Keith D. Jones's Blog, page 9

Journal: Random News and Junk

Yeah, I really should write some kind-of update here. It is getting on toward the end of the year, and I don't think I've written many journal entries or news updates. I've been doing more micro-updates on Twitter and Facebook, which aren't really that interesting. Movies I've been watching. Books I've been reading. Word count updates. Oh, you have to go to Goodreads for the books I've been reading updates.

So, yeah, little drips and drabs, but nothing much terribly coherent. As if these journal entries tend to be overly coherent, but that's as much by design as accident. I mean, I never set out for these entries to be coherent. The only reason I didn't label this section rant rather than journal was out of a certain amount of self-amused pretentiousness and rant just has a certain connotation that I didn't want to get into.

I'll refer to these journal entries as rants as much as I like, but I just don't feel like calling the whole entire category by that name. As stated above, journal entry just has the right amount of amusing pretentiousness that appeals to me something awful. [...]

Journal: Update Progress Commentary

Okay, I know it's been ages since I last wrote something here, which always makes my brain want to spontaneously combust, but I don't want to just write some utter tripe or nonsense just for the sake of having something to update, which is another item on the list of things I go on-and-on about without ever seeming to shut up. The complaining about wanting to write a new journal entry but not wanting to write filler or something or whatever. It's all regurgitated crap of one kind or another, isn't it?

Anyway, works been hard. Hours have been long. Blah blah. Nothing to see. Move along.

Writing of the POS no effort at all just keep your hand in adaptation of a Shakespeare play has been averaging between slow and stop. Blah blah. Been there. Heard that. Move along. [...]

Journal: Shakespeare Project Process

Very mixed feelings working on my Shakespeare project. Don't know how to describe. I was right about one thing. Very little time or energy to actually think about it. I know the basic idea. The shape of it. I've got the original Shakespeare play to rely on, after all. Of course, that doesn't really do me much good since I'm not exactly following the play. I've written—what?—approximately 30,000 words, and I'm still mucking about in act one. And, once I'm finally out of act one, I think the rest of the plot is just going to fly by. So, I think this is going to be very top-heavy, so to speak, which worries me for very stupid reasons. Oh, it can't be too short. Well, why not? Because the anticipated eBook price will seem unfair or something? Can't charge as much as for the others if it is only half the length? Seriously? Is that what's bugging me? That's just really stupid.

The most important thing is for the story to be whatever it turns out to be. I shouldn't be going by such arbitrarily stupid ideas as minimum word counts. Irrelevant. Arbitrary minimum word counts is one of the leading causes of padding. The other leading causes of padding that come to mind are unwarranted feelings of self-importance and bloody-minded delaying tactics. Can't get to that important bit yet. Not enough has happened. But, I digress.

Actually, one of the things that does worry me is the pacing of the whole mess. Not enough build-up. Set-up. Things seeming clumped together. Wanting to add more in the name of adequately setting the stage, as it were. Which is its own trap. More self-importance masquerading as pacing. More padding. [...]

Journal: Price-point Versus Worth-point

Finally uploaded the improved formatting version of my electric books to Apple, which also means I finally increased the price to match what I had raised it to over at Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Didn't feel right increasing the price before I could get the new files uploaded, which was an option. Price changes can be done through the website. Book files cannot. Go figure. So, there was a very narrow window in which the books were cheaper at Apple than elsewhere.

Still standing by my price increase; even though, I have found books in the $2.99 to $3.99 price range. Still makes me feel a little silly for going with $4.99, but screw it. I'm not jacking the price around. Electric books are still way too expensive. The vast majority of things I am actually interested in reading are still $9.99 or more. Whole thing still makes me freaking angry.

It's got nothing to do with supply and demand. The reason so many books are $9.99 is that is the Amazon pricing structure cut-off. Go above $9.99 and Amazon gets 70% of the price instead of 30%. This is also why you'll find so many $2.99 books. Go any lower and again Amazon takes 70%. The reason I'm pointing out Amazon's pricing structure is because most publishers want a consistent price across bookstores so if you're going to charge $9.99 at Amazon to stay within that 30% window then you're also going to charge $9.99 everywhere else. [...]

News: Updated Short Story ePub Files

Discovered there was something wrong with the ePub versions of my short stories. Calibre was giving me an error message when I tried to convert to other formats. I think I figured out what was wrong. Removed one line from the content.opf file in the ePub file. If that makes any sense. It has to do with the fact that an ePub file is actually a .zip archive with the file extension changed from .zip to .epub. It's why you need a program like Sigil in order to edit the .epub file. Well, you can probably open the .epub yourself simply by changing the extension back to .zip and unzipping it, but that's more annoying even than I want to deal with. Sigil is an awersome program, by the way. Calibre is awesome, too, by the way. It's just not an ePub editor.

Journal: Price-point Drop

Oh, so of course I would find real electronic books for $2.99 right after going on a horribly profane rant about the cost of electric books. Say all kinds-of mean things about people I don't even know. Must be that poetic justice people are always going on about. Well, now I'm just more conflicted and confused. Brain explosion. Spontaneous combustion. All of that. Curse you, Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell! [...]

Journal: Price-point Dilemma

Electronic books are too freaking expensive. That's been my opinion for years, and I've had absolutely no reason to revise my estimation. In fact, if anything I've been too soft. This was seriously brought home to me recently when I started searching for electronic books to get and discovered that the vast majority of them are more expensive than the actual honest-to-god dead-tree paperback versions of the exact same books. What the fuck? I mean, really. What the fuck?

Sure, I know maybe just a little about the costs that go into a book, but the one thing I know for an absolute certainty is that electronic books don't have anything resembling the overhead that goes into their dead-tree brethren. In fact, they've got even less of an excuse to be so much more freaking expensive than the dead-tree versions because the pricing structure is far more favorable to the publisher. When you have to give slightly more than half the cover price to the bookstore, you have to charge a little more to cover your costs. However, when you get to keep more than two-thirds of the cover price, there is absolutely no reason to charge more than when you get less than half.

Makes me sick. Makes me physically ill. It's price gouging. It's taking advantage of the audience. It's not supply and demand. I'm sorry, it's not. You're not stuck with too much or too little inventory if you don't hit the pricing sweet-spot because there is no physical inventory to have too much or too little of. It's charging what the market will bear, pure and simple. It's the reason why books from famous authors cost more; even though, there is absolutely no fucking reason why the famous author needs more money. They're already fucking rich. The publisher is fucking rich. They could cut the price. No reason to charge so much just because the people will pay. I don't mean "can" pay; I mean "will" pay regardless of whether or not they "can" afford it. Have a heart you fucking rich bastards and be nice to your audience who don't necessarily have the disposable income to spend on your shit. You do realize that some of your audience are choosing your shit over things they need, right? They're not all as rich as you, you slime-coated, flee-infested, shit-encrusted leaches. [...]

Public Domain Fuzzy

Oh, okay, Little Fuzzy is in the public domain. I was hoping something like that was the case. Anger subsiding. I mean it's been kind of embers for awhile, but confirming public domain status helps. I mean, sure, I seriously doubt that I will ever read Fuzzy Nation, but that's my problem. Main reason I've never mentioned the author's name while ranting about Fuzzy Nation was part of my effort to keep it from becoming personal. Understanding that I was reacting irrationally and trying not to get too ridiculous about it. Anyway, Little Fuzzy is still on my short list of things that should never be remade or re-imagined, but that's just me. I'll just have to learn to live with it.

Journal: Only When Nobody's Reading

Right, going to try for another short journal entry. Nothing fancy. Nothing much to say. I figure this will most closely resemble thinking out loud. Actually, that's probably pretty much what all of these journal entries resemble. I think one of the main reasons I manage to write them is that I don't actually believe anybody is reading them. Take any other social media site where I have, in fact, gotten feedback, demonstrating that someone was actually reading, and I have had this amazing habit of shutting up. So, yeah, if I actually thought anybody was reading this, I probably wouldn't be typing it. All very silly. All very strange.

Very simple reason why I haven't written more of these journal entries recently. Even short entries. I've been working on my Shakespeare project and making excellent progress. In fact, I had been making so much progress the last couple of weeks, writing just about every single day and everything, that I kind-of locked up this week. Only got words written down on electronic paper on Monday and Thursday evenings. Sunday doesn't count. Considering it last week. Actually, I can't remember if I got anything written down on Sunday. Oh, well. Not important.

In fact, I've been meaning to write a short journal entry for awhile. Talk about all the progress on the Shakespeare project, but I haven't because I've been striking while the iron was hot. Feeling the drive to add words to the project, and I wasn't going to let writing about writing get in the way of actually writing. [...]

Journal: The Unreasoned Principle

Right, short journal entry. See how that goes. Probably looking at an aberration here.

I was thinking about principles and how they can get you into trouble. In general, they are good to have. Good to believe in something. Stand by something. Have standards, will travel.

No, I'm not going to bother trying to define what I'm talking about outside of saying principles are things felt strongly about. Willing to make decisions about life, the universe and everything based on them. Stand up to people because of them. Go with people on principle. [...]