Category: Uncategorized

How KU Destroyed the Ebook Market

At first glance, Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited looks like a great deal to serious readers. For only $9.99 per month, you can read whatever you want from a catalog of more than 2.5 million books. And it is a great deal, for now. The downside is that it has had terrible consequences for authors and publishers alike, consequences that will only continue to get worse over time. Here is the fundamental problem with the KU program from a book industry professional’s point of view.

The proper price range for an ebook, as defined by Amazon, is $2.99 to $9.99. Outside that range, the 70 percent royalty is halved, so those are the relevant price boundaries. While the Big 4 publishers price their new ebook releases at $9.99, Castalia generally prices its ebooks at $4.99, so we’ll use that for the purposes of analysis.

Using a hypothetical 300-page book as an example, an ebook sale generates around $3.49 in royalties for the publisher after Amazon deducts its delivery fee and infrastructure charges. A full Kindle read of the same ebook generates around $1.20 per finished book, the precise amount depending upon the monthly KENP royalty, which has recently averaged around .0040 per page read.

So, on it’s face, KU means reducing the payout to the author by about $2.29, or 52 percent. That’s bad, but superficially survivable for a successful writer.

However, the reality is considerably worse. Think about what percentage of the books you read that you actually finish. I read 4.5x faster than the average reader, I consciously try to finish every book I read on principle, and I would still estimate that my book-completion rate is only around 90 percent. Sometimes a book just isn’t that interesting, sometimes a better book comes along, and sometimes you only want a specific piece of information contained in a particular book that is otherwise of no interest to you.

And consider the fact that Amazon literally markets KU as a means of “trying out new authors”, which tends to increase the number of books that the average individual samples, but doesn’t finish, as he tries, and discards, new authors he doesn’t like.

“I would never be able to afford reading so many books if not for KU. It also allows trying new authors and series. Since I don’t need to pay extra, I’m willing to try books/authors I would normally hesitate to spend money on.”

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that KU readers finish one out of every 3 books they download onto their Kindles. That estimate is probably on the high side, given the way there is a strong correlation between readers and collectors, but it will serve to illustrate the point. This means that while an author gets paid for every ebook sold, whether it is read or not, he’s only going to get paid for the partial percentage of his KU books that were actually read.

(This is probably why KU only reports normalized pages read, not book downloads. It would likely be depressing to a lot of authors to realize how few of their books downloaded are actually read at all, let alone in full.)

Multiplying the difference between a sale and a book read (0.48) by the percentage of completed books (0.33) suggests that on average, authors are making about 15.84 percent of what they were making prior to Kindle Unlimited being introduced. It also means we can estimate the amount of ebook sales revenues that has been eliminated by Kindle Unlimited by multiplying the monthly KDP Select Global Fund for Kindle Unlimited by 6.3131, which is the inverse of that 15.84 percent.

Since the September 2023 KDP Select Global Fund was $49.6 million, this suggests that Amazon is now destroying about $313 million in potential ebook sales every single month. And this doesn’t even get into the fact that because Amazon controls the sales across its site with its A9-A11 algorithms, as well as secret algorithms like Project Nessie, to influence prices and pick winners and losers on a monthly basis.

People familiar with the FTC’s allegations in the complaint told the Journal that it all started when Amazon developed an algorithm code-named “Project Nessie.” It allegedly works by manipulating rivals’ weaker pricing algorithms and locking competitors into higher prices. The controversial algorithm was allegedly used for years and helped Amazon to “improve its profits on items across shopping categories” and “led competitors to raise their prices and charge customers more,” the WSJ reported.

So, if you want to know why so many great little independent publishers have disappeared, why independent authors are struggling, and why genre publishing houses like Tor and Baen Books are teetering on the edge of failure, and why the comics publishers like Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and IDW are facing the prospect of looming shutdowns, you’ve got your answer: Amazon ebook sales hurt the print market, and Kindle Unlimited is killing the ebook sales market.

Now, you don’t need to worry about Castalia. Even though we’ve seen the same cataclysmic decline in ebook sales that other publishers and authors have, starting in October, you’re going to see us publishing more hardcovers, paperbacks, and ebooks than you’ve seen us publish in the last three years. We just published CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED by Chuck Dixon, and next week we’ll be publishing THE ALTAR OF HATE by yours truly and QUANTUM MORTIS: A MIND PROGRAMMED & OTHER STORIES as soon as the cover art is ready. And a whole host of books that haven’t appeared in print before, including THE CASTALIA JUNIOR CLASSICS Volumes 7 and 8, are in production. We’re also going to systematically expand the number of ebooks and print editions available on the Arkhaven Store over the next year.

CHUCK DIXON’S CONAN #2: CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED

But while we probably deserve some credit for anticipating the negative consequences of KU and taking steps to avoid them, it’s your support of Library, History, and our various crowdfunding projects, and your willingness to buy books directly from us, that is the main reason Castalia is healthy while publishers who relied upon bookstores, comic stores, and Amazon to keep them afloat are rapidly circling the dustbin of history.

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Fireworks in Israel

Hamas is reported to have fired thousands of rockets into Israel:

Israel’s military has declared a ‘state of war’ after Islamic militant group Hamas fired a claimed 5,000 rockets into the country early on Saturday.

Forces in the country have ordered residents to remain indoors and air raid sirens are sounding in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem after Hamas militants infiltrated the country – in some cases flying in via paraglider in order to evade the country’s high-tech border.

Hamas supreme military commander Mohammed Deif said the operation, Al-Aqsa Storm, was a declaration that ‘enough is enough’ as he urged Palestinians to confront Israel.

Videos on social media appeared to show armed troops from the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ militant arm, moving through built-up areas firing weapons. Israeli media reports suggested an Israeli soldier had been kidnapped by Hamas militants as they swept the streets.

One has to wonder at what all these rockets are being fired. They never seem to accomplish very much, especially when compared to the extreme destruction of the Russian-Ukrainian front or even a night of immigrant riots in France. It could, of course, presage an opening of the Middle Eastern front by Iran, which we’ll know soon if Hezbollah gets involved, but at least for now, it doesn’t look like much more than the regular flare-up.

Hopefully the Israelis in the community can shed more light on the situation.

UPDATE: It looks more serious than the customary PR-focused attacks. Israeli radio is reporting that Hamas has captured 35 Israelis so far.

Israeli media reported that clashes are taking place in seven different towns and settlements. Other reports suggest that the Palestinian Resistance has managed to strike at 21 different military positions.

UPDATE: On the other hand, Hezbollah is showing no sign of being interested in opening a northern front and is doing nothing more than “monitoring the situation”.

UPDATE: A little confused about this very unwelcoming response by the Israelis to their newest immigrants. Don’t they realize all these young working-age men coming into their country will make their economy stronger?

UPDATE: The “Israel’s 9/11” scenario is looking increasingly likely given the way anyone who suggests the obvious possibility of the attacks not having been “the staggering failure of intelligence services”, but rather, effectively permitted by those services simply looking the other way is being hounded into retractions immediately.

A Harvard professor has been forced to apologize for implying the Hamas attack on Israel was an attempt to distract from Benjamin Netanyahu’s ‘own corruption.’ Those who saw it were outraged calling the professor an ‘idiot’ who needs to ‘go commit’ himself somewhere. Liberal political commentator Keith Olbermann also criticized Tribe’s claims, calling it ‘moronic and indefensible,’ Fox News reported.

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Psyop City: Population One

I’m not saying this ex-conspiracy theorist miraculously healed of his doubts about Global Brother is necessarily gay, but he is absolutely and indubitably fake.

Brent is a real individual. There are many recent videos involving him, where he touts how he abandoned conspiracies that he once believed. However, all his live appearances show a nice-looking man with a limited vocabulary and a small repertoire of ideas. Brent could not elaborate on even one “conspiracy theory” that he believed and could not explain the specifics of how he was wrong about any particular idea.

Brent is never specific on any conspiracy theory he supposedly believed in the past. He speaks in generalities and mostly uses little words. Most conspiracy theorists I met love details! They would go on and on about “raised seals on Obama’s birth certificate,” “missing plane in front of the Pentagon,” and so on. Quite conversely, Brent is never specific about any of his past beliefs. So, I have to wonder if he is truthful about his past.

Brent Lee seems to have significantly changed. He posted semiliterate one-liners on Twitter until 2018. Then, his Twitter account changed suddenly to be much more verbose and oriented towards the daily fights of UK politics. Finally, his Facebook posts, much longer and with a much more diverse corporate vocabulary, are written in a style completely different from Twitter’s.

Clown World relies upon belief in its illusions and its word spells if it is to survive and continue to exert influence over the masses. So, the fact that it is now waging war on truth, which in its inversion it calls “disinformation” and aggressively attempting to discredit the truthtellers it calls “conspiracy theorists” is a positive sign that it knows its ability to keep its facade propped up is fading.

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Vaxxing the Proles

New Zealand exempted 11,005 government employees from its harsh vaxx mandate.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health granted vaccine exemptions to key staff while hypocritically rolling out the world’s most draconian vaccine mandates and insisting the public be vaccinated. The hypocritical vaccine exemptions for the elite were granted by former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government before she stood down and accepted a new role as the World Economic Forum’s global “disinformation czar.”

Ardern’s decision to allow the elite to refuse the vaccine while forcing the vax on normal people was revealed by an Official Information Act (OIA) request HNZ00023978 dated 2 August 2023 which asked the following question:

“According to the legislation at the time in 2021, there were operational exemptions available for those who were not getting vaccinated against Covid 19. Your website outlines the process of applying for an operating exemption under clause 12a. How many requests were received? How many were approved by the ministry?”

Matt Hannant, Interim Director, Prevention, National Public Health Service, Te Whatu Ora replied:

“From 13 November 2021 to 26 September 2022, a total of 478 applications for Significant Service Disruption exemption (SSD) were received. 103 applications were granted, covering approximately 11,005 workers. Please note that it is not possible to provide the exact number of workers that were covered by SSDs. This is because it was possible for an organisation to submit an application to cover more than one worker.”

Still think it was “safe and effective”? The lesson, as always, is this: never obey the rules set by global depopulationists.

Meanwhile, the immune-stripping feature of the vaxx is slowly, but surely, coming to light.

The data reveal that the double vaccinated population across Canada have now lost on average 74% of their immune system capability, and the triple vaccinated population across Canada have now lost on average 73% of their immune system capability compared to the natural immune system of their unvaccinated counterparts.

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Perhaps She Just… Evolved?

There appears to be a very strange situation surrounding JF Gariepy, the evolutionary biologist I debated on the subject of the mathematical impossibility of evolution a few years ago.

So, basically, there are accusations floating around that JF Gariepy murdered his wife and dumped her body in a remote forest in Canada. She apparently went missing in June, and he never told anybody. The cops only showed up when a neighbor noticed he hadn’t seen her in a while and started asking questions. So now it’s October, and this is the first thing he’s apparently said about this to anybody. Other than that when he got home, he went on a massive three-day cleaning spree, that (in his words) “sanitized” the house.

Basically, he claims one days she told him out of nowhere that she was leaving him to go live a life of adventure in the woods. Demanded that he drive her to a remote gas station at the edge of a forest, bringing nothing with her but her phone and the clothes on her back. No sleeping bag, no change of clothes, nothing. So then she got out and disappeared, and he never heard from her again. And I’m not kidding – that’s really the story he’s going with.

Considering that it took JFG three tries to understand a basic mathematical relationship, it’s not absolutely impossible that he might think it’s possible to rely upon such a flimsy and dubious explanation. But JFG is sufficiently neurologically unique that it’s also possible that he’s simply telling the truth.

Anyhow, here is hoping that it’s simply the usual e-drama over nothing.

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CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED

Bounding Into Comics reports exclusively on the release of CHUCK DIXON’s CONAN #2: CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED today.

Exclusive: Get An In-Depth Look At Chuck Dixon’s Second Conan Novel ‘Caravan Of The Damned’

Publisher Castalia House and Bounding Into Comics are happy to share with you an in-depth look at Chuck Dixon’s newly released second Conan novel, Caravan of the Damned.

Caravan of the Damned sees Conan lead his band of merciless desert raiders across the Zuagir, where he doesn’t hesitate to attack even the most well-guarded caravans.

However, after a successful raid on a rich caravan from Khwarazm intended for the King of Zamora, Conan and his company come into possession of a beautiful and priceless treasure. The House of Yildiz and the King’s Own guards set out to reclaim this treasure and put an end to Conan and his group of raiders.

As Conan is pursued through the wastelands of the Zuagir he not only has to contend with the King’s Own guards, but discovers there are horrors in the desert too dreadful for even the most fearless barbarian to imagine.

The first novel, The Siege of the Black Citadel, currently has a 4.7 out of 5 rating on Amazon with many readers giving the book high praise in their reviews.

RC Scott hailed, “This story hacks, and slashes across the battlefield, and then down to the subterranean depths where nameless monstrosities await. Author, Chuck Dixon, takes readers back to the Hyborian Age with a bloody vengeance. An awesome action adventure that’s loaded with great fight scenes, excellent pacing, fun dialogue, and a savagely satisfactory conclusion. I highly recommend this to fans of the original tales, and I’m eagerly awaiting the next installment.”

You’ll want to read the whole thing there, as it includes an exclusive excerpt about Conan doing some very Conan things in the desert as well as the back of the book and some of its excellent illustrations by Arkhaven artist Ademir Leal.

And don’t forget that if you pick up the paperback at Arkhaven, you’ll get the ebook for free.

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He Used to Vote Republican Too

Expect to see a LOT more of this sort of gaslighting from fake former “conspiracy theorists” as the Clown World facade continues to crack:

For 15 years, Brent Lee believed the world was run by a shadowy evil cabal of paedophiles orchestrating almost every atrocity from 9/11 to mass shootings. But now the 44-year-old works to combat disinformation and says he is ‘totally obsessed’ with challenging the wild theories he once wholeheartedly believed.

The self-labelled ‘recovering conspiracist’ says he used to believe politicians performed ritual sacrifices and that terrorist attacks were government-orchestrated.

But in 2018, he began to question his worldview when the ‘alt-right’ US broadcaster Alex Jones began claiming that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was fake.

He’s so totally obsessed with challenging the wild theories that I’m sure he’ll be in touch with people like Owen Benjamin, Stewart Peters and me to debate us and totally disprove the ideas like “terrorist attacks were government-orchestrated” any day now.

You know they’re getting worried when they break out the “former supporter” storylines. I’m just surprised they didn’t work the vaxx narrative in there somewhere.

And no doubt we’re also going to hear from a lot of “former Trump voters” who were with him in 20216 and even 2020, but were just disgusted by his January 6th insurrection, which is why they’re now voting for the animated corpse of Joe Biden.

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Norman Rockwell Paints Clown World

The demonic nature of Clown World can perhaps best be seen when shown in stark contrast to the ideal 1950s America that was portrayed by the great American painter. The weaponized autists of /pol/ have harnessed the power of AI image creation to illustrate the extent of the sin-drenched abomination that is today’s post-American Clown World. Below is just one of many vivid examples.

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India Knew Russia Would Win

I read a fascinating article written by an Indian ambassador in The Tribune, India’s oldest English-language newspaper, nearly one year ago. It’s remarkable, because it illustrates that Indian strategists – or perhaps we should say Bharati strategists – clearly recognized what the European governments are still struggling to accept, namely, the inevitable defeat of the US and NATO and the transition to a multipolar world order.

Policy-makers and strategists in Delhi should make a careful note of the timeline. The bottom line is, Russia is looking for an all-out victory and will not settle for anything less than a friendly government in Kiev. Western politicians, including Biden, understand that there is nothing stopping the Russians now. The US’ weapon kitty is running dry as Kiev keeps asking for more.

When asked whether he’d meet Biden at the G20 in Bali, Putin derisively remarked on Friday, ‘He (Biden) should be asked whether he is ready to hold such negotiations with me or not. To be honest, I don’t see any need, by and large. There is no platform for any negotiations for the time being.’

However, Washington has not yet thrown in the towel and the Biden administration remains obsessed with exhausting the Russian military — even at the cost of Ukraine’s destruction. And, for the Russians too, there is still much to be worked out on the battlefield: the oppressed Russian populations in Odessa (which suffered unspeakable atrocities from the neo-Nazis), Mykolaiv, Zaporizhya, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkov are expecting ‘liberation’. It’s a highly emotive issue for Russia. Again, the overarching agenda of ‘demilitarisation’ and ‘denazification’ of Ukraine must be taken to its logical conclusion.

When all that is over, Putin knows Biden will not even want to meet him. Hungarian PM Viktor Orban said last week, ‘Anyone who seriously believes that the war can be ended through Russian-Ukrainian negotiations lives in another world. Reality looks different. In reality, such issues can only be discussed between Washington and Moscow. Today, Ukraine is able to fight only because it receives military assistance from the United States…

‘At the same time, I do not see President Biden as the person who would really be suitable for such serious negotiations. President Biden has gone too far. Suffice it to recall his statements to Russian President Putin.’

India should expect the defeat of the US and NATO, which completes the transition to a multipolar world order. Sadly, Indian elites are yet to purge their ‘unipolar predicament’. Europe, including Britain, is devastated and there is palpable discontent over the US’s ‘transatlantic leadership’. Indo-Pacific strategy is hopelessly adrift. New power centres are emerging in India’s extended neighbourhood, as the OPEC’s rebuff to Washington shows. A profound adjustment is needed in the Indian strategic calculus.

A War Russia Set to Win, 22 October 2022

One year later, it is clear that the Indian strategic calculus has, indeed, been modified as recommended, at least in part. The ambassador provides more recent prognostications at his blog, Indian Punchlines.

Looking ahead, further erosion of support for the Ukraine war can be expected and even a possible collapse of support for Ukraine across the collective West cannot be ruled out in the months ahead, especially if the Kremlin leadership finally decides to give a knockout punch to Ukraine’s military and/or orders the Russian forces to cross the Dnieper and take over Kiev and Odessa.

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