I haz Strcrft2#*!(%!1

Publisher Clearing The House

Me thinking out loud...

I don't know that much about it really. I don't know how Publishers think, operate, or seek out new talent. I think about my own adventures so far, becoming a writer, writing a book, and looking for the means to publish those works. I contemplated a traditional publisher for all of ten minutes before I realized a few things.

Bear with me, it's a story I've told before.

Five or six years ago, I bought a house. Went to my Bank for a HELOC to consolidate a very small amount of debt. House was paid for, totally free and clear, nothing leaning on it whatsoever. My bank told me I wasn't in enough different kinds of debt, and that the balance I owed was far too low. They wouldn't do the HELOC unless I took out a couple of credit cards and maxed them out.

I don't have a Finance Degree, nor do I understand how the Banks operated at the time. I knew based on what the rep at my Bank was telling me that their days were numbered. Insisting that you only lend to people who can't possibly pay you back is dumb. Needless to say, Washington Mutual went down as the biggest bank failure in history.

What the traditional publishers seem to be doing is no different. They are betting that writers will continue to come to them, surrender their copyrights, get paid a small percentage, in exchange for a small amount of exposure and promotion. I wonder how many writers are looking to the emerging ebook market and giving serious consideration to looking for a different road.

When Amazon reported that they sold more electronic copies of books than hardbacks, the Traditional Publishers were reportedly unconcerned. Now Ryu Murakami (big name in Japan) has skirted his own venerable publishers to release his latest book ahead of any print deal in the form of an iPad App. He'll have to sell 5000 copies of the App to break even from the article I read. Three and a quarter million iPads in circulation... totally possible.

The value isn't in money though. The guy is making a bold statement.

If skirting your publishers and going to the electronic medium is a sure fire way to get millions in free publicity from the press, how long will it take for some of the bigger names in the US to take the plunge? Stephen King already has (sort of). What do the small no-name guys like me have to lose taking that same road?

From my perspective, nothing.

There are now a plethora of highly affordable eReaders, and Apps (mostly free) across almost every mobile platform. One has to assume that some of the traditional publishers are hip, maybe even feeding this trend, trying to put themselves at the dead center of it all. Then again, maybe they're just like everyone else... just trying to figure this thing out.

I look forward to watching it all unfold from my own quiet corner of the world.

Standing Out

Put a link on my site today allowing people to download the Actor's Guidebook for my Storytelling Sciences RPG. I intend to eventually publish and link it all under a Creative Commons, no derivatives license. It's really hard to put something out there, that you've worked so hard on, spent hours testing, for free, allowing anyone to download and look at it. My play test crew will all get a hard copy, hand bound by yours truly, but it feels good to let go of it a little.

I had held so tightly to that project, had so many good memories associated with it, and spent so much time with my friends getting it just right... it's hard to share. Feels good to let it go though, everything I've put into it. I can close the door on that project one book at a time and let it stand out there on it's own. As I publish novels, I'll also put out RPG setting books allowing people to run RPGs in those same worlds. They'll be able to look and see how everything works, the SS technical language making all plain.

I think there are some mysteries that I've already written about, those things in life you can't quantify, that'll always be guarded secrets. Not by me. Just things we weren't meant to understand in this life.

I like not knowing.

Miffed

I've been reading pretty much every headline on Hewlett Packard excited to see what they do on a couple of fronts.

- Palm Acquisition

- HP Slate Device

According to a couple of recent articles on Engadget, Palm is getting the kick to being a sub-brand and the Slate will arrive for enterprise in the fall. There aren't really any words to describe how I feel at this moment. Angry. Disappointed. Baffled. Those three seem to work really well.

So um, Asus. Go Asus. (Strongly recommend watching the video with the sound off.)

The Road Is Everything

Had a good talk with my family today. Just sort of worked out we were all in the same place at the same time. I don't know how it came up, but my mom asked me how I fight the uncertainty that seems to pervade our lives. I have my own method.

I start with myself, because it should be the realm where I have the most control.

Journaling

This blog, my own personal log, my Things App, page count, and iCal all serve to grant me a sort of intellectual clarity. I can look back at what I have or haven't done and take some of the guess work out of where I am mentally. This removes some of the uncertainty relative to my thoughts, and to some degree my emotional status.

Exercise

Knowing our physical limitations, regardless of what we do helps. It is a tiny amount of uncertainty removed relative to the big picture. Still, knowing how far you can walk, how many push ups you can do, and similar adds to one's personal knowledge of themselves, therefore eliminating uncertainty. A person's got to know their limitations.

Prayer

Just the nuts and bolts here. Even if there is no God and no one listening, it is the one time a person can be totally honest with where they are in life. Prevaricating with a supreme being is pretty pointless, thus we tend to be brutally honest during prayer. Listening to ourselves say things aloud we might not otherwise can take some of the uncertainty out of our spirituality.

That's all I'm going to say about that.

-- Sent from my Tech Envy Generator

Left For Dead

I use my RPG tables quite a bit to develop characters for my books. There are a number of characters I use over and over again to fill the gaps in stories just beginning to find their roots. Taking a character that originated from a story told orally, to be embodied by simple text has advantages regardless.

To that end, since the LARP days, I often speak aloud as the characters I'm writing about, in the shower, in the car, and alone in my office. Verbally speaking every line of dialogue doesn't always make something clearer for the audience reading the story, but it does work to give the character a distinctive voice.

My notes are full of characters that never made it into a story. In a way they were left for dead, never to be a part of a larger story. Makes me wish I had kept the boxes and boxes of material I wrote for LARPs. Hundreds of letters and instances of dialogue that would probably serve me well now.

Curse me for not being more of a pack rat.

-- Sent from my Tech Envy Generator

Marketing Win

Apple Fanboyisms

Did my usual Monday evening tech site/blog/web entity readings about the recent goings ons in the tech world. I marvel at the number of people who have been attributing the success of the iPad to some sort of fanboy phenomenon, or people are buying them just because they love Steve Jobs. If the folks outside Apple's circle of influence are just as clueless, God help Microsoft and Apple's other competitors.

If my Facebook friends list is the sample, less than 5% of my friends work in the tech industry. Only one third of those people own something, other than an iPod, made by Apple. None of them own an iPad. The people on my friends list who own an iPad, or intend to get one, know how to use a computer better than most average users. They aren't the clueless majority, or techie minority, but somewhere in the middle.

The one constant I find in folks who want an iPad, they all benefit from having a mobile computing device with them at all times. They are the sort of folks who would use it to work from their beds after the lights went out, while waiting in line at the DMV, or at a restaurant while waiting for food to show up. Their time is extremely valuable.

Also, every one of those people has sought to push the envelope of what the device was intended for. For instance, using it as one's primary computing device, getting it adopted on an institutional and commercial level, or figuring out how to use it to create media instead of just consuming it. Also, there is the intrepid user who managed to bridge the gap between their iPad and MS Office. The iPad was something different to each user.

If there seems to be some mindless solidarity among iPad users, it is because we (among the folks I know) are each inimitable people, who don't like being lumped together in a single pile over any issue.

-- Sent from my Tech Envy Generator

MS Windows 7 Tablet Trouble

I've read a little about Microsoft's WPC 2010, and several articles on upcoming Windows 7 Based Tablets. It'll be interesting to see what gets unveiled in the near future, but I don't have high hopes. That so many companies, from Asus to Toshiba think that putting Windows 7 on a tablet device is a good plan scares me a little. It's like the entire tech market has fallen completely out of touch with what the consumer wants.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Putting a Desktop OS on a mobile device is pretty much setting the device up to fail.

It's all about the three B's. Boot-time, Battery Life, and Buttons.

Mobile Devices with a Desktop OS will (in my opinion) have...

... a longer Boot-time.

... (ounce for ounce) shorter Battery Life.

... more buttons making for a confusing off-screen interface.

Put simply, this will be BBBad for any of those devices when they get held next to someone running a Tablet with an OS designed for mobile, touch screen devices.

There's hope out there though.

RIM allegedly has a 7" Tablet running a custom OS to hit the markets soon. Given how popular the Blackberry is, such a device stands a chance of being adopted by a variety of folks who already own the popular handset. Hopefully it can reach out beyond that and find some gamers, developers, writers, artists, and other folks who find it useful.

ExoPC is working on a Tablet that sports a custom interface that lays over the top of Windows 7 allowing it to be easily navigated with a finger. Has the same basic stats as a netbook with a 32GB SSD, and from all the video I've seen runs pretty snappy. While riddled with pointless ports, it doesn't have a lot of buttons. Advertised battery life? 5 hours. Fix the battery life, screen viewing angle, and push up the pixel density so the thing can sit under 10" in diameter?

Might be a winner, but the fact remains that in order for Windows 7 to be a viable option, the manufacturer had to put touch capable buffer programming into the mix. If I know Asus, they'll probably do the same thing ExoPC has done, and craft some custom programming to lay over the top of Windows 7 allowing it to be touch screen friendly. MSI and Foxconn will probably make some incredibly nice hardware, that basically requires a bluetooth mouse and keyboard to be functional. I hope I'm wrong.

What I really want? Microsoft to /cast resurrect the Courier Project.

Web Comic, iPad Style

It's cheesy, but if I used Sketchbook Pro to render, Photogene to letter, and Diptic to arrange, I could pretty easily craft my webcomic entirely on my iPad. As a gimmick, it would give me a little traction in the search engines and something else to put my name, links to my books, and so forth beneath. I just gotta pause long enough between the pages of the books I'm writing to actually paint some more Chitterlings. Being able to work on it anywhere will definitely help.