Publishers terrified by Amazon’s “price war”

This gentleman from Melville House doesn’t appear too happy about the “breaking news” of what he describes as Amazon declaring war on the book industry.  He quotes an excerpt from an industry publication:

Yesterday Amazon.com quietly began discounting many bestselling
hardcover titles between 50% and 65%, levels we’ve never seen in the
history of Amazon or in the bricks-and-mortar price wars of the past.
The books are from a range of major publishers and include, for example,
Inferno by Dan Brown, which has a list price of $29.95 but is available on Amazon for $11.65, a 61% discount; And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini, listed for $28.95, offered at $12.04, a 58% discount; Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, listed at $24.95, available for $9.09, a 64% discount; and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, listed at $17.99, available for $6.55, 64% off. A notable exception is The Cuckoo’s Calling by J.K. Rowling, using the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, which is discounted 42%.
The changes appear largely to be in response to an Overstock.com
campaign launched this week to be 10% lower than Amazon’s on “the
roughly 360,000 books sold on both Overstock.com and Amazon.com,”
according to Internet Retailer. Overstock has said the anti-Amazon campaign will last indefinitely although its site says “one week only.”

The
discounts are, of course, far higher than the usual 40%-50% range
offered by Amazon, warehouse clubs and other discounters–including
Overstock–and are more typical for remainders than frontlist
hardcovers.

Why do the professional publishers care if Amazon starts offering its bestselling books at cost, just like many brick-and-mortar bookstores do?  After all, they get paid the same no matter what price the book is sold at retail.  The reason is that this move should suffice to kill off the brick-and-mortar stores, the sales to whom are the last remaining advantage of the professional publishers over the independent and self-publishers.

Look at The Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed.  Right now, its Kindle ranking is about 30,000 and it has 127 reviews with an average rating of 4.2 stars.  Now compare it to A Throne of Bones, which has a current Kindle ranking of 52,000, 109 reviews and an average rating of 4.3 stars.  That 52k is in the middle of its customary range, as it bounces between 30k and 100k.

What that means is despite Ahmed’s book being published by DAW, being nominated for two major awards, and being pushed heavily by its publisher, it doesn’t sell much better on Amazon than my independently published book does.  It has almost certainly sold 10x more books total than mine has, but that is through the brick-and-mortar stores where it is distributed and mine is not.

Take those stores away, and suddenly we find ourselves in the grand experiment of “did the book buyer seek or discover the books he bought at the book store?”  It may be that Amazon will capture all the lost brick-and-mortar sales and they will be perfectly distributed among publishers and authors online as they were before.  But it usually doesn’t work that way.

I believe that the closure of the brick-and-mortar stores, the rate of which will increase as time goes on, is going to benefit writers with a strong online presence as well as authors who are popular with Twitter celebrities.  It is going to badly hurt the remaining midlist writers and new writers who are dependent upon having their books pushed upon unsuspecting readers by their publishers.

And that is what scares the publishers to death. The combination of declining ebook profit margins and paper book sales is going to put many, if not most of them, out of the fiction business.  Technical, academic, and trade publishing will survive, but conventional genre publishing will not.

Especially not when Amazon starts offering better royalties to established writers as an incentive to drop their existing publishers and go directly with Amazon.  Just as the traditional publishers snap up successful self-publishers, Amazon can skim off the most successful writers from the publishers.  It’s a no-win game for the traditional publishers, and it’s not going to take more than three or four years for them to figure out that even if they do everything right and make all the correct calls, they cannot win.

If you’re a writer, don’t waste your time trying to be the last rat to board the sinking ships.  Forget the idea of “book contracts” and invest your time and money into improving your self-publishing.  That’s the world in which you’re going to be competing soon one way or another, so you may as well get accustomed to it now.

Opposing predictions revisited

You may recall that after the mass shooting of dozens of larval Labor politicians in Norway, there was a discussion of whether this would turn the Norwegian electorate to the right or to the left.  Many predicted an anti-nativist backlash that would strengthen the ruling Norwegian Labor party and support its vision of a multicultural, multiethnic Norway. I, on the other hand, predicted that Breivik’s action would eventually be seen as a harbinger of Norway’s belated move towards the ethnic nationalism that is sweeping across most of Europe.

I believe we can safely conclude that the verdict is now in:

Norway will be holding elections for Parliament on September 9, just two weeks before Germany votes. If polls taken over the last year are accurate, the eight-year-old Labor-party government of Jens Stoltenberg is headed for a landslide defeat.

Normally, you would think it would be a shoo-in for reelection. Labor’s social democrats have long thought of themselves as the natural party of government — Labor has been the leading party in Norway for all but 16 of the last 78 years. While much of Europe is wracked by recession, Norway’s economy grew by 3 percent last year, and the unemployment rate is only 3.5 percent. Norway’s GDP per capita is now over $60,000 a year.

But Norwegians appear likely to elect a conservative coalition government for the first time in over a decade. Polls show the Conservative party leading with 32 percent of the vote, which should give it 58 seats in the 169-seat parliament, a dramatic increase from 2005, when it won only 23 seats. The Labor party has about 30 percent of the vote, and its left-wing allied parties are floundering. The Progress party — a populist party that supports low taxes and stricter limits on immigration, and that worries about Muslim extremism – has about 16 percent of the vote, and it and the Conservatives, together with their smaller allies, look to have a clear majority in the new Parliament.

Charles Martel, William Tell, and Winston Churchill are all seen as national heroes for their violent opposition to foreign immigration and occupation, so while some might find it very hard to believe now, it will not be terribly surprising if Anders Breivik is one day revered by Norwegians for his murderous stand against the invaders and quislings of his homeland.

The people in your neighborhood

If your neighborhood is insufficiently vibrant, Obama has a plan to fix that:

In a move some claim is tantamount to social engineering, the
Department of Housing and Urban Development is imposing a new rule that
would allow the feds to track diversity in America’s neighborhoods and
then push policies to change those it deems discriminatory.

The policy is called, “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.” It
will require HUD to gather data on segregation and discrimination in
every single neighborhood and try to remedy it. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan unveiled the federal rule at the NAACP convention in July.

“Unfortunately, in too many of our hardest hit communities, no matter
how hard a child or her parents work, the life chances of that child,
even her lifespan, is determined by the zip code she grows up in. This
is simply wrong,” he said. Data from this discrimination database would be used with zoning
laws, housing finance policy, infrastructure planning and transportation
to alleviate alleged discrimination and segregation.

I think this is what one calls “a clarifying moment”.  It will be interesting to see how long it takes for “anti-racists” to change their position once they are forced to actually live in close exposure to vibrancy.

This should work about as well as busing did in the 1970s.

Dawkins and the Dark Ages

In this Twitter spat between Richard Dawkins and the Muslim community, I find it interesting that no one has noted the silliest thing that the world’s most famous atheist said:

Professor Richard Dawkins has become embroiled in a Twitter row after he claimed the last time Muslims contributed something worthwhile was during the Dark Ages.  The 71-year-old author went on to tweet that the world’s Muslims had won fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge.

His comments sparked anger among high-profile Twitter users including writer Caitlin Moran and economics editor at Channel 4 News, Faisal Islam.

Moran tweeted: ‘It’s time someone turned Richard Dawkins off and then on again.

‘Something’s gone weird.’

While Islam said: ‘Actually, over the last two decades, it’s 8-4 against Trinity. I

‘I say this as a muslim alumnus of Trinity College, Cambridge.

‘Of course if @RichardDawkins had any clue what he was talking about, he’d know to strip out the Economics Nobels, which aren’t quite real’

Forget the fake Nobels of economics, which Islam is correct to point out are not true Nobel prizes, but rather Sveriges Riksbank Prizes in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.  It’s more pertinent to point out that there never were any Dark Ages, in Europe or anywhere else, and even if one uses the term in the historically incorrect colloquial manner, it has nothing to do with Islamic history.

Richard Dawkins is simply demonstrating, once more, the fact that in addition to being a philosophical and theological ignoramus, he is a historical one as well.

UPDATE: It is pointed out that it was the newspaper, not Dawkins, who used the ahistorical term “Dark Ages”.  Fair enough, that is an error that should not be laid at his door.  But he is responsible for this logical error: if Muslims had contributed nothing worthwhile, then the Nobel count difference cannot matter since either Nobel Prizes are worthwhile, thus proving Muslims have contributed something, or they are not, in which case his comparison is pointless.

Of course, all of this is irrelevant, since Dawkins is merely playing his usual game of vomiting forth rhetoric in the guise of dialectic.

Handism in SF/F/SF

Standout Author and anti-handist activist Mike Z. Williamson was inspired to action after encountering this troubling discussion of racism:

Stephen Geigen-Miller
June 13th, 2013 at 1:41 pm · Reply
Jim,
I agree completely and deeply respect what you’re doing in this post
overall. Because of that, may I please suggest that you rethink your use
of the phrase “tarred by association”? There are some problematic
connotations there. Thanks very much.


Jim C. Hines
June 13th, 2013 at 1:51 pm · Reply
Stephen
– I’m not familiar with the connotations in question, and Google is
failing me. Can you help fill in this knowledge gap for me?
Thomas Wilde


June 13th, 2013 at 1:57 pm · Reply
I’m assuming he’s referring to tar babies or somesuch.
Trey
June 13th, 2013 at 2:06 pm · Reply
Tarring and feathering. Also associated with lynching.


Josh Hawks
June 13th, 2013 at 2:28 pm · Reply
I’m assuming it’s referring to tarring and feathering (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarring_and_feathering), which does have classist/racist undertones.


Jim C. Hines
June 13th, 2013 at 2:15 pm · Reply
Had a quick and interesting Twitter chat about it, and did a little reading at http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-tar1.htm. I did go ahead and change that phrase, though. I like the new version better anyway
To which Mr. Williamson responded on the subject of privilege and the discriminatory bias of handism:
There’s one minority still not given proper respect in language: Left handers. The term “sinister” is still used as an epithet for evil, wrong, unpleasant. Likewise, “gauche” is a reference to rude behavior.  People are considered “dextrous” if they have good manual skills.

Why are the negative connotations expressed using references to left handedness, and positive connotations reserved for the right?

Writers, especially in fantasy, usually right-handed, should stop using these prejudicial terms and find terms that are non-handed specific.

This is a worldwide issue.  Only about 15% of the population are left handed…. I’m sure most people have never thought of this.  They have right-handed privilege, in a world that caters to them.

I’m sure some will dismiss this as a non-issue.  I challenge them to go into a store and ask for every household good in a left-handed model.  If the store has any, they will have a token one or two of each, not the dozens or hundreds of right handed options.  Buy them.  Go home and use them in your right hand so you’re using them backward. That’s what it’s like for left handed people every day of our lives.

Politically, I’ve seen conservatives refer to the political right being “correct” and the political left being “wrong.”

Then crack open a book and find the bad guy is “sinister” and the clueless guy is “gauche.”  Gee, thanks for that.

“Right” is an acknowledgment of correctness.  One gets “left behind.”
I expect there are a number of fantasy writers who are major offenders on this.  But if they’re taking steps with racially, culturally, gender and religiously sensitive terms, it would be fair to not use terms derogatory to the left handed minority as well.

This moving missive has truly opened my eyes to my right-handed privilege.  Was it an accident that the handist and racist Ursula le Guin asserted it was the LEFT hand that was DARK?  Was it a coincidence that the handist and religious bigot Jerry Jenkins related the LEFT to the body part most associated with ordure, the BEHIND?  Truly, the evil is rife within the genre! I can only abase myself and hope Mr. Williamson will accept my humble apologies for my thoughtless handism.  I henceforth pledge to do my level best to excise this shameful scourge of handist privilege from science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction.

Audiobook auditions

UPDATE: Narrator D is out because he has too many commitments and was forced to withdraw.  However, there are now two more new candidates, and a prospective third one who will be sending in an audition soon.

Narrator A

Narrator B

Narrator C

Narrator D

Narrator E

Narrator F

It belatedly occurred to me that I’ve been going about this audiobook process all wrong.  Leaping into an area in which I have zero experience – I don’t even listen to audiobooks myself – and doing so with a mammoth project that is larger than most audiobooks out there is a recipe for not only failure, but disaster.

So, I decided to retreat, rethink, and reassess my approach to producing the Selenoth audiobooks.  Since Amazon/Audible’s ACX is an attempt to be the standard offering, I thought I had better check that out.  And since I have a set of much shorter works set in Selenoth, I have the luxury of trying out several different approaches before settling on one narrator and distribution system for the main series.  This is important, because A Throne of Bones alone will make for a 36-hour audiobook.

In the interest of experimentation, Marcher Lord signed up A Magic Broken exclusively for ACX  and two narrators have already auditioned.  I’ve also included a non-ACX audition that was sent to me earlier. As I’ve mentioned previously, my ideal narrator would be Charles Dance, but then, I’m not the one who will be listening to the audiobooks so my opinion concerning the matter is not decisive.

If you’re someone who might be interested in the Selenoth audiobooks, I’d be interested to get your impression of the potential narrators.  Please let me know your thoughts in the comments here. I’ll post more here as they are submitted until Marcher Lord decides upon one.  As for ACX, my thought is to do AMB through their system and one of the stories from TWC through open distribution, then compare the results.

A fallen atheist

This self-described fallen atheist appears to have realized, as a result of up close and personal experience with the weak and the broken, that kicking away the crutch upon which people are leaning is not the act of a brave intellectual or an honest seeker after truth.  Even if the crutch is an intellectual placebo.

It is the cruel and thoughtless act of a self-centered asshole:

I heard how
the small cross in Takeesha’s purse offered her protection when getting
into a strangers car. “When I climb into that car God comes with me and
keeps me safe.”

I heard how Neecy found the strength to try and find a better life in her Bible.

I heard how Michael’s Rosary “Was a reminder that there is something better than all of this.”
Soon I saw my atheism for what it is: An intellectual luxury for those who have done well.

It isn’t a coincidence that the rise of the New Atheism coincided with the peak of the greatest credit boom in history.  And it isn’t an accident that the New Atheists are increasingly seen as intellectual embarrassments only five years into the Great Depression 2.0.

There is no shortage of scientific evidence that religion is, at worst, a placebo. Even if we assume that religion is entirely false, how can anyone who claims to possess any ethics, let alone superior and rationally determined ethics, possibly justify harming others by intentionally eliminating that placebo effect?

Double-damned lies and comparative statistics

It’s not as if government statistics weren’t already unreliable, but this mea culpa demonstrates why you should look very, very, very skeptically at any argument that compares the statistics from one country with the statistics from another.  Even with something as superficially straightforward as the murder rate, they simply cannot be trusted at face value:

I have frequently in this series referred to the English murder rates as historically low and currently very low compared to US murder rates.  I blandly accepted the murder statistics published by the UK Home Office as definitive.  I overlooked the details of what and how the English counted “murders.” It turns out that was a big mistake.  (I was first turned onto my error by this post at Extrano’s Alley.)

I fell into a definitions trap you may not be aware of. The shortest version is this. We count and report crimes based on initial data. The Brits count and report crimes based on the outcome of the investigation and trial. Yep, that says what I meant it to say.

In the US, the count of people murdered kept by the FBI is pretty darned straightforward. Got a body, not natural causes, not suicide? Must be murder of one sort or another. Count it.

So, if you ask the FBI, they will tell you that for 2011 there were 14,022 murders or non-negligent manslaughters.  On the same line of that chart, they tell us the population was 292,364,075 which gives us a “murder” rate of 4.8 per 100,000 population. Those counts are based on crimes reported by local police agencies.  They say nothing about the clearance rate, nor if anyone was ever identified or charged or convicted or whatever.  Body, not natural, not negligent, homicide.  Duh.

Now, on to England. It turns out that the Home office is very restrictive in what they report as “murders.”  Still, looking at the detailed report for 2010/2011 the Home office tells us that in the reporting period there were 636 murders “provisionally recorded” for a murder rate of 1.15 per 100,000 — less than 1/3 the murder rate in the US.  (See page 16 of the source document)

I’ve reported these numbers blindly many times, and quoted sources with many (sometimes silly) explanations for the lower murder rate in the UK. There’s a problem with that as it turns out. What about all those murders which were not solved? The ones where a conviction wasn’t gotten? The ones where the appeals are still on-going? Not only that, but when exactly were these homicides performed?

“Since 1967, homicide figures for England and Wales have been adjusted to exclude any cases which do not result in conviction”

OOOoooooops.  We’re not comparing apples to apples, we’re comparing apples to meatloaf. 

Keep this in mind the next time you hear someone extolling the wonders of gun laws in the UK or the excellent performance of the Scandinavian health care system.  It’s possible the statistics are relevant.  But then again, it is entirely possible that they are not.

The dismay of the white liberal

As Brown America waxes in influence, its longtime white liberal allies are dismayed to discover that the minorities they championed never actually gave a damn about the liberal principles they espoused:

Here’s the Daily Kos founder on the Snowden revelations:

I
don’t give a shit. Seriously, I just don’t care. NSA spying is bad! So
is stop and frisk. So is splitting up families by deporting children to
countries they’ve never been to and don’t speak the language. So is
harassing American muslims.

Government overreach
is bad. But to act like having the government track who you call is the
height of government abuse is a very white privileged view of the
privacy issue.

But as for Greenwald and Snowden? Seriously, I don’t give two shits.

Please,
Mr. Moulitsas, tell us, what is the proper, non-privileged,
multi-cultural view of the “privacy issue”? Is it one that stays within
the confines of what’s allowed by the Democratic Party? Is it one that
is relevant to the war on women, or voting rights, or immigration, but
ignores the collapse of the rule of law and the justice system (which is
far from a “white privileged” issue)?

Of course a
Mr. Moulitsas doesn’t give a damn about privileged whites such as
Greenwald and Snowden.  They are not of his clan or a minority in a
similar position. Imagine how shocked the white liberals are going to be
when they find out their erstwhile allies don’t give a damn about the
equality, the environment, abortion, women’s rights, or any of the
Left’s other sacred causes.  They never did, they merely went through
the motions and mouthed all the right words in order to ensure
themselves a place at the table.

The two-party system
based on ideology is totally foreign to most non-Americans, who are
accustomed to interest-based politics.  Now that minorities, real ethnic
minorities, make up a significant part of the Democratic party, it
should come as no surprise that they are beginning to reveal the true
nature of their politics.  Because of this, don’t be surprised when La
Raza becomes an effective third party in California and begins to
compete directly with the Democrats.