If you want to know how it feels to lose to the fucking Cougars, this video should help. Take it away, Eric.
Yeah, the Utes lost. Time for some motherfuckin’ personal-sized pumpkin pie with some goddamn whipped cream, bitches.
I try not to traffic in hyperbole on political issues, but the conservative chatter that’s going on right now has an incredible ring of McCarthyism bordering on fascism. Yes, there are always those who will stir the pot, especially when a liberal is in the White House. Rush Limbaugh owes his career to the Clintons, and Ruby Ridge and Waco stoked the fires of the militia movement, which culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing.
But having a black, liberal president in the White House, and one who is following the brazenly insular and contemptuous likes of Bush and Cheney, is bringing out the worst in the country’s worst people.
Lindsay Graham, a principled conservative, is censured by his own local party for, among other things, calling anti-immigration foes bigots and “tarnishing the ideals of freedom.” People around here freely call the president a “racist” and then turn around and refer to him as, simply, “Hussein.” Tea Party fuckheads call themselves “independents.” What? WHAT?
It sure seems like the Republican Party is collapsing in on itself. But remember that the Nazi party found its calling behind an enigmatic leader who was able to paint himself as a martyr and then recast himself as a savior of extreme national pride during a time of great economic turmoil. Yes, I did just compare what’s happening inside the Republican party to the Nazis. It’s absolute hyperbole. But if you could hear some of the stuff I hear at football games and elsewhere in the glorious south and beyond — and likely you already have — you might agree that there’s cause for concern and that we shouldn’t just step aside and expect the Republican party to implode.
What’s up, tumblr? You’re just carrying on with your “interesting” “posts” as if you don’t even care that The Holy War is going on between BYU and my Utes. Judgemental Jesus and I are judging you.
Southern stations don’t give a got-damn about the Mountain West, even after the Utes rolled the Tide last year in the Sugar Bowl. My wife coerced me into dumping our satellite service earlier this year. And I left my dvi converter at work. So I’m reduced to watching the game through Justin.tv on my laptop. Oh, the humanity blah blah blah.
Gamecocks won. In-laws are happy. Now I have 80 minutes to drive 100 miles to watch the game that matters. Go Utes.
Yes, I am willingly shouting “Go Cocks!”
Last night’s drive to grandmama’s house.
GPOY at home, in pajamas, haven’t shaved since Friday, listening to Girl Talk very loudly, wishing I could work like this every day W.
On a post I had written about digital content. It was written in haste, and, as such, was filled with some sloppy thinking.
Part of it was a bad assumption on my part, that the “digital version” would be essentially “Save as PDF”-esque quality, which Sean assures me it isn’t.
His strongest point (IMO, at least :-) was that the creation of the content is where the cost is incurred. He’s right.
If I could boil down my original idea of what had frustrated me about this, it would be:
- $20 for paperback at Amazon
- $22.50 for ebook on publisher’s website
- $30 for paperback on publisher’s website
- $40 for ebook and paperback on publisher’s website
I’d love to support the authors and I’d love to get a digital copy, but you’ve priced yourself way out of the market. Amazon may be the Wal-Mart of bookstores — and in fact it’s worse in some ways because I can easily buy from Amazon from just about anywhere — but if you can afford to tell something for $20 on Amazon, trying to sell me the same thing for 50% on your website isn’t very compelling.
What you can entice me with, which Amazon (currently) can’t, is the opportunity to pay more to get more, namely, a bundle of the ebook and paperback.
$40 is essentially paying for the book twice. Yes, it’s a “deal” compared to the $52.50 that it would cost to buy them separately, but it’s $2.50 more than if I just bought the book from Amazon + ebook from you.
That seems wrong.
Like I said, I don’t have a business degree. I’m obviously (I hope) in favor of people getting paid for their work. This setup seems broken.
I wouldn’t feel incredibly bad about buying at Amazon as opposed to buying directly from the publisher’s website. Most publishers, especially the smaller ones, create their distribution systems for wholesale distribution rather than retail (i.e. sending 5,000 books to Amazon rather than sending 1 book to 5,000 different consumers), so it costs them more to send you a book than it would Amazon and their highly efficient, consumer-oriented distribution system. It’s the same as almost any other consumer product — Gillette wants you to buy razors at the supermarket, not from their own website.
Plus, if your business depends on retail distribution, you have your hands tied a bit in terms of pricing. If you offer your product for 10 percent less than Amazon on your own website, why would Amazon be compelled to compete with you unless you’re, say, Harry Potter and they know that they’ll do a volume business and make money anyway? Most publisher websites are really just fancy flagship stores made to look good rather than run efficiently. Obviously it’s different for publishers who are trying out ebooks because the distribution chain is entirely different, but for now Amazon still owns that process.
On the content creation side, the arrangements are generally horrendous all-around for traditional publishing, but in terms of “supporting the content creator,” most legitimate contracts go into exhaustive detail in terms of royalties as they pertain to alternate distribution networks. As an example, if a publisher agrees to sell a high volume of non-refundable copies to a Wal-Mart at a discounted rate, the content creator may agree to a lower per-copy royalty rate in exchange for a higher volume of sales — in other words, it all comes out in the wash.
But, the bottom line is, in fact, the bottom line. My book isn’t a technical manual and OH MAH GOD I wish I made a 40-percent royalty. But my royalty isn’t different if you buy it on the publisher’s website or Amazon, so I always direct people who want to buy it to Amazon because they can save about 40 percent when you factor in free shipping.
But, I digress because ebooks are still largely uncharted territory. I just hope that this publisher is treating their content creators fairly on the ebook royalties (sounds like they are, according to Sean).
