Abusing the First Amendment? Senator Boxer’s Blind Trust

 Posted by at 12:52 pm  No Responses »
Aug 042009
 

 I don’t like it when someone denigrates a book they haven’t read, or a movie they haven’t seen, but at the peril of doing so, I’m moved to say a few things about a book I haven’t read, Senator Barbara Boxer’s second attempt at writing a novel, Blind Trust.

Off the bat, I wonder if Boxer weren’t a Senator from California, would California-based Chronicle Books, not especially known for their fiction, have agreed to publish it? (Zen-like, one can also ask, What better novel—likely written by an unknown—failed to see the light of day because this one took up its bookstore shelf space?)

Another question that occurs to me is, Do senators have the time to write novels? Writing a novel takes a huge commitment of time and energy. (Full disclosure: Boxer had a coauthor, novelist Mary-Rose Hayes, who may have done most of the heavy lifting.) And, while I’m sure even Senators should be allowed their hobbies, how much time should a member of the world’s most exclusive and powerful club—as the Senate has been called—devote to fiction while our country struggles with the deepest recession since World War II and is galloping, willy-nilly, toward the biggest spending programs ever conceived?

But, maybe Boxer didn’t write the book as an avocational pursuit. According to Kimberly A. Strassel who reviewed the novel in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, the ultraliberal Boxer’s book is more an “attempt to score real-life political points in fictional form” than the thriller it purports to be.

Deep, Well-Rounded Characters

The heroine is a liberal Democratic Senator from California who is “honest, tough and energetic.” The chief antagonist is a Dick Cheney look-alike, Republican vice president who “trampled on individual liberties and jeopardized the Bill of Rights.”

But wait, it gets worse: There is also a Rush Limbaugh look-alike named Sam Slaughter (a.k.a. “Slaughterman”) who is “abusing the First Amendment.”

Well-rounded, compelling characters, wouldn’t you say?

And, while I’m not particularly a Rush Limbaugh fan, I support his right to say whatever he wants—whether Barbara Boxer or anyone else approves.

And I support her right to write whatever books she wants. But the question begs to be asked: Isn’t Senator Boxer herself jeopardizing individual liberties by accusing a radio host of abusing the First Amendment by exercising his First Amendment rights?

Or is freedom of speech just for those whom we agree with?

Humor Gets Read

 Posted by at 3:26 pm  1 Response »
Jul 132009
 

“Portions of the advice hereafter may be helpful to the neophyte screenwriter. Much of it, though, will prove to be dubious, unsound, wildly subjective, and oftentimes, flat-out wrong. May God grant you the wisdom to know the difference.”

 This is the disclaimer that runs across the top of “Questionable Advice,” the Q & A advice column of Script magazine. Well-written by a semi-anonymous, busty half-Thai calling herself “Scriptgirl,” “Questionable Advice” includes a lot of humor much of it of the self-deprecating and the clever-phrase varieties.

Script girl is smart to write funny. Humor gets read.

You can check out Scriptgirl’s weekly YouTube reports  here .

New Kindle Bigger, but Not Better?

 Posted by at 12:33 pm  No Responses »
Jun 162009
 

Amazon started shipping their new version of Kindle last week, the DX. Apparently Amazon is aiming the DX at students (textbooks), magazine and newspaper readers, and business people who are able to e-mail Microsoft Word files and Adobe PDF documents to their Kindle. There is a charge to e-mail documents to your Kindle.

According to Walter S. Mossberg, writing in the Wall Street Journal, the DX is 85 percent larger than the original Kindle. He says he finds the added weight and size more awkward and tiring to use than the original Kindle. The DX sports a 9.7-inch screen (versus the original Kindle’s 6-inch screen) which can be rotated to read in landscape mode. This larger display is, I imagine, better for newspapers and magazines.

There’s still no color; images appear in greyscale.

The DX costs $489 and the smaller Kindle is still available at $359.

I don’t own a Kindle, but last week I used the Kindle app for the iPhone to download John Lescroart’s The Second Chair, which I’d left half finished in the seat pocket in front of me on a recent flight. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about reading a book on an iPhone, but, to my surprise, it’s fine. As a matter of fact, it’s downright handy. I can read a few pages anytime I find myself stuck in traffic or waiting in a long line at the grocery store. I read a couple of chapters the other day as I sat outside helping the sun set. It was fine.

 

Newspapers and Texting

 Posted by at 10:14 am  1 Response »
Jun 122009
 

In The Post-American World , Fareed Zakaria writes that Indian newspapers are booming “a rare oasis of growth for print journalism—and overflowing with stories about businessmen, technological fads, fashion designers, shopping malls, and of course, Bollywood (which now makes more movies a year than Hollywood).”

From what I know of India today, the Indians who might read a newspaper aren’t less technologically advanced than we are. I wonder what newspapers in India are doing differently than those here which are losing readership in torrents. Maybe the papers there are giving the reader what he wants?

How will the the next generation communicate?

Christopher Ellis, my grandson, graduated from middle school last week. He’s a good kid and was valedictorian so his parents awarded him with his own cell phone. In the first 3 hours of ownership, he got 123 text messages. Using only his thumbs, he types faster than I do using all ten digits. What does this mean for those of us in the communication biz?

Interested in the future of the world and exactly what Zakaria is talking about in The Post-American World? Watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U

Still Hungry for Books

 Posted by at 11:03 am  No Responses »
Mar 232009
 

Edward Nawotka, in a March 16 Publishers Weekly article, writes about the contrast observable at the Spring Book Show, a remainders show held in early March in Atlanta.

There are plenty of remainders available because of huge returns due to a weak Christmas season. Savvy retailers were scarfing up bargains by the pallet load, yet he reports that attendance at the show was off 25 percent and that “largely absent were…independent booksellers.”

One retail bookseller at the show said he’d recently bought five skids of books for $0.12 each including delivery. When they landed he held a sale, offering them still in the boxes, for $1.99 to $2.99. He sold 1,500 in an hour and a half. He said those 90 minutes paid for  the books and “everything after that was profit.”

Apparently readers still want to read.

I’ve long maintained that independent bookstore owners need to get more aggressive and use every strategy available to them to compete with the chains. Buying books at $0.12 each and selling them for $2 to $3 might be one to look into.

 

As an aside: Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that a recent Gallop poll shows only 39 percent of Americans believe in evolution. There’s a short story in that.

 

The Ever-Changing Publishing Industry

 Posted by at 12:04 pm  No Responses »
Mar 042009
 

A few interesting moves in the book publishing industry this week.

First, Thomas Nelson has begun a program called NelsonFree in which the price of a hardcover book also includes an audio download and an e-book download. The downloads will be available in MP3 format for audio and a number of e-book formats including EPub, the odds-on favorite right now over PDF or various proprietory formats to become the eventual universal format for e-readers. This is a savy move that will help brick and mortar bookstores compete with online stores.

Speaking of e-readers, Amazon.com came underfire recently because the new version Kindle has the ability to read text outloud. The Authors Guild and others felt this interferred with audio rights which are usually licensed separately. This week Amazon backed off and said the rights holders—authors or publishers—would be able to choose if they wanted this feature to be turned off on individual books.

The National Federation for the Blind opposed this, but most publishers automatically allow their books to be translated into Braille without charge and I’m sure a special arrangement for the sight-impaired can be worked out—and should be.

Finally, under the subtitle: Another One Sells Out to the Big Boys, Berkeley’s Ten Speed Press—a well-thought-of successful independent publisher—has been sold to Random House. At last count, I think Random House owned somthing like 375 of the largest book imprints in the nation. Random House in turn is owned by Germany-based Bertelsmann AG.

The more consolidation of imprints into the big publishing houses, the better for independent publishers such as Quill Driver Books.

Google Copyright Settlement Good for Authors, Publishers?

 Posted by at 12:27 am  No Responses »
Feb 202009
 

In the February 2009 Independent Book Publisher Association‘s Independent, intellectual property rights attorney Jonathan Kirsch has an article that does a good job of summing up the proposed Google copyright settlement.

The background in a nutshell: In 2004 Google began work on Google Book Search, a word-searchable database of both copyrighted and public domain books. The problem was Google, claiming this searchable archive fell under the “fair use” doctrine of the U.S. copyright laws, didn’t ask the rights holders for permission. By 2008 seven million books had been scanned and added to the Google Book Search feature.

Naturally this prompted a lawsuit.

Kirsch says that, due to the long-ranging implications to copyright law, most observers expected the dispute would eventually be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. However, in October of 2008, it was announced that a proposed settlement had been reached.

Here are a few of the basics:

 

• Rights holders remain in control of their rights, deciding if and how Google can use their material.

• Google will cut the rights holders in for two-thirds of most of the revenue it collects from Google Book Search.

• A new, not-for-profit organization, the Book Rights Registry, will be created with an initial $34 million from Google. The Registry will act as a clearing house, collecting the revenue from Google and disbursing it to the rights holders. It will keep 10 to 20 percent for operating expenses.

• Google will be allowed to make out-of-print books that are still under copyright available for purchase as digital copies unless the rights holder asks that a particular book be excluded.

 

Is this ok?

I’m not at all sure it is. I think it’s fraught with problems.

This is basically an “opt out” offer from Google and that disturbs me. Rights holders shouldn’t have to go to Google to stop it from using copyrighted material.

Right now Google is focusing on books. But what is the definition of a book? A certain number of pages? Word count? What if a repairman wrote a lengthy report on how to fix Maytag washing machines with one page to a machine and then and published it through a print-on-demand source? Would he have to go to Google to stop it from making all or part of his instructions public? Is it reasonable for us to ask this of each and every author and publisher?

And, if it’s fair for one company to have such an opt-out program, why not many? Are we soon to find we also have to contact Yahoo! if we wish to opt out of a similar program? And what if 1,000 companies decide that they would like to offer a searchable database of, say, a few business books? Are authors and publishers going to be required to contact each of the 1,000 to opt out?

Or are we issuing Google a monopoly? (If so, you may want run to your broker to buy Google stock.)

Who sets the prices? What if you feel your information is more valuable than what Google charges?

Will old editions be replaced when a new updated edition is published or will both be available? Is the rights holder required to keep track of these details?

Are “authors, heirs, and assigns” going to have to prove they are the rights holder to a particular work? If so, how? Who will settle disputes?

How will Google or the Registry find the rights holders to out-of-print works so the company can pay them? If they can’t find the rights holder, who gets the money?

There are dozens of questions similar to the ones above still to be thought of and asked.

Kirsch, a successful author in his own right, thinks most authors and publishers will go along with this. He sums the situration up as “No fundamental principles of copyright law have been changed or eliminated and rights holders will be compensated—if only modestly—for most uses of their work. Above all, they are entitled to remove their work from the Google Book Search program if they elect to do so.”

I don’t know that I agree with him, it feels to me like fundamental rights are being changed. And, who wants to be compensated only modestly for most uses of their work?

Is the public good served to such a degree that the lid on this Pandora’s box should be opened? The deadline for making objections is May 5, 2009.

 For more on the subject check out Google’s blog and this Business Week article.

 By the way, I really enjoyed The Harlot by the Side of the Road, Kirsch’s meticulously researched, juicy retelling of some of the Bible’s most violent and sexually explicit stories.

 

Purple Prose

 Posted by at 12:35 pm  No Responses »
Feb 132009
 

I started Michael Dibdin‘s Dead Lagoon last night. I’ve read one other in this “Aurelio Zen Mystery” series. Aurelio Zen is an Italian police officer and the books are set in Italy. Although the author, according to his bio, lives in Seattle the location details appear authentic and adds to the enjoyment of the story.

While I do enjoy his books, I find his writing a bit turgid. He often uses uncommon words when, I feel, a common word would be less likely to stop the reader. “Plashing” is an example. As is “caul.”

Using the exact word is important, but making the reader pull out of the story to think about a word or phrase is dangerous.

He also often seems to overwrite a bit. You be the judge:

When he awoke again the room was filled with an astringent brilliance which made him blink, an abrasive slapping of wavelets and the edgy scent which had surprised him the moment he stepped out of the train. He had forgotten even the most obvious thing about the place, like the pervasive risky odour of the sea.

“Abrasive slapping of wavelets”?  “Pervasive risky odour”? Colorful for sure, but too much?

Another mystery author who dips his toe into this kind of purple prose is James Lee Burke.  

Both of these authors get away with it—both are popular and heavily read—yet each walks a fine line that a beginning writer might be well advised to avoid.

By the way, Dibdin’s books are first published in the U.K. and as such use British punctuations—for instance, single quotes for dialogue—and spellings. I suppose in Britain words such as “plashing” and “caul” may be everyday words and wouldn’t slow down the reader as they likely would most Americans.

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