Nastiness

Porno publisher Larry Flynt recently spewed out a nasty photoshop of pundit S E Cupp. It's a despicable act, but I couldn't figure out why a sociopath would do such a thing. She's a great writer, but she isn't especially prominent. Larry the F doesn't do things that he doesn't think will profit him in some way.

Then it hit me. Playboy has a been slowly sinking for a while. Penthouse is a mere shadow of its 'glory'. Hustler must be taking some hits finally and he's flailing.

Why the difference in declines? The college dorms were wired years ago. But high speed Internet is only now coming to America's trailer parks.

That's gotta hurt.

KIndle: Slayer of...

J K Rowling will have a new book in September. I saw the pre-order tab on Amazon and then it struck me. The reason I pre-order a book is to be certain I get it as soon as possible. That being said, I very rarely pre-order a book.

The Kindle removes any need to pre-order. I pre-order out of a mixture of impatience and concern about availability.

An ebook is effectively available in infinite quantities and is available immediately upon release.

That means the only reason to ever pre-order an ebook is to lock in a good price.

Business Mystery

My laser printer is nearly end of life for its belt and drum. Replacing both would cost slightly less than $200. Currently Office Depot is selling a very nice duplexing wireless laser printer for $100. The belt for the printer on sale is $120.

I'm used to this sort of pricing for inkjet printers. When did the manufacturers start doing this for laser printers?

What's The Problem?

Amazon is pursuing offering a backlist subscription service for ebooks to their Prime customers. Some people find this upsetting. I'm not really sure why.

I suppose it's probably because I'm not a David Foster Wallace fan, or something.

Pretty much, this

Reflections on E-Publishing

I've been downloading a lot of free e-published books. Project Gutenberg, for those few who are not familiar with it, is a god send to the frugal reader. At this point they have an amazing assortment of out of copyright texts, ranging from text books to novels to poetry and any sort of non-fiction imaginable.

I've also bought a few e-books. I'm not averse to paying authors for their content. Quite the opposite. I'm just frugal and impoverished right now.

What I've noticed are the price points for e-books. Some very savvy people give books away for free. This makes perfect sense when you realize that the very first book of a very popular science fiction series (Honor Harrington) is part of the give away. I'm told drug dealers use a very similar marketing ploy quite successfully. An enormous number of works at Amazon have the firts chapter free for the same reason.

Amazon has a great many short stories for sale at $.99. That price point also covers out of copyright books that someone has taken the trouble of tweaking into a modern format, with linkable tables of content and such. This is perfect for those who can not tolerate typos as well as those who wish to sample the more modern authors.

The next price points are $1.99 and $2.99. I'm inclined to think that the latter represents savvy self published authors. Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a fair number of works at $2.99. She has some bundled works at $4.99 as well.

I think the pricing here is brilliant. $2.99 is low enough for impulse purchasing. You read the first chapter, like what you've read and plunk down the dough for the rest of the story. Once you've finished enjoying it, you track down her other works and buy them as well. The dollar amounts are small enough that you can spend without thinking too hard, classic impulse buys.

Ms Rusch's big publishing house stories are priced at $9.99 and up. She set the prices on the other stuff. Her publisher set that price. I think the publishers are missing the point here. We all know the cost of an ebook is nominal compared to a hard cover or a trade paperback. The price is such that few people will buy on a whim. The market for such books is limited to people who are already interested in that story and have no other option to read it.

At that price point, people will look for it at the library or used rather than pay full retail. There are some pretty clever people in publishing, but I think they are missing the point here. E-publishing offers the opportunity to turn the long tail of the back list into a profit centre. Only one publisher, Baen, has really embraced the change. It's no accident that Baen is small house that is largely independent. Most of the big publishers are subsidiaries of much larger firms and as such are extremely conservative.

That might hurt them.

As for what prompted the above, several people have recommended John Donnelly's Gold by Brian Noggle. It looks interesting. It's also priced at $9.99 at Amazon, so I'm not going to be reading it for a while.

Good Gaming News

In the midst of my despair of the state of real estate and contemplating a bleak future, I stumbled across this: It seems Star Wars: The Old Republic, the MMORPG Bioware has been working on since forever doesn't suck. It's actually pretty good. And that's from a guy in the very early "friends 'n family" beta.

It's not much, but I'll take what I can get.

Book Bashing

I recently learned of a writer through a rather circuitous route. His name is 'Mike Homfray'. I disagree rather vehemently with just about everything he believes in. So I'm not linking to his blog, or his various comments throughout the Web. However, he's written a book. Like all authors he links to his book on his blog. Also like any author, he wants people to buy his book.

The name of his book is Provincial Queens: The Gay and Lesbian Community in the North-West of England. I have little to no interest in that subject. All I could make out on his blog, was the cover, which is Pepto-Bismol pink and I could not read the title, so I clicked on it, which pushed me through to the publisher's site.

Here's the meat of this story. The price of the book (full retail) in England is 34 pounds. The price in the U S is $85.95. The book is 271 pages long and is a paperback. The cost at Amazon is the same in pounds, but if you order in the US, it is $67.95. The publisher is a known semi-vanity press (that is they generally require a partial payment from the author towards publishing costs, anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 pounds).

Now there is every reason to want to get published. Some authors think their book will be the next best-seller and are in it for the dough. That's not likely the case here. Some authors write as part of the publish or perish process in academia. To a certain extent, I suspect that may be the case here. An awful lot of academics are in the position of needing a book or scholarly paper to put on the old curriculum vitae. Peter Lang does publish some scholarly works that are cited from time to time in their fields. They publish a great many more that are not.

Most authors want to be published because they wish to communicate their ideas, their story or their thoughts and feelings. Unfortunately, publishing a seventy dollar paperback is not likely the way to achieve that.

There are an awful lot of vanity presses out there. If anything the Internet has helped that market to blossom. Printing on demand has dramatically reduced the cost of book production. Many books are now available in formats that didn't exist until recently, such as Kindle or PDF.

One of the more interesting new vanity presses is Lulu.com (disclaimer: I have no affiliation with them. I just love the name). To publish a dust jacketed hardcover book with 271 pages it costs $25. That's it. You can write the book, have them print off a copy and have the smallest print run imaginable for $25. Mr Homfray's book, in the manner and style that Lang printed it would cost about half that. There are other publishers with similar services. Now Lulu.com has little to no academic status, but if your desire is to get your ideas out there then Lulu or their competitors are the ways to go.

If we assume a 100% mark up between cost of publishing to selling price, then you would sell it for $25. That would be a perfect bound trade paperback of moderate length. Lang sells it for $42 more. My question is whether the rather dubious academic prestige of being published by Lang is worth $42. For some, it obviously is. But it seems a rather steep price to pay for someone on the bottom rungs of academia to climb another step on the tenure track.

All of which makes me wonder how long the Peter Langs of this world will last.

Our Challenge

"Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die"

It's bi-partisan, it's timely, important and the right thing to do. It's time for all right thinking people to rally around the cause of economic freedom.

Both the government currently in power and the government in waiting seem inclined to introduce distortions and interventions into the national economy. None of the proposed moves will aid recovery nor encourage growth, rather they seem calculated to benefit cronies and backers at the expense of the general public.

Free trade and deregulation are rarely brought forward as noble goals, but they are. Where deregulation has failed most dramatically is where the regulations remaining where hidden from public scrutiny (For an especially egregious example, look at the government requirements for lenders in regards to credit worthiness on home loans over the past ten years or so).

I'm not saying that the market is always right. But it usually is, and any distortions that arise are usually corrected fairly swiftly. I am saying that government intervention is almost always wrong, always expensive and always redounds to the benefit of a privileged minority at the expense of the general public.

As the memories of the seventies fade, a new generation of innocents have arisen who seem all too willing to be fleeced by the con men and snake oil salemen that cluster around politicians. I just hope that the lesson soon to be learned isn't too expensive for the rest of us.

A Symptom of Trouble

Healthy organizations rarely have difficulty with getting support. Generally all that is needed is to state what the needs are and ask people to help. Governments resort to taxation because the needs are typically more than people would voluntarily contribute and to eliminate the problem of free-loading.

There is a proposal floating around that would tie General Convention participation by dioceses to their contribution of canonical expenses. It is being floated as the "Ananias Proposal". On the surface, that seems fair. "You have to pay to play", after all. And the major non-contributors are the diocese that are likely leaving.

However, one diocese that would be denied representation is that poster child for all that is wrong with the Episcopal Church, the diocese of Navaholand. If they have two cents to spare, I would be surprised. This proposal would deny them any representation.

Secondly, since when is our church run on capitalist principles? This proposal is quite similar to the old system o box or pew rent which was used until this past century to fund the churches. Pew rent resulted in the bulk of the congregation being crammed into the back couple of pews while the front pews remained paid for, but vacant.

More troublesome still is this language from the proposal: "Diocese X earned $100,000 in the triennium for which payments to the budget are calculated. The canonical portion of the budget in that triennium is 19%. Dioceses are asked to contribute 21% of their earnings for the triennium ($21,000). The deputies of the diocese would not be allowed to vote if the diocese did not pay at least 19% of the asking, $3,990.

If the proposal really were about a diocese's earnings, I would not have any difficulty with it at all. Most diocese's have general endowments, and tying participation to a contribution based upon the diocese's actual earnings from its endowment is quite fair. It would not impact poor duiocese at all and would hit the wealthiest ones in the passive income, which is most equitable.
However, the earlier language in the passage makes it clear that all monies acquired by a diocese are considered earned. This includes contributions. Counting gifts as earned bothers me. If I give my church money, I'df like to think that I do it not out of necessity but out of charity. For the church then to count it as earned means that the church requires me to do it. It no longer is a gift, but an exchange for services.

I'm a service professional. I charge for my time. Is the church supposed to be the same? If so, whom does it serve, a God who loved the sinners so much that He gave up his life as a free gift or Mammon in the marketplace?

Competition

I promise I'll return to teh subject of 'fake charity' but for now I'd like to write about competition.

Suppose there was a chain of coffee shops that catered to the upscale caffeinated beverage drinker. Let's call it "Tasty Elegant Coffee". Initially it was extremely successful, opening up coffee boutiques in every state, with multiple shoppes in major metropolitan areas. As is common with franchises, it sold territorial licenses to various entrepreneurs, promising them exclusivity as to territory. As part of the franchise agreement, the owners were required to purchase supplies from company headquarters.

Over time, the corporate management at Tasty Elegant Coffee grew worried that their customer base was demographically unbalanced. Their customers were older, whiter and wealthier than America as a whole, so they commissioned some market surveys as to what Americans said they wanted in coffee. Corporate management found out that most of their potential customer base preferred a weaker, less bitter flavour of coffee, more lukewarm and less scalding than what had been previously offered. They were also put off by the simple elegance of the Tasty Elegant Boutiques and the time required by the personal service offered at the shoppes. Price was also considered to be an issue.

Directives fluttered down from headquarters. The coffee blend was altered from all arabica to a robusta and arabica mix. It was given a vanilla flavour. The coffee was made weaker, held for longer and was kept cooler. Many boutiques had their furniture removed. No longer were patrons encouraged to sit and read. Incandescent lights were replaced by fluorescents. The air conditioning was eliminated.

Some franchisees sold their franchises. Others introduced elements from other franchise chains, adding menu item,s such as slushies and hot dogs. Still others struck out on their own, offering their interpretation of what a coffee shoppe ought to be.

Recently the headquarters, refusing to see that the customer base was still continuing to leave, has taken to suing its franchisees who have rebranded but remained where the old shoppes were.

Even more recently, some franchisees have hooked up with some international coffee shoppe owners and formed a new coffee shop chain, Classic Coffee and Pastries. They promise to use all arabica beans, keep the coffee fresh and full strength.

Tasty Elegant Coffee has reacted by decrying Classic Coffee and Pastries' actions as parasitic, asserting that there is only room in the North American market for one coffee chain and that even if they are not serving coffee any more, strictly speaking, nonetheless coffee remains as part of the name of each shoppe and therefore its prior territorial claim must be respected.

Two large global chains, Roy's Coffee Club and The Other Coffee have expressed some interest in cross training with the new entity.

That's where the story ends for now. I do not know about anyone else, but people get really silly about business matters and territoriality. Fair play and equity seem to go right out the window.


{Here is what germinated the little story above}

Delta Blues

Delta is merging with Northwest Airlines. The new airline will be named 'Delta' and its headquarters will be in Atlanta.

That is good, I guess.

How to Behave

Katie Delahaye Paine writes a wonderful post on the necessity and practicality of transparency in building trust. She wrote it as it applies to the business world, but I think the principles she states have a much broader application.

Yet another reason

Not to live in France. A French court has just decided that Amazon must charge for delivery.