The Passive Voice

From Salon:

Jay Goltz, proprietor of a small retail store, has hit upon e-commerce’s real threat to his business which he accurately says goes beyond economies of scale or even ability to avoid sales taxes. It’s impossible to make money competing with Amazon, he says, because Amazon itself isn’t making money:

Why would a company choose to operate without a profit? Because it wants to provide great value? Check. Because it wants everyone to love the brand? Check. Because it wants to gain market share? Check. Because it wants to put everyone else out of business, so that it can one day flick a switch to raise prices and make a fortune? CHECK!

Don’t believe me? Well, here is Jeff Bezos of Amazon, explaining why making a profit isn’t important. Of course, he doesn’t say he’s planning to raise prices after he puts a lot of people out of business, but let me translate something for you: Gaining market share by not taking a profit makes the most sense if you are planning to raise prices later when you have less competition.

. . . .

But “drive the competition out and then raise prices” is very much a meatspace business strategy. In a world where physical location doesn’t matter very much, it’s hard to see how you could pull it off.

Link to the rest at Salon and thanks to Sariah for the tip.

The same accusation has been leveled at Wal-Mart at least a million times in meatspace. When Wal-Mart announces it is building a store, particularly in a small town, someone always claims that, after it drives the local merchants out of business, Wal-Mart will raise prices sky-high.

The only problem with this theory is that Wal-Mart has entered dozens (probably hundreds) of small towns, some local businesses have closed, yet Wal-Mart’s prices remain the same – lower than elsewhere, even when elsewhere is a long distance away.

Like Wal-Mart, Amazon is designed to operate over the long run with low prices. Low prices are a part of its fundamental business strategy. Better than anyone else, Amazon understands a competitor can open a retail website in a few days without spending much money and offer lower prices everywhere that Amazon sells.

PG opines that those who accuse Amazon of a devious scheme to gain dominance with low prices, then jack prices up to monopoly levels and rule as an evil king are often engaging in psychological projection wherein they’re ascribing their own inner attributes to others.

Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn’t it such a relief to have somebody say that?

Kurt Vonnegut

From Good Ereader:

The New York Times started to include ebooks in print and online editions back in 2011. The company announced today that it is suspending the inclusion of ebook titles in the newspaper and only posting them on the website. The prices of the ebooks will also not be included going forward, due to the shifting economic landscape of online sellers.

Pamela Paul is the current editor of the Book Review section of the New York Times, a post she only attained in April. She said in a statement, “The ebook list has migrated online, the digital world being its natural habitat. Given the fluid variety of pricing in today’s marketplace, we have also stopped including cover prices on the lists.”

Link to the rest at Good Ereader

There’s a new term for 99-cent ebooks — fluidly-priced. Remove them from the Sunday paper and those nasty indie ebooks will surely go away. Take the print readers on a pleasant journey back to an earlier time before the economic landscape of publishing began to shift. Why remind the New York literati about Amazon over their coffee and croissants?

The new editor knows how to make Big Publishing cheer. But can she can make them buy more advertising?

From The Bookseller:

Orange Prize-winner Ann Patchett has warned that authors who decide to shun traditional publishing deals and instead use self-publishing channels to “cut out the middle man” are turning their back on vital publishing services they really need.

. . . .

Patchett told The Bookseller that authors should become more involved in the industry and take greater responsibility as part of a wider ecosystem, just as book-buyers should think twice about purchasing through the cheapest channel, like Amazon, if it means they might lose their local bookshop. She also said authors who shunned traditional publishing deals in favour of self-publishing, thinking they would be able to earn more money, should think carefully about the step.

“If you had asked me two years ago, I would not have thought it was my responsibility. But I do think authors need to get involved with all sort of aspects of publishing and health of the publishing industry,” she said. “This is not every man working for themselves, we need to think and work as a business. Authors have been protected for a long time, we are very well cared for, but we need to think about our other partners, from bookshops to publishing and self-publishing.”

Regarding self-publishing, she added: “There are people who want to put books on Amazon because they cannot get publishing deals and that is understandable. But there are some authors who could get published in the mainstream but because they are trying to make more money, they think the best way is to self publish. They are cutting out the middle man whose services they really need, such as the editor and the publicist.”

Link to the rest at The Bookseller and thanks to David for the tip.

PG has just about decided that the differences between indie publishing and traditional publishing are so great that nearly anyone immersed in traditional publishing has almost nothing useful to say about indie publishing.

One of the most fundamental mistakes someone who is an expert in one field can make is to assume their expertise is transferable to another.

Thus, those who have deep experience with traditional publishing assume indie publishing is the same except without advances or some other such idiocy. Those who have lots of experience with bookstores assume Amazon is the same except with lower prices.

The idea that an indie author pursues his/her path because day-to-day life in indie world is superior in every way to traditional publishing with all its accoutrements and hangers-on is terra incognita for most in traditional publishing.

But, the services! How can we forget the services that traditional publishing offers?

Editors? Indie authors can choose the one they want to work with instead of arguing semi-colons with a fresh-faced and clueless English major who is somebody’s niece.

Publicists? You mean people who order authors around and insist on twenty Tweets per day?

Publishers? Ah, yes,those who present you with medieval contracts, take most of your money, never answer emails and send you disappointing checks with impenetrable royalty statements every six months.

What professionals get paid every six months? Lawyers? Doctors? Accountants? Teachers? Publishers? Editors? Publicists? No, no, no, no, no, no and no. Even sex workers get paid more often (and usually better) than traditional authors.

Even if indie life didn’t pay more, it would be worth it to a lot of authors not to have to deal with so many annoying and largely useless “services” they don’t need from people they didn’t choose.

From bestselling author Dave Farland:

For the past two posts, I’ve been speaking about how to get “zoned in,” to reach that mental state where your writing time is the most productive and where the quality of your work is at its highest. I spoke about the importance of getting rid of all external and internal distractions, and I suggested that you need to move into your writing zone slowly, often by performing writing exercises. Now comes the third step:

Step 3: Play. Shakespeare once said “The play is the thing.” I think that he understood that playing with words, with ideas, with characters in opposition—brainstorming as he wrote—that was the key to writing well.

. . . .

[W]hen you’re writing, you very often have a bunch of characters in conflict, but as you begin to write, you find that one of them feels more fascinating to you, more genuine and real than the others.

New writers will often complain at that point that a secondary character has “taken over” the story, yet I sometimes wonder if they haven’t really just “found” the true story, the one that feels deepest and most important to them. Many times I’ve found that the author in such cases is writing about a heroic character that is larger than life. The protagonist feels hokey and shallow. It’s when the writer begins exploring a minor character that the tale comes to life for them.

. . . .

So as you play, you begin to discover the story that you most want to tell. Characters come alive, and you find yourself envisioning scenes that you never intended to include in your tale. Fresh new themes suggest themselves, and that requires even further departure from your original plans.

In short, it is not until we begin playing in the woods of our subconscious that we can find ourselves lost in them.

. . . .

The subconscious mind, which resides in the right hemisphere of the brain in most people, spends a great deal of time trying to make sense of emotional issues. It’s constantly trying to help us resolve issues related to frightening images, powerful sexual urges, or unkind words. It tries to alert us to dangers that the conscious mind is too preoccupied to deal with. That’s what happens in humans. We have two brains connected with a little bundle of fibers, and so each of the brains works somewhat independently. As artists, we’re trying to tap into the reservoir of wisdom locked in the creative part of our mind. But that can’t happen if we’re feeling stressed, if our subconscious is trying to deal with other issues. If it’s already working overtime, you’re not going to be able to get much out of it.

Link to the rest at David Farland

From The Digital Reader:

Apple has a long history of censoring the more risque content from ebooks sold in iBooks and iTunes, even going so far as to threaten developers like Izneo with banishment, but today they have taken it to a new level. Several newspapers including De Standaard are reporting that Apple has rejected De Hartsvriendin, Heleen van Royen’s latest book, because of 2 links found in chapter 22.

Yes, links.

Apparently Apple has moved beyond censoring content they don’t approve of. Now they are blocking the sale of ebooks that merely link to content that Apple doesn’t approve of. Admittedly, the links lead to a couple porn sites , but that doesn’t change the fact that Apple is once again banning an ebook because of links.

Link to the rest at The Digital Reader

PG is of two minds about this.

On the one hand, for ebook innovation, links would be an obvious tool, albeit one that would work much better with tablets than with e-ink readers.  It’s still early days for tablet technology and lots of cool new capabilities that authors might want to use will be appearing in the future.

On the other hand, if parents discovered links to porn sites in a children’s picture book, Apple would feel an enormous backlash and sales of children’s ebooks everywhere would plunge.

Before you say this would never happen, PG’s theory about the Internet is that, if it is possible, it will happen some day.

Books tend to have much longer lives than other Internet content. The links that go to perfectly benign locations in year one may go to somewhere entirely different in year five after the owner of the domain has let its registration lapse and someone else buys the domain name.

This very thing happened to a website that PG formerly visited on a regular basis. Apparently, a large porn video operation vacuums up discarded domain names that have had a reasonable number of visitors in the past.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

Henry Miller

From BookRiot:

An old flame of mine (and by that I mean the relationship went down in flames, nahmsayin’?) told me a while back (when I was trying to remain friendly with him, how cute was I?) that he was working on a new book. This was my outward reaction:

But this was how I felt inside:

Link to the rest at BookRiot

From The Miami Herald:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who has made job creation his top priority since coming into office, has rejected a proposed deal to bring major Internet retailer Amazon to the state.

After months of behind-the-scenes negotiations, Scott ultimately said no to a deal that would have led to the construction of Amazon warehouses in Florida. The warehouses could have created up to 2,500 jobs in the state.

Amazon’s arrival in the state, however, would have meant that Floridians would have to pay sales tax on Internet purchases made through the company.

Amazon wanted to defer collecting the state’s 6 percent sales tax until next February or when its warehouses were open and occupied.

. . . .

Scott’s reluctance may have been tied to the idea that he would allow taxes on Internet purchases shortly before he runs for re-election. Scott, whose poll numbers remain low, has said in the past he could only support the taxation of Internet purchases if the money were offset by tax cuts.

. . . .

Currently, Floridians are supposed to pay taxes for online purchases, but there’s really no way to enforce the law. The state can’t force companies like Amazon to collect the tax unless it has a physical presence such as a warehouse or store.

. . . .

Randy Miller, an executive vice president at the Florida Retail Federation, told the governor’s office earlier this year that it could accept the arrangement.

“Our objection to that date initially is that it would have given them one more Christmas season without collecting the tax,” Miller said. “But the closer we got to the date – and as aggravating as it is – we finally said `ok, that’s fine with us.“’

Link to the rest at The Miami Herald

For overseas visitors, it is common for many states to offer significant tax incentives to large business that are considering the creation of in-state operations that will create a significant number of jobs. In some cases, states compete with each other via temporary tax reductions or rebates to secure such facilities.

The political considerations for the Florida governor balanced the creation of 2500 new jobs with the Amazon warehouses vs. causing each Floridian who shops at Amazon to start paying Florida sales tax on every purchase.

Since Amazon does not presently have any facilities or operations in Florida, it is not required to collect sales tax from Florida residents. As the article says, Florida has a use tax identical to the sales tax that residents are supposed to report and pay. However, use taxes are almost universally ignored by individual purchasers and not effectively enforced in most states.

Therefore, Florida residents would see a new tax on their Amazon purchases for which they now see none.

If Amazon simply built the warehouses without seeking deferral of its obligation to collect Florida sales taxes, the Governor would probably have no say in the deal. Since Amazon wanted to defer sales tax collection until its Florida warehouses were complete, that required an agreement with Florida which the Governor rejected.

From Dean Wesley Smith:

For indie writers, print runs are a puzzle because they have never thought in print runs. Indie writers think in sales up to a point. How many sales this week, this month, for this book total? Print run thinking just never comes up.

And for traditional writers and publishers, it’s impossible to not think in print runs, since that made-up number controls everything from author advance to the purchase of the next book to cover copy and art and sales and tours and you name it.

. . . .

Last fall, every bookstore owner I talked to told me about how the major wholesalers such as Baker & Taylor and Ingrams had special codes on the POD books and that the standard discounts were limited to 5% no returns. Not much chance at all an indie publisher could sell a book to a bookstore with those discounts.

. . . .

The major distributors had killed most of the walls between indie published books and traditionally published books.

In other words, if you buy the $10 ISBN that puts your company name on the book in CreateSpace and put it into the extended distribution program, it will appear on the listings of Ingrams, B&T, and other distributors right beside a Simon & Schuster book or a Bantam book.

And the discounts the bookstore will get will range from 5% to 43% plus bonuses for paying quickly. And the discounts are set by the bookstore’s account, credit history, amount of orders, and so on.

Link to the rest at Dean Wesley Smith and thanks to William for the tip.