Don't buy your books from Amazon

So, it's been a long time since I've posted. Lots of reasons. Mainly, I guess, that I've been busy with paying work--a contract that went south a couple weeks ago leaving me high, dry and as usual, broke. In the meantime, Amazon.com did something appalling. And it concerns me because:

1) I am an Amazon stockholder; and,
2) because I have long planned to publish the On the Edge books under Private Ice's own imprint using Print on Demand to print them.

Basically, Amazon bought BookSurge, one of the minor players in POD printing a couple years ago. That printer had an appalling rep for low quality, bad service, and shady business. Recently, publishers which print with with major POD printer (LSI) have been getting calls from BookSurge saying "switch to us for printing or else." The "or else" was "or else we'll turn off your book's buy buttons, meaning that to get books sold on Amazon you have to pay to have them stocked ($29/yr plus small quantity postage every time Amazon wants a few more) or you have to say good-bye to the lifeline of Amazon sales--most small and micro publishers rely on Amazon sales almost exclusively since bookstores won't carry them. You can read more about Amazon's extortionate demands in Let BookSurge Print Your Books, or Else... and IT'S NOT OVER! Amazon Tells Publishers, Pay Us To Print Your Books...Or Else and at the Amazon BookSurge Information Clearinghouse

Now, most of you are readers, not publishers, not writers, how does Amazon's move affect you? Well, say you want to buy a POD printed book (and they come from big publishers as well as small). You won't get free shipping. You might have to buy it from Amazon Marketplace and pay whatever shipping a third party wants to charge. Even if you do get free shipping, to make up the losses that Booksurge's higher printing costs and higher discounting demands cause (or the increased costs of Amazon (dis)Advantage, publishers will have to raise prices... by 30-50%. That's coming out of YOUR POCKET. What's more, eventually, Amazon will remove all LSI printed books from their catalog... that's right, they will tell you which books you can buy and which ones you can't. It's just plain fascist.

But say you're a traditionally published author, the travails of POD crap-houses don't concern you. How do you think your backlist gets printed? Right. POD. So when a buyer orders your book from Amazon and it comes with cover on screwy or the last 4 pages missing, who do you think they're going to blame? Not Amazon, whom they don't even know is responsible! But it'll make YOU look bad. Not only that, but in order to be available both at Amazon and at regular bookstores, your publisher will have to maintain accounts at BOTH LSI and Booksurge, raising the costs of producing books and lowering your eventual payday... higher costs means fewer books bought, lower advances, and an eventual hit to your pocketbook.

This is a bad move for everyone: authors, publishers, customers, stockholders. Amazon is not known for backing down in the face of even overwhelming public disapproval, but they will notice if we stop shopping there. So despite being a stockholder, I encourage you to STOP spending your money at Amazon. Use their web site to do research, but order and buy elsewhere. Don't point people there for book purchases. If you can get along without revenue from Amazon Associates Program, take those links down. Send letters to Amazon's Investor Relations at ir@amazon.com. Sign the Stop the BookSurge Monopoly petition.

Here's the text of my email to Amazon:

To whom it may concern:

I hold a quantity of Amazon stock in my daughter's education account and I am very displeased with recent actions taken against small publishers who use Print on Demand to produce their books. Extortion is not good business. Nor is it good for Amazon's reputation in the marketplace.

There are no good options for most small or micro publishers. CreateSpace is NOT a professional printing option. The cover "template" is laughable. The rights grab in its contract is completely unacceptable to ANY publisher. BookSurge has a history of poor quality, rotten service, dicey business actions. And frankly, this latest doesn't help any. Moreover, thy don't even want customers with fewer than 10 books. How do you think publishers GET to "more than 10"? Amazon "Advantage" is a joke because it's so unprofitable and annoying for the publisher to have to pay postage to mail one or two books at a time.

The reduction in profit is going to either raise the price of books (how does THAT help your customers or us stockholders?) or send many small pubs careening into bankruptcy. Any way you slice it, this wrongheaded policy reduces the number of good books that Amazon has to sell. The vanity publishers have little to lose by signing away their "author's" profits, but many, many small publishers--which would otherwise put out good books that actually sell--will go under and more will never get started. Bad books will remain on Amazon, but many good books will be unavailable. This is NOT good business.

What would be good business? How about improving the contracts so they are attractive and not abusive? How about improving BookSurge's print product and pricing? How about providing MORE value for the money instead of threatening people who Amazon thinks are too small to fight back?

Oh, and for the record, I am an Amazon customer too. And I am so disgusted with the BookSurge debacle that I am boycotting Amazon. Last Christmas, I spent over a thousand dollars at Amazon. I buy all my books there. This year, I will not buy a single book from Amazon. I won't spend a thousand dollars at Christmas. I will take my money to local book stores and to Amazon's bricks and mortar competitors. Why? Because at those stores, I can buy any book I want. They may have to special order it, but they won't tell me what I can or cannot buy based on who publishes it and how it is printed.

If BookSurge cannot compete in the marketplace, they should not use Amazon's large market share (more than 10% of the US book market) to force people to use their more expensive, lower quality service.

Insurance pirates...

Okay, so this was kind of spammed to an email list I am on. It is:

1) hysterical
2) too true
3) about a critical problem here in the US.

My family is very fortunate that we have good healthcare (my husband is military and they have comprehensive healthcare), but I am often concerned about others I know who do not. Many of my friends have no insurance. My own brother had none and ended up with $20K in medical bills in the last year alone. This is something that simply HAS to change and the vested interests will not allow it. Enjoy the video, it's an amusing take on a very serious subject.

Ego Surfing in Technicolor...

So, a friend of mine, JulieAnn Henneman got a meme from someone else and didn't know what a meme was... for those who don't, it's an idea that propagates itself across the net in a viral fashion. Anyway, the meme amused me and I decided to try it. Basically, you had to look up your own name and see what kind of images popped up. Since I can't seem to contact some of the illustrators for permission, I am only going to list links where appropriate.

I started with my nickname "dejah." It came from Burroughs Princess of Mars via Heinlein's The Number of the Best--the two Dejah's are very different characters and I reference the namesake rather than the original. But most of the art out there is of the Princess of Mars (who never seemed to wear any clothes). Of the variety of really graphic ones, I like this Dejah Thoris by comic artist Frank Cho.

Interestingly, the shorter version of my nickname "dej" brought up a wealth of unusual photos. Here's what looks like an Indian Chieftain Dejazmatch Balcha Aba Nefso:



Another was a webcam of a town in Romania called Dej.

And this, the Dale Earnhardt Jr Wishbike.

Then I went looking for my real name Mary E Tyler, and among the many images of the book cover for Google Analytics, I found this odd image of a gravestone for a woman with my exact name.

Darn, JulieAnn had a lot of interesting artwork. I get weird sex pictures, motorcycles (how apropos!) and gravestones. Not even a little lamb to temper my amusement!

Survery Jones: My Political Compass

It's been a while since I have updated this blog. I've been overwhelmed this summer. For most of the month of June, I was down with kidney stones, a sprained ankle and moving. Since I got better, I have been working my behind off trying to get the city house ready to sell (JUST in time for the housing market to go completely south). But, I was reading Crooks and Liars yesterday morning (as usual) and I came upon this nifty little political test.

The idea behind it is that there are two components to conservatism. There is an economic scale defined by the extremes of Communism (communalism) vs neo-liberalism (libertarianism) and there is a social scale defined by its extremes Authoritarianism (fascism) vs Libertarianism (anarchism). Put more simply: authority vs anarchy and communism vs unrestrained free markets. For example, here's how some famous world leaders rate on the political compass:



So, I took the test (I'd really love to see my neo-con friend Heather take this test. It's interesting!). Here's where I fall:





It appears I am just to the right of Gandhi, which I do not mind. I am a bit more liberal than I though of was, perhaps because of my libertarian leanings (and libertarians normally consider themselves on the right). But on this scale libertarian socially is left while libertarian economically is right and I tend to be more libertarian socially than economically.

But what's really telling is this image from Crooks and Liars about where the candidates fall. Even the MOST liberal of the democrats are FAR more authoritarian and far more economically libertarian. They are not very darned liberal AT ALL. No wonder I am not terribly thrilled about ANY of the presidential candidates!

I should note, at times, I found the test to be a bit too black and white. There were questions where I didn't exactly agree or disagree. Where the question itself seemed unreal. Anyway, so much for my survey jones. I'll be quite pleased when skating season begins again and when I have time to follow it.
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In other news, my husband made Chief (E7). In the Navy, this is a BIG deal. They put you through a six week indoctrination that involves a lot of silly stuff, more volunteer work, and a whole lot of working late. I am presently conducting my marriage my cell phone. And after 5 years of not smoking, it took exactly five days for the indoc process to stress him out enough that he is back to killing himself.

No, I'm not very happy/

Five weeks and counting til pinning.
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I've joined a new team blog. I haven't posted yet, due to email problems but when I do, the new blog is Mama Needs a Book Contract. It's a blog about writing and parenting (or in my case, women's issues). Looking forward to seeing you there!

Editor's Choice!

I read Salon pretty often. Recently after the VT murders (which hit me really hard as you well know, I wrote a comment on an article on what English teachers ought to do about students who write disturbing stuff. Out of 122 comments, mine was chosen as one of 20 Editor's Choices. I'm tickled. Read my comment. You may need to click through a "day pass" advertisement if you don't have a Salon subscription.

New Figure Skating Feature

A while back, Blogger (which I use to manage this blog) added a labels feature. Of course, they didn't provide a way to LIST the labels for old style templates--only for the new style XML templates. That stunk.

So, being bored and grumpy tonight, I decided to write a script that would do exactly that. If you scroll down below the Skating News, previous posts and the archives in the sidebar at the right, you'll find the list of labels. They are in no particular order. Maybe someday, I'll add some sorting code. Who knows.

If you click on a particular label, you'll be taken to the page where all the posts published under that label have been aggregated. I haven't gone back and labeled every post, so there is a lot missing. Oh well. When I get time.

For now, enjoy.

Figure Skating Frozen in Time

I love YouTube. I really do. I love how you can finds all kinds of video from all kinds of time periods, from all over the world. So I am starting a little video series. From time to time, I am going to post videos of figure skaters, famous and not. Sometimes, when there's time, I'll do some commentary and other times, you'll just have to cope.

So, to kick this off, here are two very interesting videos of Dorothy Hamill. Dorothy is known for her flow, her exquisite edging, her quiet power and serenity. But this is a Dorothy of a later age. The Dorothy of 1976 was a choppy Dorothy, an athletic Dorothy, not a very graceful Dorothy--a jock. Her spins travel badly, rotate slowly, and are generally poor--except for her layback which was quite impressive and lovely. Her program was packed with footwork and action--reminded me of a CoP program in that regard--even though she never did anything more difficult than a double jump. She was dynamic--and FAST--and very enjoyable to watch. But the deep edges? The quiet flow? The serenity? M.I.A.

1976 US Nationals


Even the Dorothy of 1980 was far less of the Dorothy we have come to know, and more the jock. Her spins improved markedly, though they still travel. She still had her speed. This program is an exhibition, so it's a bit emptier, more stroking, less footwork, but all the jumps are there. There are beginnings of the smooth-as-cream stroking and the deep edges.

1980 Olympics Exhibition


Despite the jarring fall in the middle of this program, this is the Dorothy we have come to know and love. Her edges and stroking are breathtaking. She does a lovely pivot move in the program of a sort you really don't see anymore--no time for stuff like that. She had, by this time, lost many if not all of her jumps. She would later regain them. There are hints--just hints--of the athletic young girl she once was as well as the maturity of many years gone. Dorothy is a national treasure.

What a Wonderful World (1995)

Blog survey?

I find this on a blog I read called Crooks and Liars. It's a survey about how/whether/when you read blogs. Feed YOUR survey jones. Please take my blog reader survey!

The last day... and an ob figure skating

This week has been hellish, I tell ya.

My mother is visiting this week and as my MIL says, "houseguest are like fish, they stink after 3 days." No, honestly, I love my mom, but she is tiring herself out and she really seems to resent the fact that I am working my ass off from dawn to dusk. I don't know why that is. She feels put upone because she's not allowed to bother me. Okay... she's not allowed to bother me. It's a fact.

But I shouldn't get annoyed when she calls it "guard duty" when my US Navy husband has "duty." He's not guarding anything, he's just covering the night shift this week. It's inacurate. But I shouldn't nit-pick.

Truth is, I am TIRED.

I've been busting my ass for weeks. It's allergy season. I had two week long projects this week each of which would have taken the whole work week and I had to do BOTH of them. I did, but at the cost of not being able to do much else that wasn't optional. I spent 2 days at the doctor (one for me and one for Akey). I spent 3 days working. I'm beat.

The good news--if it can be called good news--is that I finished the project for the employer which is laying me off. I've spent some time prospecting and sent some resumes. I don't see much, but I guess I can keep prospecting. I sent a couple "perfect" ones, but no response so far. I find myself more drawn to regular working job that guarantee X hours per week rather than individual articles.

I made some major headway on writing chapter 9 of Google Analytics 2.0. Jerri says that Google announced that they are beginning migrating everyone to the new version. This is great, as Google Analytics 2.0 went up on Amazon already. I've started tracking it with my booktracker. It's pretty pathetic at present. It'll improve. The current edition Amazon Rank Tracker is still doing okay.

So, last but not least, I saw this video this morning and the first thing I thought--before I saw the caption--was, "boy, this looks like modern figure skating." So, here's your video this week.



Enjoy...

And yes, they are the famous Ross Sisters singing contortionists. The video is from 1944.

The F-Word

I finally saw the pain specialist about my arthritis today. The news was not particularly good. He thinks I'm having some back problems (knew that) and that the pain in my hip might be mostly due to that. I don't agree with that, because my back is not particularly bad now, but my hip is EVIL and worse when it rains--explain to me how muscle pain gets worse when it rains?

Anyway...

He agreed with me that my PCM is a bit of a dolt (not in so many words) in that she didn't know that a negative rheumatology panel doesn't really rule out related problems. When one is in flare, the tests are positive, but when one is not in flare, you can do a zillion tests, but they won't be positive. A rheumatologist--to which my PCM refused to refer me--would have known that. So that was one of the points he left me with... that I may indeed have something RH related (or Lupus, which also hides when not in flare).

But, he went on to say the f-word. No, not that one.

Fibromyalgia.

Just what I always wanted. Something painful, progressive and incurable! Ye ha! Yeah, yeah, I know, it's treatable. You can cope with it. I don't really want to, truth be told. I am still very disgruntled about being in chronic pain. I'm not frightened, rather, I am pissed. Damn it, I want to be healthy again! I am tired of being sick and fat and achy.

The doc didn't say it WAS fibro, but he tested the pain points and they DO hurt. I think the idea is to treat it with fibro medicines and see if it responds. He gave me a scrip for a Fibro med which I forget the name of. We'll check back in 6 weeks to see if it's working. I have to take the darned stuff 3x/day. Which is going to be a trick since I can't remember to EAT 3x/day. He told me to keep taking the Celebrex, but he was able to set my mind at rest about some of the safety issues I was concerned about.

I wish I was happier about this, but I'm not. It sucks.