Amazon Pricing Tactics

While the whole $9.99 Kindle book boycott has yet to be satisfactorily resolved, Amazon’s begun a new marketing tactic on the opposite side of things. Free e-books.

Nothing new, some of you say. While I don’t deny that this new phenomenon could have been occuring for a little while without my noticing, here are a few things that I don’t mean.

I don’t mean a ten cent copy of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith which was one of my very first Kindle purchases.

I don’t mean the books (such as The Wealth of Nations) whose copyrights are long expired and were offered for free on Project Gutenberg long before Amazon caught on.

I mean relatively recently published, popular books being offered for free: His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik, for example. Go on, look. It’s actually free.

Frankly I’m not terribly fond of the Temeraire books. I read His Majesty’s Dragon at the library not long after  it came out and never bothered to read the others. Nothing wrong with the books, not by any means (except, perhaps, a weak protagonist), I just didn’t feel compelled to read further.

Amazon is hoping others will disagree. While His Majesty’s Dragon is offered for free, all the later books in the series are listed at full price ($6.39, fairly standard for a book that’s available in paperback). Every other free e-book of this type offered, at least so far as I can tell, is also the first in a series.

Needless to say, I just went on a free-book-binge. Here are a few books that I ‘bought.’

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Settling Accounts: Return Engagement by Harry Turtledove

Blood Engines by T.A. Pratt

For Love of Mother Not by Alan Dean Foster

Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter

Elric: The Stealer of Souls by Michael Moorcock

Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham

Here are another couple that I didn’t ‘buy,’ for one reason or another.

His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik

Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb (I’ve read it, and recommend it for anyone seeking quality high fantasy)

Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning (didn’t strike me as something I might enjoy)

Let me know if you find any others and I’ll add them to the list (and my library!). While ’speculative fiction’ is all I’ve seen so far, I would be excited to learn of more traditional offerings as well.

P.S. I support the $9.99 boycott for mostly selfish reasons, along with the fact that when I bought my Kindle, all the e-books were $9.99 or below, and I seem to remember a pledge to that affect from Amazon.

Update:

I’ve found several more- it turns out that many of these are part of a special promotion by Random House which will last through October

AI Object Recognition

Over the holidays I found myself reading great amounts of non-fiction. Among the books I read was ‘Physics of the Impossible’ by Michio Kaku. From that book I discovered that scientists are having trouble designing a robot which can manouver around a room due to difficulties in recognizing complex shapes. This is because the computer looks at the room as a series of straight lines and has great trouble with curves, or anything complex. An example the book gave of how slow progress is would be to compare the number of neurons required for a fly to do incredible loop-the-loops around a room to the huge amount of processing it takes for a robot move around on the floor of a furnished room. Clearly, although the fly processes far fewer bits of information, it is better suited for movement.

Why is this? Here’s my reasoning: the fly recognizes far less than scientists are assuming. Let’s move up the food chain a bit for an example. Birds will avoid eating moths with eyespots on their wings.

Consider that. You or I will look at a moth and will know that it is a moth, regardless of what spots it might have on its wings. If it is camouflaged into a tree or something else, we may not see it, but that is a seperate issue. Yet a bird will see the spots and fly away, avoiding the moth entirely. Why is this? The bird sees the spots and believes that the ‘eyes’ belong to a predator. Thus they avoid the moth. This is caused by a very simple object identification system.

Back to the fly. A fly will land on almost anything, even people, unless it is moving fast. It avoids anything which is moving fast- e.i. that could squash it. They’ve even been known to land on waiting frogs. They also don’t fly straight into any object, they slow and land on them, or go around.

This should be applicable to robot AI. It would be simple enough to scan the area to determine where obstacles are. There is no need to determine what they are, or even their exact shape. From there, as needed, the AI could be programmed to recognize certain things, such as chairs or coffee mugs, and be given instructions other than ‘avoid.’

Thoughts? Hopefully this is an example of where cross-disciplinary thinking can get you, but there may be a flaw in my reasoning.

Grammar Pun = Grampun?

Has anyone out there read the book Eats Shoots and Leaves? It’s hilarious and, perhaps, informative if you haven’t.

I was recently reminded of it when I came up with the following conversation in my head. Not sure if I’ll use it in anything, or what I’ll use it in.

“Yes, but where does all the money come from?”

With the response of either:

“A number of people I imagine.”

or

“A number of people, I imagine.”

Consider the difference.

The Name of the Charity

Patrick Rothfuss just became my favorite currently producing author in the fantasy genre. This, fortunately, means I can currently exclude Terry Pratchett who I do not believe will be publishing any more books, sadly. Otherwise there would need to be some kind of literary throwdown between Rothfuss, Neil Gaiman, and Terry Pratchett.

But get this: Rothfuss only has two published books. Only one of them is a novel. The other is a collection his humor columns in a newspaper from his younger days, and will be heretofore ignored. The novel is The Name of the Wind, which is easily the best fantasy novel published in the last decade. Possibly even the last two decades (let’s call that through 1990). I don’t say that lightly.

How good does one book need to be to make a man my favorite currently producing author? Pretty awsome, and that’s why it’s not the only reason, despite the fact I’m now reading it for the third time. I almost never read books multiple times.

Patrick Rothfuss has risen in my esteem because he is currently offering prizes for anyone who donates to Heifer International through his page, and matching donations. I’ve been making fairly regular donations to Heifer for years, but to have the opportunity to win such prizes as signed books, early manuscripts, and other paraphenalia while doing it is beyond cool.

Unfortunately, I don’t have thousands of dollars I can donate. But if you do (or even just hundreds, or tens… everyone has ten dollars they can donate, right?), please do so. Read his blog for details, or just go to his team page to donate. And if you just want to have your donation doubled and don’t care about the prizes, feel free to give me your prizes. It’s no trouble really… That and the fact that I don’t actually own a copy of the book yet mean I would love for my first to have a signature with some cool dedication.

Free Friday: Starfish

Here’s one of those things you aren’t likely to find on your own. Starfish, by Peter Watts is the first in a trilogy which was published relatively recently, meaning that the copyright hasn’t expired yet. So how is it that I come to offer it for free? The author has made it available under the Creative Commons License, along with the rest of the trilogy and all his other work on his website.

The premise of the novel is that there are geothermal power stations deep under the ocean which need people to man them, but humans must either wear prohibitive equipment or undergo extreme surgery to survive at such depths. No one would ever volunteer for such a job- except certain, shall we say, social deviants who have little other choice, who may even come to enjoy life farther below water than light can penetrate.

Fascinating on many levels- literary, scientific, political, and psychological. I highly recommend it, though I haven’t finished the trilogy yet, I’m looking forward to finishing Maelstrom and Behemoth. It’s not often someone will give me a book this good for free.

Here’s Starfish.

Free Friday: Dune

Hey all, sorry I’ve been conspicuously absent. It’s been a busy week, and I’ve been preparing for a short trip down to Virginia today and tomorrow. In any case, today I’ve found a copy of Dune by Frank Herbert which, if you haven’t already read, you should. And it’s a good thing to have in your library in any case.

Dune by Frank Herbert

Also, here’s an XKCD comic I found a few days ago. This happens to me sometimes on the Metro.

Free Friday: Dracula

Recently I was pointed towards projectgutemburg.org as a source for free e-books. Insert schpeel about how much I love my Kindle here.

In any case, one of the first things I found and downloaded was Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Believe it or not I had not read the book before, and i twas high time I started. Unfortunately, the version I downladed from Project Gutenburg was rather badly formatted, though I don’t believe this is the case with all, or even the majority of their books. It could just have been the download source or mirror I chose as well.

Shortly after this, when I was a few chapters into the book, Stumble Upon threw manybooks.net my way. There I found a well formatted version of the book and continued from where I had left off. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in classic literature, horror, fantasy, or even sci-fi. (And we all know those last two are the same thing, right? ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,’ afterall.)

You can find the download here. The file is available in just about any format you can imagine, even as an audio book. And, of course, its free. If you want to download it directly to any device with a wireless internet connection (like a Kindle) you can go to the mobile site, www.mnybks.net and use the ID# 6694 to find and download it.

Theory on Fandom Phenomena

While reading a review of “1001 Books To Read Before You Die” I noticed that the reviewer questioned the absence of any books which have been hugely popular recently- Harry Potter being one example. While I agree that the author seemed to hold a grudge against popular literature, I also question the value of many books with huge fan followings. I mean, Harry Potter was alright and a few years from now I’ll probably be able to say the same about Twilight, although I’m currently to hot and bothered over the popularity they’ve gained to give them their due.

So why are they #1 best sellers and all that jazz? Here’s what I replied to the post with:

While I agree to some extent with your notion that what is popular among most people has merit, I probably land a little closer to the author in the agree/disagree spectrum (once things were simple; black and white, you either agreed or disagreed with a statement- then they invented grayscale).

My theory about popular books such as Harry Potter or Twilight is that their wide appeal adds a multiplying (or perhaps exponential) factor. If everyone lived in an isolated bubble with no contact between themselves and other readers, the majority would like these books, and a select few might love them. But start connecting the dots (bubbles) and you see each individual’s reaction increase as they discover they are not alone. This is the phenomenon which causes huge segments of the population to wish they had glittery boyfriends or Golden Snitch keychains.

Yet despite mass appeal, it is quite possible for such books to not be incredibly good. Let’s visit bubble world again and use that sample pool to create a graph in two variables. On the X-axis we have the people who read a book. Not the number of people, mind you, but the people. On the Y-axis we have how much each one liked it. For the sake of organization we’ll put all the people who liked the book the most closest to the Y-axis itself (working only in the 1st quadrant). Thus for a book such as Harry Potter which has a wide fan base we will see, well, what looks like a low, squat building stretching almost all the way across the graph with a smoke stack or two on the leftmost side. Now, take a niche book, or a classic such as Moby Dick. You’ll find yourself with a skyscraper on the Y-axis with a sudden drop off which goes below the height of Harry Potter’s low, squat building.

Then of course there is the out of bubble world graph of a book like Harry Potter’s popularity.

Now, because I don’t want to get into negative ratings, assume that anything over fifteen means that they like the book, are willing to buy the book, maybe tell their friends about it, etc. All those things that make a book sell. Even if Moby Dick has a few people who are far more wildly enthused over it than anyone is over Harry Potter (in bubble world), it doesn’t matter because Harry Potter has, over all, more people who are above that magical threshold of fifteen. Now transfer into the real world.

Harry Potter has sold enough copies to make it a bestseller, and everyone knows it. Magical Multiplier Effect (TM) occurs and makes everyone adore it. By no means is it a bad book, but it’s not really excellent either. Just broad.

—–

Harry Potter, Twilight, and Moby Dick are all just examples representing certain types of book. When possible, please believe that commentary is about the class of book, not specific books.

Also, a few notes on the graphs. They do not reflect any real data. At all. They may be violently misleading. I can only hope that they will mislead you in the right direction.

Now just to convince WordPress to add 3000 to my word count for the pictures.

A Dislike of Books

If you have an idea you wish to share, write an essay. Not a book. Too often in recent times I’ve found that books are written because they sell. Essays don’t generate income to any significant degree unless published in collections. Thus, rather then granting a reader a significant viewpoint of a chosen subject with choice arguments in supporting roles, most non-fiction books act as soapboxes. From there the author preaches on the evils of the world they live in, maintaining the illusion of a single topic with periodic repetition of key words or phrases. 

I come to this in the reading of Neil Postman’s book “The End of Education,” though it is only an example and surely not so great an offender as some others. Postman, in the discussion of modern education systems, spends chapters debating human and child psychology, the importance of a driving ideology, and other people’s thoughts on this, and other subjects. He, in the process, makes many good points and is correct the vast majority of the time. Yet, at the same time, most of these points could have been eloquently stated in single paragraphs or sentences, not the hypothetical-laden pages and chapters which Postman deems necessary. Then entire first half of the book, all of ‘Part 1′ serves the purpose of an introductory paragraph. 

 

Clearly this problem does not pervade all of non-fiction. A book on the damage done to the Amazon Rainforest in the last century will often stay, for the most part, on task. It is non-fiction speculation, argument, and rhetoric that tend to stray. A problem is easy to state; trees have been cut down; here are times when trees have been cut down. Reasons and solutions are harder. Why were the trees cut down? How do we stop them from being cut down? Why is my solution better than her suggestion? Even the enormously popular “The Last Lecture” does this, though I beg you excuse this given the nature of the book and it’s conception. It was never meant to be a concise argument, and serves its purpose well.

 

This problem extends to fiction, though in a different way. Today various writers’ circles online, some of which I am a member of, are rife with unfinished novels. Some have even commented on the decline in the number of short stories present. Once it would be that an author became known first by getting a vignette published in a literary magazine catering to their target audience. Each short story would be expected to give just as much satisfaction as would come from a novel. If enough people liked them, and this often took numerous short stories to accomplish, they might be able to get a novel published- after all, people would clearly be willing to buy it.

 

And that’s the key- the fee a magazine might award for a short story is minimal when compared to the royalties involved in having a book published. The short story, like the essay, is becoming a lost art. And, like essays, short stories have, intrinsically, more value than books as they crystallize the moments we read for. Take Ray Bradbury for an example. I view him as a brilliant man and a fantastic author. Yet I also believe that his short stories by far outshine his novels. “The Veldt” has more power than “Something Wicked This Way Comes” because “The Veldt” is all about this single moment in time, the crowning evidence of the children’s adoption by technology. The novel is a good book, but nowhere near so good a story as “The Veldt.” There are individual portions that show characters twisted by the evil of the carnival, yet there is also much connective material, which drags the story down, relatively speaking.

 

The best novels, in my mind, are nothing more than sequences of short stories. Each story, or chapter, is complete in its own right. At the same time each story adds to the value of the others by lending credence to the characters actions and increasing the readers’ empathy. While Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” would be an acceptable example of this, I can think of a clearer, though lesser-known one. “The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss has become an extraordinary cult-success among fantasy readers.

 

My favorite of several different covers available in the US.

 

 

“The Name of the Wind” is a piece of metafiction, that is to say ‘a story within a story,’ similar to  ”The Canterbury Tales.” Yet unlike “Canterbury Tales,” Rothfuss’s story is focused on a single character’s epic life. Rothfuss divides the biography into segments, interspersed with views of the ‘present’ where the narrator and main character interacts with his captive audience. While I won’t claim there are no exceptions to the rule, the majority of chapters and snippets alike could stand on their own. Each tells it’s own story. Rothfuss has been criticized on the length of his first novel, but I find it hard to find any extraneous material. Yes, there are whole chapters that could be cut without disrupting the story but that is the beauty of it. Each chapter is as relevant as the next, and few are much hurt by the subtraction of all others.

 

If only all books were so happily divided.