Sony Reader Revolution Cam #10: SMOOCH!

My timing is perfect. 7:40PM EDST tonight:

The Smooch heard round the Internet!

More hot action at the Sony Reader Revolution cam.

Google Book Search: Medialoper FTW

The Google Book Search Deal: Winners and Losers

Two items. I didn’t realize this:

Google: It’s hard to overstate how important this agreement is for Google. Google has essentially acquired the digital rights to the long tail. At least the portion of the long tail that’s locked up in out of print books. That’s a VERY long tail.

Emphasis added by me.

And I didn’t know this bit at all:

Amazon: Amazon’s 190,000 Kindle titles look puny compared to the millions of books Google now has access to. Granted many of those Kindle titles make up the big head of consumer demand, as opposed to the long tail. Still, Google now has the ability to monetize millions of books Amazon can’t, if for no other reason because they’re out of print. What’s more, under the new agreement Google has the right to sell printed copies of those books via print on demand. And I have a sneaking suspicion that Google still has a few more surprises in store for us. Android may turn out to be more than just a mobile phone platform.

Emphasis added by me.

Holy cow. Millions of out-of-print books are now POD candidates!?

Yes, that’s good for Google, but now all those contracts in the hands of the dying dinosaurs of print will never, ever be prised from their greedy, grasping claws!

Amazon lost, yes. But writers have just been screwed again!

Google Book Search: Now Legal

I don’t have to link to the settlement stories. Besides, the only one that really matters comes from the Non-Suit Suits over at Pan Macmillan who are — just like Suits — on the ball when it comes to the dough:

[. . .] the settlement money will partially be used to fund an independent, not-for-profit Book Rights registry which will work towards ensuring authors and publishers receive the money they are owed under the agreement, and the revenue split between the rights holder and Google is set at 63-37 respectively, which is surely the right way round.

Emphasis added by me.

Unlike Amazon’s criminal split: 65 to Amazon and 35 to be fought over tooth-and-nail between dying dinosaur print publisher, writer, and writer’s agent (or simply given as chump change in one paltry coal lump to a writer who direct publishes).

I noted Google Book Search once before.

Then I noticed what it was doing to writers — and I stopped.

Now I can go back to linking to it, since it will mean money in the pockets of writers.

This is going to take some getting used to for me.

And all of this puts Google one more step closer to crushing Amazon’s eBook monopoly ambitions.

O.M.G.: Toilet Tattoos!

Toilet Tattoos

— Via Twitter from SpreadTheNewsPR

Print Is Dead. Again.

The Monitor Ends Daily Print Edition

After a century of continuous publication, The Christian Science Monitor will abandon its weekday print edition and appear online only, its publisher announced Tuesday. The cost-cutting measure makes The Monitor the first national newspaper to largely give up on print.

The paper is currently published Monday through Friday, and will move to online only in April, although it will also introduce a weekend magazine. John Yemma, The Monitor’s editor, said that moving to the Web only will mean it can keep its eight foreign bureaus open while still lowering costs.

“We have the luxury — the opportunity — of making a leap that most newspapers will have to make in the next five years,” Mr. Yemma said

Emphasis added by me.

Oh, it’s going to be brutal. The economy itself will force changes, not just the impetus of the Internet.

At some point, say when the Sony Reader has added wireless, we’ll see a new thing: I’m coining it ePrint. Formatted editions for e-reading devices. As great as access to the Internet is, there is still no device that can deal with web pages that are formatted for desktop monitors. The iPhone tries, but it’s still not good enough.

The Christian Science Monitor now joins Playgirl.

— Via Twitter from michaelcasey

Does The Internet Make Reviews Obsolete?

I think so.

This is something I’ve been meaning to write about for some time.

I could never read a music review. It was like encountering a foreign language that looked like English, but was some sort of bizarre code.

Today, is there any need for music reviewing? Anyone can pop over to their favorite online music store or even a band website and immediately listen to samples. Would a bad review matter if you listened on your own and liked the music?

Book reviews usually set my teeth on edge, as mentioned in an earlier post.

Is there any need for book reviews today? Anyone can pop over to a publisher’s site, or an eBookstore, or a writer’s website and immediately read a free excerpt or an entire free chapter. Would any review — good or bad — have an effect if you personally liked or didn’t like what you read?

What inspired this post today was this review: The Swap

But what works against the novel most is Moore’s maddeningly elliptical prose style. He seems to take forever to get a point across. As a result, all attempts at humor — be they bone-dry or over-the-top — are completely lost in verbiage. The same goes for most plot developments, including the relationship that results when the wife of one Harvey’s schoolmates leaves her husband during a post-reunion party and takes up with Harvey. Then there’s the murder investigation, which ought to add suspense, but instead reads like a distraction. And, as if all this weren’t disappointing enough, the novel doesn’t end so much as it simply … stops.

What exactly does any of that really mean? Especially when it begins with an expectation on part of the reviewer:

With its Roy Lichtenstein-inspired cover illustration and graphic title design, Antony Moore’s THE SWAP looks promising. And the back cover synopsis makes it sound like a Donald E. Westlake-like comedic romp of murder, misunderstandings and related mishaps in the world of comic book dealers and readers. Would that it were! Sadly, this debut novel is a clumsy, ill-conceived work that never really delivers on any such promises.

So how can I believe anything that proceeds from that premise?

I did some investigation and it seems the publisher of this book has spent a bit of money to give it a shiny website.

That tells me this book isn’t the disposable thing the reviewer considered it to be. It also hints loudly that he missed the entire point.

I went on to Random House’s site to read an excerpt.

I liked what I read. So what did that review actually accomplish?

The most that can be said for it is that it inspired this post.

The worst that can be said is so obvious, I won’t state it.

Reviews of music and books: obsolete.

Mike Cane Does FAIL!

Searching for a prior post, I was confronted by my own words here:

If I ever encountered someone who told me to check out his goddammed Twitterfeed or FriendFeed or FacebookFeed, I’d tell him to fuck off. Any one of those three — as well as a few others — automatically indicates to me that I’m dealing with a narcissistic twit who is deep in the grip of self-delusion, believing that what he does is worth knowing by everyone.

Hey, Cane, you eejit! Who’s on Twitter now, huh? Huh?

How many times have you had Twitter as a source for a blog post here, huh?

Who the fuck are these people who think they can tell others what to do?

Oh wait.

That’s me!

Oh, more FAIL! to come. That’s part of this life.

Covers And Spelling: Both Matter!

Another bread crumb trail led to this, which began at The Life of a Publisher blog.

I was meaning to follow the Blog Book Tour mentioned here, only to have it somehow hijacked when I saw this great cover:

I followed that to an interview with the writer and then, alas, to the site for the book itself where my interest was just about derailed by a book trailer for it. A book trailer that contained this spelling land mine:

Three things:

1) That’s inexcusable

2) As soon as it was pointed out, the trailer should have been pulled and corrected

3) It makes me wonder if I’d find the book itself filled with such sloppiness

My initial enthusiasm to read this book has hit a speedbump. (Which really is bad, as it’s available in Sony Reader eBook format!)

How many others might have been repelled by that too?

Penguin Books Has Podcasts

Gee, you think I’d, you know, be told this via their Twitter presence.

Marketing FAIL!

As I type this, I’m listening to a six-minute podcast with David Lynch. A part of the production values are sub-par, even below amateur — at least where the questions posed to Lynch are concerned. Lynch’s voice is pro-quality.

Here are the previous podcasts right now:

Click = big

There are also a few videos, including one with William Gibson. (Does he really type like that?)

Book Trailers: Um, No.

Weekend Chat: 3 Reasons Why Book Trailers Don’t Work

Every week I receive and search for great book trailers to promote on Christian Fiction Blog. In the beginning I was excited about what I found. It was a new concept, so I was game. However, after a few months of posting book trailers and reading others I’ve come to a conclusion. Book Trailers Don’t Work and here’s why:

She’s right.

I have in my Bookmarks a site that collects book trailers. I rarely go there.

What’s better than a book trailer?

Video of an author reading an excerpt of his work, like Christopher Fowler does here.

Audio of an author reading his work, as Cliff Burns does here.

Look what audio did for Mark Jeffrey:

His first podiobook, Max Quick 1: The Pocket and the Pendant, has received over 2 million downloads to date.

Go on, point me to a book trailer with as many views!

I was initially excited about the idea of book trailers too. But the more I saw, the less I liked them. So many are just so bad, I can’t see how they can generate any interest in the book being flogged.

Plus, the very idea of watching a video for something to be read seems, to me, just bizarre. A local talk radio station once spent a great deal of money advertising on TV. That seemed bizarre to me too.

I believe there is a hierarchy:

Reading
Audio
Video

And each one competes against the other. I’d rather read a book than listen to it. I’d rather listen to radio than see it. I’d rather watch video for stuff that’s best suited to it. (On this last point, how many of you have read a book based on a TV series and came away with the uneasy feeling that something was simply … missing?)

Also, since most books being sold have free excerpts available to read, why settle for someone else’s poor video advertising interpretation instead? Why, in fact, run the risk of repelling people from a book? Attention is precious on the Internet.

The money being spent on book trailers could be better used hiring a temp to do nothing more than go through the Internet day after day and find likely blogs to market books to via email invites. I really doubt that people going to YouTube, Vimeo, Veoh, et al, are there to find something to read.

Hmmm … and you know, even hiring a temp isn’t cost-effective. Why should each publisher reinvent the wheel? This is a business for someone sharp out there. (And if such a business already exists, the people running it aren’t very sharp. Why the hell hasn’t my email box been swamped with book stuff? I receive tweets from three publishers. But have they even tried to follow-up with emails? Noooo!)

Generating interest in eBooks as eBooks is going to be even more difficult because the most likely way people will encounter them is via an eBookstore, a promo email from such a store, or a website or blog. There are no shelves to browse. On the Internet, the shelves are invisible.

Just before I was about to post this, I got this via Twitter: Study: When it comes to influence, bloggers beat friend lists

Half of all those surveyed who identify as “blog readers” (people who read more than one blog per month, a fifth of total survey respondents) say that blogs are important to them when it comes to making purchasing decisions. But they don’t necessarily find them to be all that reliable: only 15 percent of blog readers, and five percent of all those surveyed said that in the past year they had trusted a blog to help them make a purchase decision.

That’s still higher than the number of people who said they used social-network recommendations, though: ten percent of “blog readers,” and four percent of all those surveyed.

I have a MySpace account. For a time, I used it daily. Now, hardly ever.

I disagree with the philosophy of such aggregator sites. MySpace has gotten singularly annoying, outright censoring links that are passed on to me via MySpace Mail or Bulletins. Plus, MySpace pages tend to be bloated as hell and I dread clicking links because I never know if that click is going to freeze up my browser and force me to crash-restart it.

I can see the appeal of such sites for those who really want to network with people they actually know. But beyond that, it becomes a very annoying marketing machine with a very high noise-to-signal ratio.

I know that writers and publishers are on MySpace. I’m beginning to think that’s a mistake. I don’t see it being a good strategy for eBook awareness except to that limited MySpace audience. And if you’re going to put that amount of effort into MySpace, why not the larger Internet?