Merrill R. Chapman's Blog, page 2

Giant Mega Kaiju Smackdown Retrospective! ZonGhidorah vs.Frogzilla a Year Later: Who Won, Who Lost the (and Who REALLY Lost)! With Special Guest Appearances by Joe Konrath as the Smog Monster and in His World Debut, Hugh Howey as Flackra

A year ago today, the world watched agog as two rampaging giant monsters fought a deadly battle for publishing supremacy in the streets of New York ( The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms tried to horn in, but was told absolutely no stop action).

The first monster was ZonGhidorah, King of Online Channels, a fearsome fire spitting dragon from Redmond with three fear striking heads, the first one named "Distribution,"  the second "Kindle," and the third "Imprints."

The second kaiju was Frogzilla , a giant amphibian from France, less fearsome than ZonGhidorah, but, under the right circumstances, tastier.

The battle began when ZonGhidorah landed in Manhattan right on top of the Publisher's Pricing Model Edifice and began to dismantle it from top to bottom. Unfortunately for Frogzilla, the other publishing kaiju were all having lunch together that day at The Russian Tea Room where they talked about nothing very much at all except on the topic of do Americans make tastier snacks than the Japanese. Frogzilla would have to fight alone.

The battle began with tremendous bellows and much chest pounding, though, oddly enough, not much damage was done. This all changed when King Ghidorah's Channel head spit flaming nuclear radioactive acid onto Frogzilla's Amazon availability and site rankings and toasted them to a crisp. Innocent Hachette authors could be seen fleeing the streets of New York City screaming and crying madly as their book sales plummeted.The horror was indescribable.

At one point in the battle, the Smog Monster, a creature made of toxic gases and slime, rose from the swamps of Secaucus, New Jersey (where else would he live?) to join forces with ZonGhidorah against Frogzilla. His chief weapons were noxious and interminable blog posts that threatened the consciousness of any who came within their range.

The battle reached its crescendo when Flackra rose from the cockroach-infested swamps of Florida and joined the fray. He was guided to conflict by two tiny shobijin wearing mumus. The one on the left is Hoffelder-san , the one on the right, Gauhgran-san . In addition to the mumu, Gauhgran-san always wears a "No Author Solutions" T-shirt.

Flackra is a Giant Moth with a huge woolly body supported by massive wings. When Flackra is on the move, it emits a constant keening cry of KKKDDDPPP FFFOOORRREEEVVVVEEERRR. Such is the buffeting power of its flight that it was able to drive thousands of indie authors who had absolutely no reason to be there towards the great conflagration being generated by the ongoing rampage. New York Times reporter David Streitfeld reportedly wet himself when Flackra's giant bulk filled the New York sky. That's the power of a kaiju!

Once at the battle's epicenter, Flackra flew around Frogzilla spitting out poisonous petitions proclaiming that Amazon was paying authors riches in such quantity that rents in Manhattan might actually start to look affordable.

At this point, everyone was sure that Frogzilla was about to cry "Mon Dieu!" and fold up into a nicely seasoned dish of CUISSES DE GRENOUILLE À LA PROVENÇALE. But, to everyone's amazement, this didn't happen! Instead, channeling his pre-Waterloo inner Napoleon, Frogzilla bellowed "Merde,!" rolled up a bunch of Authors United petitions, and beat the King of Online Channels around its two outer heads with it while simultaneously dropping water balloons filled with the tears of Hachette authors on the middle.

Finally, ZonGhidorah had enough of this and told Frogzilla to just hand over a big extra wad of euros and he'd go away. The deal was struck and the King of Online Channels flew back to Redmond. Once safely home, he proceeded to unleashed his fearsome henchman,  FirePhone , on the mobile market where it proceeded to get its ass totally kicked by iPhoneZilla, with help from Samsungasaurus.

The other monsters watched ZonGhidorah's abrupt departure from the scene in dismay and didn't quite know what to make of it.  Finally, the Smog Monster oozed away and wrote a long, boring blog post about the entire affair every other sentence of which began with "Smog Monster sez." 

Flackra fled back south, his departure hastened by an alert New York Sanitation Police squad that attempted to ticket him for spreading garbage on city streets. The New York Consumer Affairs apartment also tried to sue Flackra for deceptively claiming that charging an operating expense is a royalty, but it's hard to serve a giant bug.

The shobijin have reportedly found work in a gentlemen's club in New York. The precise nature of their duties is unknown at this time.

Wow, that was exciting. Now, let's see a year later how the respective parties are all doing.

How Did ZonGhidorah Do?

He lost. Amazon did succeed in extracting more margin from the book publishers, though how much is unknown. The larger publishers were able to give up the least, the smaller the most. All of the contracts that were signed are private and you'd have to do a lot of digging (and some bribing) to obtain precise details. In terms of a typical channel fight, Amazon did well.

However, as I've noted before, after the publisher's collusion trial, Amazon's goal was to gain control of the E-book pricing model. This attempt was driven by the belief  that "He who owns the price of a thing controls the thing." (With apologies to George Herbert and Dune .) Amazon not only failed in this attempt, it failed so significantly that its grip on the market, and its ability to project fear, were weakened in so far as the larger publishers were concerned. (The smaller ones are still terrified.) As proof, look at how HarperCollins kicked sand in Jeff Bezo's face when it was time to go to contract.

But, like King Ghidorah, Amazon is a patient beast. It will be back. It's continuing to put pressure on the publishers by adding a silly line on its listings saying the price on agency books is set by the publisher. Here's a brief note to Amazon. I want my listing to say my price was set by me and I'll take the consequences if I make a mistake. I don't need you price rigging the world to your benefit.

On the other hand, Amazon has innovated and shaken up an industry that badly needed it. For that, they deserve credit. I'll give them more the day they get out of my marketing and pricing shorts.

How Did the Publishers Do?

They won. The primary goal of the publishers during the fight was hold on to agency pricing at all cost. Many people still do not understand why publishers fight so hard for agency.The publishers do not agency all their titles, only the newest and hottest. They do this for the same reason Apple can charge full retail when a new gizmo goes on sale. Amazon buys its Apple products from 1 Infinity Way under high tech's version of agency, MAP. Perhaps Hugh Howey wants to write a petition telling us how Amazon is paying Samsung a living wage?

This takes us to another nonsense claim that AAAG repeated during the battle, that $9.99 is an "optimal" price point for E-books. It was a claim that failed high school statistics. And now the publishers are proving it. Why do publishers charge more for certain E-books?

Because they can. If they were overpricing, they’d be punished at once. It’s an open market and there are plenty of alternative titles But if you have an established rep or brand, you can charge more and people will pay it. That includes indies.  And yes, if you're formally published and your house MAPs your book, you make more money.

But I don't think the publishers fully understand the disruption still building and bubbling under them. They been issued a stay of sentence, not a reprieve.

How did AAAG (Aggregated Amazon Ankle Grabbers) Do?

Ugh. Who cares. Collectively, through the entire fight, they were a disgrace. Bad info, unrelenting propaganda. However, I see some signs of embarrassment and remorse (though not from Howey, AAAG's biggest player). Let's hope they'll make up for it in the future. 

Who REALLY Lost?

Indies, of course! In respect to Amazon, we look like Tokyo after Godzilla has left after a relaxing day tearing the place apart. We are still:

Stripped of 65 points on international sales. That's just robbery.
Imprisoned in a stupid $9.99 pricing box. By the way, in Escape from Stalag $7, I neglected to mention one other important factor. That is inflation. In 2008, when Amazon's Indie price prison was first built, the dollar was worth 10% more than it is today. And every year, our earnings are inexorably whittled away.
Not permitted to bundle/omnibus, thus forced to discount the value of our work the more we write.
Forced to live in a modified agency regimen.Told that an operating expense is a "royalty."
Let's not even get into the issue of the Kindle subscription program and what you make.

It's a pity. Had AAAG not flacked so relentlessly for Amazon, they were in a position to do the indie community some real good. They could have pointed out the problems with the publishers and asked Amazon to change its policies in respects to indies when media attention was focused on the fight. It might have moved the needle. That chance has passed. It will take another big dust up before it arises again.

Where the Amazing Randi Watches and Waits: My Review of Schism by Brett Dent

Schism by Brett Dent





File Size: 1088 KB
Print Length: 287 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00I3RLZFQ

When I was a kid, I used to watch the Sonny Fox show, Wonderama, regularly on channel nine in New York. New York was the TV media hub of the world back then. In additional to channel nine, we also had two, four, five, seven, eleven, thirteen (CPB crap) and even a couple of grainy, unwatchable UHF channels. No idea what they were. The Soviet Movie Channel maybe?

One of Sonny's regular guests was The Amazing Randi. Randi was famous for following in the steps of Houdini by performing Amazing Escapes in all sorts of death defying situations (wriggling free of a straightjacket while  suspended upside down over Niagara Falls, for instance.) As he grew older, Randi, as did Houdini, became a debunker of psychic charlatans. He successfully drove fraudster Uri Geller out of the U.S. market by successfully reproducing every trick Geller performed in public and explaining how he did it.

In 1982 I read a book by Randi that has a profound impact on my thinking about ESP. Up till then, I as well as most people, thought there some scientific basis for a belief in extra sensory perception. After all, the brain generates an electric field and electrical fields can be generated and transmitted. Prestigious universities had conducted studies that seemed to confirm the existence of ESP. More movies than I can remember featured scenes of people using Zener cards surrounded by lab workers in white coats pursing their lips and making meaningful marks on clipboards while "espers" successfully "remote viewed." Sci-Fi, horror films, writers, manga all feed their readers regular diets of ESP.

Randi's book was called Flim Flam  and it he made a claim that he has regularly backed up over the decades. Randy stated that when a double blind test for ESP is performed from which all possibilities of cheating are removed, no one has ever provided a  valid (in other words, not a brief sequence of lucky guesses but a series of predictions that cannot statistically be ascribed to chance) demonstration of ESP. 

Not...even...once.

Randi put his money where his mouth was. Back then, I think he offered a $25K reward to anyone who could demonstrate ESP. He's tested dowsers, remote viewers, seers, predicters, etc. None has collected the reward, which is now up to $1M. "Professional" espers stay well away from Randi and the money.

Schism by author Brett Dent takes ESP and puts it on a firmer scientific footing. The novel takes place in Hillview Institute, an out of the way institution in the hills of Virginia. Hillview's latest "visitor" is Adam Hutchinson, who has murdered his grandmother during what appears to be a psychotic attack. But instead of being tucked away in an asylum for the criminally insane, Adam finds himself in the company of a group of remote viewers, psychics who can observe actions and at a distance and in at least one case, destroy minds. Why are they here and what is the goal of the research taking place at the Insititute?

A safe bet is nefarious and dark deeds are underway. There are evil doctors, corrupt corporate interests, and nefarious military plots. And a group of increasingly powerful psychics growing more and more unhappy with their manipulation and confinement.

One of the interesting elements of Schism is Brett's successful effort to give ESP research a more scientific and visceral feel. This, coupled with the oppressive, Gothic atmosphere of the tale, makes for a story that keeps you interested. The characters are also engaging, most particularly the powerful but doomed Kevin. I found a few of Brett's sentences a bit gnarly, but plot and pacing keep Schism on track and compelling.

I think the Amazing Randi would like this book.

You (Don't) Suck: My Review of Suction Cup Dreams: An Octopus Anthology by David Joseph Clarke (Editor)

Suction Cup Dreams: An Octopus Anthology, David Joseph Clarke  (Editor)






Paperback: 168 pages
Publisher: obsolescent.info (November 5, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0985501359
ISBN-13: 978-0985501358
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.4 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 11 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

The octopus is probably the strangest form of intelligent life on this planet. An octopus is an invertebrate (no backbone) and belongs to the phylum Mollusca (oysters, slugs). When you see a picture of an octopus jetting and slithering its way across the seabed, you're watching a clam with eight legs and an attitude. Octopuses climbed out of their shells millions of years ago and joined cephalopods, other members of the club being Squids, Cuttlefish and the Chambered Nautilus, which is as beautiful as its name suggests.

Octopuses (yes, I know, there are long standing arguments on how you pluralize the noun. This is my choice and I'm sticking with it) are carnivores and cannibals. The anatomy of an octopus is as strange as their appearance. To devour their prey, they possess a beak that looks almost exactly like a parrots. They have eight arms, one of which is dedicated to sex (I'm going to skip describing how this works) that also function as part of their brain. They also taste with these arms. When extra speed is needed to escape attack, they can deploy a built in jet-ski.

Octopuses can squirt clouds of ink when assaulted and some species can shed an arm when necessary, which crawls away and (hopefully) deflects further attack.. They have three hearts (Dr. Who only has two) which pump copper-based blood. They have incredible camouflage capabilities, but paradoxically, many species are believed to be color blind. All octopuses are venomous, and never eat a Blue Octopus, as it's loaded with the same poison as the Puffer Fish. Their life span is short and mating is ultimately deadly to males and females. The Giant Octopus can grow to over 30 feet and weigh over 600 pounds. This animal has been implicated in dozens of fictitious assaults on hearty male divers and bikini-clad maidens in many Sci-Fi/horror movies.

Humans have long suspected octopuses have smarts, and you see this reflected in such Sci-Fi movies as the 1953  War of the Worlds  film, where the Martian invaders, though never clearly seen, are definitely octopidian when glimpsed (and dig those suckers in the movie's penultimate scene). Recent research has confirmed they are indeed very smart. Octopuses can solve mazes and become faster and better at the activity as they practice. They are expert at opening jars, particularly if there's a tasty treat inside. In captivity, an octopus will remember you, makes direct eye contact, and will squirt you with their jet ski if they take a dislike to you. If you're to their fancy, they will warp themselves around you and cuddle. They're also escape artists and not afraid of exploring on land or in nearby tanks, where if they come across a fellow octopus the resultant confrontation may be unfortunate for at least one of the parties.

Suction Cup Dreams: An Octopus Anthology, edited by David Joseph Clarke is a compilation of fascinating stories about these strange, smart, alien creatures. The stories are in the main haunting and memorable. The ones that most struck me were:

Venus of the Waves by Karen Munro. A wife watches while her husband, whose brain has been transplanted out of his dying body and into an octopus, is slowly overwhelmed by the new thoughts and environment in which he now exists.

Three-Hearted by Elizabeth Twist. Told from the POV of the octopus. "Bold" undergoes a strange alterations at the hands of "the seven-armed glass and metal Gods."

A Stranger Returns from an Unexpected Trip to the South China Sea by by Henry W. Urich. James Dougherty was murdered and his body disposed of at sea, but with a little help from his friends, he's back.

A Late Season Snow by T.E. Grau. A murdered woman undergoes a rich and strange transformation.

I can ensure you of one thing. Once you've read this book, you are going to rethink the morality of eating octopus.

Merry Magical Medieval Mercantilism: My Review of "Orconomics" by J. Zachary Pike

Orconomics: A Satire (The Dark Profit Saga Book 1) by J. Zachary Pike




File Size: 1136 KB
Print Length: 385 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Gnomish Press LLC (September 30, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00O2NDJ2M

Economics typically gets short shrift in Sci-Fi and fantasy. It doesn't really matter the genre. The fact is that when spaceships go out a' faring, or knights out a' questing, no one ever brings anyone with a degree in accounting to keep track of expenditures. The exceptions are few and far between (to enjoy one of the best in manga, I recommend Spice and Wolf ). I first wrote about the problem years ago in In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters:

...as Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Bones, Scottie, and their innumerable successors went gallivanting through the galaxy, they seemed to have no visible means of financial support. No one in the Star
Trek universe wearing green eye shades ever appeared to worry about the propensity of the various casts to blow up what you’d think were undoubtedly very expensive spaceships, given their capabilities of violating the laws of physics, transporting the crew to numerous planets inhabited by women who spent most of their time wearing lingerie, and dodging ray-gun fire from angry races of aliens who kept screaming “kaplok!” (and who also seemed to have no monetary worries).

The problem looms just as large in fantasy. Take, for instance the Lord of the Rings . Now, I know you've probably read the official version of what took place in Middle Earth at the end of the Third Age, but I have recently, at great effort and peril on my part, obtained a partial copy of The Silmarillon: The Rejected Chapters . It's only a partial manuscript, and the relevant sections are written in the dread tongue of Mordor. Translating it has been a bear what with all the declensions and the fact that these people just had no concept of the apostrophe, but I have done my best. The narrative below describes a key meeting between Sauron and an individual who served as Mordor's primary bean counter. Roughly translated, his court title is CME or Chief Mithril Extractor. I believe the text provides crucial insights into the real story behind TLOR and the fall of Sauron.

CME: Oh Cataclysmic Cat's Eye of Catastrophe, Dread Lord Sauron, I come to you with doom-laden news!

Sauron: What is it? Has Golem stuffed up his toilet again?

CME: No, Dread Lord Sauron, Oh Perilous Practitioner of Puissant Pestilence. Though that last episode was truly horrendous. The plumbing Orcs sent to rectify the situation have not yet recovered. No, Oh Master of Merciless Mayhem, the tidings are far more fell. The invasion of Gondor must be postponed!

Sauron: Postponed? Don't be ridiculous. I've been planning this invasion for years. The Orcs are armed and thirsting to plunder and kill any elf they can catch. The Ringwraiths are writhing in anticipation of drinking Gondorean blood. The Balrogs are bored from too much sitting around and are starting to whip each other. It's getting kinky in their section of the Dark Tower. They need to deploy right now and work the ya yas out. We march tonight!

CME: Alas Lord Sauron, Oh Sublime Sultan of Supreme Sadism, we cannot.

Sauron: Why not? And this had better be good.

CME: Because Oh Great Gargoyle of Gruesomeness, I have just come from an inspection of thy Dread Armies and have uncovered great woes. The Orc's armor is fourth rate and our production of MEMREs (I have translated this as "Middle Earth Meals Ready to Eat." Ed. note.) lags greatly behind quota. In their current shape, I rank the fighting prowess of the Uruk Hai just below that of Disney fairies. The entire horde couldn't stand up to a squadron of Hobbits armed with butter knives.

But this is just the start of the grim news. The Black Steeds of the Ringwraiths have disappeared and our chief cavalry arm is crippled. While no one has confessed, a domestic Orc emptying a chamber pot reported hearing strange whinnying sounds coming from the Balrog quarters the other night. I myself heard the Witch King threaten to "Uv thangor shakburz nash burzum" (I have translated this as "unload a can of whup ass." Ed. note.) unless those ponies are returned immediately. Despair and disorder fill the ranks, Oh Enduring Emblem of Eternal Evil.

Sauron: Egv gor fukardum upzorum!? (I have translated this as "What is the cause of this SNAFU?" Ed. note.)

CME: Lord Sauron, Oh Tremendous Thane of Truly Titanic Terror, we have suffered a supply chain breakdown.

Sauron:  Huh?

CME: A supply chain breakdown. You see, the peasants plant and harvest the food, which they in turn provide to the Orcs, who in turn do most of the mining and weapons production around here. If not enough food is produced, the Orcs' manufacturing production drops off and quality goes to hell, so to speak. Also, remember that an army marches on its stomach. The peasants are also responsible for providing fresh meat to the Balrogs, who aren't big on veggies. Oh, and the peasants also provide the hay that the Ringwraiths' horses eat, thought that doesn't seem to be a problem at the exact moment.

Sauron: This issue is easily solved. Torture the peasants to produce more food!

CME: Ummmm, well, you see Oh Demonic Deity of Destruction, we can't do that. We have no more peasants.

Sauron: What happened to the peasants?

CME: The Orcs at them.

Sauron: Nagth lat ronk shitztorum!" (I have translated this as "Uh oh." Ed. note.)

At this point, the writing on manuscript becomes disordered and the readability of the parchment drops because of a series of blotches that have a suspicious resemblance to blood stains.

But, not to worry. Into this gaping literary void fearlessly tramps Orconomics, Part I of the Dark Profit Series by J. Zachary Pike. 

Orconomics is set in your typical Tolkienesque/World of Warcraft milieu, but in Pike's universe economics lies at the core of everything that takes place in the book (just like the real world). The hero of Orconomics is Gorm Ingerson, a dwarf whom we first meet when he (reluctantly) saves the skin of Gleebek the Goblin, who repays our hero by attaching himself to Gorm's service despite the dwarf's deep desire to enjoy no such relationship.

Gorm and Gleebek's meeting is sparked by the activities of the Heroes Guild, an organization tasked with training, ranking, and regulating the various adventurers who comprise the organization's membership. The world of Orconomics is built on mercantilism, a zero-sum economic theory that was all the rage in Europe from the 16th through the 18th century. Modern forms are still practiced in Russia, China and similar places. Orconomics' mercantile model is built on raiding hoards of gold and treasure and redistributing them to the benefit of the raiders. Unfortunately for the heroes and the governments and institutions that rely on their labors, the number of hoards is running out.

Over the long term, mercantilism is a corrosive force that erodes an economy instead of building it (ask the Spanish Empire how this works). The same dynamic is at work in Gorm's world, and schemes and plots are afoot to try to reverse the tide of growing economic dissolution. Gorm, Gleebek, and a series of reluctant companions that include elves, wizards, thieves, bards (the usual mix) are soon caught up in a mysterious quest whose true goals are hidden and outcome unexpected.

Orconomics is at its best and funniest when it focuses on the sales and marketing issues underlying its economic woes. For instance, the following passage describes an unfortunate misunderstanding brought on by an Orcish community's unfortunate mishandling of a marketing opportunity and over reliance on the hard close during the sales cycle:

“But tell me, Tib’rin, how have I offended the honor of these mercenary-dogs. I have made every effort to please them. See, I sent them my own son to assist with their satisfaction.” 

“Indeed, Lord Father,” said Char, stepping forward. “And I have followed the way of aggressive sales, just as you have commanded.” “

And how did you open?” Zurthraka asked him. “

I showed them our fine assortments of weapons for sale.” 

“A thousand pardons,” said the Goblin. “But it could also be said that you waved your axes at the Lightlings, and took their own weapons from them.” 

“I contrasted our product and disparaged the competition,” said Char. “It is the way of the aggressive seller.” 

“And then we were commanded to follow you,” continued the Goblin.“

I would not take no for an answer!” Char was becoming agitated. 

“And we were separated from each other—” “

You were given service at a personal level!” 

“Then were paraded through town—” 

“I showed off our impressive facilities and shopping centers!”

“Wait a moment,” said Zurthraka, pointing to the Goblin. “Do you suggest that our guests felt too much sales pressure?”

Any CMO or CSO can learn something from the above.

Orconomics is also professionally edited and the prose is bright and clean. And while I thought the economic scenarios of the book the most fun, the adventuring and derring do is enjoyable as well. As the characters interact and bicker, there are several poignant scenes that provide the tale with more emotional depth than you would expect from a "satire." 

Orconomics is fun, funny, exciting and different. You should go out, buy a copy and read it. You'll have a great time.

Booktrack: Creating Your Book While on Sonic Crack

I was invited to attend Digital Book World in New York on January 15th as a panelist for a breakout session supposedly focused on author's "facing the market." When I received the invite, it sounded like fun and since I'm from New York and can easily reach mid-town from my home in Connecticut, I agreed to attend and looked forward to the event. I've attended and presented at more high-tech conferences and exhibits than I can remember, but had never been to a book industry expo and was intrigued by the opportunity.

Unfortunately, the panel was an utter fiasco, presided over by the worst moderator I've ever seen at a show (and I've run 14 high-tech conferences on my own, so that's saying something). Instead of four people, seven ended up on the dais, including the moderator, who instead of staying at the podium and doing her job, squeezed in with the panelists and tried moderating while simultaneously mike grabbing. Worse, when I attempted to run through a short slide preso that the event owner had requested I provide, I was prevented from doing so. All in all, the most gruesome show experience I've ever had (other than working the floor of COMDEX five days straight while a bevy of booth babes gyrated to rock music in the exhibit next to me. Those were the days).

A few quick tips in case you ever run your own conference. If you decide to incorporate panels, never have one featuring more than four people (and three is a much better number). This cuts down on mike grabbing. Last minute invites onto a panel are a no no except in the case of a panelist no show. Also, the moderator must understand that they are not a panelist and should never sit with the panelists nor attempt to hog panelist time. Reward moderators for their work by assigning them to another panel or a speaking slot. And, of course, it is absolutely verboten for a moderator to behave rudely to a panelist who has taken  their time and spent their money to attend your show. They're doing you the favor, not vice versa.

In all fairness to the show, I attended other moderated sessions and the ones I saw went smoothly; however, these panels were all populated by personnel from various publishing firms. As an author, I suggest you vet DBW and similar events carefully before spending time and money to attend or present. Dedicated speaking slots are probably worth it, but be careful of panels. Also, if you're an independent, there won't be a great deal of info on self publishing, though this may change in the future. My presentation focused on the amount of sales you needed to generate as an independent to recoup your time expenditure (four slides), but, of course, no one at the show saw it.

What prevented DBW from being a complete fiasco was my visit to the exhibit hall. The show sports a very healthy tradeshow component, though if you're an author, not a publisher, only some of the exhibits are relevant to you. One that is relevant to authors is Booktrack, an online system that enables you to add music, ambiance tracks, and sound effects to your book. I've heard of the technology, but when I went over to the demo booth and watched it in action, I was blown away. If you're writing any sort of genre fiction, you should immediately head over to Booktrack.com , open up your account, and play with the system. It's a blast to use and will make you rethink what digital books should be and also possibly change the way you write. And for many of you, it's the closest chance to being the "Great Auteur Behind the Camera " that you'll ever have.

Working with Booktrack

The first thing to note is that as of this writing, opening up a Booktrack account is free. Only a username and a password is required (there is a more extended profile page). Your book can be slotted into two genres, a type (novel, novella, etc.), a rating (G, PG, etc.) a language (currently, only the English character set is supported so no Chinese, Korean or Japanese at this time), and tags assigned. You can also upload your front cover art at publishing time. There are currently 10K titles in the Booktrack library, so while the system has a robust selection, you have a shot of standing out.

The system is very easy to use. First, you will need to import your book's text into the system.This is a cut and paste operation. One point to note is that if your book relies on more elaborate formatting, it will be lost in Booktrack. The editor currently only supports bolding and italics. I wouldn't be surprised if under the hood you can do some HTML formatting, but don't count on it for production work. The system does not currently enable you to embed pictures in with your text, though one picture per page support is planned for later this year.

Once the text is imported (you can do this in stages), you apply sound to your narrative. You can pick from a fairly extensive library of music and effects and paint your text with the sonics of your choice, upload your own personally composed music (your chance to be your own Hans Zimmer!) or use tracks you may have downloaded from sites such as this . Sounds can overlap, loop, and fade in and out (I suggest you become comfortable with the fade control quickly; it's often disconcerting for a sound to abruptly stop.)

You can also adjust the speed at which the text is read  while a reader is "experiencing" your book, and this ties back to the fact that Booktrack encourages you to think "cinematically" as well as narratively. It's what I was referring to when I said the system has the potential to change the way you write. To hear what I mean, go to the site and click on a book.

From a creative standpoint, the process of using Booktrack for an author is utterly addictive. Literary crack. Internally, I actually started to call the system "Bookcrack." Once you begin, it's hard to pull yourself away. And the rush you get as your book come to audible life is hard to describe unless you've experienced it.

Publishing Your Book on Booktrack

This is an area where you should take care. Books produced via the system are released under a series of open source, Creative Commons' licenses. For example, this variant:

This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation.

You may not want to do that. Perhaps this version may be more to your taste:

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially with credit to you (their new works must also be non-commercial).

I suggest you read up more on Creative Commons here and think through the ramifications of releasing your work via this mechanism carefully before moving ahead.

Booktrack is right now primarily a browser-based experience, though there are reader apps (not editors) for iOS and Android. No Kindle. Booktrack is also available as a Chrome app. I briefly tested it in Chrome, IE (no, I didn't test in IE 6. Don't use IE 6), Safari, Firefox and Opera and it worked fine. 

How Does Booktrack Monetize?

Booktrack plans to begin monetization at the end of the first quarter of 2015. Right now, you can read the titles in their library for free. The model is similar to the Apple split, 70/30. The author sets the base price (no Amazon Stalag $7) and Booktrack adds $X (between $1 to $2) on top of that when a book is sold. Initially, the Booktrack store model will be title, not subscription, based.  Once the ecommerce component of the store is up and running, promotional capabilities will be added such as bundling and couponing. If the author wants Booktrack to create their book's soundtrack, it will cost under $1K (but I strongly recommend you do this yourself. Who else other than the writer knows how the book sounds in his/her inner ear)?

How Long Does It Take to "Booktrack" a Book?

This of course will depend on the type of book, and its length, but using my own sci/fi fantasy novel Rule-Set as a base (120K words), I'd say about 10 to 14 days, factoring in your initial track creation, review, and music reedits. Plan on spending two to three hours a day working on the project.

Some Booktrack Operating Tips

First, resist the desire to go overboard with the auditory bling. This will be hard to do because using Booktrack is so much fun. My suggestion is to add tracks to the first couple of chapters, stop, and listen to how it all sounds. Perhaps ask a family member to listen to early tracks. If they start to find the music distracting, start paring down the effects.

Second, Booktrack does not currently keep a list of the auditory effects you've applied to your text. Before you start adding sound, create a simple text file and list by section/chapter every sound you apply by its name. This will will help you keep track of how often and what kinds of sounds you're using and assist you to adjust and change things up as needed.

Third is take care of your editing fixes before applying sound. When you switch to the Text tab, Booktrack loses its focus on your spot in the text and takes you to the top of the section.

Fourth is don't be afraid to upload third party sound. It's easy and immediately broadens your creative palette.

Fifth is start using the music controls immediately. Layered sound adds another dimension to your book.

What Are the Obstacles Facing Booktrack?

Booktrack is a new technology and introduces yet another E-book platform to publishing. Right now, the market is divided between Kindle, Apple, Android, Kobo and others. This adds complexity to the book buying decision, never a good thing.

But I personally think Booktrack is unstoppable (particularly once they allow you to monetize). Once you've experienced a book in this fashion, it's hard to give it up; I speculate people during the silent film era had very much the same reaction to "talkies."  I very much believe that Booktrack will become a technology standard and its use will spread into the mainstream. I have to believe the major players are giving the platform close scrutiny. I think Booktracking at least some of your works is an excellent thing to do and an opportunity to learn about how the book is going to evolve as digital printing subsumes print.

Am I Booktracking Rule-Set: A Novel of a Quantum Future?

Are you kidding? Of course I am! Rule-Set takes place in a 50 mile long giant nuclear particle accelerator located under Waxahachie, Texas which in turn houses a virtual reality lab where samurai sword fights are taking place on a regular basis. The prologue describes a group of 2087 special forces soldiers engaging in close combat with homicidal werewolves. And at the penultimate climax of the book, there's an audible computer countdown to catastrophe. I have to do it!

And that's where Booktrack continues to get interesting. I want to bring that countdown to life, and I was thinking about where I could find the right voice for the part. Then I looked at my wife, the radiant Mrs. Chapman. She's worked for years as a hospital floor unit admin and is capable of projecting a Dave-I-think-you-should-sit-down-take-a-stress-pill-and-think-things-over-Hal-9000-tone at will.

I told her I wanted her for the part of Aida the Computer voice and her eyes widened and she said "cool." Then I started to think of a new song by Big Data called "Dangerous" and how it would be a perfect fit for the chase scene I'm writing in the sequel to Rule-Set, Vorpal Sword. And I know that music licensing is a mess, but maybe, just maybe, the music moguls might be interested in opening up a new and untapped micro payment revenue stream?

Technology shakes things up and Booktrack is going to join Kindle in shaking shake up books even more.

What Is Your Indie Book Publisher Time Worth? A Look at the Numbers, Part I of II

(If you find this article of interest, please do me a favor and click here to take the 
the Amazon Pricing and Marketing Policies for Independent Authors Survey. It's a quick survey and will provide information and insights in independent publishing you will find very useful. All participants receive the complete summary results.)

Also, before we start, let me inform you that further on in this article you'll be seeing some numbers I've extracted from a spreadsheet analyzing breakeven points on your marketing and time expenditures. I will be happy to email you this full spreadsheet when it's released in a couple of weeks. To receive it, please join the site mailing list and I'll notify you when it's ready. Sign up to your right.)

Now that Amazon vs. Hachette is over, it's time for you indies to start focusing on the issues that are important to you. Mainly, making money from your writing. There are no excuses for you to pay attention to people who tell you that that Amazon is "paying you royalties" when all that's happening is a download fee is being extracted from your bottom line. Amazon and the other online resellers never pay you anything. They are channels and they exist to service demand. They do not exist to create it. For you, they create operating expenses, not royalties.

This is not only true in books. It is true in software, in high-tech hardware, consumer goods, etc.

Before you even start to plan to market your book, hammer this into your brain and keep it close to your thoughts always:

Channels do not create market demand. Only suppliers can create market demand.

And, in this case, who is the supplier?

You. Only you can create the desire for people to read your book. Your business, as an independent author, is to create demand for your book via marketing. Amazon, as a channel, services the demand you create.

Incredibly enough, even  Hugh Howey has actually acknowledged this!

But wait, you say, we aren’t just authors. We are publishers! We pay for cover art and editing. We upload a finished product, ready to go. These aren’t royalties we’re earning; they are a cut of proceeds. So comparing our income as authors to other authors isn’t fair. We should compare our income as self-publishers to other publishers.

But don't get too excited. A couple of blog posts later, he's back to telling us all how Amazon is paying us:

But I see people complaining about the 70% payout, the $1.39 KU payout, the reduction of ACX royalties.

Further on in this series, we'll see why you have good reason to complain about Amazon's very large and in some cases predatory service fees.

Amazon's job, as a part of the book channel, is to extract as much money as it can from your hide, which it will and can do. Your job, as a business, is to resist, scream, and fight as loudly as you can against these efforts. When a member of AAAG (Aggregated Amazon Ankle Grabbers) shows up or blogs about how much you owe the book channel or Amazon, throw a ripely dead rat at them.

This, by the way, is not personal. This is how channels have, do, and will operate. They hunger for margin more than Dracula craves blood. You hunger for revenue so you can write and not have to contemplate eating your offspring when times are lean. So it has been, so it will ever be. Do not hate your channel and never bend over for it. Recognize it for what it is. A middleman. Errr..."person." An entity which is both your enemy and your friend.

Do not waste a minute feeling grateful to Amazon for the Kindle infrastructure. They did not invent the ebook concept or take the risks of the pioneers of 1999-2001, who failed abjectly. (You can read about why in the second edition of In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters.)  Amazon, to its tremendous credit, took advantage of an industry complacent in the wake of that first failure. They have, and are, profiting greatly from ebooks. The long tale is eternal and it costs them next to nothing to service their storage. You pay the transmission fees on downloads. You are doing them a huge favor by putting your book on their servers. The reason Amazon makes no money on sales of their Kindle readers is that ebook revenues more than make up for their hardware expenditures.

Amazon has done you a huge service by driving interest in ebooks, thus making wideband sefl-publishing practical. It also deserves credit for building a demand service platform that has been widely emulated by other companies. (OTOH, Samsung doesn't feel all that grateful that Amazon has built loading docks to accept and ship TVs.) And while the growth of the ebook market was inevitable, Amazon deserves to profit from excellent market timing and an intelligent investment in hardware/software.

Initial Operational Costs

OK, let's go to the numbers. Let's start with the first round of operational costs an independent/self-published author must deal with.  Here's a list of the basic expenses. I know these can vary, so the numbers below are ranges:

Copyediting







Formatting (ebook)







Formatting/layout (print book)





Editing



















Cover design







Production (paper)



Production (ebook)





Audible books $500-$3000. Dependent on book size. My novel Rule-Set, at 120K words, cost me $500, but I had a previous relationship with the copyeditor and bundled other work into the order. For one book, one job, I should have expected to pay $1K at least. Costs do not change based on print or digital. A typo is a typo.

$500-$3500. This cost is heavily dependent on the complexity of your interior. Lots of charts and graphs raise the price of formatting substantially. It's not that easy to manipulate HTML to try to match the look of print (and, in fact, not possible with this generation of technology).

Very similar to ebooks. In fact, print formatting is probably easier than digital, because print is more precise in its placement of text and images and many people have good skills in this area. In ebooks, not so much.

Super highly variable. I am traditionally published (Apress/Springer). When Apress accepted In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters  for publication, I was assigned an editor. They did very little in that role. The copyeditor was more useful. 99% of authors are incapable of copyediting their own work. And let's face it, so probably, are you. I write indie reviews and too many of the books I've received have been personally copyedited. You can tell about four to five pages in.

OTOH, T. S. Eliot is probably not one of the three greatest poets of the 20th century without everyone's favorite Gauleiter of Verse, Ezra Pound. So what value to assign to a smart, experienced editor? I'll range between $1K and $5K. 

Very variable. Yes, you can go to one of those cover design services that create a generic background with some sort of geometric squiggle that you lie to yourself looks like Mondrian was your inspiration, but you're not fooling anyone. Realistically, for a good looking, original cover, $1 to $3K. You can pay more.

For indies, $2.50 to $6.00 per book depending on book type, art, and size. Art books will cost much more, but we'll stay with this range.

You can probably negotiate for a free mobi file as part of your initial formatting payment, but if you decide to support other formats such as Kobo or EPUB, figure $100 to $300 for each file you support.

$3,000 to $6,000. Yes, I know you can do it yourself. Most times, you don't have the right voice and training to pull it off. One of the funniest things I've listened to was a self-produced audible book where the author sounded like Rosie Perez speaking through a helium balloon. She thought it sounded great. There are other potential costs I could include, such as shipping. There are people who print books and fulfill directly, but this is fading. To keep it simple, we'll stick with the above. When you're done, a good median estimate is that you'll need to spend at least $4K to kick things off properly for book one, day one.

Marketing Costs

Marketing your book can encompass many things. Below is a good starting list:

PR.
Virtual press tours.
Speaking engagements.Special and free promos.
Review obtainment and management.Review writing (relates to the above).Website creation and management.Email list creation and management.Collateral creation. This can include creating sample downloads, may spec sheets and sell sheets for technical and professional books, etc.Blog writing.Threatening members of your family for failing to put up the freaking review on Amazon after you asked them 10 times (there is no financial cost assigned to this activity but there is a social one).
I'm not going to break out marketing costs for the above activities at this time, but let's figure that during the course of your launch a good median for your expenditures is $1K. You may spend less, but the trade off is spending more of your time. Which brings us to the most crucial overhead component of selling your book, one that you cannot avoid or bypass (unless you want to have sales close to zero).

What Is Your Time Worth?

To market and sell your book, you must spend your time doing so. Yes, I know, you don't "count" your time as money. This means you are a starving artist, not a successful independent publisher. But despite your naivete, time is money and must be assigned a value!

So, what value should we use? For the purposes of this article and spreadsheet, I've picked $25 per hour. Why? Well, the current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and many states are pushing that to a $10 to $12 medium. If you can write a decent book, I'm going to assume you went to college or have college-level skills, which makes you worth at least two to three times minimum wage. 

Also, $25 an hour over 52 weeks works out to a gross wage of $52K. That's not a living large salary, but you can get by on it. So, we'll use $25. (It's not my fault you weren't smart enough to choose to be a lawyer.) BTW, the spreadsheet obviously enables you to plug in your own numbers and play "what if." I've used Amazon's pricing schedule as they're the 1200lb gorilla in ebook channel and its competition currently shelters behind the big beast.

With this foundation in place, let's first look at some basic scenarios that show what level of sales you need to generate to cover the cost of your most precious commodity, time. The spreadsheet I'm extracting these number covers more scenarios; the below are  highlights. Please note these extracts only calculate how many books you need to sell to cover the costs of your time spent marketing and selling your book at $25 per hour. You then need to sell additional books to cover your production and marketing outlays. 
What Is Your Time Worth Break Even Calculations Weekly
Time 
Promo

10

30

10

30

30

10

30
Time Worth?


$25

$25

$25

$25

$25

$25

$25
Yearly Value 
of Time


$13K

$39K

$13K

$39K

$39K

$13K

$39K
Retail Cost



$2.99

$2.99

$7.99

$7.99

$11.99

$2.99

$7.99
AMZ
Serv. 
Fee

30%

30%

30%

30%

30%

65%

65%

Net
Rev. 


$2.09

$2.09

$5.59

$5.59

$8.99

$1.05

$2.80

Copies Sold Break Even


6,211

18,634

2,324

6,973

4,647

12,442

13,946
These number show us some interesting things. First, I picked $2.99 and $7.99 because these currently function as two "gateway" figures. $2.99 is often recommended as a starting point for new and unknown authors. $7.99 tends to be reserved for better known and "name" indies.

The breakout starts with an assumption that you must spend at least 10 hours a week of your time marketing your book. Over a year, your time is worth $13K and you must sell 6.2K titles at $2.09 to make your time back (remember, we're not counting your production/marketing expenses).

Now, 6.2K sales is not a trivial number to hit, especially for a new indie. I don't think it will be long before you realize you need to make the 30 hour per week commitment. And when you do, you're  going to have to cook to hit your needed sales volumes. 18.6K is a lot of books. What's that I hear you saying? You can't afford to spend that much time on your book because you're already writing the next one? That, ladies and gentlemen, is why they invented "drugs." Find something legal in the amphetamine family and get back to work.

Now, as we see, if you can price higher, your work gets easier. Of course, the main channel for ebooks, Amazon, has been pushing lower prices as part of its war with the publishers. That hurts. And life would immediately become niftier if you were paying, say, 15% for your downloads, not a hellacious 30 points, which, let me assure you, is channel margin gold.

Note that life also becomes substantially better if you can price above Amazon's pricing box, which I richly describer in my previous article, Escape from Stalag $7. But of course, you can't. Now, you may argue that you can't realistically price above $9.99 because you're not a brand name such as Stephen King. This may be true. But perhaps you could sell two books as part of a special promotional bundle? That might be just the ticket. But alas. You remain trapped behind the virtual barb wire of Stalag $7.

Now you understand why the channel is both your friend and your enemy.

The final rows make grim reading. They represent the revenue you're (not) generating from your international sales and for books priced out of Amazon's pricing box. Don't overlook there are huge overseas markets for English books in India, Australia, the UK, Europe, China, etc. And don't forget the 60% service fee Amazon charges on your audible book(s).

In part II of this series we'll dig deeper into these numbers and take a look at some early results of our indie survey.

(If you find this article of interest, please do me a favor and click here to take the 
the Amazon Pricing and Marketing Policies for Independent Authors Survey. It's a quick survey and will provide information and insights in independent publishing you will find very useful. All participants receive the complete summary results.)

The Amazon Pricing and Marketing Policies for Independent Authors Survey

Click Here to Take the Amazon Pricing and Marketing Policies for Independent Authors Survey Today

Over the last 12 months a great many pixels have been generated directed at indie authors and self publishers. I've written fairly extensively about the topic and so have others.  A few week ago, I wrote an article entitled  Escape from Stalag $7: Why Amazon's Pricing Box Is Bad for Indies . To date, approximately 10K have read it and the piece sparked some vigorous debate, here and elsewhere.

As Escape was commented on, critiqued, and criticized, I began to realize that while lots of people have commented on what indies think and urged them to adopt one position or another, no one's done any primary research asking indies themselves what they feel about industry events and policies and their impact on their writing and income.

This survey is designed to help fill that gap. It represents an opportunity for the indie voice to be heard and counted in the ongoing debates and speculation about the future of publishing. This survey focuses on Amazon's basic pricing policies as they impact indies.The entire survey is 18 questions, including some brief profile questions at the beginning, and will take you less than five minutes to complete.

Please do not take this survey if you are not publishing at least one book independently.

Everyone who participates will receive a copy of the full summary results as well as relevant cross-tabulations. We will also be posting the results on this blog.

Your participation will be kept completely confidential.

Future surveys will focus on the topic of subscription services, including Amazon's KU and similar programs, and other issues of importance to indies. As you may be aware, there's been a great deal of discussion on this topic and several prominent participants have announced they are leaving the program. Take this chance to let the industry hear your voice.

Click Here to Take The Amazon Pricing and Marketing Policies for Independent Authors Survey Today

Thanks in advance to those who choose to participate and to the over 50 authors who have already done so.

Rick Chapman

Guns, Germs, and Big Bossy Boots Bureaucrats in the Sky: My Review of Emergence by Nick Lloyd

Emergence by Nick Lloyd File Size: 437 KB
Print Length: 408 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Nick M Lloyd (October 14, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00OAGX4L2
Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
Author Website: http://www.nickmlloyd.com/#landingpage

In 1967, Star Trek introduced the concept of The Prime Directive in " Return of the Archons ," one of the series' best episodes. There's some dispute over whether STOS's most productive writer Gene L. Coon, or Theodore Sturgeon came up with the idea (my vote is for Coon), but the concept has proved to be one of Sci-Fi's most durable memes.

In the Star Trek universe, the Prime Directive states that it is forbidden for members of the United Federation of Planets to contact or interfere with the development of "pre-warp" civilizations unless the needs of the plot or to whip up another morality episode requires it. No Star Trek series has failed to mention the PD or to drag elements of it into their episodes, much to the happiness of the different screenplay writers. It's a given, in Star Trek, that if you introduce light bulb technology to a species too soon, they'll promptly use the extra reading time to prematurely create fusion reactors and melt down their planet.

Screen play requirements aside, there is good reason to take elements of the PD seriously. In one of my favorite history treatises, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, author Jared Diamond describes in stunning detail why Pizaro was able to defeat on the battlefield Inca forces that outnumbered his own 300-800 to one.

Still, when you put the germs under the sociological microscope, the issue becomes a bit muddier. Suppose, through some twist of history, it had been the Aztecs who developed iron working technology and blue water sailing ahead of the Spaniards. Driven by distant tales of a people who worshiped a strange blood god, the "Chyrstos," and legends of fabulous temples filled with gold and treasure devoted to assuaging the wrath of this god and ensuring his continued beneficence, the Aztecs land on the west coast of Spain and march on Madrid. What would have been the likely outcome? We know what happened in the reverse case.

What probably would have happened was that 90% of the invaders would have died before they reached any of the treasure temples. You see, what actually destroyed the foundations of pre-Columbian civilization was disease and plague. In facing "Stone Age" Spaniards, the Aztecs may have been able to bring superior technology to the fight, but inferior immune systems (ask the Martians from War of the Worlds how this can put a crimp in your plans to conquer all mankind. (And yeah, yeah, I know, most diseases don't cross species boundaries. Except when they do. Ask the influenza virus and your local duck.)

Europeans, because of their interaction with different groups and nations and their domestication of populations of fowl, cattle, swine, dogs, cats etc., all absent in North America, were epidemiological supermen in contrast to the Aztecs. If any of the invaders had survived to flee back to Tenochtitlan, they would have returned carrying catastrophe and despair. (And the more you know about the Aztecs, the less inclined you are to feel sorry for them. Especially after seeing those on-velvet paintings of Aztec warriors and princesses that are popular in Mexico City.They always leave out the heart-yanking bits.)

I've also always been skeptical of the absolute moral posturing of the PD. For instance, despite much hand wringing and revisionism about native American Indians and their regard for nature, the overwhelming evidence seems to be that when Chief Seattle's ancestors crossed over the land bridge from Siberia to the New World, their immediate reaction to the undiscovered continent's mega-fauna was "Let's Eat Em!" And for the next several thousand years, it was Giant Sloth ribs on the grill and McMastodon burgers to go. 

As for the Incas, they thought transporting children up steep mountains for ritual slaughter was a splendid idea. A picture of one of the dead children is here. Looking at this, you wonder. Who held the high moral hand in Pizaro's and Atahualpa's deadly game?

This issue, and others, are examined in Emergence , a fascinating new novel by Nick Lloyd. Set in the present, we discover that a highly advanced alien species, the Gadium, a race of burly lizards, with the females weighing in at about twice their male counterparts, are sure it  knows what's best for Earth. Official Gadium policy is to actively intervene, guide and manage (with the help of an occasional planetary orbital bombardment), all with the very best of intentions, the course of thousands of civilizations throughout space. As long a you do what you're told, life under Gadium suzerainty is pleasant, with advanced technology being provided to the compliant at regular intervals. Step out of line and you can consider the aforementioned orbital bombardment alternative.

The Gadium manage the process of planetary "guidance" via an elaborate systems of surveillance that infiltrates every aspect of our communications, computing, and  transportation infrastructure as well as our bodies. In a switch from Star Trek's focus on technology, what the Gadium are looking for are "emergents," humans who exhibit advanced capabilities that enable them to manipulate matter at the quantum, probabilistic level.

 Managing a galactic-wide bureaucracy is no trivial task. While the first book is not completely clear on the exact means by which the Gadium achieve interstellar flight, the means used require that a severe relativistic penalty be paid. Members of the Gaidium are used to being placed into stasis for thousands of years as they travel from point to point, putting quite a strain on family relations. When George Orwell was asked to shoot an elephant, at least he did it in real time. When a Gadium is told to bomb a planet, or dispose of someone who's behavior may disturb the emergence timetable of a civilization, his or her family may have been dead for centuries. 

Despite its power and reach, all is not well in the Gadium imperium. A strong dissenting force opposes the Gadium policy of active galactic intervention and management. To my fascination, author Lloyd has created a society where this opposition is expressed via a quasi religious argument focusing on the moral choices a society makes based on its belief in Niels Bohr's Copenhagen vs. Hugh Everett's multiverse interpretation of the most famous experiment in modern physics, the double slit. 

And yes, if you want fully enjoy and understand Emergence and have not read about the double slit experiment, you need to and take some time to fully appreciate its implications for modern science. Don' t be intimidated; it's not that hard to understand and a huge numbers of Sci-Fi plots and novels key off of double slit. Think of this as an opportunity to build your nerd cred.

Emergence's  narrative is built around two tracks, (with a brief side story meant to illuminate the main plot). The first, and most interesting, follows the intrigues and maneuvering of the different Gadium factions as they struggle for political supremacy in an increasingly roiled and factional political milieu. The second follows a group of Earthlings as they begin to realize what is taking place on our planet and one of their members begins to exercise his growing mental capabilities. I found this track at times a bit of a drag on the flow of the story, and think the amount of plot and the cast of characters devoted to it could have been cut down. I would have devoted more time to the big lizards out in space and to two members of the earthbound entourage, Jack Bullage, a man on the brink of emerging into a new kind of human and Louise Harding, who first begins to uncover the Gadium surveillance of our planet. But this is a minor criticism.

Emergence is a very intelligent and well-written book that fascinates on many levels. You can think of it as a critique of Star Trek's original Prime Directive that examines the outcome of this policy from both the viewpoint of  the society impacted by the concept and the toll extracted by the power that upholds it. A social and religious discussion of the fundamental moral nature of our universe. A political fable arguing progressiveness vs. libertarianism.

Regardless of which aspect of the book you choose to focus on, you'll be rewarded. Take some time out during the Holiday season to read one of the most stimulating Sci-Fi books I've read in a long time.

Escape from Stalag $7: The Follow Up and a Survey of Interest to Indies

As I've previously noted,  I'll be appearing on January 15th on a Digital Book World panel in New York entitled  "Authors Facing the Industry: Data and Insights From Authors on the Publishing Business, Author-Publisher Relations, and Marketing." 

Click here or on the image to view the full DBW agenda. Time is 3:00 to 3:50PM. You can save 5% on your attendance with Speakers Code DBWSPEAKERS; make sure you register today.

(Take the Amazon Pricing and Marketing Policies for Independent Authors Survey Today

This survey is brief and focuses on indie interest in potentially promoting their books via the programs I describe in my previous article, Escape from Stalag $7: Why Amazon's Pricing Box Is Bad for Indies. Everyone who participates in the survey will receive a copy of the full summary results as well as relevant cross-tabulations. More information at the link above. Your participation and personal information will be kept completely confidential.)

Last week, I posted on this blog an article  Escape from Stalag $7: Why Amazon's Pricing Box Is Bad for Indies . The reaction to it was much stronger than I'd anticipated. On the first day after it went up, about four thousand people read it, and I estimate that after a couple of weeks have gone by, the number  will rise to well over 10K. Clearly, this is a topic of interest to independent/self-published writers. And certainly one we have a stake in.

Reactions were on the whole very favorable, though the acclaim was by no means universal. Over at The Digital Reader, the site owner wrote a typical AAAG article mixing misstatements with a plea to not think about the issues I raised. A brief example of Nate Hoffelder in action:

+++ one, that people in publishing should not discuss the topic du jour, namely a contract fight which could have had an impact on the entire industry. +++

This, of course, is pure AAAG. Hugh Howey, Joe Konrath, and the rest of AAAG didn't discuss the topic, at least not on any level playing field. They advocated on behalf of a $75B coporation in its fight with a $15B group of large publishers, a battle in which indies had no stake.

+++ two, that indie authors had any obligation to explain Amazon's policies, +++

More AAAG. Hugh Howey, Joe Konrath, Nate Hoffelder et al, who position themselves as indie advocates, certainly had plenty of time to discuss Amazon's position vs. the publishers. Why can't they divert some of that energy to discussing Amazon's policies as they impact indies? After all, aren't they supposed to be our advocates? I'm not impacted by Hachette's agency pricing model, but I am by Amazon grabbing 65% of my international sales revenue.

The rest of the article is typical AAAG dreary, and never even attempts to address the issues raised in Stalag $7. You can read it here.

Over at www.teleread.com,  things were more favorable (though they had a gentleman show up and try to claim that Amazon pays you royalties! Where do these people come from)? Michael Perry of Inkling Books provided some interesting Amazon math here:

As he notes, Amazon’s ebook goal is quite obvious and has been for a long time. When you sell an ebook through them, at all price levels they want to take 65% for a mere credit card transaction and file download that costs them mere pennies. Then they want to give you only 35%. Can most authors and publishers make any sort of decent living on that? No, particularly since Amazon intends to do all it can to drive down that price from which your 35% comes.

To get a rough estimate what that would mean, for a $9.99 ebook, Amazon will make $7 less costs that are probably around a dime. And it’ll pay you but $3.50 for all your months of labor. It’s making roughly a 7000% profit, while you can’t afford the rent.

Read the rest here.

Finally, Bowerbird@bbirdman provided a very detailed critique of my article, agreeing with some points and disagreeing with others. For example:

relaxing the box too soon, however, risks the principle (held devoutly by reasonable people) that e-books are cheaper to reproduce and distribute than paper-books, so they _must_ cost less or someone be robbing people. that the major publishers refuse to acknowledge this fact is what has caused extensive damage to e-books thus far. corporate publishers were in love with their big margins, and they knew e-books would eventually threaten them.so they've been doing their best to delay that inevitability.

The "Bird" also provided some suggested workarounds for Stalag $7. I'm not sure they're all practical, but the entire post is well worth your reading.

Read her comments here

As a result of the strong response to the article and reading the many comments made about it, I realized there was one voice absent from the issue and that is yours. I'd like to know the indie community's opinion on the issues I discussed in Stalag $7. Are you interested in greater promotional opportunities on Amazon? Which ones are you most interested in? Do you think the Amazon $7 spread on your pricing is equitable? Do you think that if you were allowed to promote outside the box you could do successfully? Do you price outside the box and if no, why not?

These questions are covered in the survey. It's brief, and should take less than five minutes of your time to complete. Everyone who participates will receive a copy of the full summary results as well as relevant cross-tabulations. More information at the link above. Your participation will be kept completely confidential.

Take the Amazon Pricing and Marketing Policies for Independent Authors Survey Today

My thanks in advance to all who chose to participate. I look forward to hearing what you think!

Escape from Stalag $7: Why Amazon's Pricing Box Is Bad for Indies

(Just a quick reminder that I'll be appearing on January 15th on a Digital Book World panel in New York entitled  "Authors Facing the Industry: Data and Insights From Authors on the Publishing Business, Author-Publisher Relations, and Marketing." 

Click here or on the image to view the full DBW agenda. Time is 3:00 to 3:50PM. You can save 5% on your attendance with Speakers Code DBWSPEAKERS; make sure you register today. The agenda is very broad and provides extensive coverage of issues of interest to both traditional and self-published authors. I intend to ask some Amazon people some hard questions if can get near an audience microphone.)

During the Hachette vs. Amazon struggle, I started to visit some of AAAG's (Aggregated Amazon Ankle Grabbers) most prominent websites and ask some hard questions. As I pointed out in my series on the book channels, independents had no stake in the outcome either way, but AAAG's intense interest in the business practices of the publishers inspired me to spend time investigating Amazon's pricing and operations model as it applied to indies. This was an issue in which I had a stake.

The results were not very informative. I did learn a few things about how AAAG operates. The Passive Voice (a lawyer guy) deals with hard questions on his blog by not allowing them to appear via comment blocking. Ditto Hugh Howey. Joe Konrath was a bit better, but is given to rewriting history. As he squirmed and evaded my straightforward questions about Amazon's pricing and marketing practices model, the inevitable hints about being banned were issued and the history rewrites began. For example, despite copious words to the contrary, he suddenly announced he'd been OK with agency pricing all the while, though he'd have to be suffering from the same brain dysfunction that Guy Pearce exhibited in Memento  for anyone to believe that.

David Gaughran was the worst. In two posts on his blog, I asked my hard questions and received the usual blast of blather and evasion. For example, he called my observation that Amazon's pricing model as it applied to indies was a modified form of agency "nonsensical."  Apparently, while holing in up in Prague, he'd failed to talk to Hugh Howey about this issue, who referred to the model as "Incentivized Agency." Perhaps it was the different adjectives that confused him. 

When I stayed on topic, I was eventually "banned" from the blog  after the inevitable, unctuous, weaselly speech about his undying devotion to freedom of speech. Take this to the bank. When a blog owner affirms their commitment to First Amendment principles, you're about to be censored. It's how hypocrisy works.

But after all the fireworks and fun, the one thing I never ever received from AAAG were coherent answers to my questions, particularly the most important one of all. And that is: Why has Amazon placed indies in a $7 dollar pricing box? Why does it grab 65% of your revenue (not counting its transmission fees, which it charges on every transfer and which vary based on book size) if you price under $2.99 and the same if you charge over $9.99? This is an issue of critical importance to indies because it is not financially feasible to hand over that level of margin to a reseller for a download service. (And if you think Amazon is paying you a "royalty" when you fork over that 65% operating expense, please stop reading now. You are incurably ignorant and I cannot help you.)

The most coherent answer I ever received from AAAG acolytes was "because they can."  When I'd respond that Hachette was therefore perfectly justified in providing that same answer to Amazon over the issue of agency pricing, AAAG people became very unhappy, though never informative or more coherent.

I'll give one member of AAAG credit for integrity and that is Dan Meadows of The Watershed Chronicle. He runs what I regard as an AAAG-lite site, and most of his articles on H vs. AMZ focused on his amazement that Hachette actually insisted on negotiating in its best interests, not Amazon's. 

But to his credit, I've never seen any comment blocking or banning threats. And  when he asked in an article how writers had benefited from the whole contretemps, and I told him how, he was honest enough to acknowledge that indies had benefited from the fight as Apple's and the publishers' introduction of the proposed 70%/30% agency split had forced Amazon to compete and offer indies the same deal for books in their pricing box. Prior to that, Amazon charged indies 65 points to use their download service regardless of the book's price.

(What, you never read that fact on the AAAG sites? Hmmm. Fancy that. You indies can make it up to Apple and the publishers by saying a little prayer on their behalf to the God of Book Publishing tonight. But don't go overboard. The publishers still need to rethink their royalty structure in this new era.)

What's Wrong With Amazons's $7 Dollar Pricing Box?

Let's count the ways. Before I begin, let me stipulate for all of the following points the underlying issue is that Amazon's policies are depriving indies of revenue now and in the future.

Amazon's current pricing policy makes it financially impossible for thousands of authors to sell their books on the site that currently accounts for at least 65% of the digital download market (and I think that share is higher). Books about the Zombie Apocalypse  probably, in most cases, can't command prices above $9.99 unless the author's name is Stephen King. But a lavishly illustrated art book discussing the Italian Renaissance can (and must) to make economic sense. So does a book that discusses how Software as a Service companies can optimize their business operations (I'm the author of that book). These titles must be priced higher to make publishing them feasible. If you don't understand why, I'm not explaining it to you. Go do some homework.

Amazon's stated motive for the pricing box is a falsehood. If Amazon was worried about the price of E-books being too high, the market has solved that problem. I cannot keep track of the number of mysteries, fantasies, Sci-Fi, horror, historical fiction, bodice rippers, and soft porn books featuring pliable heroines being consensually tortured by handsome sadists selling for under five bucks, never mind ten, on Amazon. And if people want to pay more to read the works of better known authors, can someone identify the gun being pointed at their heads?

The real reason Amazon has placed indies in the box is to keep the pressure up on the publishers. Amazon failed to gain control of the book pricing model in its last go round with the publishers, but it's not giving up. They'll be back at it, sooner rather than later. Indies are thus pawns in a game we are not playing. I don't like being a pawn and neither should you.

Amazon's statement that the optimum price point for E-books is $9.99 is utter nonsense. It's what people who conduct statistical research call a "median stew." $5.99 might indeed be the optimal price point for a self-published book about proper etiquette when dating a member of the undead. However, a book by Stephen King on the same subject may sell very well at $12.99. This is because King is a well-known brand and you're not, though one day you want to be one. OTOH, suppose the major book reviewers state the Master of Horror's latest opus stinks worse than a Florida mullet left on the bank of a Ft. Lauderdale canal all day in August (this is a smell I'm personally familiar with). All of a sudden, you and Stephen are on the same pricing curve. Refer back to point one to understand how this applies to other categories of books. Amazon's stated "research" incorporated none of these variables and is as useful as the above unfortunate mullet.
Amazon's pricing box makes effective bundling impossible (and the company specifically forbids it for books, which ties back to point two). Suppose you have two books in a series, each priced at $7.99. You'd like to put together a bundle of both titles at a combined price of, say, $11.99, a four buck savings over buying each book separately. Why can't you? I can tell you there's no technical obstacle. It's because Amazon wants to continue putting pressure on the publishers and doesn't really care about you, indie. 

Amazon's pricing box makes effective couponing impossible. Why would you want to use a coupon? To build a sense of urgency and value into a promo. Why can't you? Same reason as in point four.

Amazon's pricing box destroys your brand/author equity the more books you write (and prevents you from building it into your pricing). An illustration. Let us suppose you've written 15 books in total. The median price for your line or series is $8.99 and sales are good. Some of your books are long in the tooth and the long tail now waves sluggishly. You decide to put together an omnibus of your first 10 books and price it at $19.99. Seems fair, you think. Two bucks a book. But no. Amazon's pricing box forces you to devalue yourself to a buck a book. Why?  Because Amazon wants to continue putting pressure on the publishers and doesn't really care about you, indie.

Amazon's pricing box prevents you from finding out if your author equity is expanding. As I've pointed out, its stated price point research is nonsense. You're a successful indie and your last book sold very, very, very well at $9.99 and people are clamoring for the next release. Maybe you can command $10.99 for thirty days after the new launch. Maybe 60 days. Or maybe $11.99 combined with a two-buck-off coupon. Who knows? Well, you don't, and can't, because Amazon won't let you find out. Why? Because Amazon wants to continue putting pressure on the publishers and doesn't really care about you, indie.
 Amazon's pricing box discourages innovations in online book selling. 3D printers capable of spitting out bound and braille books, as well as collectibles and memorabilia, are coming to the market. Online book selling enables you and the publishers to experiment with the concept of selling print-ready as well as E-files with your purchase. But that's just a start. More heavily illustrated books, sound tracks, screen savers, alternate versions of books, comics, illustration collections, games, printable posters and even video are all possibilities. But the price box squelches most experimentation, hurting both you and Amazon.

Amazon's pricing box has led it to proclaim it will establish some sort of pricing codex, Amazonium Codexorum. If/when the codex is established, people will waste time and effort on attempting to get in it. Now, to be honest, I don't think Amazon will ever actually try to establish the codex. I think the whole concept was a head fake for the benefit of the DOJ. But the idea is distasteful and would be an administrative nightmare. But price rigging schemes lead to these kind of bizarre projects.

This final point is broader in scope and encompasses the interests of the industry as a whole. Amazon's current indie price box is part of an attempt to price rig an industry. It is not healthy for a $75B company to attempt to do this. The free market will establish appropriate pricing guidelines for different types and levels of authors quickly. Amazon's attempt to control this process is not in anyone's best interest, even ultimately their own. (Not that I expect them to realize this.)
What Is To Be Done?

How can all the above issues be quickly resolved? The answer is simplicity itself. Amazon should lift all restrictions on book pricing and establish a uniform service fee for the use of its downloading infrastructure. Within this framework, the authors will quickly learn what works for them and their books. Amazon's "assistance" is not needed.

To help speed up the implementation of this logical and intelligent course of action, it's time for Hugh Howey, Joe Konrath, David Gaughran and the rest of AAAG to raise their palms off the pavement, rise up, and ask Amazon, for the benefit of indies, the industry, and ultimately Amazon itself, to burn the price box. It's one way they can atone for the atrocious misreporting they provided us during the Hachette vs. Amazon battle. And in the end, AAAG's bottom lines and book sales will benefit as well.