Book of the Black Dog

Never overestimate your power to change others. Never underestimate your power to change yourself.

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you want."

Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it. Plan more than you can do, then do it.

So, for those of you who might not be in the know, here is the lowdown. There has been a breakdown in negotiations between Amazon and MacMillan publishing. Who's MacMillan you ask, well they are also FSG publishing, Henry Holt, Picadore, Palmgrave, Kinfisher, St. Martin's press and most importantly in my mind, TOR/Forge publishing for lots of Sci Fi/Fantasy books...lots of Really good SF/F books. What were the negotiations over? Well, from what I understand, Amazon wants a fixed price ceiling for all ebooks of 9.99 and that the publisher will only do ebooks in Kindle Format. McMillan wants to use a flexible or dynamic pricing point (e.g. a bit higher when it comes out or is a very popular author say at 14.95 for the first several months, then dropping to a more reasonable 5.95 or less later. Pretty standard pricing procedure in the market place).

Just before Apple announced the iPad and the agency deal for ebooks, Amazon pre-empted by announcing an option for publishing ebooks in which they would graciously reduce their cut from 70% to 30%, "same as Apple". From a distance this looks competitive, but the devil is in the small print; to get the 30% rate, you have to agree that Amazon is a publisher, license your rights to Amazon to publish through the Kindle platform, guarantee that you will not allow other ebook editions to sell for less than the Kindle price, and let Amazon set that price, with a ceiling of $9.99. In other words, Amazon choose how much to pay you, while using your books to undercut any possible rivals (including the paper editions you still sell). It shouldn't surprise anyone that the major publishers don't think very highly of this offer.

So talks broke down, and Amazon pulled all MacMillan books (print and ebook)off their shelves. Pre-orders? Nope, canceled. The only place they are still selling MacMillan books is through their 3rd party sellers. So why does Amazon have such a sticking point on this? Well, Amazon's president has said publicly that they are willing to price the ebooks so low and take a loss FOR 5 YEARS, in order to get a strangle hold on the market. After that, when they are the dominant seller and reader they can charge what they want.

I've always been very suspicious about the Kindle. I didn't like that you didn't "own" the books you bought. You were paying for the privilege to read them on a reader you also had to pay for and pay a monthly fee on as well. Plus you can only read Amazon books on it, and if for any reason they wanted to, they could take your books away, because they still owned it. Here's an analogy. For $250 you can get a library card, and for an extra $200 you can sit in the good light to read. You can read any book in the library for $10... each, but you can't take it out of the library, you can't lend it to your friend, and if for some reason we feel like it, we can take the book back (even if you're not done reading it) and make it unavailable. Not my idea of a good deal.

Now, I like the idea of tablet readers, I just don't want Amazon being the only player. I kind of hope that Apple's Ipad (ok worst name, sounds like a sanitary napkin) breaks Amazon's hold. Or that the little tantrum backfires on them and instead of scaring other publishing houses, causes them to also cry bullshit and loose the dogs of TOR (see what I did there? Made a pun and all...never mind back to the rant) forcing them to drop the issue, or shoot themselves in the foot. I'm not anti-Amazon. I'm not anti-Capitalism. But I feel that Amazon is dicking with good authors and a lot of readers. As it is publishing operates on a damn thin margin, and Amazon already makes the money coming and going, dicking with me isn't going to put them in my Favorites category.

Should you want to read what a few other folks have had to say about it, here are a few good ones: (Note I am stealing the comments and links from Doug aka swords_and_pens (a damn fine edit: now under contract and soon to be published author himself)

Charles Stross with his break-down of what Amazon and MacMillan were trying to accomplish, respectively.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/01/amazon-macmillan-an-outsiders.html

Tobias Buckell's many thoughts on what is happening, and why he will no longer be selling his books on Amazon. He gives a nice breakdown of the costs behind what it takes to produce a book, which helps debunk some of the "But the price-point on an e-book is Zero, so I should get them for dirt cheap!" camp's arguments.
http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2010/01/31/why-my-books-are-no-longer-for-sale-via-amazon/

Laura Ann Gilman has apparently culled Amazon's (testy?) response to MacMillan's letter and proposal.
http://suricattus.livejournal.com/1202577.html

As with all things, you are free to do as you choose, but I think I will be passing on Amazon for a while.

“Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”

Never cut what can be untied.

“Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.” Robert A. Heinlein

At 12th night I was given a present of "Zen in the Martial Arts". It was a book I had back in college and read several times while I was in college and studied with Yōzan Dirk Mosig. It was a book he recomended not only to his martial arts students but also those who took his classes on Zen and Eastern Psychology. It was nice to have it again.

Intrestingly enough, it coincided with a personal project of mine I started this past 12th night. I set out to fight all the Dons of Northshield (not at once mind you) at least once with at least 5 passes. Afterwards I wanted to get their signature and any feedback.

So why did I take this little task on? Did I expect to win? Heck no, I expect to get thumped, and regularly. I expect to learn. I expect to be challenged. I expect to get better. If I walk away from a fight and haven't learned a damn thing, I've lost even if I got the bout. The Dons are supposed to be the creme de la creme, so I have to bring my A game each time. Each time, I realize a few things I need to work on. My close game sucks and I take it in the shorts. I need to loosen up and relax, as I tend to tense up. I need to keep practicing until shots are reflexive, I'm loosing tempo in the seeing the shot, deciding the shot and taking the shot.

So what is after the Dons? Well, the list is just a goal. There are lots of excellent fighters who aren't Dons who can help me realize my weaknesses. Hell, there are lots of terrible beastial fighters who can help me realize my weaknesses. But as the book said, it isn't about beating them, it's about overcoming me.

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. - Dale Carnegie

"You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred." -Woody Allen

"Credo quia absurdum" - it is to be believed because it is impossible to be believed. ("You can't make this shit up")

Heisenberg was driving down the highway when a cop pulled him over. The cop asks, “Do you know how fast you were going?” Heisenberg says, “Yes, but I have no idea where I am!”

For those who don't get it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

If you didn't get it, here's a couple others that you might:

What’s green and smells like red paint?
Green paint.

What’s the difference between roast beef and pea soup?
Anyone can roast beef.

Note this is just an exerpt from a longer article from a Salon article by Mr Greenwald about the not the effects of terrorism, but the FEAR of terrorism.

"The citizenry has been trained to expect that our Powerful Daddies and Mommies in government will -- in that most cringe-inducing, child-like formulation -- Keep Us Safe. Whenever the Government fails to do so, the reaction -- just as we saw this week -- is an ugly combination of petulant, adolescent rage and increasingly unhinged cries that More Be Done to ensure that nothing bad in the world ever happens. Demands that genuinely inept government officials be held accountable are necessary and wise, but demands that political leaders ensure that we can live in womb-like Absolute Safety are delusional and destructive. Yet this is what the citizenry screams out every time something threatening happens: please, take more of our privacy away; monitor more of our communications; ban more of us from flying; engage in rituals to create the illusion of Strength; imprison more people without charges; take more and more control and power so you can Keep Us Safe.

This is what inevitably happens to a citizenry that is fed a steady diet of fear and terror for years. It regresses into pure childhood. The 5-year-old laying awake in bed, frightened by monsters in the closet, who then crawls into his parents' bed to feel Protected and Safe, is the same as a citizenry planted in front of the television, petrified by endless imagery of scary Muslim monsters, who then collectively crawl to Government and demand that they take more power and control in order to keep them Protected and Safe….

For a variety of reasons, nobody aids this process more than our establishment media, motivated by their own interests in ratcheting up fear and Terrorism melodrama as high as possible. The result is a citizenry far more terrorized by our own institutions than foreign Terrorists could ever dream of achieving on their own. For that reason, a risk that is completely dwarfed by numerous others -- the risk of death from Islamic Terrorism -- dominates our discourse, paralyzes us with fear, leads us to destroy our economic security and eradicate countless lives in more and more foreign wars, and causes us to beg and plead and demand that our political leaders invade more of our privacy, seize more of our freedom, and radically alter the system of government we were supposed to have…

What makes all of this most ironic is that the American Founding was predicated on exactly the opposite mindset. The Constitution is grounded in the premise that there are other values and priorities more important than mere Safety. Even though they knew that doing so would help murderers and other dangerous and vile criminals evade capture, the Framers banned the Government from searching homes without probable cause, prohibited compelled self-incrimination, double jeopardy and convictions based on hearsay, and outlawed cruel and unusual punishment. That's because certain values -- privacy, due process, limiting the potential for abuse of government power -- were more important than mere survival and safety…

These are the calculations that are now virtually impossible to find in our political discourse. It is fear, and only fear, that predominates… All in response to this week's single failed terrorist attack, there are -- as always -- hysterical calls that we start more wars, initiate racial profiling, imprison innocent people indefinitely, and torture even more indiscriminately…

What matters most about this blinding fear of Terrorism is not the specific policies that are implemented as a result. Policies can always be changed. What matters most is the radical transformation of the national character of the United States. Reducing the citizenry to a frightened puddle of passivity, hysteria and a child-like expectation of Absolute Safety is irrevocable and far more consequential than any specific new laws. Fear is always the enabling force of authoritarianism: the desire to vest unlimited power in political authority in exchange for promises of protection. This is what I wrote about that back in early 2006 in How Would a Patriot Act?


This isn't exactly new: many of America's most serious historical transgressions -- the internment of Japanese-Americans, McCarthyite witch hunts, World War I censorship laws, the Alien and Sedition Act -- have been the result of fear-driven, over-reaction to external threats, not under-reaction. Fear is a degrading toxin, and there's no doubt that it has been the primary fuel over the last decade…"

An interesting poem by Jonathan Reed which reverses its meaning when the lines are read in reverse order.

I am part of a lost generation
And I refuse to believe
I can change the world.
I realize this may be a shock but
'Happiness comes from within'
Is a lie, and
'Money will make me happy'
So in thirty years I will tell my children
They are not the most important thing in my life.
My employer will know that
I have my priorities straight because
Work
Is more important than
Family
I tell you this:
Once upon a time
Families stayed together
But this will not be true in my era.
This is a quick fix society
Experts tell me
Thirty years from now I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my divorce.
I do not concede that
I will live in a country of my own making.
In the future
Environmental destruction will be the norm.
No longer can it be said that
My peers and I care about this earth.
It will be evident that
My generation is apathetic and lethargic.
It is foolish to presume that
There is hope.

And all of this will come true unless we choose to reverse it.

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.

So I asked myself a hypothetical question yesterday:

"Who's idea was it to take perhaps the universe's worst shot, clone him a couple million times and then put them in the front line of the Empire's defense? This was one of those no-bid things wasn't it?"

"The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept." -George Carlin

“Life's meaning emerges from conversation in community with people you love.” – Dave Pollard

So, now Pat Roberson is claiming the Haiti earthquake was due to Haitians had collectively "sworn a pact to the devil," which brought on the country's extreme poverty and the earthquake.

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French ... and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.' True story. So the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another,"

Dear Gods this man is evil. Robertson proves the Devil is alive and well and living in the hearts and minds of extremists and bigots. Robertson, Falwell, and Dobson are at their core old Southern racist preachers. When that became taboo after the 60s, they turned their speech to Communism. When the Soviet Union collapsed they turned to abortion and homosexuality.

There is a current in the traditional, god fearing, puritanical, christian mind set that if something bad happens to someone, it's because they are being punished by God and so it's fine to heap more abuse on the downtrodden in the name of religion. The problem is that those who do are not followers of the Jesus who counseled love and forgiveness, who consorted with former prostitutes and persons of questionable repute.

There will always be those who attempt to make a dime off a tragedy, but I don't have to like it. Here's hoping that Robertson gets sodomized by some of the 80% Catholic Haitians.

Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are. - Dale Carnegie