Amazon's Uncomfortable Dinner Party

They're fighting again.

Throwing dishes and swilling wine and shouting about how the other one has been making time with that Jezebel, Apple.

Yes, it's happening again. It's messy and confusing and it's all over the papers -- The New York Times and Publisher's Weekly are both reporting that this weekend, the uneasy relationship between Amazon.com and publishers reached that awkward stage when their friends start avoiding them.

The marriage between Amazon's Kindle and publishers has never been particularly easy. For the most part, pubs have been skeptical of the e-Book format from the word go. Most just thought that the Kindle's default (and seemingly arbitrary) asking price of $9.99 was well below the margin at which even an electronic book could be written, edited, typeset and published. Then Apple came along and offered to do for publishing what they did for music downloads. Apple would let the publishers set the prices (in the manner that they always have) and take a percentage.

Apple. What a tramp.

You might have heard this called the "agency model" -- which just means that Apple acts as a sales agent for the publisher, earning a cut or comission of around 30%. You know... like bookstores have for the past hundred years or so?

This model can be good or bad. The publishers argue that the prices would be higher, but quality would be better. Amazon argues that higher prices for e-books means fewer people will buy books (And Kindles). 

The argument is about e-Book pricing. (What, that doesn't prompt plate throwing at your house?) Amazon has been busily trying to get the bookbuying public to expect that e-Books shouldn't cost more than $9.99. In fact, they made a point in the New York Times recently about how the top downloaded books are usually free. All part - say publishers - of a far-reaching goal of undercutting the value of books. So publishers have apparently been coming to Amazon's Kindle team demanding the same deal they're being offered by Apple.

To teach publishers a lesson, Amazon de-listed all titles sold by Macmillan press. In the words of Science Fiction author Scott Westerfeld "Amazon more or less “de-friended” one of the six big US publishers". Saying they did it "in protest", Amazon stripped all of the "Buy" buttons from every new Macmillan book both in physical and Kindle format.

Gee... Passive-aggressive much?

The Internet lit up with the rage of a thousand dissed novelists and their fans. Picking on a publisher with that many sci fi authors was tactically unwise. As Scott Westerfeld noted on Twitter: "They'll blog you dead". And boy, do those folks know how to blog.

Which is where we venture into Shakespearean territory: Two industries, alike in dignity, here in Interwebzia where we lay our scene. The trouble is, Amazon thinks they're in Taming of the Shrew and the publishers are terrified that they might be in Romeo & Juliet and they've read the end of that play.

So I ask you, is it a comedy or a tragedy? Publishers are clinging to life, bookstores are laying off staff and closing stores... it certainly doesn't carry the air of comedy about any of this. If you think the literary landscape would be better off without publishers (and bookstores), then I suppose you will disagree with me, but for all their sins I feel that they do more good than harm. One thing is for certain: no matter how you feel about iPad (that shameless hussy), the Kindle can no longer dictate terms to publishers. But on behalf of both readers and writers, I say unto both of you: No matter what anyone tells you, this is a pox on both your houses. Get those houses in order, your public tussling serves no one, least of all yourselves.

 Think of the childr... er... books.

 Get your coat honey, we're leaving.

Sunday is Quote Day

"I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy."

- J.D. Salinger RIP

Website updates...

"They" say that I need a place on the internet where I can send the prospective editors and agents to learn more about me, about my background and especially about what I've written. The whole idea seems sort of silly, to be honest. I'm not uncomfortable speaking in public or pitching my work or even putting my thoughts and beliefs out there. (I got my start on the Internet as a political blogger for heaven's sake.) But for some reason the idea of dedicating a website to myself seems a step across the line into self-aggrandizement. I've spent a lot of energy trying to keep this blog from doing that, and I'm not about to undercut that on a different site. Too many of the author websites I looked at to get ideas were just that. I wasn't about to create www.whyscottisthebest.com, so I opened a Google site and created as lighthearted a tour of my writing and background as I could. They say it's necessary to get to the next step. So... here I am and here it is, if you're at all curious -- just click the link below to visit the site and tell me what you think.

Narrow bandwidth

They don't mention books in the NPR segment that follows, but this very much affects how eBooks can and will be delivered over the wireless devices such as the iPad, the Kindle and other electronic formats that depend upon the stability and availability of a wireless network to deliver your books to your screen.

RIP Mr. Salinger

JD Salinger, America's favorite curmudgeonly old literary hermit has died. Somehow it was comforting to know he was out there somewhere in the wilds of New Hampshire, refusing to interact with the rest of us. He has gone where his notoriety cannot follow. Go out and call someone a phony today in memory of a literary legend. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/jd-salinger-91-is-dead/

Making a Spectacle - An Open Letter to Hollywood

Dear Movie Producers (et al);

Some of your viewers have glasses. I'm not sure you're aware of this fact since you have yet to come up with a workable set of 3D glasses that accommodate this simple and common affliction.

Perhaps in Hollywood no one would be so déclassé as to wear glasses if they needed them or admit that they can't see the screen without them, so it hasn't occurred to you. I feel compelled to bring this to your attention on behalf of nerds everywhere who are suffering in silence, the quiet indignation of piling one pair of special eyewear atop another pair.

I feel it's important to point out that in many ways we are your target demographic. We are the ones who will watch your movies and then go discuss them endlessly on the internet, giving you the word of mouth validation you so desperately crave. We will not continue to do so if the only option you give us for movie enjoyment is piling a pair of goony glasses on top of our already goony glasses. It is not a good look even for us. And it's not terribly comfortable or prone to increasing our moviewatching experience.

Your failure to serve our needs is... shortsighted. (Ahem)

We have enough headaches in our lives already, believe me. And giving us one more is not going to increase the chance that we'll like your latest plot-deficient blockbuster. Please come up with an option for those of us saddled with spectacles so that we can better appreciate your spectacles. A clip on option for your 3D nerd glasses would be adequate.

I admit that clip-on sunglasses are about as sexy as a pocket protector... perhaps less so. But since you decided to go with the nerd glasses aesthetic for your new generation of 3D watching equipment anyway, we won't look any goofier than the people sitting next to us. And that's all we ask... to not look any goofier than the people next to us and yet enjoy the movie just as much. Perhaps more.

Sincerely, Scott Walker Perkins (Nerd)
cc. World HQ - Nerd World Order

iPad

Rocking your book cart...

Have you ever been in a library, and while you were browsing the stacks in contemplative silence looked around and thought "You know, this place would would make great concert venue"? No? Well, I have because libraries host music events all the time (well, occaisionally) but until this morning it never occurred to me that there were enough library-specific songs out there to warrant a top-ten list. Now I know better. Enjoy! Mixtape: 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians

Monday Jan 25, 2010 by Caroline Stanley

at Flavorwire

Implementation

Acknowledging that I'm at risk of painting with too broad a brush here I feel that I can say with assurance that on the whole, writers love rituals. Every writer's blog I've read talks about their ritual at some point, the ingrained habits that get them "into the zone". My writing is certainly some sort of psychological homefield advantage when I'm writing in my "nest" or at a table in my favorite cafe. I don't want to make it sound more metaphysical than it is, but there does seem to be some energy in those two places that agrees with me. At the very least, the effort seems greater if I write anywhere else. A lot is made of the implements that a writer uses and I'm no saint in this respect. I chortle periodically over some bit of trivia (like Wallace Stegner's typewriter) because it reinforces some portion of my own writing ritual. It's certainly easy to see how this can go from force of habit to becoming as superstitious about our rituals as any NHL Goalie, and slip from harmless habits into the realm of compulsive need. But I'm here to tell you that the tools are irrelevant. But there's a tendency to get too precious about the creative act and obsess overmuch about the tools at the expense of the creation. Writer's blogs (like this one) abound with lengthy introspection on the mystique of writing, obsessing about the meditative stroke of the golden nib across a page or the percussive "ka-chunk" of the typewriter hammer striking the page. Ultimately, it's all baloney. At least insomuch as it's purely psychological, the writerly equivalent of Dumbo's feather. And I've found that as much as this psychological trick helps, it also it sets us up for writer's block. Ask yourself what happens when you lose the feather? Misplace your nice fountain pen or run out of ink for your funky old typewriter? Or (paying in back) if you can't get to your favorite writing spot? How do you keep writing on the road if your cafe table or easy chair or desk are a thousand miles away? The only way to create and sustain a writing output is to make your writing a movable feast. Revel in your materials and your environment all you want, but always keep in mind that the pen isn't doing the writing, you are. Because in the end, writing is about sitting your butt in a chair in front of a computer, day after day and week after week, putting words on a page. No matter what we want to believe it's work, not a mystical act. I mentioned handing out Moleskine notebooks and pens this Christmas to those in my immediate vicinity who had mentioned to me the desire to write without actually writing anything. But with all due respect to my friends at Chronicle Books (the moleskine makers), a Mead spiral notebook would do just as well. My current novel began on the back of a coffeestained napkin for heaven's sake. If the ideal tool or writerly setting frees your creativity in some fashion, go for it, but I'm here to tell you that the tools are irrelevant to the process and to get too wrapped up in them is to invite writers block at a crucial moment sometime in the future. Whether you're using a quill pen or a laptop, it's about getting from the first word to the last as effectively as possible. When the obsession with writing in a particularly "writerly" fashion becomes an obstacle to writing. Get used to writing in different places, at different times, with different instruments. The ideal time to write is when the ideas are fresh, with whatever comes to hand - whether it's a typewriter, a laptop or the pen you stole from the waitress.

Margaret Atwood on Writer's Block

The other day on her blog, Margaret Atwood gave ten tips to combat writer's block. Great advice from a fantastic writer. http://marg09.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/ten-tips-for-writers-block/

Quote of the moment

"If the artist works only when she feels like it, she's not apt to build up much of a body of work. Inspiration far more often comes during the work than before it, because the largest part of the job of the artist is to listen to the work, and to go where it tells her to go." - Madeleine L'Engle

What are you waiting for?

At the dawn of this year, I stated my goal of getting you to write -- persuading you to set aside whatever is getting in your way and just sit down and put pen to paper or fingers to keys. This is not because I think everyone needs to be a writer (there's plenty of competition out there, thank you) but because I know there are a lot of people out there with ideas swirling in their heads just waiting for permission to proceed.

It's worth noting that in most cases, power isn't given, it's seized by those ambitious enough to go after it. And it's up to you to do so with your literary aspirations as well. At least in the realm of fiction, no one can give you permission to write about a subject; you have to just sit down and do it and to hell anyone who tells you that you can't.

That almost sounds silly, but there are seriously plenty of people out there frozen with their fingers over the keys. I've met a lot of them. I can't imagine what they're waiting for. There's no government agency or academic institution or critic out there with the power vested in them to license authors, at least not in America.

If you live somewhere that does that sort of thing, you might want to consider emigrating to someplace that doesn't.

There are no entrance exams for becoming an author. If you want to write, you just have to put your butt in a chair and your fingers on the keys and do it. That's not to say it's easy or that you'll have immediate success or that a degree in English Lit or Creative Writing wouldn't help you, but formal training is not strictly necessary either.

A lot of bad books come from people with lofty degrees. Enough so that I remain unconvinced that it helps more than it hinders. I am convinced that in order to be a writer you need only a love of words, the desire to dream out loud and a willingness to stick it out as you figure out how to do it.

Reading is the only meaningful apprenticeship for a writer. The classroom may ice the cake or it may stifle you, but the library and the bookstore is a wide-open field of study, an embarrassment of riches. The only way to learn how to write is to read. Read everything. Good books, bad books, classic books, trashy romance novels, history books, poetry, plays, comic books, screenplays... everything you read has a lesson to teach for good or ill. Everything you write is a reflection of what you've read, as an echo of those you honor and a rebuke of those your revile. Still not convinced? Fine.  

By the power vested in me by absolutely no one at all, you have permission to write.

There. Now you don't have any more excuses.  Get back to work.

This Is Your Brain on Books

This Is Your Brain on Books Another great article from the New Yorker!

"What strange and splendid alchemy is this, that allows me to coax shapes together—shapes essentially random—and for you to see them not as impenetrable symbols, but ideas and pictures, to hear sounds? It’s reading, and it’s so rote for many adults that we’ve forgotten how miraculous a mental feat it actually is. A new book by Stanislas Dehaene (whom we profiled in 2008), however, called "Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention," restores some sense of awe to the endeavor..."

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/01/this-is-your-brain-on-books.html#ixzz0dBHftHJk

Mightier than the sword III

Pledges

As I type this, millions of dollars in pledges are flooding the charities that are racing to help the people of Haiti. My dollars are among them. The great irony of this is that the operations underway are funded by people who donated in the weeks, months and years leading up to the earthquake. We have a tendency as a society - as human beings - to ignore charitable giving except in the wake of an incident that forces us to think about it, at which point we're scrambling to do what we really should be doing year round. It's the philosophical result of a society that lives on the credit system. Even our response to a humanitarian crisis of this magnitude happens on credit. Those we throw into the breach are followed (sometimes too late) by the monies and materiel they need to help. And there's a solution: Year-round charity. There will never be a time when we don't see an upswell in donations after a catastrophe and I don't want to belittle or discourage that kind of giving. As I said, if you donated in the wake of this catastrophe, my money is mingled with yours. But the people who are helping, really helping in the immediate responses by Doctors Without Borders, The Red Cross, Oxfam, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, and Water Missions International are the people who gave them the money that they had in the bank on the day the earthquake struck. The donations we're making now are to pay for ongoing operations and replenish the "war chest" of supplies expended as they ran into the breech, trusting that we'd catch up with them eventually. The bulk of charitable giving is coming in via Text Donation. The American Red Cross reports that they've raised over $4 million via this avenue alone in the wake of the Haitian earthquake. Charitable giving has never been easier - just text a specific message to a provided number and you've pledged the set amount (usually $5-10) to be paid with your bill. What isn't discussed very often is that text donations are pledges of money that don't get disbursed until after those donating pay their cell phone bills. Until that time, a charity has to work with the donations in-hand or acquire bridge financing using the pledged donations as collateral. This underlines the need to not only support your charities year-round, but also the need to make your donations to active and long-established charities such as those listed. Charities with the money on-hand to hit the ground running and allow the donations to catch up. The CharityNavigator.org blog has provided this list of three reputable organizations who are active in Haiti and have both the clout and resources to get the ball rolling before your dollars get to them.

• Text "Haiti" to 20222 to donate $10 on behalf of The Clinton Foundation (former President Clinton is Special Envoy to Haiti) - Rated 4 stars by CharityNavigator.org
• Text "Haiti" to 25383 to donate $5 on behalf of the Internal Rescue Committee. – Rated 4 stars by CharityNavigator.org
• Text "Haiti" to 90999 to donate $10 on behalf of the Red Cross in the U.S. - Rated 3 stars by CharityNavigator.org

In the wake of this onslaught of giving, it's difficult to look beyond the immediate need of the moment. But we have to remember that our immediate response is not as immediate as we would like to believe. We cannot lose sight of this lesson. When this falls out of the headlines - and it will, long before the work in Haiti is done, I assure you - remember not to dust off your hands and getting back to your workaday life. Because truly, when we forget our history, we have to repeat the class until it sinks in...

But what about the marshmallows?

Las cosas claras y el chocolate espeso. 'Ideas should be clear and chocolate thick. ' -Spanish Proverb

Resolved...

It's January.

I hate Januaries.

Not that there's anything inherently wrong with the month, mind you, it's just all the people asking me what resolutions I made. Or hinting strongly that there are some resolutions I should have made and it's not too late...

A lot of people swear by this practice, like a walking Madison Avenue slogan: "It's A New Year & A New You!" For whatever reason, our species hangs a lot of hopes on the simple act of turning a calendar page. When you get to buy a whole new calendar, so much the better, I suppose.

I don't really do resolutions -- the way I figure it, I write enough fiction as it is. I decided long ago that if I was going to accomplish anything, I had to stop relying on a calendar to tell me when I could get started and just go already. And it has always perplexed me that people make such a big deal about a promise that they know full well that they're going to break by February 10th. That's the very definition of an exercise in futility.

It took a couple of decades for me to realize that I was just being cynical. (What can I say? I'm a slow learner.) If the point of the exercise was to make promises you don't intent to keep, then I was right. But, if the point is to ritually express an unrealized ambition, then in that light at least, I see some value to it.

Because I'm a writer and especially since I started writing this blog, my friends have been confiding in me their literary ambitions both large and small. Which is great; I love hearing about what other people are writing and discussing it with them. I don't spend three days a week in a college writing and tutoring center because it pays well. (Click on "email me" in the sidebar if you want to join the circle.) But I still don't care what the calendar says, if you want to write something, do it.

Just because participating in National Novel Writing Month is a kick doesn't mean you have to wait until November. If the camaraderie of knowing that you're not the only one slogging through a storyline is helpful, join a writing group. Or form one of your own.

So here we are.

It's January.

And if a resolution is the externalization of ambition, then here's mine: I resolve to get you to write this year. I don't know how I'm going to do this, but that's my goal. I don't care if it's a novel or a short story, a memoir or a family history. It doesn't have to be publishable. It doesn't have to be literature. It doesn't have to be something you share with anyone. Writing is about uniting life and language. At the risk of getting cute, voicing the ambition to write is a good first step, but it's not a journey until you take the second step.

Quote of the moment...

"To say that one cannot produce a good novel within the discipline of a formal structure is as foolish as to say that no sonnet can be great poetry since a sonnet is restricted to fourteen lines -- an octave and a sestet -- and a strict rhyming sequence."

-PD James   Talking About Detective Fiction

1 (one) Generic Blog Post

I have a new work schedule, meaning I'll be writing at the coffee shop less and at home more and today's the first day of the new regimen. I'm looking forward to writing from home an extra day (access to source material is always a good thing) but this is going to take some getting used to. Anyone know where I can find an audio loop of random dish clatter and crowd noise? Incidentally, as a diehard "DIY Guy" I had to check my bookshelves this week when it came out that the Consumer Products Safety Commission had advised a recall of electrical wiring books published by Oxmoor House (publishers of do it yourself books for Sunset and Lowes). The titles date back to 1975 and according to CPSC records, no one has ever actually been harmed by the errors. Which I guess means that spouses who have been ducking home-improvement chores since the mid-seventies have been vindicated. Procrastination carries the day once again.

A colorful technology

Honestly, I've never much cared about color screens for e-Readers and never really understood the furor surrounding the perceived need to develop one. I suppose if the e-Reader is going to replace textbooks, that would be easier with a color screen, but beyond that, I don't really care. I personally read novels mostly and want the highest resolution black & white screen available to me to prevent the sort of eyestrain generally associated with reading from a screen. If I was going to read a comic or graphic novel, then the collectibility of the physical item is a significant factor in the purchase. A factor that would be negated by buying it electronically. (It's a geek thing.) If we're talking color screens for laptops that don't give me a headache after looking at them for about eight hours straight... well, then we might be on to something. As we've discussed before, the "e-Ink" screens used in the Kindle (and almost all other leading e-Readers) haven't yet been able to present color. Debuting at CES this past week, it looked like Pixel Qi might just have cut the Gordian knot on the color page front. Anyway, if you're looking for full-color e-Books, I suppose this is good news for you! Read more at GizModo.

Survival of the fittest...

The other day, I mentioned an interview with Amazon's founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos in Newsweek. At the time, I was focusing on the battle between single-use devices (dedicated e-Readers) and so-called "convergence devices" (tablets, laptops, netbooks, smartphones, et al) that do everything even if they don't do any one thing particularly well. He said something else there that's been raising hackles in the parts of the book community that are wed to the tangible paste and paper artifact.

"...we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world. That's not going to go away; that's going to thrive. But the physical book really has had a 500-year run. It's probably the most successful technology ever. It's hard to come up with things that have had a longer run. If Gutenberg were alive today, he would recognize the physical book and know how to operate it immediately. Given how much change there has been everywhere else, what's remarkable is how stable the book has been for so long. But no technology, not even one as elegant as the book, lasts forever." - Jeff Bezos Quoted in Newsweek, 21 December 2009

By far the most articulate argument for the permanence of the physical specimen comes from Seattle author Knute Berger. The op/ed is called "Will Books Survive?" and I encourage you to read it. It's an interesting take from someone in the heart of one of America's most literate cities and home of Amazon.com. Berger is mostly reacting to that part of the interview which would threaten or eliminate the creaky floorboards of the Elliot Bay Book Co or the glass and steel cathedral of the written word that is the Seattle Public Library (which Berger refers to as the "Rem Koolhas temple" in deference to its famous architect -- I have to admit I'm not a fan of the latter, the architect seems to have forgotten that libraries should be pleasant places to read as well as look at.) Knute Berger is a frequent contributor to my local NPR station, so I'm familiar with his views and I know that he and I don't necessarily see eye-to-eye on many issues. On this at least, I agree with him wholeheartedly. I have similarly eclectic buying habits despite my best intentions and my omnivorous tastes have led me from the digital docs to the dusty stacks of the Puget Sound's used bookworld. And my home too is a constant battle between finding space to build more bookshelves and the people who have to live there too. So too do I hope that the bookworld can find a kind of equilibrium that allows for the existance of all varieties of books from the terra cotta to the terabyte and beyond.

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and blogs on the interface between technology and literary culture. His current novel is The Palimpsest and he is working on another tentatively titled 42 Lines.

You know, for kids!

The guys from Crunch Gear check out a color e-Reader at the CES conference.

Are you a pro-crastinator, or are you an amateur?

It's the topic I get the most questions about. The one that I come back to repeatedly. But that's OK, it's an important one: Are you a pro or an amateur? Not at writing but at finding ways not to write? Back in the days when I kept an art studio, there was a yellowed and dogeared piece of paper taped somewhere on the wall. Perfectly centered, in twelve point type (so you had to walk up to it to read it) it said:

"An artist doesn't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working." - Stephen De Staebler*

For the record, I didn't post that so I'd have a ready-made excuse when my wife walked in and caught me goofing off. I posted it to remind me what's going to pounce on me if I let my guard down. Whether it's fear or some kind of latent masochism or the lie that we "work better under deadline", the urge to find reasons not to do the work that scratches the creative itch seems endemic to the artistic animal. Not that we're the only ones, it's just that (as the sign says) it just seems like it sometimes. As the chores and the distractions pile up, it's easy to find yourself stopping to wash just one dish, or fix one more ice cream sundae, or just one more television program/website/article/book... With the possible example of the ice cream, all of these distractions are easily made to seem beneficial, even saintly. After all, the housework's getting done! Every book says I have to have a website! I have to create a website! I have to do 'research' some time, don't I? This website/TV program/novel is research! This Twitter post or website is marketing! The excuses are all the more insidious because they are mostly true. The only way I've ever found to head off this well-meaning procrastination was to set aside specific times to do them. Research is both a positive influence on your work and a distraction from it. So set aside an hour (or more) for research each day or even one entire day each week to spend interviewing subjects, exploring landscapes, and combing the library or the internet or PBS. Set aside time for the TV and the housework (and the Ice Cream too while you're at it) and remember that writing is a job and you have to treat it like one or you'll never get anywhere with it. I've said before that the allure of working in my pajamas leaves me too relaxed and more prone to distractions. I have to get dressed and sit down at the desk and focus on The Job or I very likely won't get a darn thing done that day.

1. Make a list.
2. Prioritize the list.
3. Erase half the list and prioritize again.
4. Turn the list into a schedule.
5. Stick to it!

It works for me, anyway because when it comes to crastination, I'm a pro. And a pro knows it's always there, lurking by the television set, on the internet, under a bookshelf... waiting to pounce. You have to have the weapons to fend it off or you're doomed. And a pro also knows that you can always eat that sundae at your desk. Just try not to get any hot fudge on the keyboard.

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and blogs on the interface between technology and literary culture. His current novel is The Palimpsest and he is working on another tentatively titled 42 Lines.

Contact Me

--- * EDIT: I managed to source the quote to American sculptor Stephen De Staebler from my home state, no less. Ironically, on reflection I think I probably originally found the quote in a great book called "Art & Fear" which I really should review here. -Scott

Kurzweil casts his vote and backs it up with "Blio"

Text-to-speech pioneer and inventor Ray Kurzweil has cast his vote in the e-Reader debate in favor of a convergence device. What's more, he's putting his software where his mouth is. CNET is reporting that Kurzweil is behind a new software from KNFB Reading Technology called "Blio", a full-color e-Reader for your laptop. You might recall this post where I asked when we would begin taking full advantage of the digital domain rather than just reinventing the printing press with electrons instead of ink. Kurzweil answers this call with an emphatic statement -- Blio not only reads to you, it has the capacity to integrate animation, video, audio and other additional content. For better or worse, this is not the paper-replicating e-Reader you've come to expect. This is a bit of a reinvention of the e-Book from the ground up. Additionally, according to reporting by All Tech Considered (NPR), the innovative new software has already secured audio rights to a significant catelogue, perhaps learning from the Kindle Text-To-Speech debacle. Despite a burgeoning market in "More of the same" Kindle clones, it feels good to know that not everyone is running with the pack. Blio is due to hit the shelves next month.

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and blogs on the interface between technology and literary culture. His current novel is The Palimpsest and he is working on another tentatively titled 42 Lines. Email: swalkerperkins@gmail.com

Cool Tech @CES: Transparent Display "of the Future"

This would make for a wild e-Reader screen... CES 2010: Hands-On With Transparent Display of the Future - Video - Wired Posted using ShareThis

Because people don't read anymore...

Last week, Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos was interviewed by Newsweek and said he thought that while the novel would survive virtually unchanged, the ink & paper book was a rapidly-fading technology, soon to be replaced by devices like his company's Kindle e-Reader.

 He would say that, wouldn't he?

 Well, he had some daunting sales figures to back it up. He further made a pitch for the continuation of a dedicated e-Reader rather than creating convergence devices such as the proposed Apple Tablet that is rumored to be appearing at an Apple Store near you sometime this year. Before Apple could pull the curtain back on the Tablet, HP preemptively announced that they are rushing a similar tablet PC to sales floors and the product demo apparently featured the device running Kindle software.

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” - Steve Jobs quoted in the New York Times: 15 January, 2008

Prognostication fail.

 You would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the tech industry who still believes that and I'm sure Jobs would love to erase that quote. Almost exactly two years later, the CES tradeshow is all about the e-Reader. The Plastic Logic Que will be unveiled today and the new tablets are largely being touted for their capability as e-Readers.

3-D televisions are getting scooped in favor of the next, best way to digitally deliver books to readers. e-Readers are the hit of the season, one of the few markets where the electronics industry is expanding rather than contracting.

Bezos seems very aware of the Jobs quote when Newsweek interviewed him. He obliquely referenced that Jobs quote when he said that "...two years ago, none of us expected what has happened so far. It is [our] No. 1 bestselling product." No one knows better than Bezos that Amazon is out in front and some very very big gorillas are chasing them, desperate to catch up. Hence the pitch for the continuation of a dedicated device for reading e-Books. 

The biggest threat to Kindle is that people will actually want an e-Reader/laptop hybrid. There's a lot of debate out there about how far consumers want their devices to converge into a single omni-gadget.

 This week, comedian and YouTube vlogger Craig Benzine ("Wheezywaiter") distilled the zeitgeist into the ultimate hybrid machine, the logical evolution of the smartphone, essentially a cell phone taped to the back of his MacBook.

Is it better to do everything poorly or one thing well?

Jeff Bezos spent the entire Newsweek article effectively arguing that Benzine is right. Readers want devices that just do one thing really well. Nevertheless, readers are clamoring for full color and the current e-Ink technology used for the screens of almost all e-Readers currently on the market are incapable of going color at least anytime soon.

e-Readers continue to be rather clunky devices, and what no doubt haunts Bezos is that the fact that Apple wasn't the first company to put out an MP-3 player, they were the first company to put out an MP-3 player that wasn't a pain in the butt to use.

Apple's business model is often touted as being about innovation, but really their most successful products have all been about doing something new with existing technologies. Apple specializes in breaking into existing markets with better-designed machines and gradually dominating those new markets to the point where we forget that they didn't invent them. Amazon should be worried about getting iTuned out of the market.

Snapping at Apple's heels (maybe) are netbook innovators Asus. They have been pitching an intriguing folding e-Reader with two color screens so you would see facing pages and replicate a real book reading experience. The device was rumored to be slated for a 2009 release but it hasn't materialized and there are no updates that I could find. Critics point out that if the screens are really just standard touch screens, it won't really be an e-Reader, but another evolution of the netbook with all the eyestrain issues currently keeping most people from choosing a $300 netbook over the $400 Kindle. Of course if they can hit their target price point of <$150.00, they may pull it off, who knows? Asus seems to like snapping at the heels of the bigger companies, it's been a successful business model for them. So, what is that the future of the e-Book? Is it a convergence of gadgets into a single multi-use device, or will the dedicated e-Reader survive?

The market is groaning under the influx in a winner-take-all bout and there's no end in sight. In the meantime, save me a place in the queue for the Wheezy 1Billion.

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and blogs on the interface between technology and literary culture. His current novel is The Palimpsest and he is working on another tentatively titled 42 Lines.

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Flipbook Animation

I love how the advent of inexpensive video equipment and sites like Vimeo and YouTube have opened up a broad avenue for creative filmmakers to experiment with the form. Someone was kind enough to send this to me this morning, the advent of the flipbook into the digital realm...

parkour motion reel from saggyarmpit on Vimeo.

The word of the year is...

Yes, indeed, Websters has declared "Distracted Driving" is the word of the year. To explain himself, here's Webster's head word nerd:

Can the Apple Tablet Save Print Media?

Can a digital device "save" print media? Will people be willing to pay for previously-free content if it's packaged in the right way? Provocative questions that strike to the heart of the digital divide and the inherent paradoxes of digital content delivery...

New York Times - The Media Equation

A Savior in the Form of a Tablet

By DAVID CARR

Published: January 4, 2010

"Is an Apple tablet the second coming of the iPhone: a device that can do anything, including saving embattled print providers from doom?"

Fair warning, the tablet-related religious metaphors lie thick across this article. Nevertheless, I think my biggest beef with it is when he tries to answer my question: "It's free now, what's to entice readers to pay for it plus the cost of the new device needed to view it?" His answer is this: "...why would people suddenly be compelled to pay for something that they’ve gotten for free? That’s where Apple comes in. A simple, reliable interface for gaining access to paid content can do amazing things: Five years ago, almost no one paid for music online and now, nine billion or so songs sold later, we know that people are willing to pay if the price is right and the convenience is there." I find this difficult to swallow. Mostly because the comparison isn't apples-to-apples (if you'll forgive the pun). Before iTunes and their imitators, most digital music was illegally downloaded. The dominant portion of our society is inclined to follow laws as long as they make sense and aren't the pragmatic equivalent of going five miles over the speed limit. So a cheap, easy and reliable legal path to digital music was win/win for the listener. This paradigm doesn't apply to print media. It's free and legal at the moment. I'm not downloading New York Times and Wall Street Journal articles from Napster, I'm reading them for free on those newspapers' websites. So a simple comparison simply doesn't work. For better or worse, print media from the New York Times to Sports Illustrated have been offering free, legal online content almost since they opened their first website. In order for it to change now, all of them would have to change together so that no one site continues to give away the milk for free. Which is called 'collusion' and it's my understanding that that's still illegal. Attempts prior to this to get people to pay to view news stories & feature content have been met with mixed results outside of niche markets like stock tracking. At the moment, the market stands thus: If you're offering a unique service that others cannot duplicate at all or at least as well, you can charge for access and people who need that information will pay to see it. Outside of a few exclusive scoops, news reporting is not unique to you. Put another way: if I can get perfectly legal milk free from the New York Times, why would I buy it from Slate? I feel for print media, as you may recall I began my college career as a journalism major before - perhaps wisely - deciding that my future lay in more artistic directions. And I have all the sympathy in the world for people who would like to get paid to write. Me too, please! If they're ballsy enough, then they could conceivably gradually shut down their websites all together (which is probably what we're talking about without really saying it in the NYT article) and offer more and more of the content on the new Apple Tablet, iPhone/Droid apps, Nook or Kindle. But that's still a dicey proposition when free, legal, content that competes isn't going away. It's a format-shift that beggars comparison to the shift from CD's to MP-3's. It's about shutting off a tap altogether and replacing it with a new outlet, and that's beyond risky, it's damn near suicidal. Then again, something's got to give or we'll lose print media as a viable business altogether which would be a blow to us all whether we realize it or not.

Read Related Posts:

March 2009 - Quotable Quandry April 2009 - What We Call the News

Scott Walker Perkins blogs on technology and literary culture and writes literary thrillers. His current novel is titled The Palimpsest and he is working on a project tentatively titled 42 Lines. Email: swalkerperkins@gmail.com

Book Autopsies

More and more, I see "altered book" as an artform in galleries both online and in the real world. As I've said before, as a collector I find the notion as repulsive as it is intriguing. There's a fascination with peeling back layers and finding what's beneath that is usually metaphorical in literature, made actual in the practice of book alteration. The 'book autopsy' is an apt description used by altered book artist Brian Dettmer. Much like actual autopsies, I view this practice with the feeling of being stuck somewhere between a macabre fascination and the horror of cutting into something so precious and fragile. As is typical in any movement artistic or otherwise, much of the results are banal and unworthy of the materials that sacrifice themselves to the cause of their creation. In some cases, however, the results are beautiful, surreal, even haunting.

Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies (click to see more at Centripetal Notion)

Mightier Than the Sword (redux)

So in the various places where these blog posts publish to, I've received some feedback about my adherence to a belief that handwriting is neither dead nor obsolete. These comments seem to fall into two camps. The first camp centers around anecdotal evidence that younger people either don't know how to write cursive or prefer not to.

What you have to understand is that this does not mean that handwriting is dead or even dying. A script is dying, but the ballpoint pen seems to still have a strong heartbeat. In the evolution of handwriting, this is a common occurrence that has happened hundreds of times before as society creates and casts aside the best mode of expressing written thoughts. If it didn't, we would still be practicing our heavy gothic hands and our novels would look like Gutenberg Bibles. (Which would be cool in concept but clunky in practice) I suppose if handwriting didn't evolve, we would actually still be using other languages and other hands, but I think you get the point. Handwriting evolves. Having studied a bit of paleography as research for a recent story, I'm frankly astounded that Parker Penmanship and it's descendants survived as long as they did.

Camp #2 thinks I'm a Luddite, clinging desperately to a past aesthetic and stifling or looking down upon the new mode that is replacing mine.

Systems of written communication evolve and I have no problem with that -- I would not rather be incising ideograms into clay tablets and neither would you. Technology, language and what we could do with language evolved and the mode of transmission had to evolve too.

The survival of handwriting is about neither the persistence of a script nor an aesthetic. It's about how best to express one's thoughts and just as there is no one classroom that will best serve all students, so too there is no one tool of language transmission that will serve all writers or all thoughts. Handwriting is about more than aesthetics, it's a tool of transmission. One tool in an ever-growing toolbox, but the new tool doesn't make the old one obsolete.

Every day at the writing center, we deal with different learning styles. A preference for writing or typing is part of that. As the lady in the New York Times article that set me off last time correctly points out, messy handwriting is not indicative of a second-rate intelligence, but the corollary is that abandonment of handwriting isn't either. And just as we have come to slowly embrace the idea that not all people think and learn best in the same classrooms, so too I think we will come to grasp that not everyone is going to best express themselves at a keyboard, or on a blackberry or with a pen.

This is an argument about how best to interact with the language. Writing by hand does slow us down a bit, and for many it's a good thing. In the earlier post, I believe I mentioned science fiction writer Neal Stephenson. He apparently writes his lengthy novels with a Mont Blanc fountain pen. Typing those ideas into a computer would certainly be quicker and wouldn't require a hireling to take them and type them into a word processing program for transmission to a publisher. But he still chooses to interact with our language through the transmitting medium of pen, ink and paper.

Presumably for a bestselling novelist this isn't because he can't afford a laptop, but because it's how he produces his best work, the toolbox best suited to him. (Incidentally, I'm not saying "Because Neal does it, we all should" or anything of the sort, it's just that I recently noticed his pens and manuscript at the Seattle Sci Fi museum...) A pen is a tool whether it's a goose quill an expensive fountain pen or a Bic you swiped from a bank. So too is a laptop or a cell phone.

The writer who interacts with the language through one medium is in no way inferior or superior to the other simply by the merit of their tools. And the advent of one is not necessarily the death knell for the other. in order for the pen to die, I believe that our language will have to fundamentally change in a way that makes it no longer valid as a tool of expression. With our current assortment of Western languages, however, in my opinion it remains a vital tool that is merely out of fashion at the moment.