Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 174
October 21, 2011
johnnynopulse replied to your audio post: New Year's Eve - Tom Waits. My current...
johnnynopulse replied to your audio post: New Year's Eve - Tom Waits. My current favourite…
I need to listen to the new album, but anyway, do you have a favourite Tom Waits song? Mine's "Long Way Home".
Long Way Home is the kind of song I can't even rate on a scale. But my favourite? It's hard, but I've gotta go with Falling Down.
mirandaaa replied to your photo: No Chinook, my first novel, has just been…
Just bought it...
mirandaaa replied to your photo: No Chinook, my first novel, has just been…
Just bought it for my Kindle.
Thanks!!!
New Year's Eve - Tom Waits.
My current favourite off the...
New Year's Eve - Tom Waits.
My current favourite off the new album.
"I'm a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity..."
- Steve Jobs (via mlarson: "Sort of paraphrasing here")
austinkleon:
Small Demons — Welcome to the Storyverse
As...
Small Demons — Welcome to the Storyverse
As someone obsessed with worldbuilding, I love this idea.
Also: the evil marketer in me thinks: PRODUCT PLACEMENT.
Sounds amazing, but this sort of thing is all in the delivery. I'll definitely put my name on the beta invite list.
No Chinook, my first novel, has just been re-published for 2011....
No Chinook, my first novel, has just been re-published for 2011. Featuring an improved layout with a tighter design, notes on the novel, and a preview of my new book, A Record Year for Rainfall, I think you'll really enjoy this book.
Listen to the soundtrack
Read the first Chapter
If you like it, I'd really appreciate it if you picked up a copy.
Paperback: $9.99
Kindle: $0.99
Epub, PDF, & Mobi digital bundle: $9.99
This is the summary:
Scott Clarkson is a young and often fragile journalist, whose mid-twenties have yet to produce a clear distinction between dependency and love.
Dissatisfied by his current relationship—a complicated and secretive affair with a charismatic art teacher—Scott uses a chance encounter with an old high school crush as an escape to a place where desire and affection can be confused, and gratification replaces trust.
Removed from the life and circumstances that have kept him emotionally stunted, Scott's understanding of love loses balance and he discovers that maturity and pain are not exclusive.
Convenience vs Experience
Vinyl lovers hate the sound of condensed MP3s. Film lovers hate the sight of poorly digitized trasnfers. Book lovers hate the feeling of an ebook reader; this electronic imposter that presents every file with its own idea of a typeface. Book lovers, like vinyl and film lovers, enjoy the analogue, the real textures that come from manufactured real things. They don't want their experience to be in any way an avatar of an experience, reagardless of technological advantages.
The nice thing about this debate is that the two worlds can (and do) happily live side by side. Defenders of analogue technology are absolutely right: digital media doesn't feel as nice, and some of the compromises are absolutely limiting. Conversely, defenders of digital technology are absolutely right: it's really great to hold hundreds of books, thousands of songs, and dozens of movies on tiny things that fit in a shoulder bag.
There are many more arguments on either side, but I feel the argument comes down to experience vs convenience. Analogue media is more enjoyable, and digital media is more practical. Depending on one's own mix of finances, time, and standards, we all fall somewhere along the line between the two.
Newsweek has a fun boxing-style comparison of 2010's print vs digital breakdown. If these data points are still true today (and there's no real reason to believe they aren't) then there's evidence of a couple of optimistic things:
Only 15% of ebook buyers stop buying print books, which means they co-exist with customers.
Quality hardcover books are still easier on the eyes (and likely will be for years), but the same isn't true for trade paperback, which is the majority of print sales.
Authors make less money from ebooks, but everyone does, because they're cheaper. But they're not making so much less that, I believe, their percentage actually goes up.
My personal opinion and practice skews digital, because convenience is often more important to me than experience. It's weird to type that out loud, but I can't deny it. I listen to way more mp3s (which I enjoy) than my vinyl collection (which I love). I watch more movies at home, often streaming from Netflix (which I tolerate) than I do at the theatre (which I almost always enjoy). And I read triple the amount of ebooks as I did print books. I get the multitude of caveats, but they're never enough to get me to switch back.
This is the beginning of a conversation regarding the digitization of media and how that affects our enjoyment of books.
A Handful of Thoughts one the 2011 Kindles
The 2011 Kindles are very impressive, if uninspired compared to the Kobo and upcoming Sony Reader. Brand logo, one major button (okay, Sony has five), and pearl e-ink with infared touch technology. Design-wise, all three products are looking more and more alike, and we're getting closer to the universal container. There used to be so many buttons around these screens.
The new Kindles are really nothing new. The touch technology is identical to last year's Sonys. The real advancement here is the price, which isn't an advancement so much as a knee-capping of competition. With specs and offerings becoming less indistinguishable, the only difference becomes price. The least expensive Kindle is now less than half the price of the current Sony Pocket, and has wi-fi.
And yet, differences abound. The same restrictions the Kindle held years ago are still there and shine brighter than ever: mobi over epub, whispersync over computer sync. I don't think anyone argues that whispersync isn't terrific; it's the killer app of the Kindle, really. But Amazon's stubborn refusal to conform to the standards that every single other ebook reader uses is frustrating. Yes, you can do conversions. But if you decided to go with something other than a Kindle—or may one day decide to—you'll find no friendly passage. Books from the Nook, Kobo, iBooks, and Sony stores simply won't work. Open epubs can be converted to mobi, but regular people likely won't bother. And don't even think of reading Kindle books on anything but one.
But that's the new line of readers. What of the new tablet? If the iPad had one major criticism (it had many but let's choose the biggest) is that it was a consumption-only device. Though that's largely been curbed by a slew of , what can we say about the Kindle Fire? It's very essence is in consumption. It boldly states: This is all the media we could find—now relax.
And that's a great idea because actually highlights the fact that the iPad perhaps isn't the best lit ebook reader, not the best way to casually surf the web (Amazon Silk impressively leverages their servers to not only load pages faster but also predict what you may click next), and not the best way to watch a movie on a train. It highlights that since iPad is actually trying to be both a consumption and creation device, and there's a tension in design there. By choosing consumption, Amazon has said that this is the best size for such things.
The logic is a little frayed. It's an extension of the ebook read—because people buy them only to read books, not write them—and that's fine as a place to plant a flag. But—and this is a big but—hasn't the iPad shown that people do want to create on these things? Increasingly, ebook apps are promoting interaction: highlighting, sharing, annotating, margin-writing, and achievement-collecting. The Kindle has these features, and I'm sure the Fire will be no different. These marginalia constitute creation (or at least extending) and maybe that's what the Fire will promote, at least with books.
The 99 cent essay
With songs now an easy 99 cent download from iTunes, writers want to see if they can't also cash in. Chuck Klosterman, author of "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs," "Eating the Dinosaur," and "Fargo Rock City" joins us to explain why he's embracing this new model.
More and more, I think $0.99 is going to be the price of digital content, regardless of medium. It's enough that it's something (and in bulk for an independent producer, can be very profitable), but cheap enough that people will buy it instead of steal it.
October 19, 2011
★ A Record Year for Rainfall: Jenny & Bret
In Vegas, you...
★ A Record Year for Rainfall: Jenny & Bret
In Vegas, you can lurk behind a fake plant all day long and nobody will bother you, but it gets boring pretty quick. Bret circled around the foyer. He did his best to keep an eye on the restaurant entrance, but something caught his eye.
Bret turned around and noticed a tall man in a grey trench coat. He had just entered the exhibit. He wore black jeans. His hair fell in greasy, unordered lengths, his jaw grubby, whiskered. He looked to be around 40. He skulked around for a minute. He wasn't heading toward the slots. He wasn't heading for the world's largest chocolate fountain. He was sticking around.
The man stopped at a bench, lowered his side-bag, and removed a tank of an SLR, a giant Canon and a white, foot-long lens. He screwed on the lens. That kind of lens wasn't for macro shots of flora; it was for capturing the sweat of Olympic sprinters.
The camera man pointed that thing directly at Bret.
