Monthly Archives: March 2011

E-books Are Pricing Themselves Out of Their Own Market

Books, Business, , , , , , , , ,

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this but e-books are becoming a lot more expensive than they were a few months ago. An example is Stieg Larrson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Several months ago, it was selling for $5.00. So was its sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire. Both of them are now priced at $7.99. In those last few months, nothing was added to the books that caused them to be worth more money. As a matter of fact, using the usual models of books, the prices should have gone further down, not up.

At the same time, look at some of the bestselling books also, like Decison Points by George W. Bush. It was $9.99. Now, it’s $14.99. That’s ridiculous. But looking at all books, ALL of the prices are going up.

Basically, Kindle books and e-books in general, were seen as economical and a great deal. Now, they’re not worth the price. They’re really not.

Yes, I own a Kindle, but I think I’m going to stop buying Kindle books for the near future and buy all of my books in hardcover and paperback. The e-book market is pricing itself out of existence.

I’m not sure that’s a great idea, but I guess it’s their choice to make.

The Illustrious iPad 2

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Yesterday, Apple did its big announcement of the Ipad 2. Basically, after all is said and done, it’s the original iPad with a few extra bells and whistles. Or the same bells and whistles, but they made the bells chime longer and the whistles a little louder. What was probably more interesting was the fact that Apple is so paranoid about the people that will be replacing Steve Jobs when he retires/dies that they brought Jobs out of sick leave to make his usual announcement. This does not bode well for the future of Apple if they can’t even let the man rest long enough and let his successors actually try to succeed.

Having said all of that, I thought I would then address the Ipad 2 itself. Without getting into the details of the device, like it has the whole camera thing, supposedly a better screen (that might not be immediately available) and, well, nothing else that makes me want to go out and buy one. What is significant about the Ipad itself is that nothing announced so far has me anxious to want to go out and buy one. Yeah, I’ve been in Best Buy a few times where I’ve played with one to see how cool it is, but after I’m done playing with it, I realize that it doesn’t do anything that I don’t already have covered. And unlike my iPhone, it doesn’t combine enough OTHER things that I might want to add it to my toys to replace stuff that has become too encompassing.

And that is definitely the problem of the Ipad. There’s nothing about it that causes me to think it’s worth buying an actual tablet computer. And that’s the problem that Apple is facing in the long haul. Right now, it owns the tablet market, but it is still trying to build a “need” rather than a curiosity for that market. In olden days, when every house has an oven, there was this new device called the microwave oven. And it took a lot of convincing to “convince” housewives that they needed the gadget because an oven was capable of doing everything the new device could do. However, a media campaign that could have riveled the attack at D-Day managed to convince the average American that it was now a need, not a curiosity, or something for the rich only.

That is what the tablet still has to do, and it’s not succeeding. Sure, Apple is selling a lot, but Apple sells a lot of a lot of things that don’t become household givens. Until tablet companies do something that convinces the average person, like me, that we should want and need one of these gadgets, most of us are going to be sitting on the sidelines laughing at the people who bought one but still have no major need for one.

That is the press conference that Apple needs to succeed at. So far, they haven’t done it. As a matter of fact, Apple has recently done everything possible to destroy its own little niche market by trying to own that market completely through draconian rules and charges that benefit Apple only, cutting out other companies from investing in the Apple dynasty. As long as that keeps happening, you’re going to have a lot of people thinking, well maybe I don’t need the Apple one, so they’ll look at the other companies and then suddenly realize they don’t need a tablet at all. So far, the tablet hasn’t been the success that spin doctors really want you to think it is. The majority of Americans haven’t bought into it. A lot of people have, but a lot of people doesn’t translate to market saturation or even market itemization. It’s a gimmick right now, and as long as it remains in that category, it’s going to stay a gimmick.

Now, I know there are people reading this who are thinking, “hey, I bought one and I love it.” That’s fine, but you’re the outliers right now who Apple and tablet companies want to use to convince everyone else that their product is relevant. So, you need to start doing that and earning your pay you’re not receiving from a company that wants to get as much money out of you as possible by limiting your options in getting the best bang from your product. So do their dirty work for them. That’s kind of how the game works. For them. Be the tool they need you to be.

The Act of Writing a Screenplay

Movies, Writing, , , , , ,

I’ve been thinking about writing screenplays for awhile now. So, I saved up all of the money in my piggy bank and bought myself a copy of Final Draft Version 8, a screenwriting software program. Well, it was kind of difficult to figure out how to make sense of it, but I’ve been playing around with it for a few weeks now, and this evening I decided to actually start work on a screenplay.

Well, kind of. I actually realized I needed to figure out how to write a screenplay before I actually start writing a new story. In other words, had to get past the how to before I got to the doing it stage. So, what I did was go back to one of my stories already completed and then work backwards. You see, some years back, I wrote a couple of movies in “fake” screenplay form and then choreographed a movie, which I then put together in The Movies software. I did a whole bunch of them. But I decided to go back to my favorite one and then rewrite the story from a screenplay perspective, rather than the seat of the pants version I did before.

And I’m discovering that writing a screenplay is a whole different animal to type of writing I normally do. But it’s a whole lot of fun. It’s a completely different process of writing that you never really figure on until you sit down and actually try to do it.

The story I’m working on is called Buried Memories, a romantic movie that is more my typical style of writing (meaning it’s not the usual kind of story you’re going to find anywhere else). As I’m taking some liberties with Buried Memories 2.0, it’s going to be a bit different and a lot more robust than the original version. Either way, it’s something new for me to play around with, and after I finish with this project, I’ll probably start writing a screenplay from scratch.

Anyway, if you’re interested in the movie that was originally done for this story, I’m going to try to embed it into this post for you to experience.

Buried Memories

Is it Possible for a Freelance Writer to Make it Today?

Writing, , , , , , , , , , ,

This is one of those questions that has been going through my head lately. I’m one of those enigmas of writers who has written a lot of stuff, yet never really managed to break into a writing career. At one point, I had a good start, and then I just stopped, giving up writing, before realizing what a mistake I made. And then I realized I wanted it back more than anything. But I did it at the strangest time, when the Internet was just coming around, and suddenly the old way of doing things was no longer the way things were done. Now, I’m an overwritten writer who has pretty much nothing of a writing career, realizing that I’m probably never going to have one.

So, like most struggling writers, I tried to do the whole e-book thing, and I’m averaging about $25 every three months of sales. Not exactly the illustrious career to get one away from one’s normal day job. And when one has all desires to be a full-time writer, that gets extremely frustrating.

So I find myself wondering if there’s really a future for an unpublished writer who doesn’t just get lucky or happen to be in the right writing school at the right time. Again, being lucky.

I put my book of poetry on Amazon, and it’s done absolutely no sales. I’m not a salesperson, so I really don’t have the ability to figure out what one has to do to interest anyone in buying one’s writing. So the only other option is to just release all of my writing for free, which then still leaves me with the realization that that probably doesn’t make a difference either. People are less willing to read your stuff for free than they are if they actually went to buy it. Sadly, that’s kind of true. They find it has less value if you tried to give it away, so even if it was Hemingway trying to get bullfighters to read his latest book, it wouldn’t make a difference because the stigma is already there because of the whole free thing.

Which leaves me with the wonder if I should just give it all up. My career is going nowhere, and I honestly don’t anticipate it going anywhere in the near future. The only reason I haven’t given it up already is because I really don’t have anything else in the wings to replace it. My job isn’t going to make me happy. Watching TV isn’t going to give me any satisfaction in life. I don’t date and probably couldn’t recognize a woman if I ever saw one (as it’s been so long). Which leaves me with something I’ve been talking about for some time now. Nothing. Writing was pretty much it. And without it, I’m not sure I really have a reason for sticking around anymore. I mean, what’s the point?

My Thoughts on Memoirs and Autobiographies

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We live in an age where we seem to get a lot of autobiographical tripe paraded before us as legitimate prose and original content. Recently, previous political leaders have released their “true” stories of their administrative actions, including Decision Points by George W. Bush and Known and Unknown by Donald Rumsfeld. I’m not going to link them because I really don’t feel like hyping their work for sale because I think they can do quite well on their own as they try to force their manufactured truths onto the public through the usual channels.

My problem with just these two works is that the reviews of these have pointed out quite admirably how the truth is extremely distorted in these works. The nation, and the world, knew what happened because we recently lived through these events, yet we have two spin doctors doing everything possible to rewrite the history of those times because they still believe in the axiom that the winner gets to rewrite the history. What both books do, and I watched an incredulously sounding interview on the Daily Show with Rumsfeld the other day that was just filled with attempts at reinventing history, is attempt to clean up a very dirty period in American history by pretending that certain things didn’t happen and others did. Both make a weak attempt to pretend that weapons of mass distruction weren’t sold to us as a given in the lead up to war with Iraq. Both books also attempt to pretend that the administration didn’t do everything possible to sell a war, even though so many other rational voices were urging for more time. The Iraq weapons inspectors were begging for more time, and the Bush Administration did everything possible to discredit their voices during this period. Colin Powell, in the greatest travesty of UN history, stood before the world and powerpointed the most falsified series of documents about WMDs the world has ever seen. To this day, that event gets glossed over, or ignored as much as possible, because there’s no way to get around the fact that the administration straight out lied about the lead up to war with Iraq. And that’s really the elephant in the room there that no amount of rewriting of history is ever going to change. Rumsfeld, himself, went way out of his way to cast Saddam Hussein as the best friend of Al Qaeda, and even his attempts at trying to rewrite the narrative on the Daily Show the other night did not change my opinion that this man is amongst the greatest disgraces to the American people of all time. Sorry, you don’t get to rewrite your history when everything you did was wrong, you lied consistently and you haven’t even acknowledged the wrongs you did in your past, especially when those wrongs led to thousands of deaths of young American soldiers.

Which then brings me to the whole memoir thing that seems to be coming out of the woodwork these days. It’s bad enough that we get tomes written by people who spend 200 and some pages lying through their ass because to tell the truth would be career and political suicide. There’s another kind of memoir that has been driving me nuts lately, and that’s the one that comes out from someone who has done nothing of greatness or significance, who somehow manages to get a million dollar contract to tell his or her life story.

First off, I have to point out that if someone is under 25, the chances of that person having a great life story that needs a book is quite minimal. Sure, you might be Alexander the Great, and have conquerered the entire known world by 30, but even he would have needed to wait a few years before writing his great autobiography, if he ever got around to doing it. But I’m sorry, Justin Bieber, who is only 17, or anyone of many celebrities who have done nothing but shake their asses in front of an audience for a few years, really don’t have all that much to share with the rest of us. I mean, honestly, how much more can Justin Bieber, at 17, tell us about his life on the road that is any more intriguing than a book by Robert Plant or perhaps Life by Keith Richards. I mean, at least these people “lived” an actual rock star life that might have a bit of content to them. Granted, I have no desire to read a book of this nature, but at least I know that which ones would actually have something interesting to tell me.

Recently, there have been tons and tons of crappy books being signed by publishing companies for autobiographies of unimportant people who haven’t been alive longer than the lifespan of my car. I’ve had this belief for a long time that a memoir should never be written by anyone who is not at least 35, and definitely not by someone who hasn’t at least done something so significant that rest of the world would stop and take notice. Someone who has spent an entire life in the movies might have a story to tell. Someone who is 13 and nominated for an Oscar because she played a spunky kid in some movie does not. A rock star who has had multiple divorces, four or five near death experiences, and quite possibly is known for ushering in the second age of rock ‘n’ roll might have a story. A Disney mousketeer who is now singing for teenyboppers probably doesn’t.

Which then brings me to the unimportant people writing important memoirs for the rest of us. Unfortunately, not all of us can be Jack London, living a bunch of different lives before finally settling down and giving us literature to ponder over for centuries. That means instead we get a lot of life stories from people who broke their cocaine habit, lived through therapy, had a really cool dog with a funny name, or just outright manufactured their history because it was the only way to get Oprah to let them appear on her show. Very few of those stories are important enough for us to really want to buy their books.

But even when someone does manage to have an important enough story for the rest of us to read, that person needs to realize he or she might not be the next Hemingway and should really stop at that one story. Dave Pelzer is a good example of this. I’m not sure if you’ve read his ground-breaking book, A Child Called “It”, which is his story of living with a seriously deranged and abusive mother. It’s a great book and really pulls at the heartstrings. Unfortunately, Pelzer felt he was onto something and has never stopped writing books about his life. The first one was great. The rest of them tired, old and overdone. At some point, you need to move on and show us that you learned something from your journey, not that the only thing you learned was it was very profitable and worthy of returning to the well over and over again.

One of the greatest memoirs I’ve ever read comes from probably the only man to ever do a memoir the right way. It was so much the right way that he spent his entire life trying to figure out how exactly to write it, and then spent his final years doing just that. I’m talking about the Autobiography of Mark Twain, which the author demanded not be released until 100 years after his death. And having just read through it, or at least the first volume of three that’s been so far released, I can say that he definitely knew what he was doing with an autobiography. I’ve learned so much about his time and the important figures around his life in so little space. Few memoirs are capable of ever transcending the page like that.

Unfortunately, we rarely get a Mark Twain to tell his story as only a Samuel Clemens can. Instead, we get lying politicians and self-important teenagers with a million dollar book contract. If only the middle ground was so much brighter.

Bristol Palin to Write the Book of Her Life…I Can’t Wait….

Memoirs, Writing, , , ,

Nothing depresses me more than to see that a woman who is 20 years old, who has done nothing special with her life other than live in the shadow of her overexposed mother who is writing her life story. As someone who has done a “little” more than the young girl who was on Dancing With the Stars, bought a house in Arizona and got pregnant during her mother’s vice-presidential bid, I’m constantly amazed that a company like Harper Collins is willing to shell out real money to fund a “book” from someone who is no more special than any teen girl across the planet. Probably much less significant, to be honest.

Yet, big book companies constantly churn out this drivel to us, as if this is what we want to read. The other part that bothers me is that somewhere, somehow, there are people who are actually going to buy what she writes, being almost as excited as someone rushing out to buy Snooki’s next bestselling book.

As a writer, this is one of the things that has depressed me like pretty much nothing else can. I’ve lived most of my life in a Jack London-ish belief that you don’t really start writing great life stories until you’ve at least lived a few of them. So I spent my life trying to do just that, and now that I’m on the winding down part of that life, my writing feels great, but the writing industry passed me by, contracting books with White House party crashers instead of actual novelists and people who tried to go the old route of living and then writing, rather than doing something sensationalist and then thinking that was the groundwork for a great writing career.

I know I’ve complained about this sort of thing before, but is this what writing in America has come down to? Are we so foolish in our pursuit of stardom that this is what we’re going to pretend is important enough for us to buy and read?

I’d write a book about it, but considering I haven’t pulled any Charlie Sheen shenanigans lately, I can’t guarantee anyone would want to read it.

A Conversation with Conservatives About that Whole Midterm Thing that Just Happened

Politics, , , , ,

Hey, Conservatives. I just thought I would take a moment to talk to you about the midterm elections, because for some reason you’re getting the idea that events happened for reasons completely absent of reality. Therefore, as I know that you always listen to rational people explaining rational theories, I thought I would chime in with a little rationality.

There are some things you got right and some things you’re getting wrong. Let’s start with what you got right because everyone likes to hear good things about themselves. First, you are right that America was angry, pissed off and frustrated with politics as usual. In droves, people went to the polls and voted to “throw the bums out”. That anger was their way to show that they were angry, and if Washington wasn’t going to listen, they were going to make them listen, or at least stop paying for their hearing aids.

Lots of Democrats were thrown out of office, and lots of Republicans were given a chance to run the government. Okay, we’re on the same wavelength here.

Unfortunately, this is where reality sort of spins off on its own axle and falls apart. While the American people were angry, we need to kind of revist exactly what they were angry about.

First, Americans weren’t angry about social programs in America. Republicans tend to always be angry about these things. But it wasn’t Republicans that really voted the Democrats out of office. It was both Democrats and Republicans, meaning average Americans. The average American wasn’t upset that people were getting health care and the opportunity to survive through the Winter. They also weren’t upset that the government was spending money to get people back to work.

No, Americans were pisses off at government because government was helping out the wrong people. Who are these wrong people? The rich, the selfish, the people who don’t care one iota about the common folk of America. Americans saw the government spend a lot of money to bail out Wall Street, to help out banks and to rescue multi-millionaires from losing more money than they were already losing. The fact that almost none of the stimulus money actually went to help out the average American, other than through the usual trickle down crap theories, that upset Americans a lot. While the average American was trying to find a job, government was spending weeks arguing over how much money to protect from millionaires and billionaires with expiring tax cuts. The government seems willing to go into shut down just to make sure that the rich are taken care of, and the poor really don’t mean much to those who occupy office. Except in conversation, which doesn’t mean a lot when people have to actually pay their bills.

When the midterm elections came along, the American people were pissed that government was catering to the rich only. Yes, both Democrats and Republicans were bending over backwards to make sure the rich weren’t inconvenienced in any way, shape or form. The poor, well, they needed to fend for themselves because that’s generally how government feels they should have to handle their own affairs.

Most people didn’t even recognize what was going wrong with the Democrats in office when they had control of the entire government. Not once did they even act like Democrats, being almost indistinguishable from Republicans. THAT is what pissed off the American population that went through a previous election putting every Democrat they could find into office. When the American people discovered that it didn’t matter which party was in office, they kind of revolted and threw those people out, figuring the Republicans weren’t probably any worse.

Well, the Republicans need to figure out that the American people didn’t send them into office with a mandate to do things Republicans tend to do when they aren’t discussing politics. You know, the kinds of things they do surreptitiously behind the backs of everyone else, like reward the rich and screw over the poor. No, the American people sent the Republicans to Washington to remind the Democrats who they were supposed to be working for. That’s really it. The mandate the Republicans received from the American people was “do something different, but if you piss us off, too, expect to be accepting your own unemployment check.”

And the way things are going, there’s going to be a lot more unemployed politicians in 2012. Unfortunately, this will cause the Democrats to pull a Sally Field, thinking people like them, when in fact the people are still pissed off. The only difference is, they’ll realize they have nowhere else to turn.

And a pissed off electorate that has given up on both sides is a very dangerous animal. Once you give up on your government, there’s really not much else to do. Just ask all those Middle Eastern countries right now that are throwing out their leaders. They might have something interesting to say about it, if you could stop them long enough while they’re rioting in the streets.