of dire economic straits in 2009

Russia and China issued stark warnings on Wednesday about the impact of the crisis on their recently booming economies in 2009, with Moscow saying the downturn could spark unrest in the streets.

Emphasis added by me.

It won't be the only country where that will happen.

More:

Commenting on the worsening situation, Deputy Interior Minister Mikhail Sukhodolsky, warned that unpaid wages, the threat of layoffs and unpopular government anti-crisis measures "may aggravate the protest mood."

China's top economic planner also warned of "great challenges" ahead.

The head of the National Development and Reform Commission, Zhang Ping, said "grave risks" lay ahead for goals of fast growth and high employment if the government did not manage to stimulate demand and maintain export growth.

Emphasis added by me.

We all think of Germany as one of the richest nations on the planet. They just opened my eyes to a dimension I hadn't fully considered:

In a sign of the times in Germany, poodles, terriers and sheepdogs queued up for rations in the country's first soup kitchen for pets, housed in a disused school in the former communist east Berlin.

The soup kitchen was opened in October and offers free food for pets belonging to pensioners and the growing ranks of Berlin's unemployed.

Julia Raasch, who heads the soup kitchen, said: "We've already signed up nearly 400 people. And our stocks are dwindling fast."

Emphasis added by me.

I mentioned stocking up on pet food here. But what happens when that runs out? And you can't afford to buy any more?

Next year will be very bad.

Twitter Novel By Arjun Basu

Wonderful.

Follow Arjun Basu on Twitter.

Update: Arjun basu writes in the Comments:

Thanks. But it’s not a novel. I just want to clear that up. Each tweet is a single story. At the max 140 characters. I’m calling them Twisters. Thanks for the support.

That makes what I screensnapped above even more remarkable!

Dying Dinosaurs Of Print: Red Alert!

Americans prefer news from Web to newspapers: survey

The Internet has surpassed newspapers as the main source for national and international news for Americans, according to a new survey.

Television, however, remains the preferred medium for Americans, according to the survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Seventy percent of the 1,489 people surveyed by Pew said television is their primary source for national and international news.

Forty percent said they get most of their news from the Internet, up from 24 percent in September 2007, and more than the 35 percent who cited newspapers as their main news source.

Emphasis added by me.

Hey, the Newspaper Fetishists used to whiiiine, "Oh, I can't think of a Sunday without curling up with The New York Times."

So, question: Did they all drop dead -- or get electronic religion?

And, no, book publishers, the moral here is not "books on TV."

Get real. Make with the flood of eBooks in 2009!

All I Want For Christmas Is Who!

Here's the Countdown Clock.

And this is FAIL:



Yes, Auntie Beeb, I understand the license fee situation. But still. You offer news for a worldwide audience. Why not let up on the frikkin trailers at least?

Now this looks exciting. Contains a spoiler, though, so maybe you might not want to watch:



I'll rev up my own International Telegraphic TARDIS on Friday and call it up.

Free Classic eBooks At Planet eBook

These are all PDF files but they are very well done. Some real work went into these.

Planet eBook website



And for today, I point out: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

The Taqwacores: Free Sample Chapter

I noticed several people who were led to this blog under the search term "taqwacores pdf" and I contacted publisher Soft Skull Press.

I hope that search term doesn't indicate a pirate edition of the book is on the Internet. Isn't stealing from writers haram according to The Quran?

Soft Skull Press has given me an URL for the first chapter of The Taqwacores. That should be enough to incite interest in the book and let people know if they want to legitimately buy it.

PDF link.

Previously here:

Writer Michael Muhammad Knight In NYT
Two Books To Read By Michael Muhammad Knight

Interster TV Series Now On DVD?

According to a Comment I received today, Christmas Eve 2008 in the U.S.A, yes:

Just to let you know Interster Series 1 is available at Musica stores in SA. I bought the the 2 part DVDs in Cape Town yesterday. It is an SABC release.

I hope someone will email me some photos of the boxes to post!

This is exciting news!

Previously here:

Interster: Rare Puppet Series Pics And Videos!
OMFG!!! INTERSTER!!!
Interster Still M.I.A.

At the old blog:

Calling Out To The World Wide Web: Send Me Interster!

This Is The Future Of Book Tours

I need to do this again because people weren't listening the first time -- and, frankly, many still had jobs in the dying printed books industry and so were too smug to pay attention.

This is what the book tour of the future -- the future being 2009! -- will look like:


Click = big

That's Darren Rowse of ProBlogger doing a special "Christmas party" live streaming videocast via UStream.

What was his big outlay to do it? His existing MacBook Pro! And the connection was via WiFi too!

He was in Australia. There were people all over the world tuning in. One person was from Brazil!

The dying dinosaurs of print have asked: "Well, how can we do an author tour for an eBook? There's no ... um, book for people to bring to a store!"

That's how. The author doesn't go to any store. He goes to where the eBook store is -- the entire Internet.

People can type questions. See and hear the writer respond. No one has to deal with bad weather or bad schedules. And the videos can be archived for people to see again later.

What about autographs? I did that earlier too.

Instead of sending a writer out on bad plane (or train or bus) trips to bad hotels and the mercy of weather, everyone can stay where they are -- the writer at home, the readers at home (or likely stealing bandwidth from work!). It's all win.

The writer can even, if so inclined, show the missus and child:


(Happy holidays, Mrs Rowse!)

Previously here:

Reference: Internet Video Chat
How Our Future Does Things
I Am Internationally Persecuted!
Live jkk & Chippy!

Dying Dinosaurs Of Print Slow Suicide

Read it and weep
The economic news couldn't be worse for the book industry. Now insiders are asking how literature will survive.

The end of days is here for the publishing industry -- or it sure seems like it. On Dec. 3, now known as "Black Wednesday," several major American publishers were dramatically downsized, leaving many celebrated editors and their colleagues jobless. The bad news stretches from the unemployment line to bookstores to literature itself.

"It's going to be very hard for the next few years across the board in literary fiction," says veteran agent Ira Silverberg. "A lot of good writers will be losing their editors, and loyalty is very important in this field."

Who was it that said, "If you want loyalty, get a dog"?

Yes, writers who are treated well are loyal. Stupid us. The rest of the world runs on money.

This is key:

Finally, experts suggest that publishers missed crucial opportunities to cope with digital books, Internet innovations and economic pressures. "The big houses proved incapable of looking at the future. I've always been struck at how relatively un-nimble the big houses are," says Tom Engelhardt, a consulting editor at Metropolitan books and the author of the prophetic novel "The Last Days of Publishing." He recently wrote an essay about the crisis at his Web site, TomDispatch.com, and says he predicted the crash for years -- but no one would listen.

Emphasis added by me.

He's right. Just ask the newspapers.

Here comes the future:

Neelan Choksi, Lexcycle's chief operating officer, agrees that the midlist will suffer in coming years. "There's going to be less support for smaller writers in the traditional publishing model, in the big buildings in Manhattan," he explained. "But self-publishing and digital books haven't been considered. This upheaval will cause many authors to look at the alternatives more seriously." The Stanza reader, for instance, stocks thousands of e-books at varying prices, from free public domain books to self-published titles to 40,000 titles from Fictionwise, one of the leading digital book vendors. That list includes a variety of bestsellers like David Wroblewski's "Story of Edgar Sawtelle," Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series and the nonfiction hit "Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World."

Emphasis added by me.

Lexcycle will wind up with a store of its own at some point. I hope they do it right, unlike Apple. (Stanza, by the way, just got a glowing PC Magazine review.)

What's needed is a WordPress-type thing, where authors can set up a site to flog their books. Basically, a blog with transactional capability. It has to all be blogging-easy, too. Writers don't want to be techies and web designers. In fact, I'm surprised WordPress itself hasn't added this yet.

This bit was a surprise to me. Writer Iain Levison (who still lacks a new website) alerted me to it via email this morning:

Rumors of publishing's demise are probably overstated, but the future of publishing may depend on what those laid-off editors, publicists and industry leaders do next. The morning after Black Wednesday, a publishing blogger and e-book aficionado named Mike Cane stirred up his readers with a bite-size manifesto on Twitter: "If the FIRED NY pubstaff are such hot fucking shit, let them coalesce and form an EBOOK-ONLY IMPRINT to crush their fmr employers." However callous this Twitter-versy seemed at the time, it posed an interesting challenge: Can the publishing world channel all of this collective anger, bewilderment and fear into industry-altering strategies?

Emphasis of me by me.

But really, that guy is a pain in the ass! I should know.

Still, that challenge holds. I'd like to see those book people get back into books -- as eBooks. Apple isn't doing writers any favors and we need book people.

We just don't need Big Corporate Dying Dinosaurs of Print book people.

And neither do the Big Corporations, either.

Writer Michael Muhammad Knight In NYT

Young Muslims Build a Subculture on an Underground Book

CLEVELAND — Five years ago, young Muslims across the United States began reading and passing along a blurry, photocopied novel called “The Taqwacores,” about imaginary punk rock Muslims in Buffalo.

“This book helped me create my identity,” said Naina Syed, 14, a high school freshman in Coventry, Conn.

A Muslim born in Pakistan, Naina said she spent hours on the phone listening to her older sister read the novel to her. “When I finally read the book for myself,” she said, “it was an amazing experience.”

The novel is “The Catcher in the Rye” for young Muslims, said Carl W. Ernst, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Springing from the imagination of Michael Muhammad Knight, it inspired disaffected young Muslims in the United States to form real Muslim punk bands and build their own subculture.

Emphasis added by me.

I just wanted to emphasize once again that this was a direct publishing Win. From photocopied novel to printed book to New York Times coverage and a movie. (And I await Soft Skull Press doing the eBook versions!)

“I’m a Muslim and I’m 100-percent American,” Ms. DeWulf said, “so I can criticize my faith and my country. Rebellion? Punk? This is totally American.”

The novel’s title combines “taqwa,” the Arabic word for “piety,” with “hardcore,” used to describe many genres of angry Western music.

For many young American Muslims, stigmatized by their peers after the Sept. 11 attacks but repelled by both the Bush administration’s reaction to the attacks and the rigid conservatism of many Muslim leaders, the novel became a blueprint for their lives.

Emphasis added by me.

There's the power of a writer.

Mr. Muhammad Knight was born an Irish Catholic in upstate New York and converted to Islam as a teenager. He studied at a mosque in Pakistan but became disillusioned with Islam after learning about the sectarian battles after the death of Muhammad.

He said he wrote “The Taqwacores” to mend the rift between his being an observant Muslim and an angry American youth. He found validation in the life of Muhammad, who instructed people to ignore their leaders, destroy their petty deities and follow only Allah.

After reading the novel, many Muslims e-mailed Mr. Muhammad Knight, asking for directions to the next Muslim punk show. Told that no such bands existed, some of them created their own, with names like Vote Hezbollah and Secret Trial Five.

Emphasis added by me.

He imagined it and readers created it.

At school, her Koran teacher threw chalk at her for requesting literal translations of the holy book, Ms. Arzay said. After she was expelled from two Muslim schools, her uncle gave her “The Taqwacores.”

“This book is my lifeline,” Ms. Arzay said. “It saved my faith.”

Emphasis added by me.

It just takes one writer to say the things he or she really feels to start something. That something can be helping people not see themselves as alienated or it can be creating an entire social movement.

That is the power of writers and writing.

This is an interesting report about writer Michael Muhammad Knight and the sub-culture his book has helped to form:



Previously here:

Two Books To Read By Michael Muhammad Knight

Apple Approves Of Shooting Nurses In The Face!

mj via Twitter informed me of a game available on the UK iTunes App Store, called Silent Hill: The Escape.

This is the listing at the UK App Store:


Click = big

In this not-so-charming little game, one of the things to do is shoot nurses in the face:



Don't look for it in the American App Store. I already did. It's not there.

That raises several questions:

1) Was it rejected for inclusion in the American App Store?

1a) If so, how can Apple approve it for the UK App Store?

2) If it's still pending approval for the American App Store, will it now get it?

3) How is shooting a nurse in the face not worse than using "objectionable" language?

4) If an argument is made that the nurse is "imaginary," guess what? So are the characters in an eBook!

5) Is provoking people to actively shoot nurses in the face better than passively reading, say, the word fuck in an eBook?

6) Does Apple at this point have any leg to stand on in terms of defining what's "objectionable" and what's not?

7) How can Apple claim a moral high ground in terms of eBooks when it continues to make epic profits from music and movies that are far worse than language in eBooks?

8) When will Apple stop making itself a hypocritical laughingstock?

Supplemental:

Silent Hill on App Store

Previously here:

God Bless Writer Derek Raymond
How Many Of THESE eBooks Will Apple Ban?
Apple Bans ANOTHER Book From App Store!

The POPE Endorses eBooks!

Sacred texts: Vatican embraces iTunes prayer book

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican is endorsing new technology that brings the book of daily prayers used by priests straight onto iPhones.

The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications is embracing the iBreviary, an iTunes application created by a technologically savvy Italian priest, the Rev. Paolo Padrini, and an Italian Web designer.

The application includes the Breviary prayer book - in Italian, English, Spanish, French and Latin and, in the near future, Portuguese and German. Another section includes the prayers of the daily Mass, and a third contains various other prayers.

After a free trial period in which the iBreviary was downloaded approximately 10,000 times in Italy, an official version was released earlier this month, Padrini said.

Don't be fooled. The Pope has the Final Say over there.

And dig it:

Pope Benedict XVI, a classical music lover who was reportedly given an iPod in 2006, has sought to reach out to young people through new media. During last summer's World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, he sent out mobile phone text messages citing scripture to thousands of registered pilgrims - signed with the tagline "BXVI."

Emphasis added by me.

Who knew?

The Last Man In England?

Pistol-whipped husband vows to get revenge on robbers who beat up his wife during raid on their home

A husband whose wife was beaten up by robbers during a raid on their home has vowed to get revenge if they meet again.

Graham Eaton, who was also pistol-whipped by the thugs, told how the couple were held at gunpoint in their £750,000 converted barn and warned they may be killed.

Mr Eaton's terrified wife, Lesley, had a knife held to her throat and the butt of a pistol smashed into her eye during the half-hour ordeal at their home in Wimborne, Dorset.

He was struck on the head with a handgun, tied up and beaten about the legs with a baseball bat.

The couple were convinced they were going to be tortured and killed until Mrs Eaton faked a heart attack and the three thugs fled.

Now Mr Eaton, who runs a successful horticultural business, has vowed to get revenge on their attackers.

He said: 'I can look after myself but I will never forgive them for what they did to my wife.

'I just want to get revenge for that and want to meet them man to man and see what they're really made of.

'I would kill them and I know I'm capable of doing that to them and I've told the police that.

'They are scum of the earth and should be exterminated - we are quite robust but what they did would kill someone fragile and older than us.'

Graham Eaton should be the next Prime Minister.

He'd sort out the shit I see daily in the horrifying headlines I get from England.

I'm telling you, if England goes under, we all do.

Previously here: -- points back to WordPress blog (for now)

England Needs Serious Sorting Out
This Smells Like … Hope
Happy Veteran’s Day 2008?
Writer Melanie Phillips: The Multicult Cult
England: Land Of The Doomed West
Writer Melanie Phillips
You’ve Been Google-Burgled!
What’s Up In England?!
Smile U Dumbo
Sick England: Happy Slapping
Disintegrating England: Soldiers Go Hungry!
England Continues To Fall
But They’ve Given Murdoch Great Footage!
You Decide: Greed Or Stupidity?
Bloody England
England: You Can Die For Nothing There
England Continues To Sink
Degenerate England
Britain: The Lion Stirs?
England Slides Into National Insanity
England Goes Totally Off Its Nut
England: The Coming Explosion
Britain’s Last Man
Britain Commits Suicide — Again!
Dark Future
Hey! I’m Not Homeless! I’m A Geek!
Cue My Blog’s Title Picture…

God Bless Writer Derek Raymond

Death at One's Elbow: Derek Raymond's Factory Novels

Their stories are baroque, bizarre, even repellent. The characters inhabit the outer limits of the fringe of those who can be thought of as society's victims, and yet the extremity of their tales marks them as doomed messiahs, their suffering meant to stand for, if not absolve, the suffering of all victims. And while the books end with the cases solved, the evildoers either dead or destroyed, there is no sense of triumph, no illusion that justice has been restored.

Apple is not worthy of having Derek Raymond grace its App Store in eBook form:

Writing about I Was Dora Suarez presents the temptation to play at the critical form of hard-boiled braggadocio, saying in effect to the reader, "I was tough enough to take it. Are you?"

I'm not sure I am.

Reading the book made me nauseous. Rereading it for this piece, I found it necessary to restrict my time with it to daylight hours. Reading it after dark gave me nightmares. Nor do I want to play at listing the specifics of the book, thereby feeding the kind of interest that will send people to it for a kick, the way they go see the latest piece of horror-movie torture porn. I don't know if I Was Dora Suarez can be called literature at all. If it's possible for a book to be utterly repugnant and deeply compassionate at the same time, then I Was Dora Suarez is.

Emphasis added by me.



I Was Dora Suarez is one of the grimmest, unrelentingly bleak books you will ever read -- and possibly that has ever been written.

And where the writer of the article isn't sure, I am: It is Art.

But if it were all to do over again, I would do it all over again; I know my hands are clean.

I felt like going outside for a minute, so walked down to the bottom of Palmyra Square, where long ago I had been sent down to see into the deaths of a young couple who had lived in the top flat at number eight. There had been no point in my going, really, because they were both dead, and there was nothing I could find out or add to what the Brighton police already knew, that they had been credit-card ripping and it was catching up with them --had caught up. They had a great lunch at Wheelers, where they had invited people over to their table for brandies, after which they walked hand in hand down the pebble beach where I had just been standing and then on out to sea. The sea did for them what they had asked it to do and then afterwards brought them back to the beach in its own time, wet as fish and green with weed, their faces greyish white and their arms still half trailing round each other, and I don't know why, but when I saw them like that in Brighton morgue, I was convulsed with what I felt in myself to be a rightful fury.

I looked out to sea again. It was the end of February, the twenty-sixth, and all at once the short afternoon had had enough; it scattered its way off towards the night chased by short, dirty clouds. I remember I got home to my wife Edie in the end at about two in the morning and she said: 'You look dreadful, what was it?'

'A double suicide at Brighton, boy and girl. Banks, credit cards. They asked the Factory to send someone down.'

'Why get in a state?' said Edie. 'It happens all the time, you've only to open a paper.'

'I know it does,' I said, 'and I always want to know why.'

'Well, that's what they pay you for, to find out, if you call that pay, what you draw.'

'That's what I've just been doing,' I said, 'and it isn't that, it's a question of two deaths down to a square of fucking plastic.'

'The pubic has to be protected,' she said.

I said: 'They were the public, you stupid woman.'

'They tried to get their hands into the till and it didn't work,' said Edie severely. That was always one of the troubles with my wife Edie. For her and for her father the low-grade police was beneath her socially; she wasn't the daughter of a big wheel in the fruiterer's trade for nothing, apples by the ton up from Kent. 'Scratch my back for me, will you?' I remember she said then. 'I've got an itch between my shoulder blades where I can't reach it.'

We went to bed and I said: 'I've seen them.'

'Seen what? Look, just settle, will you? Why won't you settle?'

'Seen their bodies,' I said.

'So?'

'The sea had turned them surprisingly fucking little,' I said.

'Oh?' she said. She added: 'I do wish you wouldn't swear.'

'You just can't help it in my job, Edie. Don't you see, the words sometimes take the place of tears.'

'I wish you'd just go to sleep,' she said, 'it's nearly four.'

'I can't, Edie,' I said. 'Oh, why can't you just be a wife to me for once, just hold me quietly for a while and don't say anything more just now.'

But she said: 'I think you really ought to know it, and Dad agrees with me, you're a dreadful load on me at times -- all this perturbed thinking of yours and you nothing but a detective sergeant who'll never go up in rank because you insist it isn't rank that matters.' She sat bolt upright in the bed, pointed to her stomach and screamed: 'Well, all right, then, if that's the way you want it, look at the load I'm carrying thanks to you, Mr Police Officer with the Lofty Ideas -- I think you're altogether too sensitive for the police sometimes, I really do, and now there's the child due in May with all the expenses it'll bring, and a fat lot you care! She's due on the twentieth, the doc says, and I tell you I am near the point when I don't want to know.'

But presently she lay down again and her voice faded; I was glad of that. That night I realised that I had married Edie for her fatal, extraordinary body, not her opinions. I understood that no body could ever be enough if it held opinions in dead opposition to my own. I already knew that I wanted the coming child, who was, for nine short years, to be my daughter Dahlia, far more than Edie did; I loved Dahlia even before she was born, which may have been why Edie always hated her, who knows, and my love for the child meant that I would always find a means of tolerating Edie on account of Dahlia; I would find some means of growing deaf. All I had wanted that night was to hold Edie against me in my vulnerable hour after that day in Brighton. It was her primitive security that I needed; just a fraction of what Edie's body was giving to the child she bore. That was all I needed to recover and so, through being reassured, feel enabled to get into perspective that greenish couple still in their trailing decomposed embrace, their swollen, expressionless faces nibbled by fish -- what I needed from Edie then was her kisses, her comfort, just for a few minutes, and so prove to me that love can banish the frozen, lazy rottenness of eyes that have been eight days underwater.

We all have our weak moments.

-- I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond; pgs. 34-36

But those eejits at the Apple App Store would deny you this.

I'd like the bluenoses at the Apple App Store to read I Was Dora Suarez. Maybe it would encourage them to suicide and thus improve the human species. At any rate, it'd get rid of them.

Hey, Apple App Store eejits, this applies to you lot:

[. . . ] Disinformation is invariably one of the most powerful weapons available to any regime whose members know perfectly well that they should never have been allowed to occupy the positions they do.

-- The Hidden Files by Derek Raymond; pg. 143

Emphasis added by me.

In other words, Apple, get some real fucking book editors in there to do eBooks.

Supplemental:

Derek Raymond tribute site

Previously here:

Writer Derek Raymond Tribute
Writer Derek Raymond

At the old blog:

Derek Raymond: He Makes All Others Look Like Shit

eBook Author Gaps Closing!

When I began The eBook Test blog back in July, one of the writers I searched for was Frank Herbert.

The result was pathetic.

Tonight, via a tweet I saw, I was prompted to go look at The Sony eBook Store for Frank Herbert.

I got this very, very exciting and pleasing result:


Click = big

Prices ranged from You're Kidding Me! to reasonable (e.g., mass-market paperback).

All of you lucky, lucky people getting a Sony Reader for Christmas are going to have a larger selection of books than was previously available!

Hmmm ... maybe after this blog dies on December 31, I should take another pass at The eBook Test blog to update listings.

Caliban's End Is POD Available

Following up on an earlier post, after Lulu sorted out all the problems they caused him, Paul F. Stewart reports he has a satisfying POD copy of his novel, What Lies Beneath, in his hands at last.

It looks like this:



Happy ending?

No, not near.

When you use a service such as Lulu, you are at its mercy.

If Stewart wonders why he's not getting any sales, it could be due to the fact Lulu apparently hasn't found time to actually list it.

Look at this pathetic search result:


Click = big

Despite searching both by title and "creator" (WTF?) name, what came up was not his book. Not even close. (I've redacted the result because the guy in it is not the subject of this post and can damn well get his own post pimpage somewhere else!)

This is not good for any writer.

Does Lulu care? Ya think?

They Keep Trying To Kill The Long Tail

Long Tail theory contradicted as study reveals 10m digital music tracks unsold

The internet was supposed to bring vast choice for customers, access to obscure and forgotten products - and a fortune for sellers who focused on niche markets.

But a study of digital music sales has posed the first big challenge to this “long tail” theory: more than 10 million of the 13 million tracks available on the internet failed to find a single buyer last year.

Emphasis added by me.

And:

However, a new study by Will Page, chief economist of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, the not-for-profit royalty collection society, suggests that the niche market is not an untapped goldmine and that online sales success still relies on big hits. They found that, for the online singles market, 80 per cent of all revenue came from around 52,000 tracks. For albums, the figures were even more stark. Of the 1.23 million available, only 173,000 were ever bought, meaning 85 per cent did not sell a single copy all year.

Emphasis added by me.

On the face of it, those figures are devastating and disheartening.

But I wondered: Was any marketing done for the unsold portion? Did anyone know they were there to be had?

And: What services were measured? I'd like someone to do a study of how much music is sold via MySpace and compare those bands against, say, the iTunes Store and Amazon's MP3 Store.

All this is directly applicable to writers.

Any writer, for example, who direct publishes an eBook and expects people to find out about it without any marketing is just asking for a bagful of disappointment.

Previously here:

The Long Tail: Not Entirely Discredited
Google Book Search: Medialoper FTW
More Long Tail Debate
The Long Tail: A Lie?

How Many Of THESE eBooks Will Apple Ban?

App Developer Strikes E-Book Deals With Major Publishers

ScrollMotion, a New York mobile app developer, has concluded deals with a number of major publishing houses, and is in talks with several others, to produce newly released and best-selling e-books as applications for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Publishers now on board include Houghton Mifflin, Simon & Schuster, Random House, Hachette and Penguin Group USA.

Having these big names is a big step forward for iTunes itself in becoming an e-book shop and the iPhone in becoming a legitimate e-book reader and competitor to products like the Kindle and the Sony E-Reader.

Emphasis added by me.

Cue maniacal laughter of Doom.

The first official books will begin to roll out Monday and include titles such as Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight," Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass" and a number of others by Christopher Paolini, Brad Meltzer and Scott Westerfeld.

There are already several e-book readers in the app store, as well as a number of out-of-copyright e-books, but ScrollMotion’s product is unique in that these are stand-alone and newer in-copyright titles and best-selling novels.

Each book is a separate application using Scroll Motion's new reader technology called Iceberg and is wrapped only in the FairPlay iTunes DRM, putting Apple directly into the e-book business by allowing them to pick up a certain percentage of each sale.

Emphasis added by me.

What? FairPlay DRM on eBooks?

FAIL!

Unlike other e-book applications, each title keeps the same pagination as the print book, while still allowing the reader to zoom in and scroll down as well as skipping ahead with a feature called "Book Skim." Current functionality also includes note taking, text search and the ability to purchase additional books using a recommendation service over a Wi-Fi connection.

Emphasis added by me.

That's some coding voodoo there.

On any other day, this news would be exciting.

Given Apple's propensity for being censorious, book-banning eejits, it's not.

They plan to eventually roll out the apps on both the Android and Blackberry platforms as well.

And so the eBook ball will be taken away from Apple.

Deservedly so!

2009: Dawn Of The eBook

Opinion: Will 2009 be the year of the eBook?

Will 2009 see mass market adoption of electronic book readers such as the wonder that is the Sony Reader?

For those of us on TechRadar that have had the pleasure of living with a Sony Reader in 2008, we can only hope that the coming years will see these wonderful gadgets find their ways into the hands of the millions of avid readers worldwide.

Robert McCrum, respected literary editor of The Observer, is also a huge fan of the e-book, posing the basic (but fundamentally vital) question this week: "will people carry on buying books?"

"Framed like that, it's a no-brainer," writes McCrum.

And:

While TechRadar largely agrees with McCrum's assertion that e-readers are currently "the kind of gizmos the trade will use to lighten its load (literally)" and that "the reading public has yet to make the switch" he is surely bang on the money when he claims that "the iPod moment" for books, while it has not yet occurred, is on the near future horizon.

Emphasis added by me.

Ironically, that "iPod moment" is now very unlikely to have anything to do with book-banning Apple!

The upcoming wireless Sony Reader will be a move towards that.

But I'm also keeping my eye on Palm too.

And who knows what Asus will do, if anything? Let's not forget the impetus for the original EeePC was to empower kids with an inexpensive computer. Could Asus do a US$99 eInk (or Pixel Qi) ePub-capable eBook reader? (And at $US99, would lack of wireless matter?)

Things aren't settled hardware-wise yet.

But bring on those ePub eBooks anyway!

Apple Bans ANOTHER Book From App Store!

And this time it's an eBook with nothing but words!

E-Book Banned from App Store for Obscene Content

David Carnoy's book, entitled Knife Music, was rejected twice by Apple. Yesterday, Apple deemed some of its content objectionable, saying the book does not follow the company's guidelines in its software-development kit, according to Carnoy (who is also the writer behind CNET's Fully Equipped electronics column).

One line in particular, where a teenage girl uses expletives during a romantic encounter, is at the core of Apple's objections.

"The app was resubmitted last week, and the only reason cited for the rejection was because of the obscene content," Carnoy said.

Emphasis added by me.

Why is he surprised?

"And furthermore, there's 'explicit' content all over iTunes, with lots of rap music (they have the 'explicit' bug on those items). And obviously, Apple does serve up some R-rated movies," Carnoy added. "Beyond that, Apple sells audiobooks through iTunes that feature profanities. It has plenty of best sellers that are in the same genre as my book (Michael Connelly's Brass Verdict, for instance). So, obviously, the whole thing is hypocritical and unfair. My book is R-rated at best. It's not porn."

Welcome to the Apple App Store of Hypocrisy, Carnoy!

Previously here:

Direct Publishing Via POD: A Primer (David Carnoy article)
WHY Freedom Of Speech MATTERS, Dammit! Part Three
Sony eBook Store: Publishers Portal
2010: Back In Your Box, Bitch
WHY Freedom Of Speech MATTERS, Dammit! Part Two
WHY Freedom Of Speech MATTERS, Dammit!
Takiji Kobayashi: Writer’s Revenge
Murderdrome: Eleven Years Old!
Print: Dying. And The Net: No Future?
Apple And A Tale Of Two Bannings
Apple Forfeits eBooks By Banning A Comic Book!

eBook Winners: RH And S&S

Random House recently announced it will increase its eBook offerings thanks to exploding sales.

The publisher already has more than 8,000 books in the electronic format and will have a digital library of nearly 15,000. The new round of e-books is expected to be completed within months; excerpts can be viewed online through the publisher's Insight browsing service.

And now Simon & Schuster announces it's been a big eBook winner too.

Simon & Schuster expects to have nearly quadrupled e-book sales by the end of 2008, according to its c.e.o. Carolyn Reidy. In her end-of-year letter to staff, Reidy said that in response to the growing demand the publisher was making an additional 5,000 titles available.

This is good news, but still not the best news.

Thousands of titles sounds great, but there have already been that available and I've noted significant gaps in writer collections and entire authors not yet available in eBook format at The eBook Test blog.

I don't think these moves will make a significant dent in that deficit.

I think for every current title one of these publishers releases as an eBook, anywhere between five to ten of the mid- and back- list should be released too. Stop allowing Google to steal from writers!

One thing I have to comment about is Random House's earlier announcement that it's changing the formula to calculate royalties to writers.

I've stayed more or less mum about this but now I think it's time for me to take a stand: It's a good thing.

Yes, I know it will cause immediate pain to writers, but the Right Now isn't my concern. I take the Long View.

Random House is recognizing that eBooks cannot continue to be sold at price parity with printed versions. The majority of book buyers will not stand for that. I don't stand for that.

So lower prices are the future.

But with these lowered prices will come many more sales. I'm convinced of that.

Take the pain today, writers, for tomorrow's better profits.

Will Mac OS X Have THE ePub Program For Writers?

One of the big frustrations for writers who wish to direct publish eBooks using the industry-standard ePub file format is the complexity of that format and the current expense of the tools. Basically, unless you're a real techie, you need to be a professional typesetter because what the on-shelf choices currently boil down to is the pricey Adobe InDesign.

Last week I learned of a new desktop publishing package for Mac OS X called iStudio Publisher.

I immediately read the description of it and emailed the publisher to ask them to consider adding ePub file output support. This led to the revelation by that publisher that another program is under development, called iStudio Bookbuilder -- which will be specifically for building eBooks and which will also feature ePub file creation!



Without divulging any information about the state of its development, let me quote some of an email I received today:

[I]t will be very similar to iStudio Publisher, which is focussed on drawing / layouts, and turning the focus more to writing. There will be lots of features for writers, such as allowing the writer to make notes and save URLs against certain parts of the text, auto indexing, advanced stylesheets, outputting to ePub and many more features.

We aim to sell Bookbuilder at $149 -- however, we will give a discount to early adopters of iStudio Publisher -- and the two file types will be compatible with each other.

That sounds wonderful!

The price is affordable and it sounds as if they're thinking beyond static book-like files, with the ability to tap on URLs to reach out to the Internet. That would be especially helpful for non-fiction eBooks that are tied into timely information.

A.D.A.S.

Always Do A Scan.

I had something really slowing down this PC today.

I ran Ad-Aware 2008, because that's the fastest triage scan. avast! anti-virus takes the entire day.

And, lo! There was a trojan downloader!

Quarantined, rebooted, and better.

I'm taking most of the blogging day off.

And there are now only ten calendar days remaining to this blog.

Minus Christmas, only nine days.

I Hat Proofreading! I Hade It!!

The impotence of of proofreading



-- via Twitter from SteveAverill

STFU! No, YOU STFU!

oh just shut the fuck up already

That's a blog post headline from literary agent Janet Reid.

And the post opens this way:

Well I have more than a decade of experience in publishing. In fact I have almost two. And I've got one thing to say to this: shut the fuck up already.

Now that is an agent.

And I've looked at some other posts and I'm surprised to find she's the agent of John Reisinger, whose Master Detective book (a must read!) I posted about at the old blog. That was before I included book covers, so let me correct that oversight now:


(Makes an excellent holiday gift, btw!)

And oooops! Further Small World Alert: I shredded her a bit in a prior post here: Kindle-holics Irk Me

Now she'll tell me to just shut the fuck up!

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #480: FAIL!

Situation report: global economy, December 2008

What’s next?

Viewpoints about the crisis have coalesced into three camps.

1. The “normal global recession” camp. Just another cycle, US GDP down perhaps -3% peak to trough.

2. The “worst recession since the 1930’s” camp. A bad scene, but the world’s governments are now on the job. Fiscal and monetary policy will do the job, again. US GDP down 5% or so. See this example.

3. The “worse than worst” scenario. Government policy might not work — or it might work but only with long lags. Uncertainty rules; the outcome is unknowable.

I don't give a damn what opinions have coalesced around as "possible" outcomes.

There is only one outcome: Utter collapse and misery for hundreds and hundreds of millions.

How many of you know the fraud is on a worldwide scale of a quadrillion dollars?

How many of you yet understand that fraud was the everyday way business was being done?

How many of you think we'll be a placid population while undergoing massive starvation and panic?

Let me try to explain the situation in a manner I think everyone can understand.

Your Windows XP PC has been running for several hours. It's really a unit a few years old, but that's what you have to deal with. Firefox has been running because you've been on the Internet all that time.

With your limited CPU and RAM, every time a new browser tab is opened, you risk everything seizing up. It's almost like Browser Roulette: Which tab will lead to a website with so much Flash and Javascript crap that it will totally freeze Firefox?

Our economic system is old. Every new fraud has been a new browser tab. The system has frozen. It is going to crash.

Now, when you reach that point with your PC, what do you do? Do you just take the PC and throw it away? Of course not.

With XP and Firefox there are two choices:

1) Bring up Task Manager and kill the Firefox application. But that doesn't necessarily free up fragmented RAM, so things could still run slow when Firefox is launched again.

2) You kill Firefox via Task Manager and then reboot the PC.

You're still using the same system, but now everything has a fresh start.

This is what needs to be done with the entire worldwide economic system from all the way at the very bottom to the top.

Worldwide economic reboot.

The only way that can happen is for every government to agree that we've all screwed up. The only way out is a synchronized reboot of the system.

I call that 777: The total forgiveness of all debts, period.

Adam Smith was wrong.

And we are not not not going to have worldwide suffering to prove a goddammed point of ideology.

Ideas are created to serve people.

We do not create ideas to enslave us.

I am not offering this up as a suggestion, either.

I am telling you that every single one of you is going to recognize this as the only way out of this mess, period. It's inevitable, it's unavoidable, and it's the only only only thing that will work.

Everyone is going to left holding a bag of shit at the end, one way or the other, from very rich to very poor.

But our nations will be intact, our infrastructure will be intact, the flows of information will remain intact, our populations will not be sick and dying and frustrated, and the massive release of productive energy this will create will be unprecedented in all of human history.

Recognize that.

I pray you all do so before the chaos really begins and gets out of hand.

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #479: Expats

End of the Eldorado dream: A plunging pound and property crash have left thousands of expat Britons on the breadline

This is the key paragraph:

What makes matters more worrying still is that for many there is no way out of this nightmare. The housing market has gone into freefall, with negative equity now widespread.

Properties are being marked down by as much as 50 per cent - and still not shifting. New building has virtually stopped.

Couples are being forced apart, as husbands or wives head home in a desperate attempt to find work.

Emphasis added by me.

That one sentence is what millions of you will be paraphrasing in 2009 and 2010:

What makes matters more worrying still is that for many there is no way out of this nightmare.

Emphasis added by me.

Those are the extreme cases. What is so extraordinary about the situation unfolding on the Costas is the suffering of the silent majority. Those most hard-hit are individuals who least expected to find themselves in financial difficulties.

Having worked hard all their lives, they took the decision to move to Spain to improve the quality of their lives in retirement.

Emphasis added by me.

'None of us came to live in Spain without money,' she points out. 'Unlike Britain, which has an open door policy for anyone who arrives without even a penny to their name, we knew that if you came to Spain you had to have money to survive.

'We brought our own money with us and we invested it wisely. We bought our own homes and we have never taken a penny from the state. But what is happening now is that we are being buried by economic factors beyond our control. It's really worrying.'

Emphasis added by me.

But when they decided the Spanish lifestyle was not for them and put the property on the market, they were in for a rude shock.

'I never really settled in Spain,' explains Jan, 68. 'I missed my grown-up children and Barrie had sick relatives in the UK who needed looking after, so we made the decision to move home. This time last year we put the house on the market for £228,000 - but there has been no interest in it,' she says.

'Previously, you would have just dropped the price a bit, but because of the collapse of the market we have been told that that would make no difference.

'We need to make enough to pay off our £100,000 mortgage and to buy a small flat back in England, but there aren't even property developers out there willing to take it off our hands. As it stands now, our dream house is worthless.'

If that weren't bad enough, the couple are struggling to make ends meet. Barrie's pension has fallen by 300 euros a month, while their mortgage repayments and everyday costs have all gone up.

'Taking everything into consideration, we have worked out that after all our outgoings in November 2007 we had 310.41 euros left over every month,' says Jan.

'Now, in December 2008, we are minus 154.24 euros every month.'

Emphasis added by me.

Look at how quickly things can change.

How will it change for you?

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #478: I.D.

Premise: The rich will not be amenable to any solution that essentially reboots the entire worldwide economic system and leaves them holding a bag of shit. A bag of shit, mind you, that everybody else will also wind up holding.

Solving that is not easy ...


Click = big

... why don't you try it?

Especially all you whiny crybabies who weep for "solutions."

This is your cue. Go!

Quote: Filmmaker Eugene Jarecki

Why 2009 Could Eat Barack Obama Alive

Anyone who thinks that Republicans own the copyright on war or on corporate cronyism in America hasn't read a history book.

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #477: Biden

Can Drudge get any more stupid than that Scrooge crack?

It links to a George Stephanopoulos blog to pimp Sunday's This Week interview with Biden.

"The economy is in much worse shape than we thought it was in," Biden told me during an exclusive interview -- his first since becoming vice president-elect -- to air this Sunday on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

"There is no short run other than keeping the economy from absolutely tanking. That's the only short run," Biden told me.

Emphasis added by me.

Well, first, the economy is in worse shape than 99.999% of people realize. And in our government, that figure is even higher for widespread ignorance.

And what's the prescription from Doctor Obama?

Biden said he has canvassed Republican and Democratic members of Congress about a second "big" and "bold" stimulus package . He said the Obama team is focused on creating jobs and spending on energy and information technology infrastructure.

"Every single person I've spoken to agrees with every major economist. There is going to be real significant investment, whether it's $600 billion or more, or $700 billion, the clear notion is, it's a number no one thought about a year ago," he said.

Yeah, well, everyone already knows this.

What no one wants to face is that it won't work.

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #476: Rules?

Into the Economic Abyss

Many people -- including yours truly -- have looked to events of 80 years ago to try and figure out how things might play out in future. But maybe it isn't necessary to go back that far. There have been other economic implosions in more recent times that might offer lessons that are just as illuminating. In fact, one of my regular visitors, Jason, suggested that I check out a blog, Surviving in Argentina, published by an anonymous Argentinean, which offers up some disturbing but absorbing accounts of life in that beleaguered Latin American nation. After reading a post written a few weeks ago, entitled "Despair in Once-Proud Argentina," it made me wonder whether we will see an equally calamitous ending here.

If this account doesn't make you cry, please do the rest of us a favor and kill yourself. You are too deluded to face reality -- or you're one of the sociopathic pathogens infecting this nation.

A few clips:

"I can't explain it, and maybe I never will be able to[.] [. . .] But maybe you can start to figure out why. You have to wonder: Is all this really happening? Are our politicians so corrupt? Are we now really so poor? Have the banks really stolen our money? And the answers are yes, yes, yes and yes."

And:

"Am I proud of what we did? No, of course not. Would I do it again? Yes, of course. You start to live by different rules."

Emphasis in the original.

With each post, I am trying to plant into your head in ways that cannot be avoided how absolutely horrific the breakdown of our advanced society can -- will -- be.

Because I don't want it to happen to us!

"You can't know what it's like to see your children hungry and feel helpless to stop it," she said. "The food is there, in the grocery store, but you just can't afford to buy it anymore. My husband keeps working, but he keeps bringing home less and less. We never had much, but we always had food, no matter how bad things got. But these are not normal times."

Emphasis added by me.

I paused while creating this post to read the comments for it. That caused me to add my own Comment, which is a fitting way to end this post:

Jesus Christ.

If I read one more whiny crybaby "Offer us solutions!!!" post, I'll scream. OK, I'm screaming NOW.

WTF is wrong with you lot?

You've been given the very rare privilege here of seeing the breakdown of an advanced society into absolute horror. Some of you are thinking, unsaid, "Oh, it's just those effing spicks, that's how they are!" The other lot are thinking, "Hey, my gun will be my passport!"

Both of you are unfit for survival with what's coming up.

Your "solution" -- such as it will be -- is YOU. What the hell do you think made this country, a pack of crybabies telling the proto-revolutionaries, "Oh, give us a solution EXCEPT overthrowing Old George"?!

Your money is shit.
Your gold is shit.
Your gun is shit.

Start there and YOU can begin to CREATE some solutions.

FA, thanks much for this post. I'm linking to it.

And so I have.

Update: For those who will stupidly dismiss this account because it's from a "Doom site," here's the original source: The Washington Post!

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #475: Know Future

Yeah, I steal from Max Headroom for that.

Incredibly, I missed this huge news. It came out Thanksgiving Day. I was off the PC that day and I think the next few days I was not in a Post More Doom Mood.

But this is serious. It's from CitiGroup and it confirms what I've written here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.

Citigroup says gold could rise above $2,000 next year as world unravels

The bank said the damage caused by the financial excesses of the last quarter century was forcing the world's authorities to take steps that had never been tried before.

This gamble was likely to end in one of two extreme ways: with either a resurgence of inflation; or a downward spiral into depression, civil disorder, and possibly wars. Both outcomes will cause a rush for gold.

Emphasis added by me.

This is CitiGroup saying this. Citigroup!

More:

"The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they have pushed into the system will feed though into an inflation shock.

"Or it will not work because too much damage has already been done, and we will see continued financial deterioration, causing further economic deterioration, with the risk of a feedback loop. We don't think this is the more likely outcome, but as each week and month passes, there is a growing danger of vicious circle as confidence erodes," he said.

"This will lead to political instability. We are already seeing countries on the periphery of Europe under severe stress. Some leaders are now at record levels of unpopularity. There is a risk of domestic unrest, starting with strikes because people are feeling disenfranchised."

Emphasis added by me.

Let that first sentence sink in:

The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done.

Emphasis added by me.

What kind of world is it going to be?

A living fucking horror, is what.

And where I break with CitiGroup is over their assertion gold will be a "safe haven."

Bullshit.

Sure, it'll run up in terms of value against currencies -- but gold is otherwise shit.

You're starving. You have a wad of gold. The guy next to you is cooking Last Chance Stew, made out of rats he's trapped, killed, and skinned. Your stomach has been empty for three days.

What fucking good is your precious metal?


Money and guns: Both worthless. Money is shit. And you'll never have enough ammo. And do you really want to go to your grave having shot other people to death? It's not like the movies!

Previously here: (gold)

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #419: Gold 2
Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #409: Gold
Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #407: $2K/oz.
Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #248: Gold Coins

The Loudness Of Dust Settling

The Axe, the Book, and the Ad

A friend (and author) called me recently after visiting a large bookstore in Northern California and, his voice suitably hushed, told me that, on a weekday, he had been the only customer in sight. That's typical of the nightmarish tales about traffic in bookstores and book sales now ripping through my world as 2008 ends.

Emphasis added by me.

Why is this a surprise?

Back on June 20, 2008, I posted:

Even at Shakespeare & Co.’s NoHo store (which used to have great stock; and which now doesn’t).

But they weren’t.

And then I looked around.

And, dear God almighty!, the stores should have had tumbleweeds running through them because they were like abandoned ghost towns!

This was all in Manhattan.

This has never, ever happened before.

Even in past recessions, I’ve seen people in books stores. The places were alive. Now they are dead.

Which now really amps up my contempt for the shitheads running the dying dinosaurs of print.

Do you ever get out of your fucking offices and visit the places that actually sell your books?

How could you miss the fact the loudest noise you'll hear in those bookstores is the sound of dust settling?

eBooks grew at over seventy percent in the last year.

Why isn't that a big enough hint for you lot to change course? To sound the Red Alert klaxon and get busy as all hell adapting to the new marketplace? Is it your intent to avoid being where your customers are?

All of you former publishing employees -- again: If you're such hot shit, Get It Done.

eSlick eBook Reader: GTFOH! Srsly!

Via Twitter from booksin140:



ESlick E-Book Reader Cheapest, Ugliest Yet

From the Specifications page:

eBook Formats: PDF, TXT, Any printable document(after converted to PDF using included software)

I have one primary question: Why are you bringing this piece of shit to market?

PDF and TXT?

Are you all out of your fucking minds?

Why are you going to add to the existing confusion about eBook file formats by releasing something that can read none of them?

What greed-infected jackass at your company thought this shit was a good idea?

What, you got wind that "eBooks are the New New Thing" and decided to pickpocket a few pennies from suckers wandering down that garden path?

Do you really think there aren't people out here in Blogland who can't see this shit for what it is -- and won't call it the shit that it is?

Well, surprise! This is your lucky day. You've just run into the one person in Blogland who will call it the shit that it is!

This is an embarrassment.

No, really. It is. You look like a pack of doofuses.

Call it a mistake. Claim you all had a collective aneurysm and this somehow got loose onto the Internets because someone hit Send instead of dialing 911 for an ambulance.

Anything.

Just get rid of it.

It's not good for one fucking thing, no matter what the price.

And that slugline? "Save money to buy more e-books"? -- to what? Read on a Sony Reader? Your piece of shit can't read eBooks!

Here's a more honest slugline: "Save your money for a Sony Reader."

Srsly.

Photo Album: Snow Attack 2008 War Journal

See this post at the WordPress blog.

Because I'm sick of blogging.

Photo Album: Snow Attack 2008

Of course, after I got a fresh AAA battery in it and tortured the crapcam back into taking pictures, the blitz let up. Still, here are some photos of this horrible and unprovoked attack from the merciless Canadianistas and the heartless Arcticturians.





It's clear I will be taking my life in my hands as I venture out to run to the store to stock up on war supplies.

Doesn't much matter.

Doing this blog is sucking the life out of me as it is. Hurry up, damn you, December 31st!!

Direct Publishing Via POD: A Primer

Via Twitter from slipdown:

Self-publishing a book: 25 things you need to know

Against the advice of my agent, I began perusing the big self-publishing companies' Web sites and evaluating what they had to offer. Then I started poking around blogs and message boards to get customer testimonials. What I found was a veritable minefield with roads that forked in every direction and very few clear answers.

What follows is a very long article dense with information.

One bit I want to emphasize:

The only giveaway that you're dealing with a self-published book would be if the cover were poorly designed -- which, unfortunately, is too often the case.

See why the cover matters?

Previously here:

Covers: The Science!
The Topic Of Covers ... Again!
Writers: Would You Call A Doctor Or A Healer?
eBooks: The Issue Of Covers, Again
Free eBook: Password Incorrect
Book Covers: Murder
Book Cover: What?!
eBooks: More About Covers
eBooks: A Cover Test
They Don’t Write These Anymore

Leverage: The Two Horse Job

See this post at the WordPress blog.

This Blog Really Needed A New Category

It should have been: Too Fucking Stupid To Continue Living!

Homeowner Allegedly Tried to Sell Pierced 'Gothic' Kittens on Web

Officers with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals removed three kittens and a cat Wednesday from a home in Ross Township, just outside of outside Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

An investigation into the pierced kittens started about a week ago when a man from another state saw "gothic kittens" being sold on eBay, a SPCA official in Luzerne County told The Times Leader.

Get this bit:

Charges are likely against the homeowner, whose name was not released, Morrison said.

I hope the Internet Mob tracks you down. I hope you hang yourself Christmas Eve as a present to all of us.

You are definitely Too Fucking Stupid To Continue Living!

R.I.P. Majel Barrett Roddenberry

Majel Roddenberry, 'First Lady of Star Trek,' dies

NEW YORK (AP) -- Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, has died. She was 76. Roddenberry, an actress who appeared in numerous "Star Trek" TV shows and movies, died Thursday of leukemia at her home in Bel-Air, Calif., her representative said.

At Roddenberry's side were family friends and her only son, Eugene Roddenberry Jr. Gene Roddenberry died in 1991.

Her romance with Roddenberry earned her the title "The First Lady of Star Trek." A fixture in the "Star Trek" franchise, her roles included Nurse Christine Chapel in the original "Star Trek," Lwaxana Troi in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and the voice of the USS Enterprise computer in almost every spin-off of the 1966 cult series. She recently reprised the voice role in the upcoming "Star Trek" film directed by J.J. Abrams.

Of course, being the boss's wife, we never saw her true acting skills because our eyes were clouded by the nepotism factor. Decades later, when she became the outrageous Auntie Mame-like mother of Counselor Deanna Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation, she wowed all of us and heartily dispelled that original prejudice.

Blog Notes: Another Short Day

Bleh. I'm not pleased by this. But an afternoon appointment looms.

When I get back, I hope to do the blog post for Leverage episode 3.

Meanwhile, the hell with global warming. Did you know our magnetic field is dying and we might turn into the next Mars?

Lost Movie: Quest For Love

I was in YouTube, digging around for something totally unrelated, when I got it into my head to put "Quest for Love" into the Search box.

I had to pick my jaw off the floor and superglue in back in place when the first ten minutes of this lost movie came up as a result!

Watch this.

It was never widely sold on VHS. It's never been put on DVD (where are you, Criterion?!). It's very hard to get now as a used VHS tape.

This movie was based on a story called Random Quest by John Wyndham. The original short story is a tale told in conversational flashback fashion and really lacks the charm and faster pace of the movie adaptation (which is by Terrence Feely!).

The script moves along at a very fast pace in the beginning, as you'll see. The bulk of the film is a wonderful little character study of alternate existence, missed chances, redemption, and lost opportunities. It's the direct precursor, in film form, of Somewhere in Time.

I'm lucky to have a used VHS of it from eBay many years back (which I still haven't watched -- my Backlog Pile is big!!).

It's absolutely criminal that so few people know of this movie and that it's not easily available in pristine condition on DVD.

Enjoy. But I warn you, you'll want to see the rest of it after this.

QUEST FOR LOVE (1971)



At the old blog:

Movies You Must See And I Guarantee You Haven’t!

Writer Mitzi Szereto Is Fun Reading

What with Doom and other things, it's been a while since I've been able to get to her blog. So it was a real treat to have four long posts waiting there to be read.

Shot on the South Bank

How Many Chavs Does It Take To Screw in a Lightbulb?

Wrecked on the Isle of Wight (Minus a Ship)

Facebook: The Anti-Social Social Network

I don't like reading long things on the PC screen, but Mitzi is always an exception.

I'm telling you, she'll be the next Bill Bryson.

Or really: The first Mitzi Szereto.

Maud Newton Cracks Me Up

Soft Skull Press eBooks Soon!

Happy happy joy joy!



Gimme!!

Soft Skull Press website

Stanza Reader: Not Just iPhone?

Here's a tantalizing tweet:

TONS Of Free eBooks

Well, it would be tons if you put all these on nasty paper.

Finding Free eBooks
All Free eBooks, All The Time.

It detoured me and devoured a half hour as I grabbed free eBook after free eBook. There is plenty.

All legal too.

-- via writer Richard Herley

Previously here:

An Entire Site For Free eBooks!

Writer J.A. Konrath: WATNS

Writing: The Temporary Career

I'm not going to name names in this post. Partly because it would be mean. Partly because I'm only speculating on the reasons why, and have no real proof.

But I still wanted to talk about something that's rampant in the word of publishing. It's also rampant in other media like radio, TV, movies, and music.

It's Where Are They Now Syndrome.

The scariest thing about WATNS is how quickly it seems to occur. When my first novel, Whiskey Sour, was published in 2004, I did as much self-promotion as I could. Going to writing conventions, signing at bookstores and libraries, I met dozens of writers who also had new books out. Some were debut authors, like me. Some were veterans who seemed like they'd be around forever.

But here it is, a scant four and a half years later, and I can name more than thirty of these authors who didn't publish anything in the past year, and in some cases the past two years.

It's strange that I came across this post today.

Just last night I was wondering about a writer who made a Big Splash: Jane Mendelsohn. According to that wikipedia link, her last book was in 2000. Eight years have passed. What gives?

And then there's this ongoing publishing mystery surrounding an infamous Salon article: The confessions of a semi-successful author.

In my reading, I've come across books I've loved by writers who didn't go on to publish anything else. It's been a frustration of mine for a long time.

This is why I am an eBook militant. It's your work. It's your life. It's your career. It's your calling. Be in charge of it.

Quote: Writer Martin Millar

More of My Backlist Unleashed on the World

A brief story about when I was writing Lux the Poet: I was living in a small council flat in Brixton. I shared the flat with a primary school teacher, who was rarely there, and a young man who was a serious alcoholic, as was his boyfriend. They were continually drunk, probably too drunk to have sex, but they were both fond of spanking. Being so drunk, they weren't concerned about privacy, and used to perform, or attempt to perform, spanking sessions in the living room. Meanwhile I stayed in my own room, writing Lux the Poet on an old word-processor. So I could hear the spanking, which would have been strange enough anyway, but because of their extreme drunkenness and lack of co-ordination, it happened at an unbelievably slow rate. I'd write one sentence of Lux, and hear a vague slapping noise. And then I'd write a bit more, and after a few more sentences, there be another spanking noise, followed by some loud struggling as they fell off the couch, and scrambled around for their cans of special brew. And then, some time later, there's be another vague slapping sound. Really, you wouldn't believe that any spanking could possibly be carried on in such a slow and disorganised fashion. Sometimes he'd actually miss the target, which you'd think would be practically impossible. Hours later I'd find them collapsed, semi-naked and unconscious on the living room floor. Both of them by this time quite emaciated young men, from alcohol abuse. I was pleased when I moved out of that flat.

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #474: Cheer

Aw, in these dark times, I thought I'd post a happy, fun video that will make all of us get in the proper spirit of the times!

Watch it completely.

Enjoy.

GIVE ME MY TIME MACHINE, DAMN YOU!!

This is so important, I'm ripping off the entire news report.

Swiss watch found in 400-year-old tomb

Archeologists in China are baffled after finding a tiny Swiss watch in a 400-year-old tomb.

The watch ring was discovered as archeologists were making a documentary with two journalists from Shangsi town.

"When we tried to remove the soil wrapped around the coffin, a piece of rock suddenly dropped off and hit the ground with a metallic sound,? said Jiang Yanyu, former curator of the Guangxi Autonomous Region Museum.

"We picked up the object, and found it was a ring. After removing the covering soil and examining it further, we were shocked to see it was a watch."

The time was stopped at 10:06am, and on the back was engraved the word "Swiss", reports the People's Daily.

Local experts say they are confused as they believe the tomb had been undisturbed since it was created during the Ming dynasty 400 years ago.

They have suspended the dig and are waiting for experts to arrive from Beijing and help them unravel the mystery.

Emphasis added by me.



There it is.

Proof time travel exists!

Now give me my goddammed machine so I can go back to 1960!!!

Apple's Marketing Blunder Of 2009

Apple CEO Jobs absent from Macworld lineup

With clarification and more details:

Apple Announces Its Last Year At Macworld, Steve Jobs Not Delivering Keynote

Hey, no one has to tell me the economy is total shit.

But this is huge mistake.

It telegraphs:

1) No Big New Product (goodbye, iPod Air/iPod Touchbook!)

2) It crushes the spirits of all Apple/Mac lovers

3) It leaves the field wide open for Palm to dominate the spotlight in January

Palm!

Can you imagine the near-maniacal exuberance that's taking place in Palm HQ right now -- as they realize they now have a clear field? As all those worries evaporate about Apple crushing their CES unveiling?

Here's the reaction from Twitter ... look at the progression!



Click=big



It hit The New York Times!

And then the Big One:



Meanwhile over at Palm HQ:


The Media Spotlight will be all ours!!!!

Blog Notes: Another Short Day

Weep or dance. Your choice.

I have an afternoon appointment that will probably devour the best blogging hours.

Only fifteen days left to this blog anyway.

Well, minus no-blog day of Christmas, only fourteen.

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #473: Addicts

Downturn Spurs "Survival Panic" for Some in the U.S.

A paralegal, recently laid off, wanted to get back at the "establishment" that he felt was to blame for his lost job. So when he craved an expensive new tie, he went out and stole one.

The story, relayed by psychiatrist Timothy Fong at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital, is an example of the rash behaviors exhibited by more Americans as a recession undermines a lifestyle built on spending.

In the coming months, mental health experts expect a rise in theft, depression, drug use, anxiety and even violence as consumers confront a harsh new reality and must live within diminished means.

"People start seeing their economic situation change, and it stimulates a sort of survival panic," said Gaetano Vaccaro, deputy clinical director of Moonview Sanctuary, which treats patients for emotional and behavioral disorders. "When we are in a survival panic, we are prone to really extreme behaviors."

Emphasis added by me.

That's a smart move: adding a shoplifting arrest to your background check!

"We don't buy products, we buy feelings," Vaccaro said. "We're buying the anticipation of the feeling that we think that product or service is going to give us."

I can see what my future will be like.

I'll be surrounded by tens of millions of insane bastards addicted to spending who are going out of their fucking minds from cold turkey withdrawal.

Many of you will die.

Many more of you will need killing.

If you can't adjust to little money, you're no damned good to yourself -- or the human race.

How Writers Write Writing #2

Previously here:

This Is Your Sanity Prescription
How Writers Write Writing
Today’s Advice For Writers

Palm: Revenge Of The Nerdi

See this post at the WordPress blog.

Nano Fondle: Sony Reader PRS-505 Vs. 700

This morning I was in lower Manhattan and made it a point to stop into the Borders down there.

Sony has upgraded their locked-down Sony Reader kiosks to now display both available models: the PRS-505 and the PRS-700.

People can now have an immediate side-by-side comparison.

Let's get the big issue out of the way: The eInk is darker on the 700 than the 505. The contrast is less and it's all rather unfortunately murky. Mind you, this is with both units standing straight up with light shining down on them -- not with light directly on them.

Still, for sharpness and contrast, the 505 wins.

I understand why too:

1) The 700 screen is recessed to accommodate the sidelights

2) The 700 screen is beneath a touchscreen

Both of these will tend to make the screen feel slightly "underwater" and also affect sharpness.

On the other hand, it really is keen to flip through eBook pages with a side-swipe of the finger, to select an eBook by touching it, to scroll through the new Library Shelf by running a finger along the right side of the screen. These are things -- along with Search and Notes -- that can't be dismissed. (And, yes, iPhone owners, I know these things are available on that. But I'm discussing the Sony Reader here.)

I had zero trouble with the touchscreen, by the way. It was totally and speedily responsive. Just like an iPhone!

The 700 overall feels peppier than the 505. There is not so great a difference in page turn refresh -- perhaps a fraction of a second. What tends to make page-turning on the 700 less stark is what I raised at the beginning: the reduced screen contrast.

Call up the menu to in/de-crease font size and it's immediately responsive. It's nonchalant in displaying its strength for tasks like that. It's overall a pleasure to use, without any sensation of it being underpowered.

The 700's screen seems a step back to the original 500. But there's the increased speed and touchscreen and other features to compensate. People bought the original 500 despite its reduced contrast. I think the same will happen with the 700 too.

And judging from the interest I saw people elicit for the Sony Reader later on at J&R, I think Sony is going to have a damned good number of sales this holiday season.

Blog Notes: Late Start Today

Deal with it.

Only sixteen days left to this blog anyway.

White Castle, Brooklyn, NY

Where the scene from Saturday Night Fever was shot.

I was there that night.

Long gone. One of the victims of the Yuppie Eighties.

Photo stolen, of course, off the Internet.

The Spirit Of "Baghdad Bob" Lives!

Video: Reporter Throws Shoes At Bush



Apparently most people have forgotten the sacred vow uttered by The Greatest PR Person In All History: Mohammed Saïd al-Sahaf, colloquially referred to by his fans and admirers (like me!) as "Baghdad Bob."

This guy daily stood before the world's assembled press and mocked the invasion of Iraq, defied the observations of the entire world, and came up with some stunningly-brilliant lines.

One of them was:

We will welcome them with bullets and shoes.

Well, the shoe bit worked out as poorly as the bullet effort.

But damn, I just love it that some people never forget!

Mohammed Saïd al-Sahaf, pour yourself a drink.

Here's a compilation (alas, lacking the greatest lines!):

Mohammed Saïd al-Sahaf



I actually bought the DVD put out about him!

I'm still waiting for this one:

God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis.

What poetry!

Supplemental:

We Love the Iraqi Information Minister website

Redacted By Me Without Further Comment

Sony Reader Gets Some Ellen Love

TaxMan45 alerted me via Twitter that the Sony Reader had been featured on the Ellen Degeneres Show.

Smells like product placement, but still, good for Sony. As you'll see in the video, the entire audience got a free Sony Reader and "101 free downloads" -- which I suspect are 100 free classics and Ellen's book. But still!

Here's the video:

Ellen And Sony Reader



And here are the relevant screensnaps:









And this is from the website:



Proving that Ellen and her audience can manage a USB cable while Oprah can't. And I'm certain the audience was ecstatic to get a Sony Reader.

W. Wyeth Willard

Sometimes ... the Internet manages to knock the wind out of me.

W. Wyeth Willard, Chaplain 8th Marines

Willard was credited with serving more consecutive days under constant enemy fire than any chaplain in the history of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.

Willard landed with the Marines during the World War II battle at Guadalcanal, and of the eight chaplains who served the Marines there, he was the only survivor. In 1944, he was awarded the Legion of Merit, the Navy’s highest honor, for his service with the 2nd Marine division during the 1943 battle at Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands.

After seeking special permission to go ashore with his men, Willard, despite heavy enemy fire, evacuated the wounded and gave spiritual comfort to the dying. He paced the beach in full view, chanting “I’m Chaplain Willard and you can’t shoot me!” reported Leatherneck, the magazine of the U.S. Marines, in November 1980.

Emphasis added by me.

I never knew this about him.

For several consecutive years when I was kid, I attended a summer camp he founded.

None of us kids saw him as special or courageous or brave.

He was generally a distant fellow, who now and then would address all of us kids.

One of his specialties was doing an imitation of a rooster welcoming dawn. That sounds like a minor thing. But let me tell you, when he did it, it was God's Own Rooster thundering from Heaven! He was prohibited from doing it by his doctor, that's how powerful it was. But one summer, one of the counselors had an eye injury and Willard said he'd do the rooster if we all chipped in to help pay for the surgery. He was putting his life on the line for that.

I didn't know until moments ago that putting his life on the line was something he'd done many times before. And at Guadalcanal, one of the bloodbaths of the Second World War. He not only survived it, he walked it defiantly!

One time, on a trip, we went to some sort of museum and part of the presentation was an old silent movie with, I think, Charlie Chase, in a DIY auto that he powered with a giant magnet, towing himself behind car after car. Willard laughed at that movie with a gusto that bordered on shameful for a grown man! Tears were coming from his eyes! I thought it was funny -- but his reaction was ... we'd call it Over the Top today. But it was genuine.

It was a Christian camp, devoted to instilling Biblical values in children. Today, that sounds like a horrible thing. That's how degraded the term "Christian" has become over the decades, due to cartoon "Christians" strutting TV stages, sticking their noses into politics, and overall acting very unlike Jesus.

Whenever I think "Christian," I see the true Christians I witnessed at that camp. All saints? No, of course not. Regular flawed human beings who did their best without being inconsiderate of others, who didn't strut around in expensive suits, who didn't make embarrassing displays of themselves. And some, of course, were there just for a paycheck for the summer, but they never claimed to be holier than anybody -- and who knows?, maybe the environment influenced them and they became better people.

We kids never knew what the first "W." stood for. I still don't. And, of course, give a kid a strange name and we'll mangle it into shape for easy ridicule. So "Wyeth" (pronounced WHY-eth) became "Weeth" to us. "Weeth Willard" was what we called him. Behind his back, of course.

To go through the hell of war like that -- and then to come home to want to work with noisy, trouble-making kids? It's inconceivable to me. But I saw him lead us in prayer. I heard his words to God.

His was a true faith. And he was a true man.

God bless and rest his soul. May he have his reward.

Fandom Photos: Broertjes and Morrissey

See this post at the WordPress blog.

Fandom Photos: Carl Gafford

See this post at the WordPress blog.

Fandom Photos: Ben Katchor

See this post at the WordPress blog.

Copyediting: Behind The Scenes

Bless the copyeditors.

Oh, I was all set to use the above post as an example of why writers need a professional copyeditor.

Now the point is to double-check the copyeditor!

A copyeditor is still required -- and good for them for raising issues such as the one pointed out in that post.

But we live in Google Book Search World these days.

And so in this example, at least, you can see that the copyeditor was actually wrong.

UPDATE: I've had to kill the link. After further study of the link, I've deemed it worthless. Google Book Search is unscholarly in how it arranges content and publication dates are untrustworthy. Personally, I still think the copyeditor was wrong and the phrase in question existed before the given citation. Can anyone out there confirm that with a reliable citation? Now I won't rest today until I've found it!

England Needs Serious Sorting Out

Father-of-three cancer sufferer beaten to death as he prepared to spend his last Christmas with family

He was diagnosed with bowel cancer in February last year and underwent surgery and chemotherapy, but the spread of the disease could not be halted and he was told in June this year that he was terminally ill.

What the hell has happened to that country?

And how can they let this shit go on week after week after week?

Quote: Writer Lawrence Osborne

A Writer And Reader On Why Book Publishers Fail

What publishers don't understand is that media blitz campaigns are often less significant than old-fashioned word of mouth, which is disseminated patiently and slowly through book stores. Books are not Hollywood, to the general astonishment of agents and corporate suits. They are intimate, unpredictable agents of delicious rebellion.

Well, as book stores continue to drop dead, the Word Of Mouth moves to the Internet: blogs, Twitter, et al.

Learn those skills, publishers:

Be Social Like A Disease!
Be Social Like A Disease #2

That Bastard Muppet Assassin!

A Fucking Muppet Assassin Stalks Me!

And this rat bastard will probably get ten times as many Followers because he's all sickly gooey smiley-smiley and is a fucking puppet too.

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #472: P$ychopaths

'Financial psychopaths' wreak havoc

With everything that has happened on Wall Street over the past 18 months, you'd think we had seen just about everything right? Wrong!

Two of the most remarkable frauds in the history of finance were exposed this week. They are just beginning to unravel and as such we don't fully understand the magnitude of the crimes. But already I can tell you they are of epic, even cinematic, proportions. This is really from the "can't make this stuff up" school of news. These two miscreants aren't just every day corner-cutters, they are world-class whack.

Emphasis added by me.

Go to the article for the gruesome details.

Why did it take everyone so long to wake up the fact that people who want to swing around multi-billion-dollar dicks are not normal, are not sane, are creatures who should be locked out of the financial system?

A normal person comes into a windfall and it's often more than enough. Someone who, for example. is a big lottery winner often doesn't go around trying to pump up the volume on that. They know when they've been lucky, they know the value of money, they know themselves, and they've had a grounding in reality and in real, everyday life.

These people who pocket four-hundred million dollar bonuses from a Board of Directors they appoint -- this is not normal greed. This is Ultra Avarice. This is Fuck You Sociopathology.

Previously here:

Ayn Rand: Discredited By Greenspan
Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #351: Sociopaths
Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #255: Jackals
Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #238: Lottery
Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #174
Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #011

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #471: A-Word

Collapse of BCE plan fuels private equity industry concern

Fear of financial “Armageddon” is starving private equity of fresh funds, one investor warned on Thursday, after the collapse of the $41bn takeover of Canada’s BCE telecoms group marked a low for the industry.

The BCE deal would have been the world’s largest leveraged buy-out when it was announced in June 2007. Its collapse underlines how severely conditions have turned against private equity in the past 18 months.

The credit crunch has prompted banks to stop providing loans for buy-outs -– the lifeblood of private equity -– while market turmoil has made many investors incapable or unwilling to supply the cash needed for the equity portion of buy-outs.

“As long as we are considering an Armageddon type of scenario, our hands are going to be tied for new funding in private equity,” Mark Boyle, head of private equity at the $140bn investment arm of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, told a conference on Thursday in London. “This environment has investment professionals so rattled they are thinking the unthinkable.”

Emphasis added by me.

These are the money professionals.

They see Doom.

Catching on yet?

Bank Collapse Watch: ALL OF THEM! AGAIN!

Jim Rogers calls most big U.S. banks "bankrupt"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jim Rogers, one of the world's most prominent international investors, on Thursday called most of the largest U.S. banks "totally bankrupt," and said government efforts to fix the sector are wrongheaded.

Speaking by teleconference at the Reuters Investment Outlook 2009 Summit, the co-founder with George Soros of the Quantum Fund, said the government's $700 billion rescue package for the sector doesn't address how banks manage their balance sheets, and instead rewards weaker lenders with new capital.

Dozens of banks have won infusions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program created in early October, just after the Sept 15 bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Some of the funds are being used for acquisitions.

"Without giving specific names, most of the significant American banks, the larger banks, are bankrupt, totally bankrupt," said Rogers, who is now a private investor.

Emphasis added by me.

Why does this surprise anybody?

More:

"What is outrageous economically and is outrageous morally is that normally in times like this, people who are competent and who saw it coming and who kept their powder dry go and take over the assets from the incompetent," he said. "What's happening this time is that the government is taking the assets from the competent people and giving them to the incompetent people and saying, now you can compete with the competent people. It is horrible economics."

Emphasis added by me.

Welcome to Too Big to Fail 101. And now with all the forced mergers, we have Even Too Bigger to Fail!

Another stat:

Goldman Sachs & Co analysts this week estimated that banks worldwide have suffered $850 billion of credit-related losses and writedowns since the global credit crisis began last year.

Emphasis added by me.

That's not even one-percent of the quadrillion lurking out there.

Some frank talk, finally:

"Governments are making mistakes," he said. "They're saying to all the banks, you don't have to tell us your situation. You can continue to use your balance sheet that is phony.... All these guys are bankrupt, they're still worrying about their bonuses, they're still trying to pay their dividends, and the whole system is weakened."

Emphasis added by me.

Yep, gotta keep those bonuses flowing. No matter how fucked-up a job they've done and continue to do and plan to do in the future.

American taxpayer, drop your pants and bend over!

Previously here:

Bank Collapse Watch: ALL OF THEM!

Bank Collapse Watch: Haven Trust

24th bank failure: Fifth in Georgia
State regulators close Duluth, Ga.-based Haven Trust Bank, marking the 24th bank failure of the year.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- State regulators closed another regional bank in Georgia Friday, bringing the total number of failed banks this year to 24.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said the four branches of Duluth, Ga.-based Haven Trust Bank will reopen as Branch Banking & Trust on Monday. It was the fifth bank in Georgia to fail this year.

Haven Trust had total assets of $572 million and total deposits of $515 million. Branch Banking & Trust, which is based in Winston-Salem, N.C., agreed to assume all of the deposits for $112,000.

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund will be $200 million.

Emphasis added by me.

Haven Trust was number sixty on the List of Future Bank FAIL.



Who will go FAIL next Friday?

Sony Misses Major eBook Opportunity?

Sony’s First Touchscreen Walkman Revealed

Sony is set to debut a new 16 and 32GB drag and drop Walkman during CES 2009, according to trusted inside sources. This will be the most advanced music, video and photo Walkman music player ever released by Sony to date. While it was revealed before to Wired that Sony’s new Walkman would have Wi-Fi capabilities, we have now learned that Sony’s new Walkman will also be touchscreen and WQVGA. The touchscreen will not be the usual LCD, but a brilliant three inch OLED with a contrast ratio around 10k. OLED display capabilities in terms of color reproduction are far beyond the average LCD, which means 100% color reproduction across a wider viewing angle.

Emphasis added by me.

Here is what makes me angry:

Additionally, there will be a Youtube icon on the main screen that will allow full access to the website - search, pause, FF/RW included very similar to Youtube access on the iPhone/iTouch.

Wait. This is a WQVGA OLED screen with a CPU powerful enough to do YouTube video (and MP4!) -- and there's no Sony eBook software built-in?!

That doesn't make any sense to me.

Both the BBeB and ePub file formats support reflowable text. The screen size doesn't matter, they'll work with it.

Sony is trapped in Western Union thinking here. Western Union famously turned away Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, thinking it was in the telegraphy business -- instead of the business of communication.

Sony is trapped in thinking eBooks = Sony Reader. No! It should be eBooks Everywhere. (By the way, Sony, do you bother to bundle the eBook Library software on all desktops and notebooks? Why not?!)

Here was a way for Sony to advance eBooks and to provide an immediate alternative to the wireless abominable Kindle -- and it's been lost.

Why not offer it as a future downloadable upgrade?

Since this will have a built-in web browser and WiFi, people should be able to access Project Gutenberg and other sites that offer web access to eBooks and could read that way.

But a major opportunity has been missed here!

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #470: Madoff

Prominent Trader Accused of Defrauding Clients

On Wall Street, his name is legendary. With money he had made as a lifeguard on the beaches of Long Island, he built a trading powerhouse that had prospered for more than four decades. At age 70, he had become an influential spokesman for the traders who are the hidden gears of the marketplace.

But on Thursday morning, this consummate trader, Bernard L. Madoff, was arrested at his Manhattan home by federal agents who accused him of running a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme — perhaps the largest in Wall Street’s history.

Regulators have not yet verified the scale of the fraud. But the criminal complaint filed against Mr. Madoff on Thursday in federal court in Manhattan reports that he estimated the losses at $50 billion. “We are alleging a massive fraud — both in terms of scope and duration,” said Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the enforcement division at the Securities and Exchange Commission. “We are moving quickly and decisively to stop the fraud and protect remaining assets for investors.”

Andrew M. Calamari, an associate director for enforcement in the S.E.C.’s regional office in New York, said the case involved “a stunning fraud that appears to be of epic proportions.”

Emphasis added by me.

I was waiting for this story to pop with a write-up that would concisely summarize the point. Here it is:

But the essential drama is a personal one — one laid out in the dry language of a criminal complaint by Lev L. Dassin, the acting United States attorney in Manhattan, and a regulatory lawsuit filed by the S.E.C. According to those documents, the first alarm bells rang at the firm on Tuesday, when Mr. Madoff told a senior executive he wanted to pay his employees their annual bonuses in December, two months early.

Just days earlier, Mr. Madoff had told another senior executive he was struggling to raise cash to cover about $7 billion in requested withdrawals from his clients, and he had appeared “to have been under great stress in the prior weeks,” according to the S.E.C. complaint.

So on Wednesday, the senior executive visited Mr. Madoff’s office, maintained on a separate floor with records kept under lock and key, and asked for an explanation.

Instead, Mr. Madoff invited the two executives to his Manhattan apartment that evening. When they joined him there, he told them that his money-management business was “all just one big lie” and “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme.”

The senior employees understood him to be saying that he had for years been paying returns to certain investors out of the cash received from other investors.

Emphasis added by me.

I don't give a shit that he's 70.

He wagged his dick in contempt of everybody for decades.

Flay the bastard to death in public.

How many others are out there just like him that we don't yet know about?

This Smells Like ... Hope

Convicted paedophile stabbed to death, stripped and mutilated in suspected vigilante attack

A child sex offender was stabbed to death in a 'ferocious' attack in which his genitals were mutilated.

Andrew Cunningham was found naked and soaked in blood at his caravan home in Wandsworth, south London.

The 52-year-old, who had been jailed for raping a girl under 13, was recently accused of molesting a two-year-old.

He was found with multiple stab wounds to his head, neck and chest on the site of the Riverside Haulage company, where he worked as a truck driver.

Emphasis added by me.

The British police -- which are the laughingstock of this blog -- had better do their job right this time: leave it unsolved.

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #469: EU $267B

Novels In Three Lines

I really love getting this every day.

novelsin3lines

Reference: Voluminous, eBooks For Mac OS X

Voluminous finds free books on the Internet. It makes a catalogue of every book it finds, and you can search this, and download any book you like. You can read the books from within Voluminous, or export them to read elsewhere.

Now, since the Mac has PDF creation built in, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch -- perhaps with some AppleScripting -- to take plain text files and automagically make them Sony Reader-optimized PDF files.

Hmmm ... maybe this developer can even include such a script with the program?

Print Book Publishers: POUNCE!

Jay Leno at 10PM on NBC Monday-Friday.

By now, everyone has heard of that.

If you're like me, that's one thing you won't be watching.

So I now campaign for CBS and ABC to follow suit.

CBS: Letterman at 10PM.

ABC: Jimmy Kimmel at 10PM.

All three networks are things I would turn off.

A perfect storm for the dying dinosaurs of print to pounce on with keen marketing.

It's 10PM: Do You Know Where Your Book Is?

Quote: Writer Vera Nazarian

In a previous post, Help Save A Writer’s Home!, I related a fundraising effort. Here is a touching bit the first part of it coming to pass:

Gratitude
To YOU -- to the Universe of friends and complete strangers who are now friends:

And yesterday I went to the local small Russian grocery (they have affordable vegetables and fruit, unlike the supermarkets), and bought some food for us. Good fresh food. Mom and I ate fresh, thanks to all of you.

Emphasis in the original.

The first five emphasized words choked me up.

There's still time top add your help. Click here.

The Worst Four-Letter Word

SNOW!



I am weak.

Memo To Sony: Treat The Temps Better!

I know Steve Haber has ambitions for many more titles at the Sony eBook Store, but apparently things are going awry in this death march:


Click = big

Steve Haber once admitted he's read this blog.

Let's see if this is still true.

I'm not going to point this out to anyone via email.

Everyone keep track of how long it takes for them to fix this.

Now the world is watching you, Sony!

The T-Shirt With A Warning

Not my idea.


Click = big

But the disclaimer is: Wimminz, Mike Cane will grab your .... ums .... if you dare to wear this.

There.

That ought to really kill sales.

WIN!

R.I.P. Actor Robert Prosky

Robert Prosky: actor

Robert Prosky was probably best known for his anchoring role in Hill Street Blues, the New York police drama. Despite appearing in nearly 40 films, numerous television series and more than 200 stage plays on Broadway and in Washington, he was one of those actors whose face is much better known than his name.

He was the craggy but loveable police sergeant in Hill Street Blues; the television station owner in Mrs Doubtfire (1993) and the corrupt judge in The Natural (1984). He appeared as a priest on trial for murder in The Practice, a TV legal drama; the experienced executive who is sacked in Broadcast News (1987); and a death-row inmate for Sean Penn in Dead Man Walking (1995). In all, he appeared in more than 250 plays, films and TV shows.

You might not know how good an actor this guy is, if all you've seen of him is in Hill Street Blues.

Here is the most chilling portrayal you'll ever see, from the classic movie Thief:

Businesses: Smugness = Lost Customers!

You would think, here in the 21st century, companies would realize people talk to one another all the time now.

And also, with the economy turning blue worldwide, companies would want to hold onto customers.

Here's a clue, lulu, from the recently-deceased Randy Pausch:



Words, by the way, we haven't heard uttered by anyone getting bailout money.

Quote: Adam T. Wamack & Rubén Harris

I thought the post overall nebulous and touchy-feely, but it did offer one great insight, below.

Humanity 2.0: A Call To Action

And what is more dangerous and self-damaging than the war that you do not even know that you are in?

I don't see real solutions here, except acknowledging the above is the true first step towards them.

Leverage: The Homecoming Job

See this post at the WordPress blog.

Palm's Final Bet: All-In?

After being the pathetic laughingstock of the pocketable tech world, Palm might be ready to show its "breakthrough level of innovation."

Palm Announces a Press Event for CES

Palm Inc. has just begun send out invitations to a press event to be held during CES 2009.

This is the important part of the invite, in red:



Palm's got some old damage control to do:



Um, yeah. That was something big -- not!


Palm's "Fast Eddie" Colligan

As far as I'm concerned, this is Palm's final bet.



And they'd better be all-in!

Note to Palm: This blog drops dead on December 31st. It'll be real neat to get a blurry photo or shaky video in my emailbox. Leak! Get some excitement going!

I Am An eBook Militant

Over at the new independent publishing blog, Publishing Renaissance, masterminded by writer Zoe Winters, I was reading writer Cliff Burns' post: The Ever-evolving World of Indie and came across a passage that got my back up:

The indie world still attracts the eccentrics, iconoclasts in search of a soapbox, real or virtual…but more and more talented, motivated individuals are using those aforementioned new technologies to create a forum for work that has been rejected by the “trads” for a variety of reasons. For some, it turns out to be a canny move: David Wellington and Scott Sigler secured book deals and Terry Fallis won a Leacock Award for a novel he published through iUniverse.

Emphasis added by me.

I'm not interested in any "book deals."

I've been there. I've done that.

I've been in the stomach of that monster and will never be eaten by it again.

I posted a Comment, that referred to another portion of his essay, but it summed up my overarching sentiment concisely:

I’m telling you right now, Cliff: I will NEVER permit a treeware edition of my work. NOT EVER. There’s my line in the sand, baby.

Those who refuse to cross that line can go suck on Penguin Classics. They won’t have me on filthy paper.

For those late to this party, let me again sum up my own objections to printed books:

1) They have weight

2) They have bulk

3) If you move house move than twice in a lifetime (and I have) you resent those two physical attributes

4) You can lose them all in a disaster (fire, flood, F-18 fighter falling from the sky)

5) Being printed is zero guarantee of readers or sales

6) They're easy to suppress

7) They're objects of a decrepit and suicidal industry that's slowly murdering writers

Aren't those seven points enough?

Here's one more: No publishing company will ever care about your work as much as you do.

I want you to think about that last bit for a moment.

Every publisher does multiple titles each year. The publishing industry is a giant machine spewing out thousands and thousands of books. Everything is put on a schedule, just like any industry, just like any assembly line. This is the reality of things.

You might have a hot book that is catching an advancing wave -- but go to one of the dying dinosaurs of print and you can wait up to twelve to twenty-four months for them to deliver your baby. Timeliness is not part of their apparatus until sheer naked -- and too often, idiotic -- greed kicks in. And, trust me on this, unless your face has been all over TV (for good or bad, they don't judge the color of possible incoming money), you're just one more pain in the ass writer who thinks he has something important, who thinks he is somehow special.

You damn well might have something important and really be special -- but don't expect them to recognize that.

Remember those thousands and thousands of books they shove out every year? They can afford to fuck up yours. Think of them as great big dicks spewing out sperm. How many sperm does it take to make a baby? They can afford to have your important and special sperm drop dead on its journey to the egg of bookstore shelves. There's more where that came from! Every day someone knocks on their door with a book proposal.

They don't need you.

And things are reaching the point where you don't need them, either.

I am an eBook militant because we are reaching a point in history that could have only been dreamt about in the financially-restrained lives of Poe, Balzac, Baudelaire, Dickens, and every fellow writer who came before us and who had to rely on the whim of print publishers -- and who suffered greatly because of it.

I've just named four immortal writers. Quick: name their publishers!

That you can't name them should help you to understand that people read writers -- they don't read publishers (although in my own life I have found one extremely rare exception).

We now live in a world where it is possible to create a blog that has a larger readership than most published printed books. That makes it possible for any writer to create his own destiny unlike any other time in history. The tools to capture and build an audience are free. The tools to spread the word are free. A writer will put more passion and devote more time to promoting his work than any print publisher ever would (even today, they still don't understand how to use the Internet).

Why settle for the kind of marketing treatment a print publisher would deign to give you? It wouldn't be second-rate work. It'd be third- or even fourth-rate. Your little squiggly book would never make it to the egg and create sales. It'll be douched out to the backlist before the end of one year. A backlist that print publishers just sit on -- never, ever releasing as last-ditch eBook editions -- and then have the temerity to gripe how nothing in the backlist ever sells.



(Notice that this lack of sales didn't deter Google from stealing most of the backlist!)

Given the historical record of print publishing -- and given its current gross incompetency when faced with the Internet and eBooks -- I don't understand why anyone would want to be involved with that dying system. Going to them and expecting legitimacy or sales is delusional. All a writer is basically doing is giving up contractual rights that will never be used and sabotaging a career at its start.

I believe in the primacy of writers. I believe writing sells, not publishing brand labels.

I am an eBook militant.

You should be too.

Writer Ray Banks

Who doesn't yet have a real website.