Monthly Archives: November 2014

Having played the victim card, Hachette goes on a binge

Posted on by

 

In a feat of utmost unexamined irony, the habitual bashers of corporate monster Amazon over at Melville House report on how Hachette has now resumed gobbling up literary properties like some sort of … uh … corporate monster?

Hachette bought Black Dog & Leventhal yesterday …

Hachette’s had a big year. About four months ago, the company did not end up buying Perseus … We all assumed it had to do with the Amazon standoff … All of that ended last week … So who will Hachette acquire next?

Hachette US bought the Hyperion backlist, and formed Hachette Books to start acquiring in a similar vein. Hachette UK bought Constable & Robinson in February and Quercus in March. They’re buying a whole lot of small nonfiction publishers with strong backlists.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Hachette takes a moment from devouring everything in sight to reward its boot-licking minions at the Authors Guild for standing by them against Amazon?

But … probably not, as the hilarious Dan Meadows explains (after quoting comments from Authors Guild president Roxana Robinson):

“It is our hope that Hachette, in light of the loyalty its authors have shown throughout this debacle, takes this opportunity to revisit its standard e-book royalty rate of 25 percent of the publisher’s net profits.”

Sweet Jesus! Tell me you’re not that naive. Loyalty?! What part of “billion dollar corporate negotiation” don’t you understand? You hope, in light of your “loyalty”, that they take this opportunity to revisit that standard? What opportunity would that be? The one where they’ve settled up with Amazon, already have you all under contract at that standard, and don’t need to name-drop you morons in an obviously coordinated PR assault on a rival anymore?

The opportunity to do a hell of a lot more than “hope they revisit the standard” was the past seven months when Amazon had Hachette over a barrel and the other publishers were all worried they were next. The only opportunity you have now is for them to laugh in your face.

Yup. And when they do, don’t get made when we say we told you so.

Category: My Two Cents, Sharing

This book might require you to level-up to Mage 15

Posted on by

jnl-faceEvery once in a while, a book story comes along that’s so weird and cool, that you almost think it has to be an Onion parody. Get ready to roll a saving throw vs. spells, dear readers!

Researchers have deciphered an ancient Egyptian handbook, revealing a series of invocations and spells.

Among other things, the “Handbook of Ritual Power,” as researchers call the book, tells readers how to cast love spells, exorcise evil spirits and treat “black jaundice,” a bacterial infection that is still around today and can be fatal.

The book is about 1,300 years old, and is written in Coptic, an Egyptian language. It is made of bound pages of parchment — a type of book that researchers call a codex

The ancient book “starts with a lengthy series of invocations that culminate with drawings and words of power,” [researchers] write. “These are followed by a number of prescriptions or spells to cure possession by spirits and various ailments, or to bring success in love and business.”

For instance, to subjugate someone, the codex says you have to say a magical formula over two nails, and then “drive them into his doorpost, one on the right side (and) one on the left” …

The opening of the codex refers to a divine figure named “Baktiotha” whose identity is a mystery, researchers say. The lines read, “I give thanks to you and I call upon you, the Baktiotha: The great one, who is very trustworthy; the one who is lord over the forty and the nine kinds of serpents,” according to the translation.

Why do I suspect Baktiotha might own a tentacle wig for those special occasions that call for Victorian dress?

You can check out the rest of the story at Live Science, but only if you’re a high-level cleric or magic user.

Category: Sharing

How to organize your books at home

Posted on by

bookscoreThere’s no rule about how to organize your own book collection, but National Public Radio listeners had some interesting suggestions: Continue reading

Category: About Me, Sharing | Tags:

Deodorant isn’t just deodorant, or Why Le Guin’s comments were offensively chauvinistic (beyond their Islamophobia)

Posted on by

mytwocentsIn chapter 120 of the Chinese classic, Wen-Tzu’s Book of Pervading Mystery (通玄真經), we read: “If they are valued for what is valuable about them, then all things are valuable. If they are despised for what is worthless about them, then all things are worthless.”1

So when Ursula K. Le Guin recently quipped at the National Book Awards, “I see a lot of us, the producers accepting this — letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant,” one has to wonder how enthusiastic that crammed room full of applauding deodorant slanderers would have been had none of them been wearing deodorant.

And, the remark stank beyond its implied dismissal of products engineered to overcome human body odor.

Continue reading

Amazon’s antagonists are crooks, liars, and Islamophobic bigots

Posted on by

AppleFrom the New York Times:

A federal judge on Friday approved a settlement in which Apple could begin paying $400 million to as many as 23 million consumers related to charges that it violated antitrust law by conspiring with publishers to raise e-book prices and thwart efforts by Amazon …

Apple initially agreed to pay up to $400 million to settle the class action in June, ahead of a damages trial set for two months later in which attorneys general in 33 states and class-action lawyers were expected to seek up to $840 million …

The suit accused Apple of being a “ringmaster” of a conspiracy with the five major publishers to raise the average price of e-books from the $9.99 price that Amazon had made standard for new e-book releases. Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and the Hachette Book Group settled the day the case was filed; Penguin and Macmillan settled months later.

Read the rest here.

And, to reiterate, I recognize the economic danger of Amazon’s size, but (a) Amazon is nowhere near a monopoly or monopsony, (b) it was Amazon’s competitor Apple that showed its willing to break the law to the rip off readers, and (c) the Big Five were an economically dangerous cartel long before Amazon’s first 1’s and 0’s hit the Internet, and they prove their intentions to behave as a cartel again and again, to the detriment of readers and writers.

The facts in this scandal make the deluded National Book Awards polemic delivered by Ursula Le Guin, who is otherwise a remarkable advocate for literature, all the more tragic. Continue reading

Prep school brat profits from ridiculing working class writers by stealing their tweets

Posted on by

PenguinHow would you feel if I told you that a hack “appropriation artist”—Cory Arcangel, best known for founding a trashy clickbait site (BuzzFeed) notorious for propaganda and plagiarism—landed a book deal with a traditional publisher (Penguin) to reprint other people’s social media activity?

What if I told you that the whole point of this prep-school brat’s essentially plagiarized book was to ridicule working-class writers who included the phrase “working on my novel” in their tweets?

Now, what if I told you that an assistant editor at Harper’s had dedicated nearly 1600 words reviewing this smug lump of crap?

But … hold on, and put down the torches and pitch-forks … what if I told you that his brilliant conclusion was this: Continue reading

Category: Sharing

The egalitarian, hard-work myth dismantled

Posted on by

102_0469aMichael Bourne at The Millions takes on the egalitarian myth behind teaching the craft of writing:

[T]he problem with craft talks isn’t what is being said from the podium. The problem is the unspoken message of the genre of the craft talk itself, which is that one becomes a successful writer by mastering a series of discrete elements of literary craft. You learn to keep your scenes short. You gain a deeper understanding of the role of voice in narrative fiction. You remember to always put a little bad in your good characters and a little good in your bad characters, and — poof! — one day you open your laptop and discover you have written A Visit from the Goon Squad.

This is a species of magical thinking. It is, of course, impossible to write a good book without a deep appreciation of how language and stories work, but it doesn’t follow that successful writers have simply worked at it harder than less successful ones or that their understanding of the craft of fiction is any more acute. What successful writers have that their less successful counterparts do not is talent. [emphasis mine]

This inconvenient fact offends our sensibilities because it is elitist and because it means that for all but a very lucky few of us, literary greatness remains beyond our grasp. A belief in the transformative properties of craft also undergirds an ever-growing industry of creative writing education that, one way or another, now pays the bills for most working poets and literary writers. For these reasons, we have constructed a culture of discussing creative writing designed to skirt the obvious. Because craft exists outside us and can be improved through effort, a focus on craft gives us a way to talk about bad writing that is less hurtful to the writer. The successful writer is saved from having to tell the less successful one, “Sorry, but you have no talent.” Instead, the successful writer can say, “You need to work on your craft.”

This analysis coheres neatly with what I have said about the “Authorhood of All Readers” myth and the dangers of pyramid scheme dynamics in a publishing culture wherein writing teachers teach writing to writers who will primarily go on to teach other writers (to be writing teachers).

To read the rest of Bourne’s fascinating piece, check it out here!

Category: My Two Cents, Sharing

Tales from the Medieval Arab world

Posted on by

Xzibit-1001NightsThe very first book I ever bought with my own money (insofar as a grade-schooler can be said to have his own money) was A Thousand and One Nights, more commonly known as The Arabian Nights. I bought it at a yard sale in Cinco, West Virginia. I can still remember the spare illustrations, and the leathery texture of the cornflower blue cover.

Several of the tales that would eventually be incorporated into the Nights were originally published in the 10th century as Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange, the earliest anthology of Arabic short stories. The Guardian recently featured a review of the first English translation of Tales:

The variety of the tales – a mix of comedy, fantasy and derring-do – is instantly appealing, as is their headlong narrative drive. Unlike the stories of the Arabian Nights (in which Scheherazade’s talking for her life is the thread on which the collection is hung) they have no unifying frame, and profess no didactic purpose. If there is a common element to them it is that they are almost all concerned to a greater or lesser degree with sexual or romantic love. They seem sensual, capriciously violent…

Check out the rest here!

_

For my frame-story pointers referencing A Thousand and One Nights, go here.

Category: Sharing

Passive Guy shows how Hachette is shooting itself in the foot

Posted on by

jnlThe Passive Voice blog (“A Lawyer’s Thoughts on Authors, Self-Publishing and Traditional Publishing”) has posted an extensive quote from GigaOm on the details of the recent Amazon-Hachette deal.

But, what I found more interesting was the Passive Guy‘s economic analysis of traditional publishers’ myopic and desperate tactics. The bold emphasis is mine:

Since Big Publishing has attempted to use ebook pricing to protect the sales of physical books in physical bookstores in the past, PG suspects it will continue to do so in the future. If this is the case, Hachette ebook prices on Amazon will be higher than Amazon would set those prices if the folks in Seattle had unfettered pricing discretion.

If PG’s suspicions are anywhere close to correct, it appears that indie authors will continue to be able to undercut the price of ebooks from Hachette while earning royalties from KDP that are much higher than Hachette authors receive.

PG says that indie authors are much smarter about pricing ebooks on Amazon than Big Publishing is … Like Amazon, indie authors don’t have any legacy sales channels to distract them from setting an optimum price for ebooks.

Trying to protect a legacy business with legacy margins is a classic mistake that established business organizations make when faced with a technology disruption that allows lower-priced competitors into a marketplace. Doing so allows the lower-priced competitors to survive and thrive. And eventually put the legacy model out of business.

Check out the rest at The Passive Voice.

Category: Sharing | Tags: , , ,

Author J. A. Konrath dismantles AG-AU hypocrisy and the agency model

Posted on by

Hard to argue with these numbers:

picard-face-palmThe Authors Guild has, many times in the past, voiced that ebook royalties should be raised. So do something about it.

The AG, and Authors United, have been able to get beaucoup media attention during the Hachette/Amazon spat … Now the AG, and all of the bestselling authors who supported AU, need to show some backbone and integrity and use the same tactics to force the Big 5 to raise digital royalties …

Konrath's numbers, my chart

Konrath’s numbers, my chart

On a $25 hardcover, the author makes about $3.75, and the publisher around $5, after all production, delivery, and middleman costs (distributors and booksellers). On a $25 ebook, an author makes $4.37, and the publisher $13.12. How did this happen? Where was the outrage when this was slipped into all major publishing contracts? …

I won’t point fingers, but a Google or Twitter search will show how many authors seem to think Amazon is bad, the agency model is good, and the poor Big 6 are getting the shaft. Uh, no. That’s just plain wrong. I’m going to explain why the agency model in this particular case is indeed bad for authors …

Under the prior [wholesale] model, Amazon bought ebooks at a percentage of the recommended retail price. Then they priced them how they saw fit. The wholesale price for ebooks was often about half of the hardcover price. So a $25 recommended retail price meant Amazon paid $12.50 for the ebook. According to most contracts, the author made 25% of the net price the publisher received. So at the above numbers, an author would make $3.12 NO MATTER WHAT PRICE AMAZON SOLD THE EBOOK FOR.

Konrath-AuthorTake

Konrath’s numbers, my chart

In other words, if Amazon wanted to sell the ebook for $9.99, the author still makes $3.12. Sell it for $5.99? Author makes $3.12. Sell it for 99 cents? Author makes $3.12.

So what happens when the agency model comes into play? First of all, Amazon no longer controls the price … Amazon works its butt off trying to keep prices low. That’s why so many people shop there.

With the wholesale model, authors made more money per unit and sold more units. Funny thing is, publishers also made more money under the wholesale model. But instead the Big 6 decided they wanted an agency model. Authors still get 25% of net. But net has gotten lower in almost all cases.

With the wholesale model, net was $12.50. With the agency model, net is 17.5% of the list price set by the publisher. So the publisher sells it for $12.99, the author makes $2.27. Sell it for $9.99? Author makes $1.74. Sell it for $5.99? Author makes $1.04. Sell it for 99 cents? Author makes 17 cents.

Read the rest at J. A. Konrath‘s blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.