For some reason, there seems to be a mindless clawing to mediocrity going on. We elevate anyone who accomplishes anything to the level of “magical being” and then we determine that we aren’t that good, or that lucky, or that, whatever. But I think more than personal low self esteem, the problem is a type of social communism. In which we’ve been led to believe that somehow everybody has to be equal.
Excellent post.
Previously here:
And the freebie? Well I wouldn’t want to leave my WATE listeners out, so here… Digital Magic, the sequel to Chasing the Bard, free and complete. Enjoy and spread the word about it and Double Trouble.
Go there for the PDF file.
A NIGHT WITH THE JERSEY DEVIL
Dear Friends and Fans,
If you grew up in central or south Jersey, you grew up with the “Jersey Devil.” Here’s a little musical Halloween treat. Have fun!
Bruce Springsteen
Thanks, Bruce! Happy Halloween!
The Triumph of Ignorance: Why morons succeed in US politics.
It wasn’t always like this. The founding fathers of the republic – men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton – were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W Bush and Sarah Palin?
An excellent post. Go read.
Internet video finally pays off
Gongora and his wife, Diana, founded Language Assistance Telemedicine in 1999 – and spent the better part of a decade trying to find online video technology that worked. Their story is a profile in persistence. The Houston-based company tried two ineffective tech solutions before coming up with the right combination of hardware and software last year. Its 2008 revenue is projected to rise 25% – no mean feat in a downturn.
Emphasis added by me.
A very interesting story of some interest to writers and future eBook promotion.
Previously here:
How Our Future Does Things
I Am Internationally Persecuted!
Live jkk & Chippy!
Financial Armageddon: Korea and Japan Sign On
I’ve just learned that my publisher, Kaplan, has sold the rights to the Korean and Japanese versions of Financial Armageddon.
In celebration (or, perhaps, as a final inducement to those English-speaking readers who’ve not yet gone out and bought a copy of their own), I’ve just uploaded a PDF version of Chapter One, entitled “Debt,” from the hardcover version of Financial Armageddon.
Go there for the link.
Hey, where’s Day 29 and Day 30?!
At least now I know what the allusion to the “Chuck Norris signs” was about earlier today.
I spent most of the day watching Dave Farrow on the Sony Reader Revolution Cam.
Now I’ve been cropping 162 screensnaps to go through for a post tomorrow.
Blogging will resume as abnormally as usual tomorrow.
First, a video from Dave Farrow.
Dave Farrow — speed reader and memory expert — started a read-a-thon thirty days ago in the window of DataVision in New York City at the behest of Sony to promote the Sony Reader and to donate as many eBooks as possible to schools across the country.
Today, around 4:45PM EDST, that mission was accomplished.
Dave Farrow is gone. What remains is a commemorative sign in his former seat.
44,097 pages were turned.
Over 100 eBooks were read.
Sony will donate 4.4 million eBooks to schools.
I have a ginormous number of screensnaps for the final day to sort through to produce the final post for the Sony Reader Revolution cam posts here.
I think so.
Google has arbitrarily stepped in as an uninvited third-party to put “in print” thousands (perhaps millions) of books that have been out of print.
Being out-of-print is grounds for an author to demand a reversion of rights granted in the original contract.
That basically ends the business arrangement between writer and publisher.
The publisher took a commercial chance, it didn’t work out, the book was never kept alive, it stopped earning money, and the writer should have all rights reverted and be free to make commercial deals elsewhere.
Google has upset this equation by putting those books back “in print” and has suddenly jeopardized the future livelihoods of thousands of writers as we enter this age of eBooks.
Publishers holding contracts that long ago should have reverted can now claim grounds of works being “in print” even though those damned publishers never did the deed themselves.
And what’s more: they probably never, ever intended to do that deed, either!
I really don’t give a damn what a limited author’s group and a limited collection of publishers have agreed to.
Neither one of them speaks for me. Neither one of them can speak for any other writer who is not party to this agreement.
Google is going to find itself having to negotiate with individual writers for the rights they mistakenly believe they have been granted by this “settlement.”
This is a settlement only between Google and those two parties.
The two parties suing Google do not at all have the right to speak for every writer out there.
I foresee writers getting together and filing suits either singly or in groups.
That big 67% to “rightsholder” is still bullshit, when it comes to conventional book contracts. Some of these contracts will not contain provisions for electronic rights and I’d damn well bet money that publishers are going to dole out only the printed book royalty rate — and the lowest rate they can get away with too.
That 67% should bypass publishers who have kept works out of print — that money justly belongs solely to the writers.
Google, stop dancing around your desks.
This isn’t over.
Mike Cane 2008 
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