Apple and 5 publishers found guilty of E-Book Price Fixing

The only thing I can say to that is "ugh".
The misconception that books (just like movies) have to be "spiced up" in order to be interesting is truly inane.

Sure, there are some stories which can benefit from this sort of content, but not all of them. And depending on the genre and on the primarily targeted audience such content might result in a drop in quality, sometimes a big drop even. People got the stupid idea that even books addressed to "young adults" (which in case of literature means teens and young adults, go figure) needs to contain violent and/or sexual tones because otherwise people wouldn't be interested in reading those, all because some authors who tried that recently became "popular" (I'm looking at you, miss Meyer; not only at you, though). Myself, I enjoyed reading Dostoyevski's books when I was a teen, and while there were some so-called "adult" themes ("Crime and Punishment" has the main character murder someone near the beginning of the book, for example) they are mostly about psychological changes in people and about the concept of morality and its link with human behaviour; in the same vein, I enjoyed reading Goethe's "Faust", another book which doesn't reach for the "shortcut" today's publishers nag authors to use.
I could compare the whole phenomenon to movie companies forcing movie directors to include fight scenes or nudity in their movies regardless of whether it would fit, even if the movie is supposed to be, let's say, a documentary about catholic monks (people who are supposed to neither fight nor sleep around).

Heck, if anyone tried to force (and yes, paying me in order to make me do it does count as "forcing" in my opinion) me to add coarse language or any sexually-intoned scenes into the book I am trying to write now (emphasis on "trying", since I want to be honest in measuring my writing speed) while knowing what sort of story it is, I would consider it an insult. I really would. Sure, if I wanted I could fit such scenes into it and make it not look out of place (hypothetically speaking; I do not see the point of adding those and therefore I won't). Sure, there will be places where some characters will use rough language for whatever reason, but it will always be justified as either being a part of a given character's behaviour or being an indication of some character being subjected to strong, or perhaps even extreme, emotions (not to mention that any curse words used there would have to be custom-made to fit the world presented in the story, which defeats their purpose as "spice" as the readers would only be told that these words are such by other characters' reactions and to [readers] these words wouldn't mean anything), and reactions of other characters to that will vary greatly.
But I am digressing. The point is, I perceive people trying to tell those who create things "sure, it's good, but you have to add blood/sex/whatever because 'bread and circuses'" as disgusting and pointless, and the very act of telling authors of anything to change their stories to include unfitting themes to raise the rating where it is not necessary as thinly-veiled insults.

 

I can certainly see some of the points being made about adding sex and such to books that don't need it. I have a slight anecdote to share. When I was younger, the Xanth series by Piers Anthony was my most favorite in the world. I was a teenager when I started reading them and I loved the adventure and action. I even liked the puns he made in his books. Now, I have to practically force myself to read his latter works because it seems all he does is write a book about puns and tries to fit in a very small story around them. It has killed them for me. I still very much love the early books but I don't think I have even bothered to find out what new ones have come out for many years. He has fallen off from my favorite authors list and I am still occasionally saddened by this because the early stories are still so much fun to read even after having read some of them half a dozen times over the decades. But as I said in an earlier post, I have found other authors to replace him.

Oh, also, I really loved the Wild Cards series when I was a teenager as well. It was great and then the author had problems with the IRS I think and it was a decade or more before I ever saw a new one. The new ones while being good, just don't seem to be as good as the older books were. I think the author lost their train of thought or something because they just don't quite feel the same.

Another series I really enjoyed while younger was Robert Asprin's Myth series. I remember sitting somewhere reading the stories for the first time and suddenly bursting out laughing. One of my favorite comedy series. I was saddened when I heard of his death. Jody Lynn Nye did co-write some newer Myth books with him and seems to be taking over the series for him. I have read some of the co-written books but I had a hard time finding them and have lost track of which was the last book I have read. I probably should look into finding and reading the remaining books. I did find her to be a good author so I think I will at the least enjoy them. Just need to find time to track some down and maybe some money to purchase them with.

 

I think you might be confusing another author (possibly George Alec Effinger) with the Wild Cards authors (it's a shared universe). I only mention Effinger because I know he had stopped writing for a while. He had severe health issues, leading to medical bills that he could not afford to pay, and had to declare bankruptcy. Wild Cards, on the other hand, was created by a group of writers, not one writer specifically, but principally was led and edited by George R. R. Martin, and Melinda Snodgrass. They've had several different publishers over the years, and have had difficulties with a couple of them. So far as I know, they've never had (as a group, anyway) significant financial problems.

BTW, there's a strong possibility of SyFy doing a Wild Cards movie -- it would be set in modern times, but a couple of old classic characters will probably make an appearance -- specifically Croyd Crenson ("The Sleeper") was mentioned, which is VERY cool. He's really a great character, and makes sense for a modern film, since a side effect of his Wild Card ability is that he doesn't age normally. He's kind of the classic rogue -- a thief who isn't such a bad guy (except when he's been on amphetamines for far too long trying to stay awake). After all, he IS 'The Sleeper'.

 

Yeah, I know it's George R.R. Martin as the main collector/author. But there was a point where for maybe a decade, nothing new came out and at the time I had heard it was because of troubles with the IRS. The internet was non existant or extremely young so I couldn't fact check this at the time. But there was a long period of time between the "old" series of books and the "new" series that started coming out again.

As far as the movie goes, I had heard about it but with it being SyFy doing it I'm not holding my breath that it will be great. I can count on one hand the number of movies that they have done that were great and still have fingers left over. That doesn't mean it wont be good or at least tolerable so I will be watching for it to come out.

 

I share your trepidation at SyFy making the movie, but I still hope it is successful, if for no other reason than I'd like to see some kind of series (maybe an anthology series) of it on television. I think it's a perfect series for TV because of the number and variety of stories that they could tell -- with cast as diverse as The Great and Powerful Turtle, Gregg Hartman, Modular Man, Chrysalis, Father Squid, Quasiman, Brennan, Kid Dinosaur, Poppinjay, Doctor Tachyon, and so on. Include Fortunato, Captain Trips, and The Lizard King, and you got (respectively) Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll.

 

After reading my last post, I'm curious if the reason why they don't intend to do an early story is because of the political incorrectness of characters like Captain Trips and Fortunato. Ok, Captain Trips, I can certainly see, but a superpowered pimp/hero with 'magic sperm' (I don't know how else to describe it) who gets his power from tantric sex? That may be out of SyFy's comfort zone and more Cinemax. They COULD edit him out of the story, but he's such a key character that you'd have even casual fans screaming for blood. (he's less Tom Bombadil, and closer to Gandalf in his importance in, at least, the first trilogy).

 

I know I started the discussion and then took it WAY in a different direction lol. But I just wanted to point out that there's only THIS blank entry on IMDB. So God knows if this will actually ever happen (it's not the first time that there was talk of a Wild Cards movie or series, but this was the most serious I've heard it get.

BTW, while looking for ANY new news on the movie (there's none, other than as of just under a year ago, it was still in the writing stage), I DID discover that the reissue of volume 3 ("Jokers Wild") will be out in February in trade paperback (and I assume in e-book format also). It is the concluding volume in the Astronomer trilogy. Furthermore, there's news that for the reissue of volume 4, much like the reissue of volume 1, that additional stories have been commissioned.

 

Yay for topic derailment!!

...I contributed to it, didn't I?

 

So how is the weather?

 

Bloody hot! 110 today with higher humidity because of storms brewing around.

How about for you?

actually relevant discussion: the new Amazon Matchbook system sounds like a direct iteration of progress. I'd post link but on phone

 

I just looked it up -- they aren' t exactly specific about the price. Link to Amazon's explanation is here. They aren't quite specific enough about how the pricing will work. $2.99, $1.99, $0.99 or free? What is the price based on? Free for a book that I already purchased would seem fair. $2.99 would not.

What actually interests me more is this.

 

2.99 is better than buying the paperback and then having to pay full-price for the ebook as well. there are many books I'd like to have in both formats. Also, the price is set per-book, per-publisher, so...

it's a step in the right direction, at least in my opinion, although this doesn't apply to me as a publisher because my ebooks are already only 99 cents lol. But still, I think it's at least forward thinking.

Also, the lending library is excellent. I've used it a few times and it really is a nice touch.

 

When I moved from Ohio, I had to leave behind most of my books, so I could see a use for the service. I donated my books and a bunch of board games to friends and their kids who helped me move. I suppose it might be worthwhile simply because of that. But honestly, any book that I am willing to read on a kindle, I don't need a paper version and I simply don't have enough room for lots of books any more. But I always have room on my Kindle.

As far as books that I DO have paper copies of, I wouldn't mind having an electronic copy of, simply because it's so much easier to read, especially in bed. But I'm not sure that it's worth $2.99.

 

Aye, it's a different service for different people. Me, I prefer print copies, in fact, I think I only own two or three ebooks. That's just how I've always read so it's comfortable and familiar. But I can't haul all those books with me when I travel (not that I can afford to travel anymore lol) so I would love to have an e-copy of my books as well.

Would it be worth 2.99? Depends on the book. Some of them, definitely. Most? Probably not. But I think the option is nice

 

For those browsing Project Gutenberg, note that most books are available as either PDFs or LaTEX format. (Ending in .TeX) Here is the freeware LaTeX editor/reader.
http://www.latexeditor.org/download_main.html

*Edit* Scratch that. The books look like pure crap with the editor since it seems not to have an option to show only the book text. It is full of what looks like hypertext or XML.

Anyone know a LaTeX reader that is freeware and is designed for actually reading the document?

I hate PDF because of Adobe, but at least they look like they were meant to be read.

See for yourself if you want.
The Theory of Heat Radiation by Max Planck

 

I want to say the same thing, but since a lot of stuff I have now is either difficult to get in the language I want to get it and for a normal price as a printed book, or simply something that one of my acquaintances (or me) had created and thus something that started out in a digital form, I had to settle for having digital copies of many things, out of which at least some were printed once we had the opportunity but most still remain only in digital form.

But yeah, I prefer "normal" books over digital ones too. Not in the least because it's simply less taxing for my eyes, but also because the sound of turning pages is really relaxing. There's nothing like sitting in a soft fauteuil, reading a book and drinking tea. Sounds of rain and a fireplace are optional, but both of them are good additions.

On that note, I just noticed (since normally I just use a reader and this time I checked the folder itself) that the folder where I keep all of my digital books is called "Fresh meat". I have no idea why, but then again there were periods of time when I named folders really weirdly so I guess I must have named it then.

 

Use Sumatra PDF instead of Adobe and life is good.

Also, Kazeto, that sounds like a beautiful reading environment!!

 

I have not tried Sumatra, but I use Foxit for PDFs. It was once freeware too, but you can hardly find a decent freeware version anymore. Thanks for the suggestion. I will check it out if ever there is something my ancient Foxit cannot work with.

 

I just wanted to update this thread because I got an e-mail this morning from Amazon with the following:

 

I can only say "nice", but well ... nice.