Merrill R. Chapman's Blog, page 3

What Hugh Howey Won't Talk About (but Should). The Publishers and Amazon, Part IX. The Last Part

(A quick note to those of you who have been following this series. On January 15th I'll be appearing on a panel at Digital Book World 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.)

In the last article of this series, I continue  my look at how the publishers can push back against Amazon. If you've not been following this series, I urge you to read it from the beginning as it provides you with a concise but accurate explanation of the fundamentals of distribution in the book ( (and other) channels.

While the publishers have their work cut out for them, there are significant things they can do to remain a force in the industry. The most important factor working in their favor is that they are still the primary managers of content. As a channel entity, Amazon's core expertise is not in producing things, but in selling them. As a distributor/reseller, Amazon wants to sell products that are uniform in structure and whose sales easily scale if/when they catch the public's fancy.

Books meet the above criteria only partially. While both printed and E-books scale easily in terms of sales, their creation is often idiosyncratic and halting. Every book ever written or published by definition is unique. Books that aren't are called "copyright infringements."

A practical example of this is a Sci-Fi series by David Gerrold (famous for his "The Trouble with Tribbles" screenplay for the original Star Trek). I started reading in 1984 his series called the "War Against the Chtorr." The last book in the run was published in 1992 ( A Season for Slaughter ) and three more have been promised since then. I'm not holding my breath for the next release, don't think he'll ever finish up the tale, and feel a bit cheated.

The problem with a channel attempting to also become a content provider is evident in the struggles Amazon has had in establishing its house imprints. ( Click Here for More Info .) Currently, the paper channel won't sell Amazon's house books because they conflict with the interests of the book channel (outside of Amazon). And the thought of dealing with hordes of cranky, emotional authors probably makes the teeth of Amazon's internal management ache. And the whole Hachette dust up may have have excited some bright-eyed, long-nosed legal beagle at the DOJ to start sniffing through the case archives and read up on the fed's successful monopsony case against the film studios decades ago. That thought gives Amazon's attorney the hives.

In high tech, there are examples of suppliers successfully integrating their operations with their channels. Apple is the most notable case. In the late 90s, Apple pulled most of its computer products out of the stores, shut down its OEM and licensing operations, and opened its own retail chain. But Apple is the exception that proves the rule. Apple closely controls its product production scheduling and planning. Apple sells its most popular products via a strict agency pricing regimen. Apple has always attempted to integrate its hardware and software technologies into unified products. And Apple is slowly edging away from the PC market as its focus turns increasingly to smartphones, tablets, and the upcoming new generation of flexible devices.

This is in sharp contrast to Microsoft, which has always relied on channels and third parties to grow and whose attempt to build a retail channel has been far less successful than Apple's.

A final point to keep in mind is that in most markets, channels do not sell. Channels exist to service demand. In software, company after company made the mistake of thinking that because a distributor had ordered X number of boxes of product into their warehouse they had sold something. They were always wrong. It was always the responsibility of the software publisher to create product demand and pull products out of warehouses. In E-books, nothing has changed except the cost of warehousing and shipping has dropped to near zero. Plow those savings back into your marketing.

A Change of Mindset Would Do You Good

Publishers must rethink their relationships with the author community and give up their traditional gatekeeper mentality while repositioning themselves as author facilitators and as writing coaches. The Amazon-Hachette battle uncovered the fact that there was a great deal of pent up resentment towards publishers. Many writers perceive them as an unfriendly blocking force that takes away opportunity from people who are certain they have a book or books in them. Publishers need to understand this and proactively reach out to this community and to the future revenue and profits they represent.

Gatekeeping makes no sense in the age of the electronic shelf. There is no limit to the amount of inventory the system can carry. There is no genre or market segment that cannot be served by the electronic shelf. There are no returns and shipping issues. The long tail is eternal.

In this milieu, rethink publishing as an analog to the baseball system, where different levels of talent are segmented into different circles and encouraged to improve their skills until they’re ready for the big leagues. With this model in mind, start to learn how to market into niches and genres, and build new imprints and product lines to service them. Leverage community to help manage these minor leagues and promote talent to the first rank. Both authors and publisher will benefit. This model also has the benefit  of helping publishers break away from the blockbuster mentality that dominates their thinking. You may never find another World War Z zombie apocalypse best seller, but lots of people love the genre and you can probably make money by serving up a steady stream of well-written E-titles to people who like to settle down to a quiet afternoon reading about the rotting undead and mall massacres.

I also strongly recommend publishers turn away from the types of services packages offered by such groups as Author Solutions. They have been tainted by their use of tactics traditionally associated with exploitative "vanity press" businesses and are a growing sore on your business.

Mentor the Market and the Next Generation

One of the most powerful arrows in the publisher's quiver is their relationship with existing,well-known authors. For example, in this blog post, Hugh Howey is verklempt over a few nice words of affirmation from Stephen King (yes, that S. King) towards Wool. I find this a bit ironic as Stephen King was one of the "one percent" who signed that awful, awful, awful petition from Authors United criticizing brave, plucky, $75B Amazon for screwing around with the Hachette authors in its search for more margins on books and MDF (expenses ultimately paid for by the writers). Heck, King's wife signed the damn thing. How awful is that? But, nice words from the master of horror and suspense are very bankable and I guess all is forgiven from the self-publishing pioneer who introduced the concept of "incentivized agency" and author punishment if you want to price your book above $9.99 on Amazon.

My suggestion is that if Stephen King's ready to make Hugh Howey's day, perhaps he and his compatriots might want to help make some self-published authors' days as well? How about a reach out program sponsored by the publishers that encourages their authors to:

Write a few reviews of self-published works they find intriguing?
Some "coaching" classes where a famous author takes a writer or writers under their wing for some tutelage and tips?
Perhaps an "Author's Award" that recognizes rising new stars in self-publishing. (And, coincidentally, uncovers new bankable talent the publishers can sell?)Perhaps manage some genre communities? If you're an author, this will probably help sales.
There are more ideas you can develop along these lines, but you get the idea.

Explore the New Venues Open to You

In the previous article I mentioned that paper is a trap for publishers. I stand by that statement, but I'm not only talking about the inevitable demise of print at the hands of digital. I'm talking about missing and experimenting with new venues and ways to sell books while focusing too deeply on managing a legacy business model (which the major publisher do need to do).

Here's an example of what I mean. I went to see Edge of Tomorrow this summer and loved it. The movie is based on a well-written manga, All You Need is Kill . I wondered on Mke Shatzkin's blog the other day why you shouldn't offer the manga, or perhaps a novelization of the book, to people who went to see the movie. I call this "Point of Event" distribution. Walk in the theater, download the publication to your smartphone and read the book after seeing the movie. This adds more value to your movie ticket and potentially offers new marketing awareness for both the book and the movie derivative. Or perhaps when you visit William Sonoma, offer a copy of a hot new recipe tome when you buy that latest, can't resist rubbing sauce? How about an art book during a major touring exhibit at your local museum?

These are just some ideas. There are more opportunities out there. But, of course, this concept can only be executed if you're thinking digitally. Won't work with paper. Too much risk.

Provide Your Own Service Layers to the Authors and Writers

In the last article in this series, I described the various service layers Amazon is controlling within the world of E-books. Experts such as Mike Shatzkin think it's beyond the grasp of the publishers to create a competing E-commerce platform for their own use a la the airline industry's SABRE system and he's probably right. But there are services the publishers can provide to existing and aspiring authors. These include:

Website hosting. Every author and their books needs a website.
Marketing services, including E-mail and social platform management.A standardized book submissions system that covers the publishing industry. I, personally, may throttle the idiot, if I ever find them, that outlined to the eighth of an inch where I had to place an epigraph in the paper manuscript of my novel. Screw that stupidity. That type of behavior is why so many people are angry at the publishers. And stop asking for paper manuscripts and prepare for the future. And don't whine at me that you can't read all the submitted manuscripts. That's what the minor league system I describe above is for.Crowd sourced agenting. You should be able to compete with Amazon in this area if you leverage your communities.Community enabled E-books is something worth looking at. IOW, allow people to communicate and share opinions, information, and suggestions about a book from within a book. I actually created what may have been the first book to possess this capability in 2002, but was way ahead of my time. Companies such as Digerati do offer this type of technology for periodicals, but it can be easily adapted for E-books.
I'm not saying that publishers shouldn't charge for the above services where appropriate, but pricing should be reasonable and not predatory. Publishers should remember that the above ideas and suggestions will ultimately provide them with far more information about their readers, writers, and markets than they currently possess and help them compete against the Amazon data juggernaut.

This brings this series to an end. My next article will take a closer look at the Amazon $7 roach motel and why's it's bad for indies. After that, I'm going to post up an article entitled "What Is Your Time Worth," along with a spreadsheet, that helps you compare the value of your time against the sales needed to ensure you don't end up working at Home Depot during the holiday season to make ends meet.

It's Bad and It Will Get Worse: My Review of Kali - Destroyer of Worlds

Kali - Destroyer of Worlds by Mike Kuykendall





File Size: 1084 KB
Print Length: 386 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1501030469
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00NB5JTBW
Author's website: http://mike-kuykendall.blogspot.com

Several years ago I read an article in, as I recall, the New Yorker about the problem of suicides at San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge. I've sailed under the bridge once or twice and have driven across it many times. The road surface of the Golden Gate is about 200 feet above the bay, a little more than two thirds of a football field. From the water, the bridge certainly looks high, but to a New Yorker, not that high.

The Golden Gate is the second most popular suicide spot in the world, ranking only behind  China's Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge. Third place is held by Japan's Aokigahara Forest. Since the bridge was finished in 1937, an estimated 1600 people have leaped to their death from the span. The precise number will never be known because many people are not spotted jumping and/or never recovered after they impact with the bay. If you one of the very few who survive the fall, you're going to be hurt, the water is cold, the tides swift, and fish have to eat too.

The physics of the jump are grim. It will take you about four seconds to reach the water and you'll hit it at a speed of approximately 75 mph ( 120 km/h), then decelerate to zero in a fraction of a second. Your organs are going to want to keep going and thus your heart, lungs, spleen, etc will often rupture or tear free of your interior. Multiple bone fractures are a given. Most people die almost immediately, but about 5% of jumpers don't, drowning in the cold water or thrashing about as they bleed internally to death.

The article was grim but interesting reading, but the part I found most compelling was the observation of a man who was one of the 34 people who are documented to have jumped and survived. He told the writer of the article that as he lept off the side of the bridge and the plunge became irrevocable, he realized nothing in his life was so bad as to justify the action he'd just taken.

Kali - Destroyer of Worlds , begins at just such a moment. The chief protagonist, 12 year old Rebecca Wilder (no, this is not a YA title), has walked almost an hour into the woods intent on cutting her wrists open and ending her life. Parentless, a temporary resident in a series of foster home, and deeply disturbed, Rebecca succeeds in opening an artery and begins to bleed to death. Like the Golden Gate jumper, the hard reality of death makes her rethink her decision. Unlike the jumper, she's in a position to change the trajectory of her choice and scrambles to stop the flow of her life's blood. 

As she does, all hell breaks loose.

Hell, in Destroyer of Worlds , are two nearby but undected neutron stars, each approximately 13 km in diameter, that collide, releasing blasts of gamma, X-Rray and microwave radiation from each body's pole. A neutron star is what's left over when a star about two times our Sun's mass comes to the end of its life cycle and ejects its outer layers. (Ten times our mass and you end up with a blackhole. What's created by stars in between that range is unknown, but I bet  there's a good Scif-Fi yarn in there somewhere.)

The resultant beams of pure destruction intersect with  Earth in the vicinity of northern Virginia, incinerating Washington, DC and hundreds of miles of the eastern US. A follow up blast of microwaves then slowly roasts many of the exposed survivors, leaving the US in ruins and the rest of the world in chaos.

This vision of the apocalypse is not pure speculation. Over the years, several scientists have theorized that some of the mass extinctions that have taken place in prehistory were caused by events of this type. And you'll be happy to know that there are detectable neutron binary systems spinning in our section of the galaxy, with the closest system estimated to be about 1,500 light years away. If/when the two stars finally collide, they could be trouble. (I know I've given some of you something new to worry about, but, after all, you don't read a book such as  Kali  if you think the universe is all lollipops and fluffy bunnies.) And I thank God and Mike that I didn't have to read more about global warming and the UN.

Paradoxically, the arrival of Armageddon on Earth saves Rebecca's life. Positioned literally in the eye of the radioactive storm, she survives as everything around her dies. The abrupt decapitation of a unfortunate bicyclist by a flying chunk of doomed airliner enables her to crudely stitch her mutilated wrist back together using a bike spoke as a makeshift needle and bit of yarn from her frayed sweater as thread. (One of many "makes you wince" moments you'll experience in Destroyer of Worlds .)

As the maelstrom continues to rage around her, Rebecca goes insane and is reborn as Kali, the Indian goddess or aspect of death, time and change. The exact details of this transformation are left ambiguous in the novel. Has Rebecca actually been possessed, or is her new persona simply a manifestation of mental illness, possibly schizophrenia? It is left to the reader to decide. But regardless, as Kali makes her way through the post-apocalyptic landscape, it quickly becomes apparent that ending up on her bad side is a ticket out of this plane of existence.

There are other survivors of the disaster whose fates we follow. A group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station who realize they are doomed but decide to remotely attempt to remove the fingers of America's surviving military commanders off their nuclear triggers. The first Hindu American sub commander (a nice juxtaposition with our eponymous heroine) who slaughters his own crew and waits alone beneath the waves in an Ohio-class boomer for the orders that will enable him to unleash his ICBM's against the enemy, any enemy. A drunk who finds himself transformed into a local sherrif caring for a group of dazed survivors. The inevitable religious fanatic.

One character's fate in particular stands out in the novel. It is Abe Renson, a cancer-riddled dump truck operator who is caught in the irradiation zone while eating lunch and paralyzed in place. Over the course of several days, Abe slowly transforms into...something while feeling every moment of the process. It's a powerful scene that's compelling but painful to read. A literary equivalent to a scene in one of those Saw movies where someone gets to watch a needle sloowwlly approach their eyeball or is required to partially dismember themselves to escape a trap. 

And obviously, when the transformation is over, Abe rises to play his part in the fun and ruin taking place outside the diner.

I'm not going to reveal any spoilers in Kali - Destroyer of Worlds , but I will say the book ends on a note of hopefulness (and many less characters than when it started). I found Kuykendall's writing style compelling. After a while, you feel like you're living the story, not reading it. But if you like to start the day humming a tune from Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music, this is not the book for you. Unless you like to carry a chainsaw while singing a few lines of  "The Hills are Alive."

Kali - Destroyer of Worlds is a gruesome, grim, well-written apocalyptic tale that bores a bit into your soul. Professionally edited and written. Not exactly good fun but more like a roller coaster ride through Hell. If this genre is your thing, buy it.

Starbuck and Sushi: My Review of Beyond Cloud Nine by Greg Spry

Beyond Cloud Nine (Beyond Saga Book 1) by Greg Spry




File Size: 2486 KB
Print Length: 391 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0990822400
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Greg Spry; 1 edition (September 17, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00NOFZ16Q

When author Greg Spry submitted Beyond Cloud Nine to me for review and described the book's main character, who is of American/Japanese heritage, I immediately accepted.

I have always had an affection for Japan and the Japanese and think it's really too bad about that whole WW II thing. Why? Well, it's not because I have any close friends who are Japanese, though my buddy from my days at MicroPro, publisher of WordStar for you antiques out there, Todd Judge, lives in Japan with his Japanese wife and their extremely cute identical twin daughters.

I have never been to Japan. I speak no Japanese, though I've read extensively about the history of the country and its culture, and recently bought a used copy of The Yakuza from E-bay, a movie I saw when it was first released in the 70s and have never forgotten. And I have a ton of Japanese plane and ship models I one day intend to build if I can live long enough.

I also enjoy Japanese manga (I read it online mainly here) and  and watch a fair amount of anime online (currently working through Vampire Knight, though the lachrymose sound track is really grating). Elements of manga and anime are tightly woven into my own novel, Rule-Set, another tribute to my interest in Japan.

Interestingly enough, I didn't much care for the animes of the 60s and 70s, especially Speed Racer with that stupid monkey, though Tobor the X-Man was a bit more palatable. I knew the Warshawsky brothers had made a mistake when they announced they were doing a live action version of Speed Racer.  Any comic that features a monkey wearing a hat is trouble.

The reason for my soft spot for the Japanese is Mrs. Narita, my third grade teacher at PS 86 in the Bronx. Mrs. Narita was Japanese American and, as I recall, very cute. Even better was the the fact that Mrs. Narita appreciated my compulsive desire to read. By third grade, the phrase that probably most defined my early childhood was "Ricky, get your nose out of that book." During a parent/teacher conference, Mrs. Narita informed my mother and father that my vocabulary had become so extensive that she found herself reaching for the dictionary when talking with me. (No, I wasn't a boy genius. My math skills were as horrid as my reading skills were good). 

I really was a very good reader, but I've always wondered if Mrs. Narita had not come to the strategic conclusion that while I had my head pointed towards my lap as I ignored my other lessons on history, math, spelling and so on, I was less likely to trouble her and the rest of the class. Regardless, my parents were quite pleased with that aspect of the meeting and the entire incident was the high point of my elementary school career. My affection for Japan was set in my heart.

But enough reminiscing. Let's move onto the review.

The primary protagonist of Beyond Cloud Nine is Brooke Davis, the daughter of an American father and Japanese mother. The story kicks off in the year 2247 and homo sapiens has spread into the solar system as far as the moons of Jupiter. A political crisis is underway as different colonies begin the process of breaking away from Mother Earth and their nations of origin. Compounding the problem is that humanity is on the brink of finally mastering faster than light (FTL) technology, bringing travel to the stars within reach. Who will first have access to the technology, and when, has become a flash point in the gathering crisis.

When we first meet our heroine, she's been deployed on a UN (sigh. Yes, the UN. If you read my review of Second Chance , you know what I think of the UN. To see what I think about the UN, go rent  Idiocracy . Oh well. It's convenient) space carrier assigned to protect the FTL project, named Luminosity, from terrorist attacks. Brooke is a serious badass in the tradition of Starbuck in the reboot of Battlestar Galactica and demonstrates it by taking a wrench to the face of her wingman after they have a disagreement about battle tactics. Gotta love the girl.

The action kicks off with a battle between Brooke's fighter squadron and a group of terrorists who we later find out are much more than they seem. One of the best aspects of  Cloud Nine is that author Spry works to make the science feel real, something I also strove for in my novel. Here's his description of Brooke preparing to launch in her "SF-522 Starthroat" and intercept a group of baddies.

She fastened her helmet to her armor and sealed her face shield, feeling like a futuristic knight. After the safety harness clamped down around her shoulders, locking her in place, the canopy closed. Gravity gel rose up above her boots, legs, torso, and helmet until it filled the cockpit. The gel buoyed up her body, soothing her as if she’d crawled back into the womb.

What's fun about this passage is that it's scientifically feasible. One of the problems with most descriptions of space battles is they're always a bit ludicrous if you know anything about Newtonian physics. On Earth, the limits of human anatomy generally restrict us to Gs between the 5 to 15 range for any extended period. At speeds that can generate those Gs, ship to ship combat in space is a slow, tedious affair. I'm not sure how many Gs Star Trek's warp drive theoretically generates, but it's enough to rename the ship the USS Strawberry Jam. Yes, I know they have "inertial dampening systems" on board the Enterprise, but no one ever attempts to explain how they work.

By contrast, Greg's gel system could indeed enable a pilot to endure hundreds of Gs, turning space based fighter-to-fighter combat into something that wouldn't put you to sleep. Of course, I'm hoping in the future mankind will be as one and no one will be shooting at each other.  But if we are, let's not be boring about it.

The rest of the book also strives for a feeling of reality and creates a world of the future you can believe in. His description of how an FTL-driven spaceship might handle and operate appears to be based on the Alcubierre drive and feels solid. Cityscapes set  in a future Chicago were also enjoyable and had a nice hard edge.

The author is also good at building interesting, sympathetic characters. Some of the best writing in Beyond deals with the interaction of Brooke with her identical twin Marie and her niece Maya. In fact, if I have any criticism of the novel, it's that author Spry concentrates on providing slam bang action and perhaps needs to focus on the human factor a bit more in Beyond's sequel. For example, I thought the relationship between Brooke and Kevin Sommerfield, the scientist responsible for the Luminosty project, could have been built out further.

To sum up, a blast to read. Professionally copyedited and composed. Scientifically well constructed. If you enjoy strong feminine leads, definitely your cup of tea. If you're ethnically Asian or share an Asian background, a must read. Go buy it

Tolstoy had Napoleon and 1812. We've Got Tolkien and World of Warcraft

The Orb of Chaos Vol.1: No Rest for the Wicked by M. Ray Allen 






File Size: 2752 KB
Print Length: 558 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0615874029
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Lucky Duck Publishing (January 19, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00EYRUWDK

I first read the Lord of the Rings in the original "unauthorized" US Ace editions ( the ones that really annoyed J.R.R. Tolkien and inspired him to write his famous note about courtesy to living authors in the early, authorized Ballantine versions of TLOR). It is ironic that the whole kerfuffle was sparked by Tolkien's belief that his epic fantasy would be harmed by appearing in:

   “ ‘degenerate a form’ as the paperback book.'” 

Ace's book were not pirated edition of the series BTW,  as the interpretations of US law at the time seemed to support the position that Tolkien had mishandled his copyrights. (I'm not going to go into this as trying to explain copyright laws and IP licensing gives me the hives. I do have a friend whose legal specialty is IP and I notice that he seems to scratch himself a lot.)

While I don't think he ever appreciated it, those degenerate Ace editions spread Tolkien's fame far and wide among the beatniks, hipsters and flower people of the 50s, 60s and 70s. From there, the series moved up and out and eventually filled his and his family's coffers with enough loot to fill up a reasonably sized room in Smaug's Ereborian pied a terre.

Now, I know I'm going to catch a great deal of heat for this observation, but I think Tolkien overrated himself (I know, I know. I have a lot of nerve. How many mega-best seller have I written? But give me time). I don't think TLOR is great literature. I think it's a very good yarn and a stunning achievement in popular culture as is Dracula and The Wizard of Oz, two other books that don't quite scale the literary peaks high enough to reach that ultimate summit we call "literature."

Perhaps the problem lies in the character of Sauron. We never learn much about him or his personal motivations for wanting to conquer Middle-Earth. When we first “meet” him, he’s faceless and remains so for the length of the trilogy.  I’ve always wondered why TLOR didn’t provide Sauron with a richer backstory. Tolkien was, after all, a master of creating detailed, three dimensional imaginary worlds. Perhaps something like the below would have helped:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Mirkwood,

I’m writing you per our agreement to update you on Little Sauron’s progress at Middle-Earth Elementary School. While everyone is sure your son is a bright and inquisitive child, the current state of his peer interactions remains a concern (though, in his defence, many of the senior staff find Little Sauron enchanting and predict he has a bright future. Still, I must report on what I see).

For instance, today at Lunch Recess, your son attempted to transform several members of the First Grade into Uruk-hai, frightening several of his classmates terribly and even causing one little Elvish girl to wet herself. Little Sauron has also volunteered to take care of the class bunny, something that I initially thought was a hopeful sign, but now I am not so sure. When I went over to Bombadil to check on his well-being, I noticed his incisors were abnormally sharp and he nipped at me. Also, I do not believe bunnies normally salivate much.

Another issue has arisen that must be discussed. As you know, Middle-Earth Elementary School serves a diverse educational audience that includes Humans, Hobbits, Elves, Ents, etc. Recently, your son has taken to shouting out “Hey, Get Shorty” anytime he spies a Dwarvish child, behavior that does not contribute to the atmosphere of tolerance and community we constantly seek to build at this establishment.

On a more positive note, Little Sauron continues to show a positive flair for penmanship, though his practice note pads do have an unfortunate tendency to burst into flames when he has finished with them.

Sincerely,

Miss Fenmarch, Kindergarten Second Class, Middle-Earth Elementary School

I feel this adds a bit of depth and perspective to the story. Or maybe not. 

Ah, you ask, which modern books in the genre, or close to it, do I regard as literature? I nominate two.  T.H. White's The Once and Future King and Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger (also the author of Little Big Man ). If you haven’t read Arthur Rex , pick up a copy. You are in for a treat). Why are they better than Tolkien? Because they create worlds in which humor and tragedy both exist and intermix, something that Tolkien's work lacks.

Regardless of your particular opinion on Tolkien’s literary ranking, the astounding success of TLOR has provide subsequent authors with a solid template on which literally thousands of novels, novellas and short stories rely on (not to mentions hundreds of game and virtual worlds).  If you want to create a fantasy epic, you can pull from a laundry list of different plot elements and characters such as:

Elves, Dwarves, Gremlins, Gnomes, Wizards, Mages, and so on (Hobbits are a Tolkien exclusive).
A quest or quests.
An enchanted kingdom in danger of foreclosure.
An enchanted prince, princess, king, queen, duke, duchess et al in danger of foreclosure.
A dungeon.
An evil wizard.
An evil king.
And evil wizard king.
Someone so incredibly evil they can melt you in your armor.
A sniveling quisling.
And so on.

Grab your chosen ingredients, mix, spin, write your yarn, complete, and begin again.
The Orb of Chaos is a Tolkienesque tale built from the basic template above and fits firmly in that class of fantasy novel I refer to as ”Shaggy Orc.” Exemplars of the genre are Robert Asprin’s Myth series, Craig Gardner’s Wuntvor line and just about anything published by Terry Pratchett. Normally, the “heros” of these stories are nebbishes, ne'er do wells, magical nerds and generally people who are unlikely to be dating on Friday night or borrowing twenty dollars they promise to pay back next week but don’t. Or both.

Orb takes place in the magical realm of, well, actually, I’m not sure. It’s a fairly generic magical realm with knights, elves, goblins, wizards and the other usual suspects. Most of the early action centers around an inn named “The Lucy Duck,” inhabited by two of our protagonists, Soliere Forrester, a rogue suffering from a congenital cash shortage who is catnip to the various serving wenches and members of the lower middle class who inhabit the environs in and around the Duck and Oather, a large Barbarian of unknown origins. Soon to be thrown into the mix is Halistan, a young cleric, Serieve, a paladin in training, and Andrea, a young and beautiful assassin who would just as soon shove a dagger in your ribs as look at you. Let’s not forget Zorath, a querulous wizard.

As the plot moves along, more elements are added to mix, including a sadistic emperor who likes to toy with his employees before dispatching them in various horrible ways (I kind of liked him. He reminds me of Steve Jobs in his heyday), an evil demon king with an attitude and the ability to raise the dead in unholy quantities (I know, that’s redundant, but it’s my review), court schemers, and more characters drawn from the standard stocks.

And yes, there is a dungeon quest, a battle with two kinda-dragon-like creatures, and at the end , an epic battle against an undying army of the skeletal dead. That section was very well done and provides some enjoyable shivers. All the bases are pretty much covered. 

Now, the secret to making a book like this work is the characters. They must be interesting and their interactions intriguing enough to freshen up the fairly standardized backdrop on which they perform. Otherwise, it’s pretty much been there, seen that.So, how does Orb do in this respect? Pretty well, especially as the story moves into the latter half. I will say that in the next book of the series, author Allen should mix it up some more and build out the main characters while letting others drop into the background. Also, slightly sharper copy editing is also recommended. (Indies, make sure you get this right and don’t skimp.)

To sum up, a bright, well-written Tolkienesque tale that will keep you entertained for an afternoon. The characters don’t break new ground, but the rogue is roguish, the paladin noble, the assassin winsome and deadly and there’s something going on between her and the cleric and I want to know more.

Escape from Planet Howey

Hugh Howey is feeling some heat these days and you can tell from reading his blog. The tone has shifted from a righteous clarion call to battle on behalf of Amazon and its adorable King Jeff Bezos to Slay the Evil Publishers and the Minions of Agency Pricing to a sort of abashed and befuddled "Wh jus happn'd?" vibe. This is because Amazon has cut a deal with Simon and Shuster that enables the Evil Publishers to continue Evil Agency Pricing in return for more margins and MDF. IOW, it was a typical supplier/channel battle over money and control that we've seen before and will see again and again and again till our Sun goes nova.

In the meantime, as I've pointed out (and now Hugh has jumped on the bandwagon), Amazon continues to impose agency pricing on indies via its $7 roach motel pricing box and locked in margins. (Hugh calls this model "Incentivized Agency" and it's to be thought of as a  sort of whip to punish evil indies who want to make more money than Hugh thinks is seemly. And yes, if you actually were one of the 8.5K or so who signed that ridiculous petition at Change.org and are feeling duped, well, you were.

As a result, Hugh needs to begin the process of walking back some of the silly things he's said to maintain credibility, but this is not an easy thing to do. As exemplified by his  latest post, " Who is David? " which is littered with cracked logic, more misstatements of basic facts, and internal breakdowns of language and common sense. It's a sign of a mind that's lost track of itself.

The problem begins with the post's opening lines. Here's one example:

The negotiations between Amazon and the Big 5 publishers is often framed as a war between David and Goliath. What’s strange is that who gets to play David depends on who you’re talking to. Both sides claim him. The rare moments when people equivocate between the two parties, they state that this is really a case of Goliath vs. Goliath, which is far closer to the truth. We’re talking about multi-billion dollar corporations on either side.

Wait a second. When you equivocate between two parties, you're attempting to hide the truth.  But Howey now tell us that a battle between two "Goliaths" is closer to the truth. Which isn't equivocating.

And is also true. The revenues of all five major publishers together are about $15B. Amazon's yearly revenues are currently estimated to come in at $75B+. Amazon's book business is currently estimated at between $5 to $5.5B, about 7% of Amazon's overall business.

Of course, leaving aside the issue of Amazon's house imprints, the two entities do different things. Publishers create content, Amazon is a channel for content. In the channel, Amazon is a heavyweight, though in sheer number of dollars, smaller than B&N, with 2013 revenues of $6.8B. But we all know what's happening to B&N.

The post continues, and quickly descends into the swirling, obfuscating clouds of Planet Howey as logic and reason are discarded in favor of rhetoric and dizzying departures from the truth. 

+++ In practically every way, Amazon is the clear underdog here. The upstart. The newcomer. +++

Amazon is not an upstart. The company was founded in 1994 to sell books. Twenty years ago. On what planet is a company that's been in business for twenty years considered an "upstart.?" A "newcomer." Only on Planet Howey.

+++ They’ve published roughly 5,000 titles across their imprints to date, which is the number that the Big 5 might publish in a year. +++

Yes? Twenty years ago, Amazon went into business to sell books, not be a publisher. Now, Amazon has a right to also try to be a publisher, though this opens the company up to conflict of interest and monopsony issues. But that's really off the point. Amazon's core book business is to be a channel giant and it is.

+++ Meanwhile, the Big 5 have banded together to establish price floors with other retailers in what the DOJ found to be illegal collusion. +++

Yes? And they were spanked by Uncle Sam. But the good news is that agency pricing still survives! The big publishers retain it and so does Amazon in respects to indies. Planet Howey is where the whips are stored to punish the indies.

And bookstores have refused to carry Amazon’s works, banning these titles from a large sector of the marketplace. For many of us, this is bullying far more severe than removing pre-order buttons. 

Of course they are! Amazon has created a major conflict of interest by moving into the publishing business. Amazon's direct sales model wiped out Borders, all the mid-sized book chains, and thousands of independent bookstores. Only on Planet Howey would you expect anyone to hand over a gun to an entity that's already cutting your throat.

When it comes to size, the publishing divisions at Amazon represent a tiny sliver of Amazon’s overall revenue.

It’s quite possible that all of these divisions combined earn less than each of the Big 5 publishers do individually. The David from this point of view — not only in earnings but also in marketplace challenges that are either illegal or a result of book banning at retail — would seem obvious.

What does this have to do with anything? Why is Howey flacking Amazon's publishing imprints? After all, just like Evil Hachette, they don't accept unagented submissions. 

Compound this with the fact that Amazon pays authors more than publishers (anywhere from double at their imprints to nearly six times as much with their self-publishing platforms).

At this point, you realize that Hugh has breathed in the noxious fumes of Planet Howey and his brain, like Halston in "Wool," is dying from the toxins being released into his system.

Amazon does not "pay" indies anything. Amazon takes a fat fee from indies in return for the use of its downloading system. It takes a ruinous fee if you attempt to escape the $7 roach motel. (Don't forget that 65% margin grab on international sales.)  If you enroll in its Select program, it takes a fee via exclusivity.

Or perhaps you're the type of person who believes that after the taxman has removed X% of your salary to fund government operations, it's "paid" you? You do believe that? Really? Before that high speed power drill reamed out your frontal lobes, how did you lose your grip on the tool?

Or the fact that they charge less to the consumer, where publishers have banded together to artificially raise prices, and the David is not only clear, but so is the side who is fighting for the little people. At least, from one perspective.

Earth to Planet Howey. Amazon just signed a deal with the publishers that preserves agency pricing for publishers. Which, BTW, is perfectly legal in the US.  And Amazon is attempting to price rig the market via the $7 roach motel. And who are the "little people?" Are leprechauns being under served in today's society? Time to bring in some diversity councilors!

Publishers, meanwhile, are fighting for the health of large bookstore chains and for the top 1% of writers who benefit from massive distribution. They also benefit from a system that bars 99% of applicants from even entering. Again, this is the way those who support Amazon and other digital disruptors see these parties as David and the combined might of the Big 5 as Goliath.

A new transmission has just been sent to Planet Howey. Will it be received as the EM waves traverse the toxic smog covering the place? Who knows? Message below:

Wow. So I go to Barnes & Noble, our local branch, to ask them about what process they have for local authors to be featured in their local author section. With in 10 minutes, it was 'OK, you're in our system, let's order a few copies of all your books, here's the e-mail and phone for our community rep and he can help you set up a book signing'. THAT is service. 

James Garner, author, Indomitable (reviewed on this site).

But this view is just as wrong as the view that sees Amazon as Goliath and the publishing division of NewsCorp as David. Simon & Schuster proved this view to be false last month, when they agreed to a multi-year distribution deal with Amazon for both ebooks and print works. The major publishers have operated lockstep in some ways (from boilerplate contracts to digital royalties), but they aren’t the cartel we accuse them of. They enter subscription services variably. Some of them work out terms with their distributors while others don’t. Some have dabbled in print-only deals and have embraced genre publishing and lower ebook prices to a greater degree.

And at this point, we see Hugh attempting to walk back dozens of misstatements of fact, importuning indies to ride to Amazon's rescue in its battle with the publishers, and saying nothing when indies were thrown under the bus while simultaneously repeating again multiple ridiculous and just plain wrong assertions.

If you read his blog in an attempt to understand what goes on in the endless struggle between suppliers and channels, I have one piece of advice for you.

Escape from Planet Howey.

What Hugh Howey Won't Talk About (but Should). The Publishers and Amazon, Part VIII (the Next to Last Part. No Really)

What is Happening to the Publishers?

I've worked extensively in software and high technology since the mid-70s and have become comfortable with disruption. In high tech, nothing is stable and tried and true business models, empires, and technologies are constantly being overthrown. Here are just a few choice examples:

The toppling of IBM from the apex of corporate power and respect. Before Microsoft displaced IBM from its throne, a change of CEO at "Big Blue" was front page news. Now, IBM is just another company.The disruption of the retail market for software. In the mid 90s, you could have walked into one of several big box computer stores dominated by row after row of boxed software. Today, all gone. The amount of software carried on the shelves of Staples and Office Depot is shrinking steadily and will soon approach zero.The rise of the Internet, a technology which was first conceived of in the 60s and began to disrupt conventional wholesalers and retailers in the early 90s. The disruption continues today in media, shopping, the taxi industry, hotel rentals and on and on.
The breakdown of Microsoft's Windows monopoly. The company that stole IBM's imperial crown in high tech is itself being torn from its perch atop the industry by Google, Apple, and the rise of new devices such as smartphones and tablets, markets where Windows has negligible market share.
By contrast, the book publishing has seen one major technology disruption in the last 100 years. The introduction of the Kindle, in 2008. As I've written before, an earlier effort to kickstart E-book adoption in the 1999-2001 timeframe failed (I document the attempt in the second edition of In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters and predicted the effort would restart in 2010. It's not the first time I've misjudged the speed of change.)  At the time, the publishers  relaxed and assured themselves all was well. The book industry seemed to be immune to all the bits and bytes whizzing around and reshaping other businesses.

Yes, Amazon had disrupted book distribution via its online purchasing and delivery model. Borders had collapsed and he independent bookstores massacred and this was disturbing. Still, this was primarily a channel problem. The publishers still controlled the critical part of the industry, content creation. And there was an upside to all this channel fuss!  The less places you needed to ship books to, the more you saved on that aspect of the business. But paper books would never die.

But those of us in high tech knew they were wrong. Technology doesn't give up. Technology keeps coming at you. In 2008, it arrived.

The arrival of the Kindle shook the publisher's control over content. As the device took off and a massive infrastructure began to form around the system, more and more people took advantage of its downloading service to independently sell their books directly to readers. Competitors to Kindle appeared and more outlets for independent publishing appeared. The success of authors such as Hugh Howey helped remove the traditional stigmata associated with self-publishing.

The publishers were caught flat footed. 

While all this was taking place, the publishers also found out something.They were hated by large numbers of writers. It's almost a cliche to note that the publishers have served as the industry's gate keepers. In this article, I'm not going to get into issues of authors being screwed out of royalties a la Harlequin's sleazy ploy or the unending complaints by mid-list authors that the publishers never marketed their books. The reality is that there were and are major physical limitations on how many million pounds of paper the book business can haul around the world. The industry's publishing structure came into existence to manage this reality. 

But part of this reality was to reject many books that were indeed very good but couldn't fit into paper's limited carrying capacity, refuse to market others because of a limited ability to address niches and genres, and create a royalty structure that left every writer scratching their head wondering how they ended up with 15% of a book's proceeds. Sometimes.

Now this reality is changed. Permanently. Paper book publishing is being supplanted by digital distribution and about the only thing that will change this is if a big meteor splats down on Earth and civilization collapses. And if that happen, I'm shutting down this blog and won't be following the industry any further.

And another part of this reality is that every writer who feels he or she was snubbed, neglected, or robbed now feels free to express their feelings. It's not a pretty sight to read some of the nastiness I've seen on some AAAG (Aggregated Amazon Ankle Grabbers) sites directed towards people from the publishers who attempt to explain their side of things (Hugh Howey's site has been particularly egregious in this regard). No one is afraid of the publishers anymore. After all, indies have Amazon. 

In the initial euphoria that comes with any liberation, a lot of facts are being ignored. Such as while you may be able to write and distribute a book, you just may not be a very good writer. And that marketing and selling a book to the point that you can eat and pay the rent is hard. And that Amazon's deal is not amazingly great for indies.

What matters most is that  if you feel you have a book in you, now you can finally take your shot. The hell with anyone who thinks you don't have what it takes (and that means you, publishers). And that's better than never being able to take your shot at all.

What Amazon is Doing to the Publishers

Amazon is innovating and changing the book industry at a rapid pace. It will not stop this process and nothing the publishers do will stop it either.This is fine. The current book publishing model is about two centuries old and that's long enough to keep doing the same thing. If the publishers will not innovate and change, then Amazon will do it for them and the publishers will be disintermediated from book readers and they will have no reason to exist.

In the software industry, SaaS (Software as a Service) permanently disrupted the on-premise software model. Instead of accessing programs on local machines owned by yourself or your business, you subscribed to software and used it via (for the most part) in your browser. (The mobile app market is a somewhat different beast and I won't discuss it now.)

To support this new model, SaaS systems rely on a series of service layers and models that are often invisible to the customer. These can include data integration and management, privacy and security, analytics and community management and more. Companies that manage key service layers can exercise a great deal of power (and make a great deal of money) in SaaS.

Amazon is in the process of creating a similar model in book publishing. It is creating new service layers for book reading and consumption and in the process stripping control of these layers away from the publishers (I tend to think of the process as a form of virtual "delamination.") Layers already stripped away or in the process of being peeled off include:

Digital distribution.Digital book consumption via the Kindle devices, readers, and the mobi file format.Customer data collection and management. Amazon knows far more about what book readers buy and why than the publishers.Digital book and art creation.Content creation. Amazon has several in-house imprints and is growing them.
Book agenting, as exemplified by its crowd-sourced Kindle Scout program.Digital book reviewing and management.
This is just the start. As Amazon identifies new service layers in E-book publishing, it will attempt to co-opt them and further disintermediate the publishers.

What Can the Publishers Do to Resist Amazon?

The first thing the publishers can do is realize that paper is now a trap. Yes, they still make good money selling print books and I calculate that they can do so for perhaps another ten years. But in the US and other main first world markets, societies are divesting themselves of paper. Fax, physical mail, bill paying, newspapers, magazines, post cards and decks, etc are examples we are all familiar with. Large business were early adopters of digital reading technology and this trend continues. Every state government has pilot projects to shift from paper to digital storage of records. The green movement dislikes paper mills and printing presses. Schools are wondering how they can save money by replacing paper text books.

As paper consumption decreases, the print industry will descale and need to raise paper and printing prices to make up the revenue lost in volume. Eventually, quality book printing will survive primarily as a craft, a means of artistic expression serving small niche and collectibles markets.

But the tide sweeping paper away as a mainstream means of consuming the written word is irresistible. New 3D print on demand (POD) systems that will enable book readers to create paper volumes if they want them and flexible display technology are two additional technologies that will help seal paper's fate. One by one, the major publishers will begin to wind down print operations, possibly by spinning off their E-divisions from their paper counterparts. That is, they will if they hope to survive into the future.

In the last entry in this series, I'll examine what types of services and programs publishers need to consider implementing if they wish to survive the Amazon challenge.

Amazon vs. Hachette: It's Over and What Really Happened (and AAAG Owes Indies and Authors an Apology)

A web collective I've come to think of as the Aggregated Amazon Ankle Grabbers (AAAG for short) is in a bit of shock. The problem can summed up by this plaintive post on The Digital Reader, a site I rate as being an AAAG member.

+++ One has to ask what happened to the demand for ebook prices to be below $9.99, that was apparently so important to Amazon that we indies were asked to write to Hachette on Amazon’s behalf? +++

Yes, that is an interesting question, isn't it. Here Hugh Howey and David Gauhgran and Joe Konrath and Passive Lawyer and others have spent so much time telling us how awful agency pricing was. Awful, awful, awful. And that $9.99 was a golden number. Of course, anyone who actually believed that nonsense either A) failed math in high school or B) buys bridges crossing the East River in New York.

But, apparently, agency’s not so bad after all if Amazon gets more margin and more MDF. Which it did. Which is what channels always want.

And if you, as an indie, suspect you were being used, you were. Yes, those  are bus tracks all over your clothing.The publishers used their writers and Amazon used you. And nothing about the outcome of the fight benefited indies in the least. In fact, you never had a real stake in the fight in the first place.  Evil agency pricing is alive and well and will be in the future. Amazon is not going to talk anymore about optimal price points and 1.7 more readers and all the rest of that junk. That’s in the past. Until the new contracts are up.

What Just Happened?

After the major publishers lost the collusion case, Amazon had the whip hand in the negotiations. It decided to swing  for the fences. Why not? They had nothing to lose. By forcing the publishers to abandon agency pricing, they would gain control of the E-book publishing pricing model. Channels always like being in charge of that.

Part of their strategy was to proclaim the wonders of $9.99. It’s a price calculated to put pressure on the publishers. THAT’s why they put indies in their $7 pricing box and are keeping us/you in it. If indies are allowed out of the box, some of you are going to find out why that box is bad for you and you’ll talk about it. And once you do, Amazon loses an arrow in its quiver to fire at the publishers.

Amazon overplayed its hand. Hachette failed to break (Hachette, BTW, will get the same basic deal as Simon and Shuster, as will all the other publishers.  All that will differ in the deals will be squabbles at the edges about margins and MDF). Playing games with product availability didn't play well in the press. Having highly visible writers dabbing their eyes while muttering about censorship didn't help. I don’t think Paul Ryan noting his book had disappeared off Amazon played well either.

Amazon started to hear rumblings from the Feds about being a monopsony. That’s why they put in that odd phrase about “legitimate” reasons for pricing books above $9.99, which I covered in the article Amazonium Codexorum. And I can assure you that every time the Feds wanted to talk about the ramifications of the collusion case, the publishers jumped up and down pointing to movie theaters, threw around .pptx files loaded with slides on famous monopsony cases and flashed sock puppets who asked why no one could find possible presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s book in the Amazon search engine.

This was all becoming a bit noisy and complicated so Amazon decided to grab the extra MDF and margin that was always on the table.

Who's Happy?

New books from hot authors will be priced at $X for Y period of time, then drop back to $Z based on wholesale pricing and promotional patterns. IOW, the long tail will be activated. Publishers will also do things like release big fat art books with lots of illustrations and not have to apply for the Amazon pricing codex to wholesale them out to Amazon over $9.99. They are happy boys and girls!

Amazon gets fatter discounts (more margin) and more MDF from publishers. (BTW, did you, the writer, ever stop to consider where some of that extra margin and MDF is going to come from?) They are happy boys and girls!

Established publishers such as Doug Preston and pols like Paul Ryan will see their books shine in the Amazon search engine.They are happy boys and girls!

Indies are in exactly the same place. Stuck in a $7 roach motel paying 30 points for a download service. (And don't forget those international margins.) If  you  (I use the collective you here) are happy about this, I think you definitely need to pick up 50 Shades of Grey as you squirm in the happy sadistic grip of  Hugh Howey's “Incentivized Agency.” The hour and the book are met.

AAAG Doubles Down on Stupid

Now you would think that AAAG would have learned something. Unfortunately, in too many cases, they haven't. Exhibit A is Joe Konrath, who has spent many pixels preaching the evils of agency. Apparently, he failed to finally persuade Amazon of this. Nor does he seem to be able to tell us if agency is so bad, why does Amazon impose it on indies? Maybe he and Hugh Howey can punish each other.

To see what I mean, please read his October 23rd post. This is supposedly helpful advice to Authors United. If anyone takes any of it seriously, take a quill, stick it into your eye and end it all. Your stupidity is terminal.

Here are some of his trenchant observations:

Write an open letter to Hachette. You've stated, repeatedly, that you aren't taking sides. Prove it. Let Hachette know how unhappy you are with their negotiating tactics..."

This is remarkable. Everyone knows what the negotiations where about. Agency pricing, margins and MDF. If Amazon had gotten everything it wanted, just who does Konrath think would have paid for the loss of revenue? And will pay for the loss of revenue the Simon and Schuster deal, which will be extended to the entire industry, represents?  Remember, more money to the channel, less money for publishers and authors. Care to hazard a guess, oh content provider?

 Openly ask Hachette why they can't reach an agreement.

Uh, they have. Konrath didn't know that this battle was over agency pricing? Really? Once Amazon conceded it would remain, the fighting was over. The S&S deal is the template for the industry.

Ask Hachette and Amazon to retroactively compensate all effected Hachette authors once an agreement has been reached.

Wait a second. Is Konrath claiming that Hachette stopped paying royalties to its authors? No? Well, how were the authors hurt?. Oh, by Amazon deprecating their search results, playing games with pre-orders, recommending competing books during searches and launching a ridiculous PR campaign proclaiming $9.99 was the one true pricing.

And this was the second time Amazon had done this. Macmillan was the first. And if you actually believe that Hachette's Amazon web problems were a coincidence, you also believe in Santa and that Elvis directs him from his UFO to the homes of all the good little boys and girls on Christmas Eve.

Now, you may say that Amazon has a perfect right to hurt a publisher's authors as part of hardball negotiating tactics. But Amazon didn't say that. It spewed a lot of nonsense about "optimal" pricing and how awful agency pricing was, and gosh darn it, books were too expensive and all the rest of it.

There was also a lot of blather from AAAG about how Amazon, without a contract, wasn't required to carry Hachette authors. And AAAG is right! Amazon was perfectly within its rights to tell all those Robin Roberts, Dan Simmons, David Baldacci, James Patterson et al fans to just head over to Smashwords or Kobo to buy those author's hot new releases because those books weren't going to be available on Amazon going forward.

Wonder why that didn't happen?

Here's what AAAG can do for indies. 

Stop carrying water for Amazon. It's a $75B company and can take of itself. And they  just made fools of you.Apologize for all that bad advice and analysis you provided. It was a waste of time and pixels.If you have any influence on Amazon, push to get us out of the $7 roach motel, push for a more reasonable retail usage fee on downloads, help us get reasonable royalties on international sales. That's a start.Some of you should write less about Amazon and help out some self publishers with reviews and PR. I note Konrath, Howey, Gaughran don't do squat in that department. That would help indies.

Bela's Last Name Was Really O' Lugosi: My Review of "The Fall" by Stephen Cost

T he Fall: Fall in Love with Death by Stephen Cost




File Size: 3014 KB
Print Length: 298 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1500910325
Publisher: Stephen Cost (September 16, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00N6GEL1E
Author website: www.stephencost.com

The three exports Ireland's primarily known for are sweaters, Guinness, and...uh...Irish. (Don't start. My mother's original maiden name was Duffy.)  This  represents a tragic, lost financial opportunity for the Emerald Isle. Because Ireland's most important export should be...vampires. For Ireland is the spiritual home of every bloodsucker tale, movie, TV show, comic, manga, anime, and probably a dozen other literary and video categories I'm missing. Ireland is also, may the good lord forgive us, the true progenitor of Kristen Stewart and the entire awful Twilight series. (Ireland is also indirectly responsible for those godawful Leprechaun  movies, though any film series that features Jennifer Aniston being menaced by Warwick Davis can't be all bad.)

Bram Stoker, you see, was Irish (a Protestant, but in favor of home rule). If only the country had attempted to copyright the entire fanged meme a la the Greek attempt to trademark "feta cheese." Generations of poverty might have been avoided. As the royalties flowed in, Ireland might have been diverted from its favorite pastimes of Catholics shooting Protestants, Protestants shooting Catholics pub bombing (both sides), both sides shooting at the British and just being bloody minded about life in general.

During his life, Stoker's daytime job consisted of managing the career and theater of the great but largely forgotten British actor Henry Irving, who is widely believed to have been the physical model for Dracula. (Take a look at his portrait and you'll understand the speculation.) On his off hours, Stoker was a prolific writer who wrote at least a dozen novels, including Dracula , and several collections of short stories. His oeuvre is regarded as uneven, but it hardly matters. His tale of the undying Hungarian predator and Ottoman foe is the genre's masterpiece and Stoker's literary heirs prolific almost to a fault. And when it came to horror, Stoker was no one hit wonder, as anyone who has read his unforgettable short story, The Squaw,  will attest to.

Dracula is perhaps the most famous example of the epistolary style of novel. The narrative of the book is carried by diaries and letters, which leads to some inadvertently funny scenes if you stop to think about. Like this one:

"The air seems full of specks, floating and circling in the draught from the window, and the lights burn blue and dim. What am I to do? God shield me from harm this night! I shall hide this paper in my breast, where they shall find it when they come to lay me out."

Dracula, Bram Stoker

The above leads a logical person to ask "Hey lady. If you've got the strength to write elaborate descriptive prose while the vampire's trying to get into your room, why don't you just get the hell out of the room?"

But this is carping. Dracula's blend of repressed Victorian psycho-sexual desire, blood letting, and dread claustrophobia is irresistible. And if Stephen King had written the above, he'd have found a reason to throw in some projectile vomiting or something similar, so I should be grateful to Bram. And I am. Though to be fair to The Master, Salem's Lot was pretty damn scary.

Incredibly enough, the original manuscript of Dracula , thought lost after Stoker's death in 1912, was found intact in the 1980s in a farm house in western Pennsylvania. I'm sure there's a horror story in there somewhere. Someone out there go out and write it. I'll give you a review.

The Fall thus represents a noble, and in my view, long overdue effort by the Sons of Erin (author Cost grew up in Ireland) to regain some portion of the Stoker Franchise. Let's see how well he does.

The protagonist of the story, Giles, is technically not a vampire but a reaper, an immortal (though not invulnerable) energy and blood sucking monster. Reapers periodically manifest themselves among us naked, in fresh graves, a fascinating leitmotif  (I suspect the writer may have seen Wings of Desire at one time or another.) After this grim birth, reapers are compelled to snack on the occasional human, though they can make the moral choice to sustain from their grisly diet and thus forego immortality. Giles has not given up his human-protein approach to caloric intake, but has made the decision to dine on only the evil and morally depraved (think of him as a toothy type of Charles Bronson a la the Death Wish movies). When we first meet him, he's a relatively young three centuries old, of Irish...err...extraction (at least that's where his grave was located) and is living in Seattle. Why Seattle? Good god man, have you ever eaten Irish cuisine?

Not unreasonably, Giles thinks of himself as our society's apex predator. Then one night, when out for supper, he finds to his great shock that he just may not be at the top of the food chain any longer. From this point on, the book commences a cat and mouse hunt and struggle between our hero and a creature nasty and powerful enough to make the reaper fear him.

While the battle between the monsters rages, Giles takes time out to fall in love with Emma, the daughter of his greatest friend Gallus, an old reaper who's gone vegan, so to speak, married a mortal, and settled down to the bloodsucker version of domesticity. Emma is equally drawn to our Giles, but he is justifiably wary of becoming too involved with her lest Galllus, in our reaper's words, use "his head as a hockey puck." As the father of an only daughter, I call tell you Giles' speculations on fatherly sentiments are accurate. I certainly did consider using the bodily parts of my daughter's boyfriends for fun and amusement if I thought them not up to snuff and wasn't afraid to share my thoughts on the topic, and the particular parts I'd be using, with them. You may think I'm old fashioned but I can report the tactic is effective.

One thing I particularly liked about The Fall is that the book returns us to the elegant vampire, something I think is long overdue. Over the years, we've had gothic vampires (the Blade films and comics), yuppie vampires (the Fright Night franchise), hooker vampires (Dusk to Dawn and siblings) and most recently Starbucks vampires (the never ending Twilight series). I guess Tom Cruise was on the elegant side in Interview With the Vampire but boy was Brad Pitt morose.

 But I'm old fashioned. I've always felt that every vampire should have a little "Goot evening" in them and The Fall upholds that glorious tradition. Giles drives a Porsche, wears Prada and Gucci, and is an oenophile who makes a living writing a wine column for an upscale magazine. He's also a java snob who owns a Jura Impressa coffee maker and while I was reading the novel, discovered it's possible to order a cup of coffee that costs $70 dollars. In short, Giles is my type of vampire and I'd love to be invited to his place for dinner if I could be sure I wasn't on the menu.

To sum up, The Fall is a fun, exciting read in the honorable bloodsucker genre featuring a dashing but undying hero, a luscious heroine concealing intriguing mysteries, much supernatural double dealing, lots of death, and a climax that ends with Giles setting out to redeem his life and retrieve his woman. What more can you ask from a vampire book?

Erin go blood.

Hugh Howey Serves Up a Turd to Indies (but DOES Polish It!)

The industry is buzzing about the new deal between Simon and Schuster and Amazon. I'm not going to comment to any extent on the deal in this article because no one yet knows any of the details (it's a dead given that both parties have agreed to put the particulars under NDA) and if you're an indie, it really doesn't matter to you. The battle between the publishers never was about indie authors and was always about the clash of two large business entities, each trying to protect its market power via control of how E-books are priced.

Apparently, under the terms of the deal, Amazon will buy X% of Simon and Schuster's books under the agency model and buy the rest under wholesale. Agency will be used for Simon and Schuster's hottest and latest titles, as is always the case. In return, the publisher will provide provide juicier discounts and drop more MDF into Amazon's pockets. This is a typical supplier/channel negotiation and in a few years, after the current contract expires, they'll be at it again. It's mistake to say anyone "won" or "lost" (especially if you don't have access to the contract). It is interesting to see that Amazon seems to have changed its mind about how evil agency pricing is and about how $9.99 is the optimal price point for all books. We can tell this because many Simon and Schuster books will be priced above $9.99, particularly when they're new.

However, the ever reliable Hugh Howey is here to ensure all of us indies that in the midst of the normal corporate hypocrisy that surrounds any major corporate tussle, Amazon's actions are in our very best interests. The current  $7 pricing box turd that indies are forced to burrow into under Amazon has had its exterior walls polished to high gloss by Hugh, who is here to tell us that we actually live in a shiny new McMansion.

How does Hugh do this? First, by a feat of verbal prestidigitation that would turn David Copperfield green with envy. In his latest column, he tell us that:

"Some commentators are hailing the deal as a return to Agency pricing, but I wonder if these are the same commentators who claim that self-published KDP authors employ Agency pricing?"

First of all, this is a return to agency pricing (well, a continuation of it, in the case of Simon and Schuster). This is not a disputable point.

At this point, Hugh's feeling a little silly, because he's been telling everyone how wonderful it is that Amazon is going to strike down the evil agency model, then the company goes and signs a deal that retains it for one of the members of the "Evil Cartel." It sort of has a "Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939"  feel to it all.

Hugh is also feeling a bit of heat because several people, including yours truly, have been pointing out that its indies who live under agency pricing. All the time. I refer to it as modified agency because of the two elements of the Amazon/indie pricing model. They are:


Locked in margins for Amazon (30%). (I don't take 65% seriously.)
Limited pricing (as opposed to fixed) for indies between $2.99 and $9.99. Claims that an indie can ignore the walls of the box are dishonest and it's ruinous to pay 65 points to  a channel to use a downloading service.
But, you'll be happy to know that Hugh has discovered that we are not paying modified agency! No sirree, we're paying...wait for it...drum roll please...

Incentivized Agency! (That's Howyish.)

As you can read below:

"Our agreement with Amazon is something more like Incentivized Agency. If we set our prices between $2.99 and $9.99, we get 70%. If we set our prices outside that range, our split drops to 35%. According to our EULA, Amazon retains the right to discount our ebooks as it sees fit."

This is an example of Hugh Howey parroting that immensely dishonest claim of Amazon that it's paying indies royalties. There is no "split" here. Amazon is simply charging you a fee to use its website servers to download your book. In this case, a predatory 65% that you can't afford to pay. The wall of the box.

But Amazon's tender care of indies doesn't stop there. Reread the last sentence of that quote above and get a load of this:

"What does this mean? It means if we price our ebooks at $14.99, Amazon has plenty of meat left on the bone to discount our ebooks back down to $9.99. The customer gets a good price, and Amazon still makes a profit. That is, we the authors are punished for jacking up the prices."


First all, Howey has a lot of nerve telling anyone, especially indies,  they should be punished for pricing their books at the point they think makes the most sense. That's just off the wall. If you as an indie screw up your pricing, you'll find out soon enough. The market will tell you. Amazon not needed to police this nor Hugh Howey.


Second, how does the math on all this work out? Well, let's assume I charge $14.99 for a book. And please, please, don't be an idiot and tell me why I'll never do that. Indies aren't stupid. Not every book is about Vampire Love or Bondage with Billionaires. Thousands of authors are writing books aimed at limited or specialized audiences and a $9.99 price points makes no sense in many markets. As Amazon itself has already acknowledged via Amazonium Codexorum.

So, a bit of calculating takes us here:

$9.99 * .70 = $6.99 (I should add in the transmission fee Amazon charges, but will keep it simple.)
$14.99 * .65 = $5.24 (Pretty awful, particularly since the reason you are pricing above $9.99 is often because your audience is much smaller than that enjoyed by a large genre.)

But wait! According to Howey, Amazon retains the right to discount your book back to $9.99.

So does that mean that your cut remains fixed at $5.24? After all, you didn't discount your book. Amazon did. That takes your margin to over 50% on $9.99. Or do you now receive $3.50 per book, because you broke the walls of Amazon's box?

Howey doesn't tell anyone. Knowing how channels work, I'm betting on $3.50.

And then Howey unloads this howler:

"Amazon has been right to say that the negotiations are about price, and Hachette has been right to say that the negotiations are about margin. That’s because margin is to be determined by price, just as it is for KDP authors."


No, it's not "just as it is for KDP authors." Because the big publishers don't live in the box. Amazon will buy certain categories of books at either agency or wholesale from them and price these titles above $9.99 because that makes sense for those markets. Amazon can't loss lead every book it sells.

Of course, there are plenty of other reasons why the $7 box is stupid, but I'll save that for a future article. Not that you can't figure it out yourself.

But don't worry, indies. You've not been stuck in a roach motel. No, that sticky 65% margin is in reality the finest "wool" Persian carpeting and you're really living in Mint Green Turd Acres.

No, really, you are.

create esquelle new_book as select [ * |very, very cool ]: My Review of Esquelle and the Tesla Protocol

Esquelle and the Tesla Protocol, Book I by Joe Dacy





File Size: 3067 KB
Print Length: 580 pages
Publisher: Joe Dacy II (June 24, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00LADPBBO
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

OK, before I even start this review, I have a few questions I'd like to ask you, the reader. Here goes:

Do you know what relational database technology is?
Have you ever been, or are you now, a RDBMS programmer or administrator?
Have you ever heard of SQL? Do you know what it stands for? Can you code in it?
Have you ever heard of Oracle corporation? DB/2? Postgres? Ansa? Borland?
Have you ever heard of dBase II? III? Most infamously IV? Have you ever heard of a company called Ashton-Tate?
Do you know who Edgar Frank Codd is? Have you ever read his 13 commandments for relational database management systems?
Does it make you feel good to know that you know the difference between a tuple and a domain?

If you can answer YES to any of the above, then stop reading this review right now and go buy Esquelle and the Tesla Protocol by Joe Dacy. To help you grasp the point, go back to the top of this page and look at the cover. Closely.

All done? I'm sure that after reexamining the cover, you understood precisely why you should buy this book. And you know that I've just brought a little extra sunshine and joy to your life and you'll be thanking me years from now. No need to weep for gratitude or send gifts. I did this just because I'm that type of guy.

And you figured out that "Esquelle" is a Franconization of "SQL," right? I mean, how cool is that! (To make it all even better, the chapter headings are numbered in binary.)

And if you can't answer in the affirmative, you should still buy the book because it's an exciting and very cool read. And after you're done, you will have picked up just enough nerd cred to impress people at parties with your deep grasp of technology. Just don't push it when you're around a true nerd. You still don't know what query by example is and how it works so you run the risk of being found out. Otherwise, you'll do just fine.

By the way, in honor of this great book and topic, I'm running a little contest. During the 80s, many software companies released desktop RDBMS software packages for the IBM PC and some of the other competing systems. However, it was well known among the geek/RDBMS cognoscenti that "Ted" Codd was known to favor one product in particular.

What was the product and the name of the company?

The first five people to send me an E-mail with the answer will receive a free copy of my book, Rule-Set: A Novel of a Quantum Future .  Send your answers to rickchapman@softletter.com. The winners will be inscribed on this site as Geek DBMS Supremos for all time.

BTW, yes, I am familiar with database programs and programming and have coded and worked with dBase II, III (if you want to know what happened to IV, pick up a copy of my book, In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters ), InfoStar, and Ansa/Borland Paradox up to version 3.5.

Databases rule the world. You don't see them and may not understand much about them, but all those computers maintaining your private financial transaction information that's periodically stolen by Russian mobsters and all those smartphones running all those apps that collect traffic data and restaurant reviews while storing nude pictures of your favorite celebrities that are also periodically stolen by both Russian mobsters and pimply teens who do understand databases run on a technology conceived of and described in a seminal paper released in 1969 by a British computer scientist you've probably not heard of but who changed the world in as fundamental a way as ever did Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Al Gore, who invented the Internet. Fortunately for Dr. Codd, he's deceased and doesn't have to worry about Jennifer Lawrence getting up into his grill about those pictures which you haven't seen. Right. Uh, huh. No, seriously, I believe you.

But if you had seen them, you could thank Dr. Codd, the father of relational database technology. 

I'm not going to describe how relational database management systems (RDBMS) systems work. If you want to learn the basics, go buy  Esquelle and the Tesla Protocol and you can learn at the hands of a hot French chick who kicks the snot out of terrorists via savate. (What better introduction to technology can there be?) Suffice it to say that some people become very passionate about the issue. During the 80s, when relational databases were sweeping through technology and dispatching the older hierarchical systems like Huns picking off Romans, ferocious geek wars broke out periodically over the topic of which database adhered most closely to the True Relational Faith. Fortunately, database programmers are poor fighters and no one was usually hurt.

OK, enough geeking out.  Esquelle and the Tesla Protocol takes place in a world twenty five years in the future. Our heroine, Esquelle, is a database query master (ladies, take note of author Dacy's belief that you can kick ass via high tech just as well as any guy) who has a chip implant in her skull that enables her to tap into the world's databases. When we first meet Esquelle, she is sitting outside a French bistro enjoying a cappuccino while being closely observed by two Arab terrorists and two American spies from the NSA.

They, obviously, are all up to no good and when Esquelle spots the Arab operatives eyeing her a little too closely, their doom is sealed when she uses her implant to uncover their identity via her mastery of SQL and ability to data mine the planet. Forewarned, she foils their kidnap attempt via a savate slam down, not really needing the assistance her "Uncle Robbie," a top French security head, sends along to her aid. Still, it's good to know you can count on your family in a pinch and "Uncle" Robbie will prove useful in the future.

After this high-stress  interlude, Esquelle heads off to the US to enjoy some much needed R&R. She's followed every step of the way by a bevy of shadowy spies, terrorists, and a handsome French operative who's interest in discussing the topic of access privileges with Esquelle clearly transcends just the topic of database tables. The reason for this spook frenzy is not Esquelle herself, but her brother, Bernard, whom the crowd hopes Esquelle will eventually lead them to.

Bernard is an eccentric genius who lives in the South Bronx (138th Street, not a neighborhood currently attracting a lot of quantum physicists these days, though the area is slowly gentrifying and Esquelle does take place 25 years from now.) Everyone's interested in Bernard because while living in the Bronx, he's apparently figured out a way to use tachyons (theoretical and, to date, unobserved quantum particles) to send messages both into the future and the past. This will revolutionize text messaging, obviously, and everyone wants in on the action.

One of the interesting techniques author Dacy employs is a high level of detail when discussing the fast moving events taking place in the book. A second kidnapping attempt on Esquelle that takes place on the Seattle waterfront is backed up with maps. Hotels and locations are shown via eye in the sky photography. There are numerous charts and tables. Esquelle's data queries use proper SQL syntax. As you read through the story, you begin to almost feel as if you're attending a briefing, not reading a novel. The effect is to draw you in to the story and make Esquelle more realistic and immediate, an atmosphere I try to create in my own novel, Rule-Set.

Joe Dacy is a natural heir of Tom Clancy and if you're looking for someone to fill the void left by the departure of the man who gave us The Hunt for Red Octobe r or Patriot Games (my two favorites from his oeuvre), then the hour and the book are met. (You geeks have already bought Esquelle and are busy scanning the pages for any mistakes in the SQL.)

As for me, Joe had me at SELECT * FROM.

Oh, I'm sorry. What's the "Tesla Protocol?" I'm not telling you. But Nikolas Tesla was the man who spanked Thomas Edison in the high stakes electricity shootout between DC vs AC and before his untimely death, announced he'd designed a deployable particle beam cannon. To this day, no one is sure if he was kidding or not.