Free E-Books From Tor Publishing

Yesterday, thanks to a post on Dear Author here, I signed up for Tor's newsletter.

If you sign up for the newsletter, you'll receive a free e-book every week.

According to the Tor Publishing site, "Our next free book is Old Man's War by John Scalzi, 2006's winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Next week, Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold."

So, go here and sign up for the newsletter.

Borders Takes On New Partners

On Friday, I wrote a post about the new Borders store model being unveiled in Ann Arbor.

Also on Friday, self-publishing enterprise Lulu announced a deal with Borders. The Raleigh News & Observer reported "Lulu will run interactive kiosks at new Borders stores where customers can upload, showcase and ultimately sell their works via Lulu.com . . . Authors also can get limited professional assistance for $299. A $499 package includes professional editing and design."

Note the story does not say anything about selling the books through Borders, only through Lulu.

Lulu now has kiosks in thirteen Borders stores in Michigan.

Borders has also signed deals with Ancestry.com (genealogy) and Shutterfly (photo sharing).

Revisiting Microsoft and Yahoo

Years ago, I worked for Smith Barney, a stock brokerage house known for its corporate finance department. That department helped to bring companies public as well as putting together important mergers. I learned a lot during my time there, eventually earning my broker's license.

We're going to look at the situation with Yahoo and the offer made for it by Microsoft.

When last we discussed the matter on February 1st, Microsoft had just made a $31 per share bid to take over Yahoo.

Since that time, Yahoo has formally rejected the offer, saying it was too low. The Yahoo board believes a fair price would be $40/share. This from a company that was selling at $19 prior to the bid and that--two days before the bid--had warned its shareholders not to expect its performance to improve before 2009.

I thought it might be helpful to look at a glossary of the terminology used in acquisitions and takeovers. Listed below are the applicable terms. The definitions in italics are courtesy of Verisign. The comments that follow are mine:

Bear Hug: An offer made by a company to buy the shares of another company that is too high for the board of the target firm to refuse. Microsoft bid $31/share and got turned down. The question is whether they're willing to sweeten the offer to the point that Yahoo's board would be unable to turn it down. Experts think this is unlikely. Why offer more unless you have to? Unless, for example, Yahoo finds itself a white knight to make a competing offer that Microsoft is then forced to match.

Black Knight: A company that makes a hostile takeover offer on a target company. Microsoft has the potential to become a black knight. If they decide to go around the Yahoo board directly to the shareholders, they will have moved into black knight territory.

Hostile Takeover: A takeover attempt that is strongly resisted by the target firm. Microsoft made a polite offer and was turned down politely. If Microsoft decides to go hostile, CNET News believes it will try one of two things: (1) Make a formal tender offer, going directly to the shareholders with the deal, giving investors a deadline by which to turn over their stock to Microsoft, and/or (2) Nominate their own candidates for the Yahoo board. The entire ten-member board is up for re-election at the annual meeting (probably in June). This move would allow Microsoft to push their deal through and, importantly, flush Yahoo's poison pill down the toilet.

Poison Pill: A strategy used by corporations to discourage a hostile takeover by another company. The target company attempts to make its stock less attractive to the acquirer. Reuters reports that in March 2001, Yahoo adopted a poison pill. If anyone buys 15% or more of Yahoo's stock (outside of an agreed-upon bid), shareholders are offered the right to buy more shares. This, of course, will dilute the value of the shares the black knight has acquired, making it much more expensive for the takeover company to acquire Yahoo.

In addition to its poison pill, Yahoo is actively looking for a new partner that will be more likely to allow its company to remain independent. As opposed to a black knight, such a partner would be called a white knight.

White Knight: A company that makes a friendly takeover offer to a target company that is being faced with a hostile takeover from a separate party. Reports indicate that Yahoo may be in talks with both News Corp. and AOL, in the hope that one of the two might become its white knight.

Stay tuned . . .

Harvard To Begin Publishing Research For Free

On Wednesday, I did a post on the business model of "free."

Coincidentally, on Thursday, Harvard announced it will begin posting some research on the Internet--for free.

On Tuesday, Harvard's arts and sciences faculty met to discuss the possibility. According to The New York Times, the faculty "voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution that would commit Harvard to open access access--the movement to speed the exchange of knowledge by freely distributing research on the Web."

This decision applies only to the arts and sciences faculty.

An Office of Scholarly Communication will be created along with a website. It is expected that these will be ready by April 1. The authors of scholarly articles will retain their copyright and are free to publish their research elsewhere.

On Tuesday, the director of the university library was quoted by The New York Times, saying, "In place of a closed, privileged and costly system, it will help opne up the world of learning to everyone who wants to learn . . . It will be a first step toward freeing scholarship from the stranglehold of commercial publishers by making it freely available on our own university repository."

A first crack in the dike?

Two Publishers Trying New Experiments

This week, two of the biggest publishing houses made announcements that indicate they're paying attention to changing reader tastes.

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) pointed out that "retailers and publishers are looking for clues into how readers want to access digital content." In an experiment, Random House has decided to sell individual chapters of the popular Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. The publishing house seeks to "gauge reader demand for bite-size portions of digital texts" by selling the chapters for $2.99 each.

Readers looking to buy the chapters should go here. After purchase, they'll receive an email, which will give them the link to download the chapter to their computers. Eventually, RH says readers will be able to download the chapters to devices like BlackBerries.

While this type of download will be attractive to students or people wanting to download a specific chapter from a non-fiction book pertinent to their need, it remains to be seen whether Western readers will be interested in purchasing small chunks of fiction works.

Also on Monday, The New York Times reported HarperCollins has uploaded entire books by popular writers, permitting readers to browse the contents in the same way customers would examine the books in a bookstore. The publishing house is trying to determine whether this will increase hardcover sales of the books.

The books can be found here on the HarperCollins' website.

Right now the available books include The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho; Mission: Cook! My Life, My Recipes and Making the Impossible Easy, a cookbook by Food Network's Robert Irvine; I Dream in Blue: Life, Death and the New York Giants by Roger Director; The Undecided Voter’s Guide to the Next President: Who the Candidates Are, Where They Come from and How You Can Choose by Mark Halperin; and Warriors: Into the Wild, a children's book by Erin Hunter.

The free electronic versions will only be available for a month, and users will not be able to download them. HarperCollins plans to continue to upload copies of Mr. Coelho's other books--one each month throughout 2008.

The Times said:

Reached by telephone in Paris, Mr. Coelho said: “I believe that generosity pays off.” On his own blog, he gives readers links to pirated editions uploaded by readers in numerous languages. “I believe that they are not going to go beyond 20 or 30 pages” when reading on the Internet, he said.

HarperCollins also intends to begin offering 20% of selected books on their site two weeks before the hardcover goes on sale.

Borders Unveils Model For New Store

I'm late in posting today because my laptop blew up Wednesday. I dropped it off at my computer guru's tiny shop yesterday morning and got it back today. He always adds new things to the laptop while he's playing with it so it came back fixed AND improved.

On Wednesday, Reuters reported on the model for the new Borders store, saying the bookchain "unveiled a new concept on Wednesday -- a store where shoppers can mix and burn CDs, explore their genealogies and even publish their own novels."

The new model is intended to help the #2 bookseller to turn around its lackluster performance. Reuters says the plan is to "refocus on its core U.S. store operations."

The new-style Borders store, which features additional seating, is in Ann Arbor. According to yesterday's Publishers Lunch, "The biggest change is their Digital Center, outfitted with computer workstations and a promise 'we'll show you how' with the help of knowledgeable staff. Borders wants customers to buy music for download (to non-Apple players) and custom-burned CDs; print out digital photos and create their own photo books; self-publish through a 'personal publishing' program in conjunction with Lulu.com; research their family history through 'genealogy services' from Ancestry.com; and buy Sony Readers and download e-books."

Read the Reuters' story here.

CNN Dooces One Of Its Producers

On Tuesday Chez Pazienza, a producer on CNN's American Morning, was dooced by his employer.

If you're a blogger, you probably recognize the word "dooced." The word is a neologism that sprung up on the Internet after Heather Armstrong was fired on February 26, 2002.

Heather had the singular distinction of being the first person ever fired for her blog. Dooce was the name of that blog and, according to the Urban Dictionary, it became the word used to describe being "fired from your job because of the contents of your weblog."

If you want to read Heather's story, go here.

Chez Pazienza had worked for CNN for four years and had been writing a blog called Deus Ex Malcontent since May, 2006. According to his post for yesterday here, he was fired because of that blog.

His friend, Terry Heaton, had a bit more to say on his own blog here:

Chez Pazienza, a producer at CNN assigned to American Morning, was unceremoniously fired from his job today — without severance — over the content of his popular and edgy blog, Deus Ex Malcontent (warning: adult language) . . . According to Chez, he was terminated for violating network policy by not running what he was writing through their vetting system.

This isn't the first time CNN has fired a blogger. Almost a year ago, according to the Huffington Post here, the Cable News Network fired an intern named Rachel for her "password-protected, closed-membership" blog in which she shared industry secrets like "Anderson [Cooper] apparently gets gift baskets all the time, and leaves them to the interns to enjoy."

I'm sure there's a lesson here.

As for me, I'm going to be especially careful from now on during the month from February 12 to March 5--the period during which all three bloggers were canned.

I Gotta Be Free

We're going to talk about the business model of "free" today.

At the same time the music, film and publishing industries are struggling with the concept of DRM (Digital Rights Management), a few visionaries are exploring options at the opposite end of the continuum.

Last summer, I wrote about Chris Anderson's upcoming book, Free. You'll remember Anderson; he wrote The Long Tail. He also talked at last year's Book Expo America about the relationship between the Web and free content. If you'd like to read my post about that speech as an intro to today's material, you can find it here.

This week Tim O'Reilly is hosting his second Tools of Change for Publishing conference at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York. If you want to read my post about the first TOC conference go here.

Today's Publishers Lunch talked about O'Reilly, but also directed readers to another blogger who is talking about "generosity" as a business model. That blogger, Kevin Kelly, was the first executive editor of Wired magazine.

Kelly had an interesting post titled "Better Than Free" on his blog two weeks ago. He argues that--until the Internet came along--our economic model was based on scarcity, and our wealth came from making copies to sell. In the media industry, those copies would be printed books, DVDs and CDs.

Along came the Internet. Kelly opens his post with the line, "The Internet is a copy machine. . . [and] Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free."

Kelly's thesis goes this way:

• When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
• When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.
• When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

The rest of the post focussed on the things that cannot be copied. Kelly identifies eight uncopyable values, which he calls "generatives" because they must be generated, grown, or nurtured. Things like:

• Immediacy: People want to be the first to read the new book, the first to see the new movie and the first to own the new record.
• Authenticity: People want the "real" thing, the one that is warranted and special.
• Accessibility: People want easy access to their possessions. Look at the iPod, the Shuffle and all the other devices that aggregate our music and make it easily available to us.
• Findability: People want to be able to find the quality work in the vast sea of sludge. This is the value that I have previously described as the impediment to self-published work. Someone needs to vet for quality.
• Interpretation: People want to understand what they have. Kelly reminds us: "As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000."
• Embodiment: People want the tangible product: the book they can hold in their hands or the live performance they can attend.
• Personalization: People don't want the generic version; they are willing to pay a lot for a personalized version. ". . .personalization requires an ongoing conversation between the creator and consumer, artist and fan, producer and user."
• Patronage: People want to pay creators. According to Kelly, people are happy to pay artists, musicians and authors "if it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators."

After he identifies the eight generatives, Kelly gets to the essence of his argument:

These eight qualities require a new skill set. Success in the free-copy world is not derived from the skills of distribution since the Great Copy Machine in the Sky [the Internet] takes care of that. Nor are legal skills surrounding Intellectual Property and Copyright very useful anymore. Nor are the skills of hoarding and scarcity. Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse.

In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits . . .

Most of the suggested solutions I've seen for overcoming the free involve some measure of advertising. I think ads are only one of the paths that attention takes, and in the long-run, they will only be part of the new ways money is made selling the free.

I found Kelly's arguments fascinating, and I'm looking forward to seeing Chris Anderson's upcoming book on the subject.

I encourage you to read Kelly's entire post here as well as his earlier post titled "Technology Wants To Be Free" here.

Writers May Return to Work By Tomorrow

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) votes today on a new contract deal and on whether to end their three-month strike against The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. On Sunday the WGA board and negotiating committee approved the new three-year deal. Writers could be back to work as soon as tomorrow.

The breakthrough in negotiations came on January 22 when the WGA abandoned its proposals to unionize writers who work on reality shows and on animated movies. The writers' union decided to focus instead on its most important issue: getting paid when their work is delivered via the new media--across the Internet on devices like cell phones and laptops.

After the Directors Guild (DGA) reached agreement with the studios last month, cracks began appearing in the WGA's solidarity. Some writers pressed to accept a similar deal to the one reached by directors while other writers wanted to sweeten the pot.

Sunday's LA Times described the new media provisions reached by the writers:

Under the tentative deal, film and television writers, who previously got nothing for shows and movies streamed over the Internet, will receive a fixed residual payment of $1,200 a year for one-hour shows streamed online in the first two years of the new contract.

In the third year of the deal, however, they would receive something directors will not: residuals equal to 2% of the revenue received by the program's distributor. Productions of certain shows created for the Internet will now be covered by the Writers Guild contract . . .

The tentative agreement also includes a doubling of the residual rate for movies and TV shows sold online and secures the union's jurisdiction over content created specifically for the Web, above certain budget thresholds. And like directors, writers would receive a 3.5% increase in minimum pay rates for television and film work.

The studios aren't out of the woods yet, however. In June, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) contract expires. According to the L.A. Times, "Officials of the 120,000-member actors union have sounded increasingly militant."

Keep An Eye on Time Warner

Today, all eyes are likely to be on the proposed Microsoft/Yahoo deal. Rumor has it that Yahoo plans to reject the offer, saying it's not rich enough. I'll have more to say on this later.

However, there's another potential deal floating around that's gotten much less play, and I thought I'd mention it here.

Last month on January 1st, Jeff Bewkes became the new CEO of Time Warner Inc. after serving two years as president of the company.

Bewkes worked his way up the line, starting out as the CFO of HBO for five years (during the period when Time--parent company of HBO--merged with Warner Communications, making HBO a part of Time Warner).

He went on to become president of HBO in 1991, and then served as CEO of HBO from 1995 to 2002. In 2002, he moved up to chairman of Time Warner's entertainment and networks group and then became president of Time Warner, Inc. in December, 2005 under CEO and Chairman Dick Parsons. With Bewkes' latest promotion, Parsons gives up the CEO title, but will remain chairman.

On February 6, Bewkes spoke with investors for the first time as CEO. He described a restructuring of AOL and talked about separating AOL's Internet business from its advertising business.

That raised investor hopes that the new CEO planned to spin off the AOL Internet business, which has been hemorrhaging since Time Warner made the decision to drop the cost of subscription fees on their dial-up business in favor of trying to grow the advertising business. Portfolio.com reports "Revenue at AOL fell 32 percent, as it lost 740,000 subscribers." Those subscribers sought high-speed access elswhere. "The current total of 9.3 million subscribers is down 3.8 million from last year," according to the Associated Press.

Portfolio.com said, "While Bewkes did not outline any specific plans to combine part of AOL with another online partner, such as Google, he noted that the company was "open to strategic moves that make sense."

The timing for spinning off AOL might not be right. The Associated Press (AP) said "...those prospects became murkier last week when Microsoft Corp. made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo Inc. That would not only eliminate two likely bidders for AOL, but create a major online advertising power."

The AP also pointed out that Time Warner owns 84% of Time Warner Cable and may be considering spinning it off tax-free. However, with the value of cable stocks down, this may not be the time for that move.

Stay tuned . . .

Phyllis A. Whitney Dies At Age 104

I returned from Austin to find sad news. Author Phyllis A. Whitney died on Friday at the age of 104. Reading the article in The New York Times (NYT) , I felt a mixed rush of sorrow and nostalgia.

I was a voracious reader as a child. Our household was frequently in an uproar, and books provided needed stability. They offered a refuge to which I could retreat when things around me became too chaotic.

Books also helped to assuage my juvenile insecurities. I was an obsessive kid, full of fear. I decided at an early age that knowledge was the key to feeling safe, and books gave me a [false] sense of security. Tests in sixth grade revealed, at age eleven, my reading comprehension was that of a junior in high school.

My grandfather regularly sent boxes of books to my mother. Grandpa loved detective novels, and the boxes were always filled with paperbacks by Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason), Ellery Queen and Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe). By age ten, I'd started working my way through those boxes.

Mom worried Grandpa's reading material was too mature for me. She went looking for more appropriate material for a prepubescent female and began feeding me books by Agatha Christie, Mary Roberts Rinehart and . . . Phyllis A. Whitney.

Whitney was a fascinating woman. She was born in Japan in 1903 to American parents. Her middle name "Ayame" means "iris" in Japanese. Before age fifteen, she'd lived in China and the Phillipines in addition to Japan.

When she came to the States for the first time, she had trouble academically because she'd been educated in missionary schools overseas. Whitney was twenty years old before she graduated from high school.

After graduation, she worked in bookstores and at the Chicago Public Library. According to the NYT, it took four years for her to sell her first short story to the Chicago Daily News.

Whitney wrote over seventy novels, many of which were set in exotic locales. The NYT once called her "The Queen of the American Gothics." Her website says, "In 1975, Phyllis A. Whitney was elected President of the Mystery Writers of America. In 1988, the organization awarded her the prestigious Grand Master Award . . ."

I was moved by the last paragraph of the NYT story on her yesterday:

Ms. Whitney ascribed her success as a writer to persistence and an abiding faith in her abilities. “Never mind the rejections, the discouragement, the voices of ridicule (there can be those too),” she wrote in “Guide to Fiction Writing.” “Work and wait and learn, and that train will come by. If you give up, you’ll never have a chance to climb aboard.”

Janet Evanovich Tears The Sheets With Cannell

I'm posting tomorrow's blog early because I'm spending the weekend in Austin and won't be back at my computer until late in the day on Sunday.

Today's Publishers Lunch (PL) had an item about Janet Evanovich. The hugely popular writer of the humorous Stephanie Plum mystery series now has thirteen novels in print starring the lingerie buyer turned bounty hunter. Each book has a number in the title with the first being One For the Money and the 13th, Lean Mean Thirteen.

Evanovich has been experimenting with collaborative efforts with another writer since the re-release of her book Full House in an expanded version in 2002. She and writing partner Charlotte Hughes have now produced six "Full" novels.

In 2004, fellow writer Jennifer Crusie decided to collaborate with adventure/thriller writer Bob Mayer on a novel written from both the hero and heroine's point of view. Crusie wrote the female POV while Mayer wrote the male POV. The huge buzz over that novel, Don't Look Down, which was released in 2006, may have prompted Evanovich's decision to collaborate with a male partner.

Evanovich agreed to write a book jointly with Stephen J. Cannell, the television producer/novelist. Cannell created mostly crime dramas including the hugely successful Adam-12, 21 Jump Street and The Rockford Files. He has also written more than a dozen crime novels.

Evanovich and Cannell's collaborative effort was to be called No Chance and was to be the first of a series. The novel, starring Special Forces veteran Benjamin Cannon, was set to be released by Grand Central Books in October, 2007.

October came and went without the book being released.

Friday's Publishers Lunch reports that the book AND the collaboration has been cancelled due to "creative differences" between the two writers.

Friday's New York Post reports that "the resulting fallout may have caused a rupture in the relationship between Evanovich and her longtime agent Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media."

PL indicates that, two months ago, Gottlieb represented Evanovich during the signing of a new four-book deal with St. Martin's Press reputed to be worth more than $40 million. However, it seems likely that Evanovich's son Peter will represent her on a go-forward basis.

Feedback on Rule #5

After yesterday's blog in which I mentioned Laura Albert (who wrote as J.T. Leroy), I got an email from her, directing me to an article written by Levi Asher.

You will recall Asher wrote an article for The Guardian titled "How to Avoid Author Scandals." In my blog, I suggested that Laura should have read Rule #5--"Just say no to sending a friend out in public with a wig as you"--before sending her half sister out in a wig to pretend to be J.T. Leroy, Laura's pseudonym.

In the interest of fairness, I am happy to direct my readers to the link Laura sent me. Please go here to read the article.

The School For Scandal

The Guardian had an article on Tuesday by Levi Asher, the New York writer who founded Literary Kicks. LitKicks here is a website that highlights contributions of poetry and prose.

Asher's article, titled "How To Avoid Author Scandals," offers eight rules for writers to remember:

1. Do not use the word "memoir" unless you mean it.

2. If you're not sure whether what you're writing is a memoir or not, guess what? It's a novel.

3. No more than half a page of plagiarism per book.

4. Don't make up exact dates that you can't remember. Instead, be general: "The most important day of my life was the day of my son's birth, in the summer of 2005 ..."

5. Just say no to sending a friend out in public with a wig as you.

6. If you're in a flame war and you're about to go sock puppet, take a 10-minute break and go to a coffee shop without a wi-fi facility. Maybe the walk will cool you down.

7. Go ahead and make up dialogue. Everybody except Tom Wolfe does.

8. Pick a name. "Benjamin Black is John Banville" is just not a good look.

Readers of this blog will recognize the scandals and just plain quirkiness that prompted Asher's list.

Rule #1 refers to Timothy Patrick Barrus AKA Native American writer Nasdijj among others. You can read about him here.

Both Rule #2 and Rule #4 might apply to James Frey, the author of A Million Little Pieces. You can read about him here.

Kaavya Viswanathan needed to read Rule #3 before writing her first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life. Read about her here.

Laura Albert should have read Rule #5 before sending her half sister out in a wig to pretend to be Albert's alter ego J.T. Leroy. Read about her here.

If reporter Michael Hiltzik had read Rule #6, he might still be writing his column and Internet blog for the Los Angeles Times. Read his story here.

Rule #7 probably refers to Tom Wolfe's last novel, I am Charlotte Simmons. After that novel, Wolfe had to leave his publisher of forty-two years to get the advance he wanted for his next book. Read a sample review here.

Asher obviously is not a fan of an author taking multiple names in order to write in different genres. Here's a blogger who feels the same way.

Reading Asher's article was like taking a stroll down memory lane to revisit some of the most infamous scandals of the last two years.

A Look At Mass Market Paperbacks

Monday's Publishers Weekly (PW) had an article reporting that, despite softness in the mass market paperback (mmp) segment, publishers are not abandoning the format.

As a reminder, the mmp is the smaller paperback, usually about 4" x 7." It's the least expensive of the most common print mediums. Its cover is a heavy paper, but its pages are thin and cheap and yellow over time. These books are so cheap that, when bookstores return them to the publisher for credit, the covers are stripped off and sent to the publisher as proof of the return while the rest of the book is pulped.

The trade paperback is the larger paperback version, approximately 6" x 8." The paper inside a trade paperback is the same quality as that of a hardback book. Trade paperbacks and hardback books are both returned in their entirety to the publisher/distributor for credit.

Publishers Weekly interviewed Louise Burke, the publisher of Pocket Books. She said: “Mass market gets the most attention when people talk about a format not being what it used to be . . . But it still has a lot of value in getting readers in and then moving them up to hardcover. You have to look at the big picture.”

To help boost paperback sales, Levy Home Entertainment has initiated a variety of programs, including having an author autograph several thousand copies of a title before shipment and promoting specially priced titles at $4.99 to attract interest in a new author or an established author's backlist.

Another innovation is the $9.99 premium paperback, which according to the Write News has "higher quality paper, more white space both in the margins and between the lines of text, and a larger font size throughout." The premium was pioneered by Penguin in the spring of 2005 with the intent of appealing to aging baby boomers. Publishers have since discovered that the premium paperback also holds an appeal for younger readers who prefer hardbacks. The premiums haven't done well with romance readers because that segment of the market is "more price sensitive."

Speaking of romance, publishers agreed that "among the various mass market categories, romance continues to enjoy solid sales gains, helped by . . . a resurgence” in historical romance. "Another hot category cited by several houses was paranormal" although one publisher "warned against the danger of overpublishing in the category." (PW)

The article said the increased competition for limited shelf space is a reason for the mmp soft sales in 2007. Even so, publishers are not planning to abandon the genre. They see the low price of the mmp helps readers to discover new writers. Additionally, in an economy facing recession, mass market paperbacks offers an inexpensive alternative for entertainment.

Update on the WGA Strike

This morning's Variety announced "WGA [Writers Guild of America] leaders have scheduled a bicoastal powwow on Saturday, with membership meetings in Gotham [New York] and L.A. designed to sell the new contract agreement to the WGA's rank-and-file and end the 3-month-old strike."

If enough WGA members back the proposed contract, the WGA board will go forward to ratify the new deal and consider issuing a back-to-work order. Writers could be back on the job as soon as Monday--although the WGA membership would still have to vote on ratification to officially end the strike.

There is growing concern over the future of the upcoming pilot season. If writers don't get back to work soon, the pilots will be in real jeopardy.

You can read the whole story here.

Vanity Fair Cancels Its Oscar Party

Despite the optimistic news coming out of the studios/WGA discussions, the Associated Press (AP) announced around 9:00 AM EST that Vanity Fair is cancelling its annual Academy Awards party on February 24th.

Vanity Fair began holding the glitzy affair at Morton's restaurant in 1994.

"After much consideration, and in support of the writers and everyone else affected by this strike, we have decided that this is not the appropriate year to hold our annual Oscar party," said a statement posted on VanityFair.com.

"We want to congratulate all of this year's nominees and we look forward to hosting our 15th Oscar party next year," the magazine said.

The AP said that Vanity Fair's editor made the decision to cancel the party after talking with writer friends. The move is intended to show "solidarity with the writers, directors and actors."

Another WGA Strike Update

Today's LA Times had a story on the striking Writers Guild of America (WGA).

The Times indicates that agreement may be near. "The West Coast board of the Writers Guild of America has reacted favorably to the outlines of a pending agreement reached between guild negotiators and Hollywood studios."

The deal reached between the studios and the directors served as the jumping-off point for the new round of discussions between the studios and the writers.

The two sides reached a tentative agreement on Friday, and attorneys are now drawing up the actual contract language based on that agreement. If the WGA board sees and approves that language, the strike could end, and the contract could go to the membership for a vote this weekend.

The fate of the upcoming Academy Awards show hangs over the negotiations like the Sword of Damocles.

The Times says:

The deal includes a doubling of the residual rate for movies and TV shows sold online and secures the union's jurisdiction over content created specifically for the Web, above certain budget thresholds. It also establishes payments for shows streamed online that improve upon what directors were given in their new contract.

The WGA leadership is pressing members not to abandon their picket lines until the deal is sealed.

Election Day Preview

It is midway through the day here in Texas.

I woke early and was at my desk by 7:30--despite rain and the fact that I usually drift in around 9:00 AM.

I've been aware of a low-level anxiety all morning. Sort of like the feeling my mother used to describe as "ants in your pants."

While I was eating my Chinese food and cruising the Internet over lunch, it dawned on me.

I'm worried about the election.

I was the same way in November, 2000. At that point, I'd had five years of George Bush as governor of Texas and--although I'd been a Republican since I first registered to vote at 18--I refused to vote for him. When he first ran for governor, I wrote him off as a lightweight. Nothing that has happened since then has changed my mind. I didn't vote for him for governor or president.

The television and radio broadcasts are filled with commentary about the war in Iraq and the slowing economy. While both are hugely important issues, neither one worries me as much as a third issue: nominations to the Supreme Court.

Right now the Court is somewhat tenuously balanced: four conservative justices (Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas), four liberal justices (Breyer, Ginsburg, Stevens and Souter) with Justice Kennedy acting as the balance.

The problem is that the two oldest members of the court are liberals: Stevens is 87 and Ginsburg is 74. Kennedy, the court's swing vote, is 71.

The next president, assuming s/he has two terms, is likely to replace two justices. That will probably be the two liberal ones.

I want the Court to remain moderate. So my vote in November will be largely determined by that single issue.

Whatever YOUR issue, make your vote heard. If you haven't yet, get out there and vote. Your vote does make a difference.

So What's the Deal With e-Publishing?

John left the following comment on last night's post:

So you like e-publishing? What are the uses and abuses?

I saw somewhere that you had published on Ellora's Cave.

I frequently speak of traditional publishing and self-publishing. In my mind, those are the only two distinctions in the publishing industry. They are two distinct business models, and everything else falls under one or the other of those two designations.

So where does e-publishing fall?

It is traditional publishing, using a different medium. Instead of print books, it releases electronic books, also called e-books. That's the main difference. In e-publishing, as in print publishing, you submit to a publisher who evaluates your manuscript and decides whether to accept it for publication. When your e-book sells, you receive statements and royalties.

Are there differences between print publishing and e-publishing? Yes, but they are the result of two different mediums, not two different business models. There are pros and cons on both sides.

First, let's talk about print publishing:

• The investment on the part of the publisher is larger (printing costs, distribution, warehousing) so the publishing houses are more cautious. As a result, the bar for acceptance is set higher.
• It takes a lot longer to see your book published; a year from the time the contract is signed is pretty common.
• Because of the longer lead time to release, print publishers generally offer advances against sales (commonly given in thirds: one third when you sign the contract, another third upon the publisher's determining the manuscript is acceptable and the final third upon release).
• Print publishing has been around a lot longer than e-publishing so the distribution network is better established. This means that, at this point in time, you will probably sell more books via print publishing than e-publishing.

Now, let's talk about e-publishing:

• E-publishing is much less expensive than print publishing so e-publishers are more open to taking chances on genres and writers. For someone tired of rejection letters or impatient to be published, e-publishing can offer an attractive alternative.
• The time lag between the signing of a contract and the release of a book is much shorter in e-publishing than in print publishing.
• Because of the accelerated release schedule, e-publishing doesn't typically pay more than a token advance, if any. E-publishing doesn't need to allow for reserves for returns from bookstores so royalties are paid on a monthly or quarterly basis immediately after release.
• E-publishing is much more open to a variety of book lengths. It's much easier to sell shorter stories online than in print publishing.
• Although print publishing might sell more books, e-books offer MUCH higher royalty rates. It is not uncommon for an e-book writer to receive 33% to 40% royalty rates.
• E-publishing is a newer medium. That means there are some better-established e-publishers and a lot of start-ups. It is so easy to become an e-publisher, that people are able to create a business in their kitchen in a few days. Writers who have been unable to find publication for their work decide they'll self-publish by opening up their own publishing house. They seek other writers to lend their "publishing house" credibility. These do-it-yourself operations frequently run into financial problems. They go out of business at an alarming rate. If you are considering e-publishing, you need to stick to the better-known companies.
• Readers of sci-fi and romance were among the first to embrace e-books, but other readers are now beginning to embrace the medium. And the establishment is taking note. Amazon recently released the Kindle e-reader. Today's Publishers Weekly reported: "Reflecting the growing importance of digital publishing to traditional publishers, Simon & Schuster has created the position of Chief Digital Officer and named Elinor Hirschhorn to fill the spot. "
• Print publishers have been offering contracts to the better-known e-book writers. MaryJanice Davidson is among those who got her start in e-books. Interestingly enough, many writers who accepted print contracts continue to write for e-publishers. More telling, writers who were originally published in print are actively seeking e-book contracts. I believe this is a recognition that e-publishing is a growth industry.

No, John, I've never been published by Ellora's Cave. However, if I didn't already have a publisher for my erotic romances, I would be happy to be published by EC. They are probably the best known of the e-publishers. Their authors make very good money.

I get irritated every time I hear someone sneer at e-publishing. I invariably get a vision of a farmer telling his wife that the Ford Model-T rattling past their property is "just a craze."

On Buying Low and Selling High

This question came up twice today in two different venues so I thought I'd natter on about it for a few minutes.

On a writers' loop I belong to and, later, during the Writer's Chatroom discussion tonight, I was asked about trying to write in a genre that's "hot."

The conventional wisdom is that, by the time you identify a "hot" trend and write a novel in that genre, the market will likely be saturated and the trend cooling down.

A perfect example is the popularity of chick lit novels. Every publishing house opened a chick lit imprint, and almost every writer had a story featuring expensive high heels, a gay best friend and an obsession with shopping. By 2006, you couldn't give a chick lit manuscript away.

But something interesting happened. The chick lit voice (full of attitude but minus the high heels, gay friend and shopping obsession) morphed across genres into another hot trend: urban fantasy.

So . . . should you try to chase a trend or not?

If your goal is a New York publisher, probably not. It takes New York a long time to release a book. By the time you identify the trend, write the manuscript, get a contract and are published, the odds are good the trend will be on the downswing.

However, if your goal is e-publishing, it may be possible to jump on a trend before it cools down. E-publishing can release your manuscript online in a third of the time it takes to get traditionally published.

The flip side thinking is that you need to write the book that matters to you, no matter whether it's in vogue or not. This train of thought holds that there is always a place for a well-written book and that, even if you can't sell it today, the market will cycle back around in six months, a year or three years, and you'll be able to sell it then.

Thinking about this, I was reminded of my years in the stock brokerage industry where the mantra is "buy low, sell high." We were always having clients call, wanting to buy the hot new stock. The only problem was, by the time Joe Ordinary heard about the stock, the price jump had already happened. Our clients were asking to buy a stock that was now too expensive and probably due to drop in price.

In order for buying and selling based on "hot" trends to work, you have to catch the trend on the uptick, not the downtick. If you aren't in on the beginning, most of the upswing momentum will be over by the time you hear about it.

Re-Reading George Orwell's Rules

Sorry to be so late in posting. My afternoon got away from me.

Well, I'm a happy camper. I got Dutch tulips and daffodil bulbs at half price at my very pricey nursery.

I also had a very nice chat at the Writer's Chatroom.

Nathan Bransford mentioned a couple of things in his blogs on Thursday and Friday that I think bear repeating.

In his Thursday blog here, he pointed out that people submitting entries for his first page contest are trying too hard to provide "shock and awe" in their openings.

I agree. But I also noticed something else that relates to Nathan's Friday post. Nathan directed readers of that post to George Orwell's six rules for effective writing here.

As I'm sure most of you have, I've seen these rules before. However, in looking at the entries for Nathan's contest, I was struck by the relevance of #2 and #3, which I believe go hand-in-hand.

Orwell's Rule #2 says, "Never use a long word when a short one will do." Rule #3 says, "If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out."

Sometimes I suspect newbie writers feel a need to "prove" themselves as literate. When I read the entries, I sometimes had the sense of someone trying to pack twenty pounds of potatoes into a five-pound sack.

Every sentence does not have to be fifty words long. You need to vary your sentence structure with short sentence and an occasional long sentence.

And don't write with a thesaurus in your right hand. Twelve-dollar words are not better than one-dollar words. Keep it simple. When readers read for pleasure, they usually don't want to have to work at understanding what they're reading.

The old KISS principle still applies.

A Scent of Spring

It's a lovely spring day, and I've been out and about since early this morning, weeding and pruning.

I'm doing that Writer's Chatroom tonight at 6:00 PM EST. I'll come back and do a Sunday post before then.

In the meantime, I need to visit the nursery and buy some new bulbs [grin].

Notre Dame Sculpture

I'm working on a paranormal and was cruising the Internet looking for a face for my demon. I came across this photo. I
LOVE it.



These are a pair of gargoyles on the roof of Notre Dame in Paris. The photographer is Nicolas Knight, an artist who lives in New York. His website is here. I contacted him, requesting permission to post this photo here.

The gargoyles remind me a little of a pit bull or perhaps a pit viper. Their faces are beautiful and . . . terrifying . . . at the same time.

Dara Joy Resurfaces

There was a lot going on in publishing and in business this week, but I'm going with the weird story for today's post.

Last April, I told the cautionary tale of Dara Joy, the up-and-coming author who demolished her career through the exercise of extremely poor judgment. If you're not familiar with the name Dara Joy, I suggest you read my first post here before continuing with this entry.

I hadn't given another thought to Dara since writing that post last April.

Yesterday, the Dear Author site published an update on Dara. Read the rest of the story here. The comment trail put me on the floor.

One note of advice: Do NOT go to the Urban Dictionary for a definition of "ploot." I did and wish I hadn't.

Come Talk To Me Sunday Night

I'll be doing a live chat over at the Writer's Chatroom on Sunday night.

7:00 PM EST and 6:00 PM CST.

I'd love to have company if you're available. It's free.

Go here at the right time.

Hoping to see you there.

Microsoft Makes Offer For Yahoo

Last Thursday, I wrote a post titled "Yahoo Looks Ripe For A Deal" here.

In the article, I quoted a January 19th Wall Street Journal article, which had said:

For the right marauding investor, Yahoo looks like glistening treasure. Like all worthy plunder, it won't come without some effort. But for an activist hunting for a target, it looks like a pretty appealing start page.

Now--only eight days after my post--comes the news that Microsoft announced this morning it has made an offer to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion in cash and stock.

According to Reuters, this would be the biggest Internet deal since the merger between Time Warner and AOL.

Yahoo's stock closed at $19.18 on Thursday. I just checked the pre-market price for this morning. The stock was at $29.56 as of 8:21 ET.

Microsoft's offer to buy was at $31 per share--a 62% premium over Thursday's close.

The Reuters story included a quote from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

"We have great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market . . ."

Yahoo did not immediately offer a comment.

Not everyone was impressed by the offer. Reuters quoted Tim Smalls of the brokerage firm Execution LLC:

"Shocking! To me, the premium seems exorbitant, for what is a dwindling business. I personally don't see how the synergies of Microsoft-Yahoo is going to take on Google . . ."

This is only the beginning. While the Yahoo shareholders might welcome seeing their stock in play, it's unlikely that the company's executives will regard this offer in a positive light.

Also, once a company goes into play, new players often enter the field.

It will be interesting to see how Google responds to this news.

Amazon Buys Audible

It's time for my annual mention of Audible.com, the largest provider of digital downloads of audiobooks in the U.S.

On February 3, 2006, I mentioned Audible here in a post on new technologies. A year later on January 5, 2007, I brought the company up again here in a post on "Another Look At Audible."

Today, February 1, 2008, I'm back to report that Amazon.com said yesterday it has reached agreement to purchase Audible for $11.50 per share.

This is Amazon's second major purchase of an audio provider. Last May, Amazon acquired Brilliance Audio, an independent producer of audiobooks based in Grand Haven, Michigan.

Reuters reported that Amazon values the Audible deal at approximately $300 million.

Audible stock closed Wednesday night at $9.33 a share so the $11.50 purchase price represents a 23% premium.

The Audible purchase creates some questions. First, according to Publishers Weekly, Audible "is the exclusive distributor of spokenword audio to iTunes, owned by one of Amazon's competitors, Apple."

A second issue is DRM (Digital Rights Management). Audible's content is DRM protected. Amazon offers music downloads without DRM protection.

Stay tuned . . .

Price of Books Falls in Japan

I'm heading back to work this morning.

This was in the Asia Pulse News on Monday:

Sales of books and magazines in 2007 dropped for the third straight year, falling 3.1 per cent to 2.08 trillion yen (US$19 billion), according to figures released Friday by the Research Institute for Publications.

These numbers are deceptive because, while the number of books sold didn't change, the price of them did. A greater percentage of books sold were cheap cell phone novels that brought down the average price of all books by 3.8 percent.

Optimism on the Striking Writer Front

I'm taking another sick day. This will be a short post so I can go back to bed.

Yesterday's Los Angeles Times reported "guarded optimism" in the ongoing talks between the studios and striking writers.

The [Writers] guild's board of directors, which ultimately has to approve any contract, met Monday to discuss the status of negotiations. One main area of concern is a flat residual payment of $1,200 that studios gave directors for streaming their shows in the first year.

Writers fear that such a rate could one day give networks greater incentive to rerun shows online, where residuals would be a fraction of what producers currently are required to pay.

While the agreement the Directors Guild reached with the studios is being used as a model, the article points out that writers have issues unique to their craft. "Chief among them is securing so-called separated rights to their projects, which guarantee writers additional payments and credit when their work migrates from one medium to another, such as a Web show that spawns a TV pilot."

Book Buying on the Internet

I'm taking a sick day. I feel really, really awful. After I post this, I'm going back to bed to die.

Thanks to Shelf Awareness for pointing me toward a BBC story yesterday.

According to the BBC, "Polling company Nielsen Online surveyed 26,312 people in 48 countries. 41% of internet users had bought books online, it said."

Nielsen Online said "much of the increase was in emerging markets, such as South Korea and India . . ."

Here's Nielsen's breakdown of the top Internet book buyers by country:

1. South Korea - 58%
2. Germany - 55%
3. Austria - 54%
4. Vietnam - 54%
5. Brazil - 51%
6. Egypt - 49%
7. China - 48%
8. India - 46%
9. Taiwan - 45%
10. UK - 45%

That 58% of Internet users for #1 South Korea translates to approximately 18,000,000 people who purchased books. By contrast, compare that to the U.K. where 45% of Internet users is estimated to be 14,500,000 people.

At only 38% of its Internet users buying books, the U.S. didn't make the top ten list--even though that 38% translates to approximately 57,500,000 people.

These results compare to a similar poll done two years ago when 34% of Internet users had purchased books.

A New Contest

Agent Nathan Bransford has finally taken permanent leave of his senses.

He's posted an invitation to "The Surprisingly Essential First Page Challenge" on his blog here.

Essentially, the Essential FPC invites writers to post the first 500 words of their manuscript in the comments section of his blog between now and Wednesday at 5:00 PM (Pacific time).

Nathan and his friend Holly will judge the entries.

As for prizes:

And the prizes! The ultimate grand prize deluxe winner will receive the satisfaction of knowing they have a seriously awesome first page, and will have a choice of a query critique, partial critique, 10 minute phone conversation, or one of my clients' books. Runners-up will receive a query critique or other agreed-upon prize.

It's been slightly over three months since Nathan announced "The Largely Indispensable First Paragraph Challenge," and I'm guessing the holidays helped to blunt the pain of that experience--although I notice May, Nathan's intrepid assistant for that little soiree, didn't volunteer for this outing. She's probably moved out of town and left no forwarding address.

So, come on, you slackers. Get up and going. Hie thee over to Nathan's and post your first 500 words.

[giggle, giggle]

Is Your Novel Fresh And Original?

Agent Jonathan Lyons had a post on Saturday that should be required reading for every would-be writer.

Go here and scroll down to January 26th: "Fresh and Original Ideas."

In the kindest possible way, Jonathan tells writers that most of the query letters he gets are neither fresh nor original.

Every time I walk into Barnes & Noble and see a dozen new vampire novels I know just how he feels. Enough already with the vampires.

Now if you could give me a book where the vampire has an allergy to Type O blood that results in an eating disorder, maybe I'd read it.

Thanks for the reminder, Jonathan.

Briggs Signs With The Dabel Brothers

I had a wonderful writing weekend. It was cold and wet and foggy both mornings, which encouraged me to stay indoors and write.

I took a break to moderate the "Chatting With Joyfully Reviewed" Yahoo group from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM (CST) on Saturday. I always enjoy visiting that group, which is lively and a lot of fun.

Because the Dallas Cowboys lost two weeks ago, my poor brother--the sports columnist--ended up in Green Bay instead of in Dallas last weekend. His plan had been to bring me Dancer, my mother's overweight whippet, but the Dallas loss changed the plan. Following advice from readers of this blog, we're going to explore other options to keep Dancer with Mom.

But now, my dog hunger has been piqued. I dogsat Penny, the Lab from next door, over the weekend. Once it warmed up, I took her for long walks on both days. After spending time with her, I was seriously tempted to stop off at the local animal shelter. The thing that stops me is how little disposable time I have these days. It would be unfair to a dog.

I've written about Patricia Briggs on this blog before, first on August 18 here and later on January 12 here. I've now read three books and one short story in her Mercy Thompson urban fantasy series.

ICv2.com reported on Friday that the Dabel Brothers have signed Briggs to a contract for an original comic series featuring Mercy Thompson. The four-part miniseries will appear in the latter half of 2008. Del Ray will produce a hardcover collection of the series in 2009.

The Dabel Brothers are four brothers (Ernst, Les, David and Pascal) whose company is based in Atlanta. In the seven years they've been in operation, they've earned a reputation as a roving band that has moved from publisher to publisher while turning out high-quality graphic novels based on fantasy novels by famous authors as well as up-and-coming urban fantasy writers.

Since 2001, the Dabel Brothers have worked and then broken off from Image Comics, Devil's Due, Alias Enterprises, Red Eagle Entertainment and Marvel Publishing. A number of those breaks have been well-publicized and vitriolic, with some legal entanglements apparently still lingering.

Even while they've been wandering minstrels, the Dabels have signed deals with top writers to do graphic adaptations of their novels. Their first big client was George R.R. Martin. After the success of their six-book series for him, they signed Robert Silverberg, Raymond E. Feist, Tad Williams, Robert Jordan, and Orson Scott Card.

In 2006, the Dabel Brothers added Laurell K. Hamilton to their stable.

Last August, they announced an adaptation of best-selling author Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: Prodigal Son, which will debut next month.

Jim Butcher's Dresden File novels will be released this year in twelve to sixteen monthly comics for each book.

Thanks to Dear Author here for bringing the ICv2 story to my attention.

The Daily Coyote Hits The Big Time

On December 1, I offered you a link to the blog Daily Coyote here.

The Daily Coyote blog came on line in mid-September. I discovered it in November when Dooce recommended it. Just after Christmas, the Chicago Tribune did a story on the blog, which was then logging 30,000 hits a day.

Shreve Stockton, a 30-year-old writer and photographer, lives in a one-room log cabin in Wyoming with her cat Eli. She has previously published a cookbook on Eating Gluten Free.

Two years ago, while riding her Vespa across country from San Francisco to New York, she fell in love with Wyoming. She's been supporting herself as a ranch hand and substitute teacher.

In April, 2007, hunters killed two coyotes, leaving behind a ten-day-old pup. Shreve took the baby in, named him Charlie and started a photo record of his growth. Five months later, she began her blog, posting a photo a day of Charlie, Eli (who was NOT amused by his new bedmate) and her surroundings.

The Chicago Tribune article said:

People are seriously loving this site. Stockton's photos are beautiful, but, more important, they capitalize on a triumvirate of cultural fascinations: blogging, living off the grid (Stockton has electricity and DSL but no running water in the winter) and, perhaps most viscerally and ridiculously, having a wild animal as a pet.

Shreve began by offering to sell photos of Charlie, then she offered to sell calendars of Charlie. Now for $5 a month, you can subscribe to The Daily Coyote.

I am confident she is building a database of names to be used for the inevitable Charlie book. My only question as to whether she would self-publish (she has a niche) or go traditional was answered in the January 14th edition of Publishers Weekly:

Marysue Rucci [of Simon and Schuster] preempted world rights to a memoir by 30-year-old photographer Shreve Stockton titled The Daily Coyote: A Year with Charlie, derived from her popular blog of the same name; Stacey Glick at Dystel & Goderich made the sale . . . pub date is scheduled for fall 2008.

If you visit the site, be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom to see the photos in order. We are still five months behind real time although--if you read the FAQ in her blog's left-hand column--you can link to a picture of Charlie today in the snow.

Everyone is holding their collective breath to see what Charlie does next month when mating season begins. My brother, who is an avid hunter, says Shreve should neuter Charlie because one of two things will happen: (1) He'll be killed by a coyote pack, or (2) Unafraid of humans, he will not run from hunters and be shot. I hope my brother is wrong.

Rambo Revisited

We went to see Rambo last night--along with half the teenage boys in Dallas County. The theatre was packed.

If you don't remember (or never saw) the Rambo series, here's a cheat sheet on the three previous films. For the record, the first two Rambo movies would be on my top twenty action films list:

• First Blood: Released in 1982, seven years after the official end of the Vietnam War, the film tells of a troubled veteran having difficulty adjusting to life in the States. Medal of Honor recipient John Rambo is now a drifter. He wanders into Hope, WA, looking for the only other survivor of his elite Special Forces unit, but learns his friend died of cancer as the result of his exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange. When the local sheriff--who doesn't like vagrants--tries to run Rambo out of town, Rambo fights back, using the skills that kept him alive in Vietnam. By the end of the film, Hope is in shambles, and Rambo is en route to prison.

The film was a hit, tapping into the ambivalence many Americans had for both the Vietnam War and its veterans. It depicted post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which as the result of a ground-breaking book in 1980 was only beginning to be understood at the time.

• First Blood, Part II: Rambo is sprung from federal prison by his old commander, Colonel Trautman. Congress is trying to satisfy families of MIAs from the War by sending a fact-finding mission to see if there are any POWs still alive in Vietnam. The hope is that Rambo will document the fact that there are no U.S. soldiers still imprisoned. Instead, he locates POWs and tries to extract one. His team abandons him, and he's captured by the Vietnamese. He becomes a one-man war, destroying the camp and rescuing the POWs.

This film was a mega-hit, earning $300 million, more than twice what the first movie did. It was the second most successful film of 1985. Early in the film, Rambo asks Trautman, "Sir, do we get to win this time?" I suspect Americans, still smarting over the defeat in Vietnam a decade earlier, embraced the film because, through Rambo, they got to vicariously win "this time." Even President Reagan was a fan of the movie.

• Rambo III: This film was released in 1988, three years after Part II. Rambo now lives a quiet life in Thailand, where he lives and works in a monastery. Colonel Trautman arrives and asks Rambo to help him deliver weapons to the Mujahedeen, the freedom fighters opposing the Soviets in Afghanistan. Rambo refuses but, when Trautman is taken prisoner by the Soviets, he flies to the rescue. The finale has Rambo and Trautman facing down the entire Soviet force in Afghanistan until the Mujahedeen arrive to help.

Stallone lost his sense of proportion with this film. It was over-the-top, and the finale was just plain silly. MovieCynics.com said: "Rambo III is the movie that killed the Rambo franchise for the next 20 years. " They were right.

Now, after that over-long build-up, here's my review of Rambo, the fourth film in the franchise.

It is probably the most gratuitously violent film I've ever seen. According to Wikipedia, there are a total of 236 kills or 2.59 kills per minute.

I got the impression that Stallone was trying to redeem the plot from the third film. Why he would pick the plot from the worst of the three movies to revisit is a mystery to me. Julie Benz, the female lead of the new film, came to the series without having seen it before. She said in an interview that Sly asked her to watch the first and second films, but not the third. That says to me he knew he blew the third movie. So why redo it?

This time, instead of the plight of the people of Afghanistan, Stallone focuses on the plight of the Christian Karen tribe in Burma (Myanmar). As the film opens, Rambo is again living quietly in Thailand. He owns a boat and earns a living by trapping poisonous snakes for exhibitions. A group of missionaries approaches him and asks to use his boat to deliver drugs and supplies to the Karen tribe. Rambo refuses.

Just like in Rambo III, the missionaries are caught and imprisoned. One by one, they are being fed to the pigs. Rambo agrees to go back in with a small team of mercenaries to try a rescue.

That's it. That's the ENTIRE plot. The dialogue is limited and stilted. There is no subtlety in the characters. They are all caricatures. The rest of the film is people being blown up, people being eaten alive, people being cut in half or having their throats ripped out, children being shot in the head or chest.

Stallone has been quoted in interviews saying he wanted to draw attention to the genocide in Burma. In my opinion, showing endless shots of people being slaughtered was not the way to do this.

It's obscene.

Stallone is in pretty good physical shape. If the film had any plot or heart, I would probably have enjoyed it. His age did not distract me. What DID distract me was his one-note performance. It consisted entirely of anger. What passed as a smoldering expression when he was younger came across as sullen now.

I'm guessing he decided he could not do the kind of physical performance he did in the earlier films. In the finale, he is manning a machine gun nest. All he does is cut people in half for ten minutes with that machine gun. It was simply gross.

I felt like I was watching a videogame where the object was to kill as many people as possible. Maybe that will appeal to some viewers. It didn't do anything for me.

More Independent Deals With the Writers' Union

The Associated Press released the following today:

Lionsgate and Marvel studios have signed interim deals with the striking Writers Guild of America, the union said Thursday.

The deals followed separate guild pacts with other independent production companies such as United Artists, The Weinstein Co. and David Letterman's Worldwide Pants.

The guild said such agreements confirm it's possible for writers to be compensated fairly and for companies to operate profitably.

Come Joyfully Chat

Tomorrow the Berkley and NAL HEAT authors are going to be chatting in the Joyfully Reviewed Yahoo group. Both imprints are part of Penguin.

I will be joining Alyssa Brooks, Kathleen Dante, Cherie Feather, Joey W. Hill, Julia Templeton, Saskia Walker & Sasha White from 10 AM to 10 PM Eastern Time on Saturday.

I've agreed to take the lead for a two-hour period from noon to 2:00 PM Eastern time (11 AM to 1:00 PM Central).

Joyfully Reviewed has over 1,500 members. If you'd like to join our chat, please go here and join the group.

Friday Morning Political Quarterbacking

The New York Times strongly endorses Hilary Clinton today
here.

Also, during yesterday's Fresh Air on NPR, Terry Gross interviewed Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate online magazine about his new book, The Bush Tragedy.

I found the interview very interesting. Weisberg describes President Bush in light of his family background, saying that nothing the president has done should come as a surprise because he has followed a consistent path throughout his life.

You can read an excerpt or listen to the entire interview here.

To See Or Not To See

Okay, by now, you all know I'm an action film fan. I love fast-moving adventures films, and I'm not disturbed by violence in these movies because it has no relation to real-life violence.

I entertained myself in traffic yesterday morning trying to name my favorite action films. Here they are in alphabetical order:

1) Aliens
2) Blade Runner
3) Bourne Ultimatum
4) Casino Royale
5) Collateral
6) Die Hard
7) First Blood
8) Lethal Weapon
9) The Long Kiss Goodnight
10) Pulp Fiction
11) The Rock
12) The Terminator

You probably know where this is leading.

Rambo premieres today.

First Blood is one of my all-time favorite action movies. First Blood, Part II would probably make my top twenty favorite films.

Of course, Rambo III was god-awful. It was such a huge embarrassment that I can't even believe I'm thinking about going to see the new film.

It's been twenty-five years since the first film and almost twenty years since the third one. Sly Stallone is now sixty-one years old.

I've known more than one guy over sixty whom I found very sexy. Somehow I don't think Sly is going to be one of them.

I'm so conflicted.

More on Yahoo

This morning, the Associated Press released a story on Yahoo that continues where I dropped off last night:

Yahoo Inc., is in early discussions with major record labels over offering unprotected MP3s either for sale or for free as part of an ad-supported service, two record company executives familiar with the talks said Wednesday. . .

Unlike music files that come with copy protections embedded, MP3 files are compatible with most portable music devices, including Apple Inc.'s market-leading iPod media players, Microsoft Corp.'s Zune and mobile phones that play music.

The company's management said last fall it had begun to de-emphasize its subscription model in favor of an advertising-supported music service. Yahoo also expanded it online music pages by adding song lyrics.

The Internet pioneer recently announced plans for a multiyear restructuring plan that calls for the elimination of some of its existing areas of business.

Yahoo Looks Ripe For A Deal

Saturday's Wall Street Journal (WSJ) had an interesting article that suggests Yahoo is ready for a shake-up.

The WSJ makes this case:

Consider the management question. A month after Mr. [Jerry] Yang, a Yahoo founder, took over from former Hollywood studio boss Terry Semel in June, he promised action to turn around the flailing Internet titan within 100 days. Nearly 200 days later, there is little sign of this. Since he took over, Yahoo stock has dropped 23%, while Google's has added roughly 10%. In the past two years, the company's value has been halved, so it is hard to see how investors would oppose a management shake-up.

The San Jose Mercury News had an article on Tuesday that said:

Yahoo is planning to lay off hundreds of people as part of an effort to refocus its sprawling Internet services to compete with rivals like Google and Facebook, according to a source close to the company.

It's unclear whether the cuts will be deep enough to satisfy Wall Street, which has been urging the Internet company to shed as much as 25 percent of its workforce of about 14,000. More than half of those employees are based outside of the Sunnyvale headquarters.

But the source said Yahoo also is planning to hire people to work on new initiatives, so ultimately there may be no reduction in the total head count . . .

Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein, said in a recent research note that Yahoo should outsource paid search, automate display advertising and get rid of one in four employees.

Lindsay's suggestions zero in on Yahoo's main problem: They've continued to pursue a strategy of becoming the next best search engine even while losing search market share. The Mercury News says, "Yang has so far rejected the notion of allowing another company, like Google, to sell search advertising on Yahoo's behalf."

The Wall Street Journal had a second article about Yahoo on Tuesday, saying:

"...Yahoo has many strengths, but its primary weakness remains in search, where its U.S. market share has dropped to 17% from 22% a year ago, despite investing mightily to catch up to Google. An activist would almost certainly pressure Yahoo to swallow its pride and hand its search traffic over to Microsoft, or even Google, for a fat fee. Outsourcing search could boost Yahoo's revenue from the business by at least 30% to $3.5 billion, according to some analyst estimates."

Yahoo's pursuit of a larger piece of the search engine pie hasn't always been graceful. They've certainly managed to annoy me. My provider is Southwestern Bell (in partnership with Yahoo). About every fifth time I click on Google, I get a message asking if I'd like to make Yahoo my home page. This is NOT a good strategy for winning over customers.

The Saturday WSJ article said:

Yahoo is expected to provide more information about any cuts and activities it is scaling back when it announces fourth-quarter results Jan. 29. Any cuts would signal to investors that the company plans to maintain or improve profit margins . . .

At the close of market on January 22, Yahoo's stock price was $19.92. The WSJ estimates the market value of their assets at $28 billion. Shareholders would love to have access to the money value of those assets, particularly the Asian Yahoo Japan and Alibaba. The catch would be the taxable consequences of such a deal.

This is the kind of situation where a corporate finance expert with skill in putting together tax-free deals could help.

The Saturday WSJ article ends:

After outsourcing search to Google and reaping the cost benefits of a lessened head count -- another step investors would like to see -- Yahoo's stock could be worth as much as $36, according to a breakingviews.com sum-of-the-parts analysis, or as much as two-thirds more than the current share price. For the right marauding investor, Yahoo looks like glistening treasure. Like all worthy plunder, it won't come without some effort. But for an activist hunting for a target, it looks like a pretty appealing start page.

Latest News on the WGA Strike

The Associated Press (AP) released a story on Wednesday, indicating that the logjam preventing further talks between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) seems to have been broken.

The WGA and the AMPTP released a joint statement on Tuesday saying they would begin informal talks today in an effort to end the almost three-month WGA strike.

ABC reported on Wednesday morning that the WGA said it would not picket the Grammy Awards ceremony on February 10th. However, no such announcement relating to the Academy Awards on February 24th was forthcoming.

The hopeful signs come after the Directors Guild of America (DGA) reached tentative agreement with the studio heads. The model of holding "informal" discussions prior to the "formal" negotiations apparently was one that worked successfully
during those talks.

Discussions between the WGA and the AMPTP broke down on December 7th when the studios demanded that the writers stop insisting on unionizing writers working on reality and animation shows.

According to the AP:

The [writers] guild agreed Tuesday to withdraw those two issues to "make absolutely clear our commitment to bringing a speedy conclusion to negotiations," union executives Michael Winship and Patric Verrone said in an e-mail letter to members. But organizing efforts for guild representation in those genres will continue and will be discussed more fully in the next two weeks, said Winship and Verrone, presidents of the East Coast and West Coast guilds, respectively.

It's no secret that the writers believe they made a bad deal in their last contract. The Guild underestimated the value of the Internet as a medium for entertainment. Their goal in these negotiations is to obtain improved rights in the new media arena.

The AP reports:

The studio executives said the [DGA] deal established a precedent for the industry's creative talent to "participate financially in every emerging area of new media."

The directors won several key contract points, including union jurisdiction over programs produced for distribution on the Internet and payments for downloaded TV programs and movies based on a percentage of the distributor's gross.

But the writers guild was seeking 2.5 percent of such grosses - about three times what the directors' deal provides.

Stay tuned . . .

Little Things That Make A Difference

Yesterday was a day of enjoying little things.

Little things like taking a shower without an arm encased in plastic. Little things like enjoying Viggo Mortensen's Oscar nomination for Eastern Promises. Little things like seeing my
first cardinal of the year sitting on the backyard fence.

One of my personal goals for 2008 was to add a new way for me to help the environment each week. My changes are small, but at the end of the year, I will have made 52 such small changes. For example, I now bring my own net bags to the supermarket when I go shopping in order to avoid using plastic bags unnecessarily. I don't leave the water running when I brush my teeth. I'm using cold water in my washing machine instead of hot.

I'm finding that each time I do one of these small things, I feel good. My changes may be almost negligible, but they're real. And I'm enjoying doing the research to decide what change to add to the list each week.

Speaking of small things, I've spent a fair amount of time on this blog talking about niches--those small markets comprised of a group with a specific interest.

Sunday's Peoria Journal Star had an article titled "Because of Niches, Magazines Still Strong."

The reporter, Steve Tarter, interviewed a professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi, Samir Husni who is also known as "Mr. Magazine." Husni estimates that "only 10 percent of the magazines published today fall into the general-interest category, down from 30 percent just 20 years ago."

General interest magazines are the broad stroke, intended to appeal to the widest possible audience. These include magazines like Life and Look, which have long since gone out of business.

Niche magazines are the smaller, special interest ones: Crochet World, Farm & Ranch Living, Water Garden News, All About Beer, Bowhunting World, Today's Christian Woman, New Jersey Life and American Cheerleader.

Niche titles are growing at the same time that, over the last 16 years, three general interest titles--Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report--have lost a total of a million readers.

"Publishers no longer launch magazines looking for a million readers. The new face of magazines are niche titles that may never exceed 10,000 in circulation."

Lesson? Identify your niche and mine the hell out of it.

No Lawsuit Here

Monday's New York Times (NYT) has a cautionary reminder for writers: book titles cannot be copyrighted.

On May 12 of this year a new book related to food will be released by W.W. Norton. The book is The Saucier’s Apprentice: One Long Strange Trip Though the Great Cooking Schools of Europe, by Bob Spitz.

Raymond Sokolov, the restaurant columnist for The Wall Street Journal, is incensed by the book's title. According to the NYT,
"In 1976, Mr. Sokolov wrote The Saucier’s Apprentice: A Modern Guide to Classic French Sauces for the Home. Published by Knopf, the book is now in its 16th printing . . . "

After reading Mr. Sokolov's rant about Spitz' "bad taste" (I wonder, was the pun intended?), I was mildly amused when the NYT pointed out that humorist S.J. Perleman had written an essay for The New Yorker on January 14, 1956. The title? "The Saucier's Apprentice."

Oscar Nominations Today

If it wouldn't have been disrespectful of Dr. King, I would have titled this post "Free At Last."

Monday at 3:00 PM, I saw my left hand for the first time in 68 days. It was swollen and flaking; it felt tender and stiff; it was the most beautiful sight I'd seen in . . . well, 68 days.

When my surgeon saw the blister the cast had rubbed on my left thumb, he didn't even argue removing it. I offered to wear a new cast for another two weeks. Before deciding, he X-rayed the hand, showed me the five tiny screws and metal plate he'd installed and manipulated my fingers, sending me to my knees in pain.

He decided he didn't want to put a new cast on it. It's time for me to begin working the hand before it gets so stiff, I'll have serious difficulty regaining use of it. So, for the next month, I'm to exercise it. If I don't have full use by the time of my next visit, I'll have to go into rehab.

Six hours ago, I tried typing with it. I couldn't do it. The fingers wouldn't stretch even the tiny distance required to use the keyboard.

Undeterred, I've been trying to type all evening and can finally write this using both hands--although nowhere near as fast as my usual typing speed. But I don't care. Not having to wrap it up to take a shower or having to look at that moldy old cast is worth almost any price.

It's that time again. Today the Oscar nominations will be announced. As I've done in previous years, I'm listing my suggestions for the top six awards.

Here we go:

Best Actor

• Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd)
• Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will be Blood)
• Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises)
• Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Savages)
• Denzel Washington (The Great Debaters)

I think George Clooney will be nominated for Michael Clayton, but I replaced him with Viggo Mortensen because I really liked Eastern Promises and thought Viggo should have gotten the nomination for History of Violence in 2005.

I was one of the few people who did not like American Gangster. I had such high hopes for it, but thought it was badly paced. However, I think it likely that Denzel Washington will be nominated for the film. I preferred his performance in The Great Debaters so listed him for that.

Ryan Gosling got passed over last year for Half Nelson. He may snag a nomination this year for Lars and the Real Girl.

UPDATE AT 8:25 AM: I missed two here, but I'm not crying. Viggo got the nomination I wanted him to have. George Clooney WAS nominated along with Tommy Lee Jones, whom I had pegged as a Best Supporting Actor. Denzel Washington and Philip Seymour Hoffman were not named.

Best Actress

• Julie Christie (Away From Her)
• Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose)
• Keira Knightley (Atonement)
• Laura Linney (The Savages)
• Ellen Page (Juno)

In 2005, Keira Knightley was nominated for Pride and Prejudice. She lost out to Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash. That same year, Amy Adams was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Junebug. She lost out to Rachel Weisz. My bet is that Knightley and Adams will battle it out for the last nomination slot for Best Actress this year. I'll confess I was not an Atonement fan, but since I'm not nominating it for Best Picture, I'll give this slot to Knightley.

UPDATE at 8:25 AM: I missed one here. Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age grabbed that final slot I gave to Keira Knightley.

Best Supporting Actor

• Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford)
• Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men)
• Philip Seymour Hoffman (Charlie Wilson's War)
• Tommy Lee Jones (No Country For Old Men)
• John Travolta (Hairspray)

Casey Affleck was lauded for his roles in two pictures in 2007: Gone Baby Gone and TAOJJBTCRF. I'm betting he'll get nominated for one of the two.

Tommy Lee Jones could be nominated for Best Actor for In The Valley of Elah. I think instead he'll get nominated as Best Supporting Actor for No Country.

Philip Seymour Hoffman won Best Actor for 2005's Capote. I think he's more likely to win the Best Supporting Actor nod this year for Charlie Wilson's War than he is to win a nomination for The Savages. I just really loved The Savages.

I wanted to nominate Josh Brolin for either American Gangster or No Country. I threw John Travolta in as a wild card instead.

UPDATE at 8:25 AM: Again, I missed two. Tommy Lee Jones was nominated for Best Actor instead of Best Supporting Actor and John Travolta wasn't nominated at all. Instead Hal Holbrook was nominated for Into the Wild. and Tom Wilkinson was nominated for Michael Clayton.

Best Supporting Actress

• Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There)
• Helena Bonham Carter (Sweeney Todd)
• Ruby Dee (American Gangster)
• Vanessa Redgrave (Atonement)
• Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone)

Since I nominated Travolta for his gender-bending role, it seemed only fair to nominate Cate Blanchett for her role as Bob Dylan in I'm Not There.

I think Helena Bonham Carter will get passed over and that would be a shame. She did a terrific job in Sweeney Todd. She'll probably get snubbed in favor of Saoirse Ronin in Atonement.

UPDATE at 8:25 AM: Once more I missed two. I was right about Helena Bonham Carter getting passed over for Saoirse Ronin. Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton edged out my pick of Vanessa Redgrave for Atonement.

I was delighted by Ruby Dee's nomination, the only one for American Gangster. Apparently the Academy agreed with my low estimation for that movie.

Best Director

• Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country For Old Men)
• David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises)
• Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum)
• Ridley Scott (American Gangster)
• Joe Wright (Atonement)

Okay, I know the odds are waayyy against Paul Greengrass and David Cronenberg, but here I went with my heart.

Since I snubbed American Gangster and Atonement in other categories, I balanced my choices here with those films.

UPDATE at 8:25 AM: Gina was right. I should have taken a look at the DGA nominations. I missed FOUR of the picks here. The only one I nailed was No Country For Old Men.

The nominations included Paul Thomas Anderson for There Will Be Blood, Tony Gilroy for Michael Clayton, Jason Reitman for Juno, and Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Best Picture

• Juno
• No Country For Old Men
• Sweeney Todd
• The Savages
• There Will Be Blood

I could have erred by not listing American Gangster or Atonement. I just didn't admire either film all that much. I was torn between Michael Clayton and There Will Be Blood. I went with the one most likely to be on the minds of the Academy voters.

UPDATE at 8:25 AM: Again, I missed two. Sweeney Todd and The Savages were edged out by Atonement and Michael Clayton.

Apparently the Academy voters didn't agree with me about Atonement. I KNOW how much they like those big sweeping historical sagas. I do, too, sometimes. Just not this year.

With This Faith We Will ... Work Together

I had today off, and I'm taking tomorrow off, too.

It seemed only right that since MLK gave me the day off, I should spend ten minutes listening to the speech that, according to Wikipedia, "was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address."

Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. President Kennedy had expressed anxiety to his closest advisors that, if there wasn't a large turnout for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, it would set back his efforts to push a Civil Rights bill through Congress. The president's fears were allayed when over two hundred thousand supporters showed up.

November Bookstore Sales

Shelf Awareness reported on November bookstore sales last week. Preliminary census estimates put November sales at $1.186 billion, up 7.5% from from the same month in 2006.

Year to date through November, bookstore sales were $14.654 billion, up 0.8% from for the same period in 2006.

"This marks the fifth month in a row that bookstore sales were up over the same period last year--and the second month in a row that year-to-date sales have topped last year's comparable figures."

When we compare bookstore sales to total retail sales in November, we find bookstore sales did better than the market as a whole. November total retail sales were $347,688 billion, up 6.4% over November 2006.

However, retail sales for the year to date were up 4.1% compared to the 0.8% for bookstores.

As always, remember the Census Bureau figures do not include "electronic home shopping, mail-order, or direct sale" or used book sales.

Edward Albee's Decree

While I was running errands on Saturday, I wore my Sony S2 Walkman so I could listen to NPR's Morning Edition. I heard an interview that indicated Edward Albee will no longer give professional theater companies permission to stage his Zoo Story alone. He now insists that it can only be staged as the second act in his play Peter and Jerry.

Zoo Story was Albee's first play, written in 1958 when he was just 30. It tells the story of two men who meet on a bench in New York's Central Park. Peter's a married publishing executive and Jerry describes himself as a "permanent transient." The play explores themes of loneliness and isolation.

This isn't the first time Albee's tinkered with Zoo Story. In 1981 he wrote a parody of it called Another Part of the Zoo for a gay benefit. That effort was not well received by the critics.

In 2003, the Hartford Stage wanted to produce Zoo Story, but needed to fill out the stage bill. They commissioned Albee to write another one-act play. To their surprise, Albee came back with a prequel to Zoo Story that he called Homelife. Hartford Stage produced the two plays as one play called Peter and Jerry during their 2004 season.

“They’re still two plays,” Albee told Entertainment Connecticut Central magazine during the play's run. “They can be performed separately. But I think of it now as one play.”

Albee has formalized his belief. Since Zoo Story is HIS play, he insists it either be performed as part of Peter and Jerry or not at all.

He still gives permission to non-professional groups like high schools and colleges to produce "Zoo Story" alone. Zoo Story is a popular choice for schools because, with just one act, it can be easily staged.