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The End of Television

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tvI’m not a futurist, but as an indie writer with a tech background and a serious thing for video games, it’s difficult for me not to think about the consumptive future of story-telling.

That’s a made-up term I just invented, but the concept is simple enough: the vast majority of consumable entertainment—movies, books, video games, and television–manifests itself as story-telling. And, thanks to the internet, media is now in the early stages of ubiquity, which is to say:

If you have a computer and an internet connection, all story-telling, in any form, will be made available to you.

There is nothing original in this statement—I won’t even take credit for it, because I’m sure it’s just me putting words to a standard and accepted form of groupthink.

But I didn’t think I’d see the physical manifestation of it so soon, and in the form of paradigmatic shifts that, I believe, we will be seeing in 2-3 years.

[Read more…]

Amazon vs. Hachette: The Cliff Notes

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amazonhachetteIf it’s one thing I despise–in me when I catch myself doing it and in others when I hear/see it–it’s an empty-headed, knee-jerk argument.

Whether it’s from a lack of knowledge, a confirmation bias, or intellectual laziness, when one side of a debate has bothered to gather supportive facts and present a considered argument and the other just parrots old information or rehashes only what they want to hear, it makes me want to pull my eyes out (or my ears, if I have to listen to it).

I feel particularly frustrated when I’m the one that’s factless in an argument…and twice that if it’s something I care about.

[Read more…]

Nick Stephenson – Full color thrillers

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nick2I don’t often straight-up recommend following other bloggers and writers, but I recently stumbled across UK thriller writer Nick Stephenson‘s blog (noorosha.com) and I’ll tell you: if you’re self-pubbing, you should go there right now.

The man is funny, smart, and is rocketing up the Amazon best-seller lists with a combination of good writing, great PR (check out his covers), and a dissection of the inner workings of Amazon that borders on the preternatural.

He only blogs once or twice a month, but that’s more often than some indie authors (ahem) and his posts are cogent and pure gold for those of us trying to make the ebook industry work for us.

Check out the first book in Nick’s Leopold Blake thriller series, Wanted. It’s perma-free and being downloaded like hotcakes.

Scribl, Patreon, & Noisetrade

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scriblI’ve recently come across three interesting web sites—Scribl, Patreon, and Noisetrade–that could potentially benefit both writers and readers. Each has its own new twist on book distribution, which is exciting to see, since the democratization of the internet (and of the ebook industry) is often in question.

I’ll cover each of these new sites in a different post over the next week or two. First, up…Scribl! [Read more…]

NY Time Fires a Dud

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I had to laugh at one section in a recent New York Times article about the recent “spat” between Amazon and giant NYC publisher Hachette–which only Hachette writers and the Authors Guild seem to know or care about. (Hachette complains that Amazon is price-fixing and recommending different books than theirs [something they’d never do] over a recent failed negotiation.)

Brad Stone’s book on Amazon, “The Everything Store,” said the company’s negotiations with publishers were so hostile that a veteran of its book group had post-traumatic stress disorder after leaving the company. (The price and availability of Mr. Stone’s book, published by Hachette last fall, appeared unaffected by the current conflict.) [emphasis mine]

I’m not a soldier or a doctor, but I do know one thing: you get PTSD when you have other people shooting at you or when you’re the target of violence, not when you can’t negotiate an extra point on a book sale. Using it to describe anything else is laughable as well as insulting to those who do suffer from it.

If you read the article, beware its one-sided nature–reporter David Streitfeld’s narrative works overtime to resurrect the “Amazon World Domination” meme.