Would You Play Bigmouth Strikes Again
Every bit I've mentioned previously, I'm most to put my novel online in diverse ebook formats, and office of the process is working out how much to charge. Information technology's a controversial topic, so it was nice to see this post by John Rickards (which came to me via the superb Loud blog). As Rickards points out, joining the "buy my book for 70p!" movement isn't necessarily a swell idea:
You're pandering to a dangerous kind of hysteria that sees the stuff that nosotros produce as a article with near no inherent value. Whatsoever kind of industry that drives its prices down equally close to aught every bit it can become, and which has no other revenue stream at all,dies on its arse. How long do you recollect superstores would stay in business organization if all they had were their loss leaders on the shelves?
If you're interested in electronic publishing, the whole post is well worth your time. I specially liked this bit:
I'll reiterate: this is the same equally the cost of a cup of java. And of and then many of those cheap smartphone apps you lot and I buy like processed.
That'due south pretty much my thinking too.
If I can ever persuade Amazon to charge the correct cost (I'm having a few issues with Amazon simply now, so if you spot Bury Dodgers in the Kindle Store before I tell everybody that it'south on sale you may end up with a not-quite-perfect version) I'm going to be charging $ii.99US/£1.99GBP for the ebook of Coffin Dodgers.
For what information technology's worth, my cut of that is around a pound per book (and that's taxable, of class). The likelihood that I'll fifty-fifty recoup the cost of the beers I drank while writing it, permit alone the toll of time spent editing and formatting it, is pretty slim.
At 70p, your cut is even smaller: subsequently VAT, Amazon'south delivery charges and Amazon'south 65% cut, you're left with pennies. In the unlikely result that you sell even x,000 copies, you'll be lucky to make two thousand quid. Practice a much more than likely 1,000 copies and you'll brand effectually £200. That's £200, before tax, for two years' work.
I don't recall £1.99 for a book is excessive, particularly as (unless I've made a complete arse of things) I'm letting readers on every ebook platform sample the first fifth of the book for free. If y'all're that far into the book you can exist pretty sure of what you're getting for your 2 quid. I've likewise gone for the DRM-gratuitous, go-ahead-and-lend-it options on Amazon, so I'one thousand hardly trying to persuade people to mitt over cash for something they can't sample.
I could charge less, but I don't want to. As Rickards puts it, if you're selling too cheap you're saying:
"Buy this, it's cheap!" rather than "Buy this, it's good!"
I completely understand the rationale behind charging less – I've spoken to authors for whom that's worked – merely it'due south a game I don't want to play.
More to the point, it'southward a game I tin can't afford to play. Writing Coffin Dodgers was fun, but it was fun that took every 2d of spare time I had for five months – and if you're a parent, you'll know how precious spare time tin exist. And writing was the easy fleck. Writing the commencement draft took a few months, just the adjacent seven drafts took a year and a one-half of RSI-inducing extra-curricular work. Believe me, that wasn't fun – and neither is buggering about with ebook publishing platforms, checking formatting and wondering why Amazon's system is so bloody frustrating.
I'grand not doing this for the money – I've junked another, much more commercial novel considering Coffin Dodgers' globe is the ane I want to spend time in – only I'k non an idiot either: time spent writing (or editing, or formatting) a book is time I could be spending on paid journalism, or on pitching for paid work, or recording stuff in Logic, or on killing space monsters on Xbox.
This turned out a chip longer than I intended, then I'll wrap upwardly: I'll be plugging my book in a day or two. If y'all'd similar to buy it, that'd exist smashing. If you don't, I hope the plugging isn't also abrasive.
This could exist interesting. Businessweek:
Armed with licenses from the music labels and publishers, Apple volition exist able to scan customers' digital music libraries in iTunes and chop-chop mirror their collections on its ain servers, say 3 people briefed on the talks. If the audio quality of a item song on a user's hard drive isn't proficient enough, Apple will be able to replace it with a higher-quality version. Users of the service will then be able to stream, whenever they want, their songs and albums directly to PCs, iPhones, iPads, and perhaps ane day fifty-fifty cars.
Sounds good, merely of course price is going to be the key factor. The article suggests that it might be rolled into MobileMe, the£60-per-year cloud sync service Apple currently offers. That makes sense: MobileMe's been due a revamp for a long time, and the rumours have been suggesting a music angle for a few months now.
Luv & Hat is a funny blog by Stuart Heritage, who writes for The Guardian, and Robyn Wilder, who is a woman. Each post takes a single subject and one of the duo praises it while the other damns information technology. Today's post on cinemas fabricated me laugh.
Nothing else is worse than going to the cinema. Nothing elsein the world. Having a nosebleed is better than going to the picture palace. Falling down the stairs is better than going to the cinema. Catching a sexually transmitted disease from a zoo fauna, and then drinking a pint of someone else's sick andthen taking a naked tour of a wasp manufacturing plant while a crying pensioner describes the final x minutes of Requiem For a Dream to you in graphic detail is better than going to the cinema. The subtext of this paragraph is that I don't really like going to the cinema very much.
I exercise a wee news roundup for Techradar each week, and this week social networks were the principal story. Facebook, it seems, is coming for your children.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg doesn't like the manner the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act prevents Facebook from giving accounts to under-13s. But it's not because he wants to make money from advertisers desperate to target the elusive and big-spending pre-teen market. No sirree.
It'southward because getting the wee ones on Facebook will make them clever, or something. "In the futurity, software and applied science volition enable people to learn a lot from their fellow students," Zuckerberg says.
Remember the adage "If y'all can't see what the site is selling, the product is you"? That'south Facebook – so when Zuck says he wants kids on Facebook, I have a mental image of children beingness fed into mincers and made into sausages. I know I'm not Facebook's biggest fan – I'd love to write a column called Fuck Zuck where I brand appalling and libellous comments virtually any abrasive thing the Facebook founder's done that month – but when a company whose concern is selling your life to advertisers says it wants your kids, my Sinister Detector tends to go off the scale.
According to Reuters, Zuckerberg is at present "contradicting some media reports": "some time in the future, I think information technology makes sense to explore that, simply nosotros're non working on it right now." What he isn't doing is changing his position. The comment that kicked off the "coming for your kids" stories was: "That will be a fight nosotros take on at some point."
He isn't saying Facebook doesn't desire your children. He'due south saying Facebook doesn't desire them just withal.
You lot know that LA Noire game? I've got it. It'south rubbish.
Well, maybe not rubbish. Tedious and annoying might exist a meliorate mode to put it. The facial capture technology is boggling, merely that's almost information technology. I was hoping for Grand Theft Ellroy, XBLA Confidential, but I just got bored.
A more intelligent critique from the inimitable Richard Cobbett is over hither:
…oh, LA Noire can be a painful game. Let's get-go with Cole Phelps himself, securely unlikeable guy that he is. He's fourscore% the most dull square in the history of heroes, with the other xx% by and large squidged together like some kind of chimera made from utter, total dicks. Every single 'error' I accept made in this whole game has been a direct consequence of Phelps being either a moron or an asshole, and usually both.
I spotted this on MetaFilter: a superb and badly distressing article about the rise and fall of Bill Haley.
After ten minutes or so Billnitzer would bring him his food. But usually he was thinking about something, and so he ignored it. After a while, though, he'd first to shift in his seat and look around. And then he'd kickoff to hum. Billnitzer, refilling his coffee cup, knew the tune—everybody knew that tune. Information technology was "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock," the acknowledged rock song of all time. She smiled, because she knew what he was doing. He was giving people around him clues. He wanted people to hear him and say, "You're Beak Haley, aren't yous?"
But they rarely did.
It's funny stuff, but the funniest thing of all is that my daughter *becomes* Bat Hound. Her eyes become slits, her back straightens and her voice thickens. If you've e'er wondered what Christian Bale's Batman would exist like if he were a domestic dog played past a three-twelvemonth-old girl, then my house is the identify to notice out.
As a result of all of this, I was woken the other twenty-four hour period from a perfectly pleasant tardily afternoon nap to detect Ace the Bat Hound on my bed. "Fourth dimension to get up, daddy," the Bat Hound snarled. I said something groggily, and the Bat Hound'south eyes became narrower however. "Time. To. Go. Up." And with a swish of a cloak – actually a pink raincoat, its hood hooked over a 3-twelvemonth-one-time'southward forehead – the Bat Hound moved to the end of the bed. 2 forepart paws were raised, superhero-style, and a unmarried command was barked: "Doggy slide!" And and then the Bat Hound was gone.
Children are weird.
Last yr I blogged nearly BBC Scotland's The Scheme, a fly on the wall documentary serial filmed in Kilmarnock. It was pulled for legal reasons – people featured in it ended up in court, and the episodes including them couldn't be shown until the legal process was complete – and it's back this evening. If y'all watched it last fourth dimension you lot tin can skip this week and side by side, as they're showing the full series. If y'all're not in Scotland you'll exist able to scout information technology on iPlayer.
The plan has attracted trigger-happy criticism, and information technology'due south been dubbed "poverty porn". The critics have a point. Every bit I wrote when it get-go aired:
People doing squeamish things or fifty-fifty normal things aren't exactly riveting Television receiver, and so there's precious little of that in the programme. What you get instead is a freak show, a "await at the funny poor people!" programme for the smug middle classes.
Then again:
I suspect few sensible people would concur to exist filmed for that long in the beginning identify, then what you stop upwards with is a year in the life of attention whores and idiots, edited to brand them wait more than whorish and idiotic. Of course it'south non representative: most people'south lives aren't interesting enough to sentry.
I'k increasingly convinced that, with the honourable exception of this site, you lot should never read beyond the end of a product listing or online article. Comments are where the crazies live.
As you lot may have noticed, Kate McCann has written a book about her daughter's abduction and the backwash. Over to y'all, Amazon reviewer Matthew Charles.
I dont understand why this detail case is of such loftier knowing, kids get kidnaped all the time and while yes it is sad escpeically for the parents, i dont become why this one is so important.
plus no one seems to mention the fact that the parents left their children solitary in a hotel room while they went out for dinner, everyone seems to exit out that trivial detail.
and if u ask me its a little sick to publish a volume, if peopel really think all the money is goign to the cahrity and so… thats but ridiculous thinking.
39 out of 75 people found that review helpful.
Prolific reader Matthew has reviewed one other book, Pat Reeat's "Whatever happened to the English?", which he reckons is "truly a work of fine art". He says:
An incredibly well written accept on modern england… oh sorry I meant "united kingdom" no doubt the law will arrest me for making that simple fault rather than stopping actual crime.
What has this land come besides!!!?????
Indeed. What has it come up as well!!!?????
[The quote in the title is from Private Eye – information technology's a running joke in the magazine's From The Message Boards section.]
Me, on Techradar, virtually Google's brand new Chromebooks:
Ah, says Samsung. "With nothing stored directly on the Serial five, malicious spyware, trojans and viruses are a thing of the past." They're a matter of the past on my Windows seven PC as well, considering I'm non an idiot who opens unsolicited files that claim to be details of taxation refunds or photos of Pippa Middleton's arse.
Source: http://www.bigmouthstrikesagain.com/2011/05/
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