I guess the battle is still raging above me.
I saw them back available (I swear I did), but now they’re not. Sigh. I guess it’s a waiting game. I’m willing to wait with Macmillan, since I still need them to win.
The odd thing is, I’ve been fighting them becasue I want my books on the kindle. I still do. I get asked why they aren’t there all the time. I live in Amazon Country.
Maybe when it’s over I can have both – physical books on Amazon and ebooks on Kindle. And BTW, I’m fine with the ebook release date being after the hardcover release. But it should be by or before the mass market.
Our Books Have Returned
And what a silly weekend it was.
At least at the moment, my books are once again available at Amazon. They remain unavailable on the Kindle.
I sell content. I like to call that content stories. In general, I don’t control availability or format or price.
I want to wake up in a world where the stories I tell are available in print (via Amazon and my local Indie bookstore and in the local chain), on the Kindle, on the Sony eReader, on the Nook, on the iPad, in as many formats as possible. This should be possible at a price fair to me, to my publishers, to distributors, and to readers.
My Books Cannot be Found on Amazon
If you are a fan and want a copy, try indie bookstores. I know you can order through a number of them. Powell’s.com is one example.
I plan to strip links when I have time and re-point them to other stores or to Indie-bound.
In the meantime, I’m seriously saddened that the easiest place to find my books at this moment is not available to readers.
In general, the argument is about control of pricing (not about a particular price point for ebooks). It is between one of the largest publisher’s of physical books and one of the largest sellers of physical and electronic books. It was probably prompted by Apple and the iPad.
For those of you who are interested in understanding the current kerfuffle, here are a few good links:
Tobias Buckell’s “Why my Books are No Longer for Sale Via Amazon.”
Charlie Stross also did an excellent job, in his post titled “Amazon, Macmillan: an outsider’s guide to the fight.”
My own simpler version is in the post below.
The longest discussion anywhere is surely the one at Whatever, which is John Scalzi’s blog. It’s up to about 274 comments at the moment.
Of interest, many people were already mad at Amazon for the ability to take books away (remember the removal of the book 1984 in what can’t have been an accidental statement that they can be big brother?) and for Amazon’s “mistake” regarding GLBT books. In spite of those things, I’ve been really loyal to Amazon for a long time. I like their recommendation engine. I like the convenience of being a Prime customer and I like it that I can order books with my food via Amazon Fresh. I live close to their headquarters and I spend a lot of money with them. I like my Kindle (and yes, I want an iPad too – but I’m a tech geek and an early adopter with a Kindle, an iPhone, a fitbit and two iPods, not to mention numerous computers).
I’m reading two books on the Kindle right now and went to sleep reading it even though I’m furious with Amazon for this move. This might be the straw that breaks my loyalty. I woke up dreaming of smashing my Kindle on the sidewalk and talking a picture of it and posting that on YouTube. If I do that, I will be greatly saddened by the act.
Amazonfail: What Happens if the Distributor (Amazon or Apple) Controls Prices
The current #Amazonfail is about them pulling all of the Macmillan books off of Amazon (the last one -if you remember – was pulling a rankings off of gay and lesbian themed books). The apparent issue is about price control. For those who find this news new, John Scalzi has a good summary of the issue. As an author, and someone who’s always been loyal to Amazon, I’m pretty pissed off.
Here are the business model points as I understand them.
Today, in print, the publishers have full control of the price. The books are pre-ordered by bookstores and cannot be discounted (except for things which are almost surely in contracts between major chains and the publishers like the B & N loyalty program). They can be – and often are – returned. The super deal books you see (for example, at Half Price Books) are usually overstock the publisher has sold a very steep discount rather than paying to have it destroyed. This model has flaws, but it results in dependable pricing and a lower inventory carrying risk for bookstores.
If publishers lose all control of the price with ebooks, then a few things happen. One is that ebook prices may approach zero (the is bad for publishers and authors and even bad for readers in the long run). If ebooks go too low too fast, the bookstores go belly up too fast to adapt to the market.
Bookstores will go the way of record stores some day; sad but nearly inevitable. If Amazon wins, this will happen much faster. If they don’t, some stores and chains will be able to adapt and live.
iTunes means I buy about three times as much music as I used to. Maybe iBooks will have the same affect, especially if it’s available widely and not just for Apple products (remains to be seen). Kindle has driven me to buy more, too, by the way. I like my Kindle.
But if Amazon wins the ebook price war and publishers lose complete control (whether that’s me – I’ve published some of my back list stories on Kindle — or that’s Macmillan/Tor who owns all of my novel print rights) then many of things we need in this industry will go away completely. Publishing is changing, and we need publishers to change, too. But this is one battle I want them to win, as a reader and an author.
Geek Girl Goes Army
I was lucky enough to be an invited speaker and guest at the 2010 Mad Scientist Future Technology Center, put on by TRADOC G-2, which is part of the US Army. Other attendees were from various armed forces (including some form different countries), other science fiction writers, and subject matter experts in various science and technology areas. The primary purpose of the seminar was to provide input to the Army as they plan for future force development. This took place Wednesday through Friday of last week.
I only feel comfortable talking about parts of the experience (maybe I’m still processing – I live in personal world where I don’t spend much time – and particularly not three straight days – worrying about seriously bad threats to hope, health, and humanity). I am glad there are people who watch our borders for a living, and I can see how it might be tough for them to maintain a sunny world view. Since the next book in my series will need a lot more military characters, this will be good for my writing.
There were no lines for the women’s rooms. Participation was primarily white males, many with grey hair. This wasn’t a surprising demographic for this conference although I think some more youth (such as a few open-source maker-bot user types) and a few more women would have been nice to add. There was some diversity in race, color, gender, and age, but any analysis would have yielded over half in a single basic demographic. That said, it was certainly a smart, thoughtful, and driven group of people. I liked them.
We started off with a presentation from England by Ian Pearson, who made up diabolical potential weapons of mass destruction based on the anticipated capabilities of future technology. Next, Peter Bishop talked about future secenario building in general (more for me to learn) and I talked about near-term hard science fiction as one door to the future and gave some reading recommendations. The last talk was a rapid-fire run-down of numerous current and likely future threats, setting the stage to drive us off to explore ways we might use science and technology, ways they might be used against us, counters for those, and so on. After that, we spent a day and a half working in small groups and then reported out.
I am usually a positive futurist. These three days were pretty chilling, and I now have a wild urge to get together a bunch of people at the same level to brainstorm ways to use science and technology to make a happier society. Of course, there is an army to feed the threats to, and I’m not sure who to feed the glass-half-full scenarios to. Maybe that’s what we do with our stories.
Some of the biggest threats include EMP weapons (destroying the ability of our electronics to work, Bio-weapons and bio-nano weapons – imagine a blended biological and manufactured goo that corrodes metals, and serious economic warfare. There was a lot more technology talked about – all of it available in open literature today – and maybe some of it will sneak into my stories or into one of my Futurismic columns.
On the whole, I came away with slightly more of a few things than I went in. I came out more scared. I came out more full of ideas I can incorporate in my current and future series. I came out happy that a lot of things I do reference in the Silver Ship and the Sea series make sense in light of the military tech being discussed today. And for the week’s surprise, I came out with more respect for the military than I went in with. I didn’t go in disrespectful by any means – maybe just ignorant. But I found the men and women who were at the Mad Scientist 2010 Conference were smart, concerned, brave, worried, and pretty realistic as well. They see many of the same trends we civilian futurists do – that our power balance against other large economies is unsteady, our education system needs serious help, and the next few decades are going to be risky for us and for the world.
I took slight comfort from the fact that on the flight out, I read Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Lucky Strike,” which is a positive alternative history relating to the nuclear bomb. Which, by the way, is a lovely story.
I’m glad I went. And yes, I asked if it was okay to blog about it before I posted this!
What do you think we need to worry about for the next twenty years?
Linkages and Trivia
Congratulations to Cherie Priest for winning the Pacific Northwest Bookseller’s Award for Boneshaker. There is an article in the Seattle Times, and here is a link to my reading recommendation for the book.
The linkage between man and machine is growing every day. I call it “The Tender Mashup” in this month’s installment of my column, Today’s Tomorrow’s over at Futurismic.
I’ll be heading to the east coast (Newport news, Virginia) next week for a conference, and stopping for a day in Arizona on the way back.
I’ll be at Rustycon this Saturday
Places you can find me at Rustycon (Seattle Airport Marriott) this Saturday:
10:00, Moderating the panel, Palaces and Prisons? Urban Development in the 22nd Century in Evergreen I
Is technology accelerating the divide between rich and poor? Will it make sense to live closer together in high-density zones optimized for transit and pedestrians, or will ever-longer commutes require even bigger and more comfortable cars? Will residential towers bring every indulgence to the wealthy, or simply warehouse the permanently unemployed?
Noon , talking on a panel about “Schools of the Future: From Science Fiction to Reality.” In Evergreen H
Will students sit in front of computers learning from teaching AI routines? With all the crimes in school should we continue to house students in crowded environments with a lack of adequate supervision? What will the classroom and teaching environments of the future look like?
1:00 PM, Reading in Evergreen I
1:30 PM, Autographing in Evergreen I
3:00 PM, Moderating the panel “Retro Futurism: Steam Punk and Alternate Realities” in Washington E.
What is Retro Futurism? What is the fascination with Steampunk?
5:00 PM, Moderating the panel “Have Engineering Degree, Will Travel,” in Evergreen H.
Does truly hard science fiction miss the target with the average reader? Do we care? Is this the answer to finding a new view of the future? Perhaps more collaboration between those who are hard science writers with the writers of space opera will make the resulting book something exciting technology speaking and yet of interest to the average reader
An ordinary futurist reads her Seattle Times
I often get asked what makes me a futurist. Fair question, since I don’t have the formal training many futurists have. Mostly I read, and then I think. I talk to other people. I am not an expert in any one field (except maybe writing science fiction) but being a generalist has it’s uses. Anyway, today’s paper had some great futurist fodder. Here goes:
The best – the must read – is a transcript of Paul Hawken’s commencement address from May of last year to the University of Portland. It’s moving, brilliant, and meaningful. I think I will cut it out so I can read it again in the future. Yes, I read a physical paper. A small quote, just to get you hungry to go read the whole thing: “When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future my answer is always the same: If you look at the science of what is happening with the earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.”
Yesterday I talked about what we could be doing. One was work on education, where I cited the abysmal literacy statistics for women in Afghanistan, and talked about water. In the times today, two articles address these same issues. On the front page there is “Building a Future for Girls Amid War,” by Hal Bernton. A small quote from that article is “‘If we send our children to these schools, then the Taliban, they will come to our homes at night and kill us,’ said a Pashtun elder in an Arghandab village, where a large modern school built with Japanese aid now stands empty.” In the NW Arts & Life section, there is a review of the book “Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization, by Steven Soloman and reviewed by Alan Moores. Notable short quote? “One in five people worldwide lack access to at least one gallon of safe water to drink per day.”
And then there is the pleasure of the Sunday funnies. Here is a great futurist strip from Sally Forth. Note it’s the January 3rd entry if you go look for this at a later date.
2010: What we could be doing
This is the third part of my futures post series for January 2010. The first one evaluated my results for 2009. The second talked about what I think will happen in 2010. This is the “what could we do” post. There are a lot of things, but I’m going to pick four.
Reform the way we make decisions in this country. Why? We and many of our elected representatives are abysmal listeners, easily spun by the people with money (corporations, lobbyists). We are easily affected by sound-bites with zero substance, and too fast to position on the red or blue lines of our two-party system. Here are a few ideas:
- As far as I can tell, both parties have lost the center. One option is happening – more people calling themselves independents. Another option might be a third party. The tough question is around who or what.
- We could be teaching critical thinking and listening skills more at all levels, and re-teaching to adults. We have classes in business about organizational dynamics and project management – but not very many about thinking clearly. Maybe there’s a business idea there.
- The surest way is real campaign reform that sharply limits the amount of money anyone can give anyone.
Why did I pick this one first? I mean, really, it’s hard to measure, hard to affect, hard to change. But our current way of making decisions is clearly broken, and if we can’t fix that, we won’t be able to fix the other problems coming our way.
Get real about energy. Planning for a future with fossil fuels as a main source of power shows a criminal lack of imagination. No matter what you believe about the role of fossil fuel or humans in climate change, it’s a geopolitical nightmare that reduces our safety and the extraction and transportation process endangers our fragile home. It’s going to take a while to re-tool our power grid, our transportation options, and phase oil out of many of the products it’s an integral part of. But given that world population is going to keep increasing for at least the next four decades and most of the world will keep modernizing, we can’t just drive less or ride our bike or the bus to work. We must do more, faster. Let’s built the modern energy infrastructure of the future now, and go all-out on our options. Let’s get creative with wind and sun and solar arrays in space, with tide and waterfall, and with thorium-based nuclear plants.
This we can measure, we can change fairly easily, and we can use to build economic strength. The primary tool? A government with more willpower than the oil lobbyists have. And that willpower can come from us, the people.
Provide an excellent education to everyone. This includes here, in the United States, but I think even more leverage over world problems (and thus our problems) can happen if we educate others. The literacy rate in Afghanistan in most areas is below 50% and for Afghan women it is around 15%. We know a lot about education. It has ties to increased income and decreased family size, to increased health and increased power. How many of the people in congress have no high school diploma? Most people running businesses and supporting themselves and contributing more than they take from their own societies have a basic level of education. We could be investing as much in the education system in Afghanistan as we are in the fighting force there.
Outcomes in education like students in school, students graduating various level, and literacy rates are measurable. This task will secure our children’s future.
Put enough healthy food and water into the right places. This planet can feed all of us. We can all have enough healthy water to drink. We need to stop the hijack of aid delivered to poor countries, and we need to deliver more. And with it we need to deliver tools and ideas and education so they can produce it. Because we know climate change is going to lead to migrations (if not from where to where, and when), we need stock and plan for emergencies. Estimates say over one billion people are undernourished worldwide.
Also measurable. There are so many people working on this problem that if everyone added just a little leverage (money, time, writing), we could save a few hundred thousand lives this year.
There’s a simple statement here. With enough education and energy, the basics of existence, and a little critical thought and respect for different points of view, we can thrive in the midst of all of the myriad forces of change buffeting us. If not? Maybe it will be a miracle if we survive. I’d rather thrive.
An Ordinary Futurist Predicts 2010 Events
After evaluating my predictions from last year (which were in three separate posts to start with), I decided to keep it simple. Remember that futurists have no crystal ball and I can no more tell you what a stock will be on a given day than a séance leader can. We can see trends. We usually can’t see the things that knock us off our expectations (like Twitter). But hey, this is a bit of fun to have. Put keep in mind – this an educated guess at what will happen, and it’s not exactly what should happen (that’s another post).
Technology trends:
- Even more social networking. Plus, social networking gets more synched with physical space (geo-aware applications like Foursquare but more useful). Immediate opportunities to help a neighbor, great business deals close to where I am standing, someone with interests a lot like mine in the same coffee shop. Etc.
- The cloud takes over more of our personal storage and backup, but doesn’t make it very far into the enterprise yet. We enterprise CIO’s watch it and poke it and maybe try a bit here and there, but we don’t drink the kool-aid. Yet. We will. Just not so much in 2010.
- I know I said this last year, but I think people will choose to be chipped in certain situations, like when they are travelling overseas, when they have certain medical conditions, etc. Soldiers and criminals may get chipped, too.
- The apple tablet will actually appear (and I’ll buy one). It will have been at least slightly over-hyped but as apps get released it will be well-loved by gamers, readers, students, and field people. It won’t replace the netbook or the notebook generally, but it might be a great substitute for the Kindle.
- eBooks will be near 10% of book sales by the end of the year. This is a phenomenal amount of growth - they are about 1.5% of the market now. BTW – I think it growth in this sector might slow down again for a bit after that.
Society and Government
- The hard-line Iranian government will fall, and some confusion will follow. This will help in Iran, although it won’t solve all of the problems.
- China will see more protests about a variety of things (not sure, though, what they will do about it – I don’t see an Iran-like situation but more continued flexibility).
- The US will have tighter working relationships with Canada, and maybe with Mexico. Changes to NAFTA may be talked about seriously and tied loosely to immigration discussions
- Once Health care is passed (or not), attention will be split between changes in energy use and more anti-terrorism measures. These are, of course, tightly linked. People will begin to see the linkage more clearly.
- Iraq will feel like a memory, but Afghanistan – not so much. The usual war-hungry republicans will try to take Obama down through his position on Afghanistan, but what they’ll really do is save him from immolation by the democrats for his position of Afghanistan. In other words, politics as usual. Whatever the party in power is doing will be slammed by the party that’s out of power, even if it’s their usual MO. We will stay ridiculously divided across senseless lines of red and blue light.
Climate Change / related topics
- While we’ll probably continue to flail politically, green business will rise out of the recession and start to make it less of a political issue. After all, who needs to mandate things people are making money on? Success stories: conservation, green transportation (smaller and electric cars), and – at least in 2010 – less needless consumption.
- I’m going to re-make last year’s prediction. In some areas at least, things will get worse. I don’t know if it will be drought, hurricanes, ocean carbon, or ice melt, but the Earth is reacting faster than we expect it to. More extremes.
- Smart grid will be the buzzword of the year, and a big business opportunity. Mostly still in large projects and on corporate campuses, rather than on the national public grid.
- The percent of people who believe climate change is happening will rise again, approaching 70% again (as of October 2009, it was measured at 57%).
What do you think will happen? What did I miss or get wrong? Anyone got a different number for ebooks?
