We Are Not Amazon and Living Up To Unreasonable Expectations

I have a lot of collectibles. A garage full, in fact, which is something I've mentioned in the past. In an effort to divest myself of said collectibles, I've been selling things on eBay. This is mostly fine other than the part where it's really slow.
And the part where I sometimes have to actually deal with people.
People who are mostly trying to convince me that my prices are too high.

For instance, because this is a fun one:
I've been selling some cards from the Harry Potter tcg recently. I listed this card:

The Ginny holofoil card is very hard to find and expensive. Expensive to the point that I haven't seen any sell for less than $100, so I had it listed at, anyone?, $100. I had a string of people message me that they would offer me something less than that. Like the guy who offered me $30 and, then, argued with me about it when I said "no thanks," finally went all the way up to $40, then argued with me some more when I said "no thanks" to that one, too. The card sold for $120.

Don't get all excited for me about all the money I'm making, because those kinds of things are few and far between. Mostly, I'm selling things at about the $3-10.00 level.

The other thing I have to deal with a lot is people complaining about the cost of shipping, which is the actual thing I want to talk about.
And before I go on, sure, shipping and shipping charges suck. I get it. I do everything I can, personally, to order from places that offer free shipping or to order enough to meet the minimums for free shipping. The big companies that can offer that kind of thing are just that: big companies, big enough to make deals with the USPS to cut their shipping costs so that they can afford it. Even eBay has a deal with USPS to cut their sellers' shipping costs if we run our shipping through eBay, and that has to be good for eBay because I'm sure their discount is greater than what they pass on to us, which means they're making money from both ends of that deal.

Even with that, eBay pushes (and pushes and pushes) its sellers to offer free shipping. I'm sure that's something that totally works for some sellers, but it doesn't work for someone like me who, say, sells a trading card for $2.99 (or, even, a comic book, for $4.99) and, then, has to pay $2.80 to ship it. That's with the eBay discount and is just the cost of the actual shipping. The envelopes cost another $1.00, so I'm spending close to $4.00 for each item I ship, but I only charge $3.50 for shipping. Don't worry, I may be losing money on every sale, but I make it up in volume.

Which brings me back to my previous statement about how shipping sucks, because the buyer is paying $3.50 in shipping for a $3.00 card, something which I personally wouldn't do.

And it gets even worse when you have to deal with international shipping. I just went through a huge ordeal over the cost of shipping with a guy in France. Seriously, huge ordeal. The guy took all kinds of penalties from eBay for not paying for his auction wins on time because he was haggling with me over the cost of shipping. For a week.

On the one hand, I get it but, on the other hand...
Look, on the other hand, only so much of the shipping is under my control, and part of the problem this guy ran into is that I use eBay's Global Shipping Program for international orders so that I only have to mail the items to eBay and eBay takes care of the shipping charges with the buyer. And I guess that service isn't cheap? I don't really know, because I can't see what eBay charges, but the guy in France flipped out over what eBay was going to charge him, all of which could have been avoided if he'd listened to me before the auctions closed when I tried to tell him about how eBay would handle it. (He told me I didn't know what I was talking about, that shipping should be no more than x amount and he was sure eBay would handle it just fine. eBay wanted to charge him 30x, as I tried to warn him, and, well, I already said the rest. I spent a week of going around and around with the guy so that he could finally get what he paid for shipping down to only 2x.)

All of which goes to the point I want to make: I am not Amazon. Or Wal-Mart. Or... whatever big chain store you want to say. I can't get amazing shipping discounts from USPS, and I can't afford to pay for your shipping, especially when the shipping costs more than the item you're buying. Stop expecting that from me, other eBay sellers, or from any small, independent business trying to make some kind of profit. If you want free shipping, please, feel free to order what you need/want from Amazon or Wal-Mart or... oh! Amazon doesn't have this card that you want? They don't sell those kinds of things? Neither does Wal-Mart? oh... well, then, I see. Of course, of course, it should be up to me to provide you with the same service as Amazon... Amazon who doesn't have the product you want.

So there's your tradeoff. Pay the shipping or don't get the whatever it is that you want that Amazon doesn't carry or have in stock. Pay the shipping and don't fucking complain about it or try to convince me that I'm charging too much for it. You know how I know that I'm not charging too much for shipping? Because I take a loss on it from every order I ship. If you don't want to pay the shipping, don't buy it. To paraphrase the internet, "I am not the asshole here."

The Man in the High Castle (a book review post)

As I've said previously, any good adaptation should make you at least curious about the source material, hopefully beyond, "Oh, it was based on some book," though I'm sure, people in general not being much for reading, that's where most people stop. But not me!

And, well, looking at the list of books PKD wrote, I can see that I haven't read enough of his works anyway.

Let's just get it out of the way that the Amazon series is only loosely based on the book, which is fine when that's what you set out to do and how you present it. The series, being a format which is ongoing, is able to do a little bit more with some of the concepts Dick introduced. But don't think that if you've watched the series that you have any idea of what the book is really about. You should definitely read the book.

The obvious premise of the book has to do with what the world might be like if the Axis powers had won World War II. That's a frightening thought, isn't it? What would the world be like under a totalitarian rule that covered most of the planet? It's a theme that unexpectedly resonates with our current political climate. Unexpectedly, because we all thought we had put that kind of shit behind us long ago, but here we are with a president (#fakepresident) with all of the leanings of a fascist dictator. If only, you know, people (Democrats) would just get out of his way and let him take over the world.

But I digress...

The book is fascinating on many levels, but Dick's use of language is one of the most interesting aspects. The characters are loosely grouped into two categories: the Japanese and the German, though the individual characters are not necessarily Japanese or German. When the focus is on one of the characters in the Japanese group, the prose (not just the dialogue) is stilted. There's a noticeable lack of articles. The dialogue and prose when centered on one of the German-side characters is fairly standard. There also seems to be a difference in thought processes from one side to the other, but it's possible that's just the prose speaking.

Then there are the characters: a Jew hiding out in Japanese territory under an assumed name, which is still not safe, because the Japanese and Nazis are ostensibly allies and it's routine for Jews to get sent to Germany for extermination when discovered; a "white," which is how the Japanese think of Americans in the part of America they control (just a white), small business owner who is enamored of Japanese culture and thinks they deserve to be in charge; a Swedish businessman on a trade mission to San Francisco; and more, but that should give you a taste. Almost none of the characters are precisely what they seem, though, an experience possibly like pulling on a rope only to find out it's a snake as it gets closer to you.

There's also a question as to what is or what constitutes reality, something Dick frequently does. You can see this just by looking at the basic question, "What would it be like if the Axis powers had won World War II?" But, within the book, there is a book which asks the question, "What would it be like if the Allied powers had won World War II?" The different perspectives on the answer to that question are interesting, to say the least, and they're not always what you would expect.

Maybe not as much as, say, 1984 or Brave New World, but this is definitely a book for our time and definitely worth a read. And I'm again reminded that I should really explore of PKD's works.

Day 19 (a future history)

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Everything that was bad about life before all of this stuff started happening keeps getting worse, and all of the good things are gone. Even the good things that I didn’t know about before. Like books. But soldiers came to the school today and took lots and lots of books from the library and came and took books away from us if we had any that were on their stupid list of books they were taking away.

But they only took library books from us, because those books are in the system, I guess, and they knew who had them. They did go through all of the teacher’s rooms, though, the ones who have books that they loan out to us, and took tons of their books, too. Just took them like they took my dad’s TV, but they didn’t offer to pay for the books. They didn’t search us, though. I guess they didn’t have time. That was good, because I still have my copy of Fahrenheit 451 that I got from Mrs. Madison. I only have about 25 pages left, and I would have been SO MAD if they had taken it.

Mrs. Madison was so mad. I wasn’t in her class when they went in and took her books, but everyone was talking about it after. Evidently, the soldiers had to hold her down while they were taking her books. They had to evacuate the students from her room because of how she was screaming. It was making some of them cry.

Some people said they locked her in her classroom after they took her books, and a bunch of the boys were saying she was raped because there was a lot of screaming while they were keeping her in her class. A bunch of other boys were laughing about it and laughing that some people cried.

Boys are making school even worse than it usually is, lately. There’s a bunch of them that are going around all the time talking about how they get to do whatever they want to now. They slap us on the butts in the hall and one of them, Caleb, grabbed Jenna’s boob right in the middle of class yesterday! That was in Mrs. Madison’s class, and she sent him to the office, but he was back 20 minutes later like nothing had even happened. And he grabbed Jenna’s ass when class was over, too! Mrs. Madison made him stay behind, but I saw him after school, and he was laughing about it and said there was nothing they could do.

Caleb and his group of friends think they are going to get to be part of a new student patrol, but no one knows if they’re making that up. No one has announced anything about that, not even Trump, though I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. But Caleb’s dad is one of the National Guard soldiers who came to the school and took the books, and Caleb said his dad said it’s going to happen.

So maybe he’s talking shit or maybe he knows something he’s not supposed to know. No one knows, and everyone is scared to find out. Even the teachers, I think. Everyone except Caleb’s friends who think they’re all going to be in charge.

But, anyway… Mrs. Madison wasn’t in her class when I got there for 5^th period. She had gone home. Or got sent home. Or got taken away. It really depends on who you talk to. All the boys who had laughed said the soldiers took her away and that she would probably never be back. It makes me so mad that they were saying those things, and I don’t know what to do about it.

I don’t think anyone knows what to do about it either. Everyone is scared, even the teachers. Having soldiers raiding the school doesn’t help.

I think I need to go to the book store and buy some books, because I might not be able to buy any soon. Assuming they didn’t already go to the bookstores and take their books, too. Except I don’t have any money, and books cost a lot. And I can’t order them from Amazon, either.

Not that I even know what books I should try to be getting. Fahrenheit, I know. And Hunger Games. And they took some book about flies, King of the Flies?, from Jimmy, but I don’t know what else. I just know that I want to read all the books they don’t want me to, and I need to figure out how to get some of them.

I used to never care that we didn’t have books in our house; now, I’m kinda mad that we don’t. What’s wrong with my parents that we don’t have any books? And why didn’t they ever tell me how important it is to read? And what is it in these books Trump doesn’t want us to read? I mean, I understand with Fahrenheit – It’s ALL about this! – and maybe I understand with Hunger Games, but I don’t know why they are so scared of us reading these books, and I want to know.

I WANT TO KNOW!!!

An Attack Against the Consciousness of Humanity (or The Angst of Reviewing) (an IWSG post)

Having been the recipient of multiple author tantrums as a result of reviews they didn't like, you'd think I wouldn't be surprised anymore by this kind of behavior. Amazingly, sometimes the meltdowns are so extraordinary that even I'm surprised. Not long after the whole Dilloway Incident was "resolved," a friend emailed me to point me at another author, another indie author, having an even more explosive tantrum about a negative review.

It seems that a reviewer had called his book "pretentious," and he didn't take very kindly to that. Well, he didn't take kindly to the whole thing, especially the 1-star rating, but that particular word, pretentious, seemed to draw particular ire. He called her an idiot who just didn't understand his book. In fact, he called her a lot of things. And, then, he called a lot of people a lot of things as people came to her defense and her right to have not liked his book. He called so many people so many things that goodreads eventually pulled his profile and his books from the site. [They are back, now, which makes me curious as to whether they put them back or if he just made a new profile.]

As the comment thread got longer, he lashed out at pretty much everyone, even people who tried to defend his right to be upset about receiving the negative review. In all of the flailing and raging, two things stood out to me:
1. He said (and I wish I could just go pull the quote but it appears his comments have been removed from the comment thread) that anyone who would give his book a 1-star rating was not anyone whom he would want reading his book to begin with.
2. Giving his book a 1-star rating was an "attack against the consciousness of humanity." [That quote I saved at the time, because it was so outrageous that I didn't want to forget it.] You know, because his book is all deep and meaningful and shhhtuff.

He went on from there to talk about how people who give his books bad ratings, or any indie book, are killing the soul of the world. Personally, I'd say that is a little more than pretentious. All of his comments were like that, lofty and pretentious, so, if his novel was anything similar to his comments, she was probably accurate in calling the book pretentious. [Incidentally, the "misunderstood artist" is one off the asshole archetypes that Aaron James identifies in his book Assholes. This guy who was just "defending" his book fit the definition like a glove. "You just don't understand me!"]

The thing that gets me in all of this is the whole "target audience" idea. The "you didn't like my book, so you're not my target audience and shouldn't have been reading it in the first place" idea.
BULLSHIT!
Unless you, as an author (or any kind of artist), are personally going to hand out copies of your work only to people of your own choosing, people you somehow just know will like it, you don't get to pull that whole "you're not my target audience" crap.

You put your work out for the public, and you live with the results. Period.
Or you don't put it out there.

You want to know what I think is an attack against the consciousness of humanity (and is killing the soul of the world)? All the crap being shoveled out into the marketplace, mostly by, yes, indie authors. Crap that we are then expected to admire and praise.
"Oh, look at the little poopy!"
"It's such a cute little poopy!"
"Just look at the texture and that smell! So exquisite!"
I'm sorry (no, I'm not), but that stuff just hurts my brain. Just, please, call it what it is:
"Dude, that's a pile of shit."

Okay, so, maybe, don't be so crude, but the weight of pretense surrounding indie authors and how good their books are is... well,  it's overwhelming.

And, you know, unlike most of you (almost all, in fact), I've tried. Because I'm an indie author and I want people to take a chance with my books, I've tried to do what I think is the right thing and support other indie authors by buying and reading their books. But I think I've hit my limit.

So far, with only a few exceptions, I have powered through even the worst books because I haven't felt like I should review a book I couldn't finish; however, I've come to believe there is some validity (more than just "some") in saying, "This book was so bad that I couldn't finish it." And, so, this latest indie book that I'm reading is so bad that I can't finish it. But that's not what did it. No, it was not just that it was a "bad book" that was the proverbial straw that killed the camel.

What was it then? Well, when I got to the part where my eyes fell out because I couldn't believe what I was reading (and having your eyes fall out just hurts, okay), I went over to Amazon (after laboriously cleaning the carpet fuzz off of my orbs and working them back into my head) to check the reviews of the book. There were a lot of reviews, close to 100, and more than 90% of them are 4- and 5-star ratings, with only one of them being under a 3. My first thought was, "Maybe, it's just me." But, then, I started reading the reviews and all of the reviews (all the ones I read, and I read seven or eight of the 5-star rated reviews) were... The reviews were not "good" reviews. They were not 5-star rating reviews. They were reviews that said things like:
"The beginning of this book was really hard to get through but it got better."
"I had a hard time accepting the insta-love."
"The characters seemed flat."
And, see, the reviews were all from names I recognize as author bloggers. Clearly, it was a case of not wanting to give someone they knew a bad rating.

That's just wrong. There's no other way around it: It's wrong. It's lying to readers who come in and see something like 70 4- and 5-star ratings and think they are buying something that's quality work when it's obviously not. Just because it is the author's "best effort" doesn't mean it's good or quality material or worth having on the market.

So, yeah, I'm pretty much done with indie authors except for those (very) few that I have found I already like. I'll be putting up a tab (hey, it might be there already as you read this, but it's not there while I'm writing it) pointing out the indie books that I think are worth your time; beyond that, I won't be sifting through other indie books trying to support other indie authors who
1. aren't doing anything themselves to support other indie authors (and)
2. aren't putting out anything worth reading, anyway.

However, if you want to run the risk of having me review your book, I will take requests. (I'll put up a tab for that, too (which may also already be there.)

Look, what I'm saying here is this:
It is not an "attack against the consciousness of humanity" to give a book a bad review (unless you're just doing it to be mean or spiteful). What is an attack against the consciousness of humanity is to lie in a review just to make someone feel good or to keep from hurting someone's feelings. Reviews are not for authors; they're for readers. You are doing an injustice to those readers when you don't tell the truth because you're worried about how the author is going to take it. You're also doing an injustice to the author, but that's a whole other topic (and one I've already talked about (not that I haven't talked about all of this before, anyway)).

This has been brought to you in part by the IWSG.

The Weekly (Pat) Report #1

Well... Here we are! Another week in the saga of the Revenge of the Fake Reviews! You're probably all tired of hearing about it by now; I know I'm tired of talking about it. BUT, if you want things to be righted, you can't stop talking about it, because that's the same as saying, "What you did is okay, and I'm going to let you get away with it." Dilloway has already been implying that he wants me to stop talking about the things he's done and his patterns of behavior, and I will... just as soon as he has his sister take down all the fake reviews/ratings she has up for me. Which are also on goodreads, now, because Dilloway can't stop himself from escalating the situation even as he's talking about how I should stop talking about him.

So... Let's review the situation, shall we?

1. I wrote a review of a book not written by Pat Dilloway.
2. Pat Dilloway freaked out and had a hissy fit because the author of the book was a friend of his.
3. As a result of his hissy fit, he attacked my review in each place it was posted.
4. He also, in a attempt to "give me a taste of my own medicine," lowered the rating of a book of mine, "Tiberius," which he had previously reviewed and rated four stars, to one star.
5. Pat tried to extort me to change my review of the other book by offering to change his rating on "Tiberius" back to what he originally gave it. Not one to be extorted, I said no, but that whole exchange made me angry. This is not a "hey, I'll lie for you if you'll lie for me" kind of thing.
6. Then, he wrote a post on the IWM blog about what a horrible person I am and accused me of being someone who just goes around giving out 1-star ratings, basically, because I feel like it and because I like being mean to people.
7. At that point, I wrote a post explaining, again, my stance on honest reviews. This post had nothing in and of itself to do with Pat Dilloway, although he took exception to it just as he did the first time I stated my stance years ago. Also, Briane Pagel wrote a post about honesty in reviews which he posted on the IWM blog in no small part because Pat's view that reviews should be biased toward the author for indie books (although he does not practice his own stated stance and will freely give negative reviews to people he doesn't like or to whom he views as a threat or competition) is not a reflection of the views of IWM.
8. Pat expanded his attack on me to include Briane and 1-starred at least one of Briane's books in response to Briane's post about reviews.
9. I wrote a post about the childish behavior of Pat Dilloway with the idea that the way you deal with bullying behavior is to bring it to light. The bully wins if you keep it hidden, and it allows the bully to keep doing it and do it to other people.
10. Pat began harassing me and calling me names in the comments section on my blog (he had also been doing the same to me on goodreads).
11. I published a review of a book of his which I had previously withheld. I see, now, that withholding the review in the first place was a mistake but, at the time, I had not wanted to get into it with Dilloway, because I already knew how he reacted to bad reviews. The review was not revenge, as he seems to think, but was to make a point, again, about the types of reviews that I do, i.e. reviews with objective reasoning based on the product which have nothing to do with how I may feel about the author.
12. Dilloway, of course, attacked the review. Another reviewer pointed out some of the things that I was talking about in the review, things Dilloway said didn't exist, and Dilloway attacked him, too. The other reviewer posted his own review of Dilloway's book because his comments somehow mysteriously vanished from the comment thread on Amazon, and Dilloway attacked that review, too, though most of Dilloway's comments were removed by Amazon.
13. Dilloway began spamming my comment sections on my posts with hundreds of comments calling me names. Yes, I said hundreds. These comments I just ignored and stored, but Dilloway, then, went out of his way to also call various of my commenters names and, actually, called all of my commenters stupid.
14. Because of Dilloway's "I didn't do that, oh, I did do that but it's okay" attitude and his similarity to Vox Day along with his persistence in spamming my comments, I wrote the Sad Puppy post.
15. Dilloway asked for people to help teach me a lesson (on Facebook (I saw the post but don't remember the exact language he used)), and his sister went over to Amazon and began 1-starring all of my books. Later, his other sister also 1-starred the same books that Dilloway had 1-starred.
16. Dilloway wrote another post about what a horrible person I am and how I am just petty dictator for removing all of his comments which were full of nothing more than calling people names and insulting people. Sorry, it's my blog and, if insulting people is the best you have, I don't need that on my blog.
17. Amazon stepped in and removed all of the Dilloway siblings reviews/ratings on "Tiberius" and The House on the Corner. Dilloway re-posted his reviews, both with 3-star ratings, just to have Amazon remove them again. That happened several times (at least three), but Dilloway was persistent in re-posting the reviews every time Amazon removed them. They currently stand with 3-star ratings. Neither sister replaced their reviews on those books, but the first sister still has six 1-star ratings of my work on Amazon.
18. Dilloway began spreading around, in order to show how horrible I am, that I am currently in a feud with my church. That's a very interesting thing since, currently, I do not attend church nor have I in years. I'm assuming that Dilloway is referring to the series I've been doing about racism, and I am going to be generous and assume that his misunderstanding came from a lack of being able to read closely rather than that he is siding with the batch of racist assholes I was talking about in those posts.
Oh, wait, he could have just been purposefully lying about me so as to discredit me. Hmm... yeah, let's go with that option. Occam's Razor and all of that.
19. His sister expanded her rating attack to goodreads where she has currently given me more than 50 1-star ratings (because each piece of the Shadow Spinner serialization is still listed there).

This is the point at which I'm saying that I am not going to quit talking about Pat Dilloway and what he has done and is doing until he fixes it. Not just his reviews (he also went and downrated everything he'd rated of mine on goodreads), because he's changed those so that he can, I suppose, say, "Hey, look, I don't have any bad reviews of his works," but his sister's, too, since, ultimately, he is responsible for those being there. Also, if I see that he's doing this kind of thing to anyone else, I will do my best to let people know about that, too. Because, you know what? Bullies don't get to win.

And, now, for my favorite one!

20. Just this week, Dilloway has published a post saying how much he hates me and how, also, he's sure that everyone believes he's an asshole but, really, what he's doing is okay because he keeps it isolated to "out-of-the-way message boards and blogs." At least he's not putting it in a book that's for sale on, say, Amazon where thousands of people could see it.

The logic here is amazing to me. It's kind of like saying, "Hey, I know I hit you in the back of the head with this board, but at least I did it in this alley where no one could see instead of out on the street." Or, "I know I stole $100.00 from you, but at least I didn't steal $1000.00." It is not the magnitude of something that makes it wrong. The thing is wrong or it's not. Speeding is still against the law even if there are no cops around to catch you.

He also states in the that post that he has been involved in "many a flame war," which I also find interesting considering his stance that I am the problem. I suppose that this could be considered a flame war except that I have kept all of my talk (except for one stray comment) restricted to my blog and have also restricted my talk to only pointing out actual actions without resorting to calling names and insulting anyone's intelligence. At any rate, I think the person who has an issue with getting involved in flame wars should take a look at his behavior.

So that's the update. Next week's will be restricted to only new developments, but I wanted to get the sequence of events down here at the outset. I think I covered everything, at any rate.

If you would like to find out what you can do to help fight the bullies who attack and/or intimidate authors like this just because they can, please feel free to email me.

Assholes (A Theory) (a book review post)

Assholes, by Aaron James, is a difficult book to walk past and not pick up. With a title like that, it's hard to resist. And I'm sure that it's the title that has made the book a New York Times bestseller. Probably bought as gifts, because, when you see a book called Assholes, you're bound to immediately think of someone who ought to have that book no matter what the book is ultimately about. For me, that person was myself. I mean, here was a book that promised to tell me where assholes come from and what to do about them. I didn't even try to resist.

Perhaps, I should have, though. But, ultimately, it's a different experience standing in the book store with the book in your hand than it is looking up the book online and being able to see what other people are saying about it. I probably would have bought the book anyway just to see for myself, but I would have gone into it expecting more of what it was rather than what I hoped it would be.

See, James is a philosophy professor and, as such, the book is presented more as a research paper than as a book. Or, maybe, like a sermon. It very much follows the practice of (1) I am going to tell you what I'm going to talk about. (2) I am going to talk about what I am going to talk about. (3) I am going to tell you what I just talked about. It makes the book annoyingly repetitive at times.

But that's not to say the book isn't without its charms. It does, for instance, give us a workable definition of what an asshole is:

In interpersonal or cooperative relations, the asshole:

1. allows himself to enjoy special advantages and does so systematically;
2. does this out of an entrenched sense of entitlement; and
3. is immunized by his sense of entitlement against the complaints of other people.

I think that's a pretty good definition.

From there, he goes into examples of different types of assholes. The only problem is that he's a bit choosy about the examples and fails to actually provide a general description of the sub-types, leaving it to become "an asshole politician is an asshole who is a politician" or "an asshole driver is an asshole who drives a car." Except he gets even more vague about it by saying things like "sometimes, a person is an asshole only when they are driving [or at work or at home or wherever]," or "sometimes an asshole politician isn't really an asshole himself, he is just taking asshole advice from some other asshole politician [as in the case of Bush from Cheney]." He gets so involved in the philosophy behind assholism that he fails to provide any practical "advice" for identifying assholes definitively.

Also, one of the main purposes of the book is stated to be "asshole management" or how to deal with the assholes in your life. Asshole management boils down to a cost-benefit analysis, because dealing with an asshole is never easy. You therefore have to always weigh the cost of taking a stand against an asshole against the benefit you will get from it. And, then, there is no particular strategy or set of strategies, anyway. He leaves it very "every situation is different," which is true, but, then, don't state that you're going to provide keys to asshole management if you're not actually going to do that.

There are some very interesting portions of the book, like the chapter about asshole capitalism, but I'm not sure I can say that the book is worth reading just for those sections. I also don't think there's any good way to know which sections any given individual ought to read. Personally, the thing I found most interesting about the book was how it came to be in the first place, which had to do with dealing with asshole surfers. Unfortunately, then, the asshole surfer thing serves as no more than a brief illustration about the larger asshole picture.

I suppose, in the end, I would say that the book is worth the read as a curiosity piece. Don't expect to get any actual, practical information out of it beyond the asshole definition, which is something you probably already knew, anyway, but had failed to ever put into words. Mostly, the book serves as a political soapbox from which James can call "asshole" at selected politicians and discuss how assholes caused the financial crisis (and cause most of them). I don't really have a problem with that in a general sense; those guys need more people to point the "asshole finger" at them. However, don't try to disguise that as a guide to identifying and dealing with assholes in regular life if what you really want to do is make a political statement. But, then, James is a philosopher so, maybe, that's all the same to him.

[Also, in posting this review to Amazon, I find it both supremely annoying and amusing that I will have to edit out every usage of the word "asshole" despite the fact that the book is named Assholes.]

The Amazon Slant

As many have said, we live in a very divisive culture. I'm not sure if it's always been this way, but it's certainly that way right now. Left or Right. Black or White. Liberal or Conservative. Right or Wrong. On side or the other with no room for anyone to be in between. No room for ambiguity. No room for indecision. We're just not comfortable with it.

I'm sure that at least some of this attitude has been adopted from the press, since controversy sells. People getting along is not a story; that doesn't happen till they take up sides and start throwing bricks at each other. If you want to sell things, it's a good tactic.

And Amazon knows this.

I don't know how many of you pay attention to the rating systems on the various sites on which you may be rating things, but they are not all the same. In fact, most of them go something like this:
5 -- I loved it!
4 -- I really liked it.
3 -- I liked it.
2 -- I didn't like it.
1 -- I hated it!
Goodreads has a more positive slant on it:
2 -- It was okay.
1 -- I didn't like it.
There's no room for hate there.
Basically, though, most sites offer "like" as the default giving you much more room to rate things positively than negatively. If you're paying attention. What this means is that most sites have a "top heavy" rating system that's geared toward generating positive ratings and reviews.

Looking at Goodreads more closely, what we have is a system that is designed to get ratings of 3, 4, and 5. 2s should be virtually non-existent, leaving 1s as the only real option for an actual negative review or rating.

Why do I say 2s should be non-existent? Because most people most of the time do not have an actual "it was okay" reaction to things. They like things or they don't like things. There are very few "I could take it or leave it"s.

Which is what makes Amazon's rating system so interesting. It has that "it was okay" right in the middle.
5 -- I love it
4 -- I like it
3 -- It's okay
2 -- I don't like it
1 -- I hate it
So, when you look at Amazon reviews, you get high numbers on both ends and almost non-existent numbers in the middle, because the system is designed that way. It wants to pit the 1s against the 5s, because that's what draws attention to products.

As someone who does a fair amount of reviews on Amazon, I have seen a lot of this confrontation first hand. For instance, there is a strong group of Marvel-haters out there. So, if a post a review for a Marvel movie, it is sure to immediately get "unhelpful" votes (my review for Guardians of the Galaxy didn't receive the normal deluge of negative votes when I posted, although, still, the first vote was negative).

What it boils down to is that Amazon doesn't want ambiguous ratings or reviews. Amazon wants "I loved this!" or "I hated this!" When you can shrug your shoulders and say, "Well, it was okay, I guess," no one is going to want to take a look at the product. Whatever the product. I love or a hate, though, will get some attention.

And what's my point with all of this?
The first thing is this: When you're rating things, make sure you pay attention to the rating system you're using. Just to give you an example, I was rating/reviewing some things recently, and I was on Goodreads leaving my stuff there. The particular story I was dealing with got a 3 on Goodreads because "I liked it." When I switched over to Amazon, I was sort of on autopilot, and I gave the story a 3 there, too, which was not accurate. On Amazon, I needed to leave a 4. It was a couple of days before I noticed what I'd done and went back and fixed it. It's just something to be aware of.

The other thing is... well, I'm not sure. I mean, I am sure, but I'm not sure (I'd give that a 3). If you're looking at selling things (like books), it seems that a way to do that is to generate some love/hate around it. That's what Amazon seems to think at any rate. And I've seen that work in actual practice. I don't know, exactly, how I would say to go about doing this, but there probably are ways. For one thing, though, as authors, it may not be in our best interests to be getting all upset about reviews on the negative end of the spectrum. I mean, it's never in our best interest to act out over negative reviews, but it might be even more than that. I think the real key is to learn how to exploit the reviews on either end of the rating scale and make them work in our favor. I'm just not sure how, yet.

Are You Ready?

The great myth out there about indie publishing is of people (mostly women, I think, although I could be wrong about that), not quite dressed, feverishly pounding out a manuscript and immediately uploading it to Amazon. These manuscripts are full of plot holes and are only half-baked, besides, and are unedited messes. "Messes" is a euphemism in this instance. In short, they, the manuscripts and the authors, were not ready for publication.

To read the rest of this post, you will need to hop over to Indie Writers Monthly.

See you there!

The Shelf Life of Serial

Every time I do one of these posts, it makes me think of cereal. I just can't help it. Last time, I talked about Grape-Nuts; this time I'm thinking about cereal I liked when I was a kid.

I suppose my first favorite kinds of cereals were those ones with the dried up marshmallows in them, specifically Boo Berry and Fraken Berry.

(Yes, I had to get the Star Wars one in there.)

My aunt used to buy those for my cousin and me down at the farm when I was little. I mean, like, before I was five, but I never got those at home, and, as we got older, my aunt and cousin quit being down at the farm all the time (because of school, I suppose, like me), so that cereal quit being available to me. I always wanted Lucky Charms, but my mom would never buy them for me. Or any marshmallow cereal for that matter. Any time I got any of those was over at friends' houses.

I ended up settling on Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch. Thinking about it now, that was because my mom liked that particular cereal, so that was the only kind of sugar cereal we had around my house as a kid. Okay, not true: we also tended to have Frosted Flakes, but I didn't really like those, so I tended to ignore their existence. Now, don't get me wrong; I really liked the Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch (and still love the idea of it, even now, but, after being off of sugar for... years, now, and after not having had any of it since, basically, living in California, I don't want to go back and try it, now. I might find out it tastes like dirt), but, sometimes, I wanted to have other kinds of cereal, like Crunch Berries, which is still Cap'n Crunch, but my mom wouldn't even go for that.

Actually, all of this cereal talk is making me realize some things about my childhood that are better saved for another day, especially since this post isn't actually about cereal. So let's play Homonym!

and talk about The real answer here: Serial!

I've been doing Shadow Spinner as a serialization for over a year, now, and I've learned a few things. You'd hope so, right? As I said when I started all of this, it's all been kind of an experiment, one in which some  of you have been participating, and I figure it's about time to let you in on some results.

1. Overall, I'd say that serialization is a very viable option in today's publishing world. I know that I've gained a lot more exposure by releasing Spinner in parts rather than if I'd just released it all at once. In that respect, it has worked very well. I've gotten reviews and ratings from people I don't know who, for the most part, have really enjoyed Spinner, and that has been gratifying to see. I've also gained an unknown number of friends on Facebook due to Spinner, people who are following me there specifically because of Spinner. So, yeah, I'd say doing the serial thing has been a positive experience. And I may do it again...

2. However, I think 34 parts is too long. I knew that from the beginning, but, not having done it before, I didn't know that I knew it. Of course, I didn't write Spinner to be a serial when I was first writing it, and the format I wrote it in, the short chapters, was to fit in with the creative writing class I was teaching. If I had known what I was going to do, I would have structured it differently. Or, if I'd really thought about how long the process would be that I was setting up, I may have combined the chapters or something. But none of that matters for this particular project, because I can't go back and change how I've done it, only remember it for the future.

3. The Kindle releases do not help the sales of the physical book. That was a bit of secondary experimentation I was doing. Release the full physical book before the serialization was finished, but I can't see that it made any impact on sales. People wanting the physical book will buy it, but it has nothing to do with the serialization.

4. At this point, I can't see that Shadow Spinner has had any impact on sales of The House on the Corner. Maybe it has, but, if it has, it has been small enough that I can't see it. What that means is that House has continued to sell at approximately the same rate as before I started the serialization of Spinner. But, then, House has been out for a while, so, maybe, without Spinner sales would have dried up altogether and it's only Spinner that has kept sales going. I have no way of knowing.

5. What I do know is that the release of new Spinner parts has almost always resulted in the sale of various older parts, depending on what was available for free on any given release day. Actually, most of those purchases would come later during the week after one of the free days, so that tells me people must have been reading and deciding they wanted to go on. At least, I think that's what it's telling me.

All of this means a few things:
1. As I've said before, I'm going to be collecting the individual parts of Spinner into collected volumes. That will keep it in a serialized format but also make it cheaper for people to buy in the future (once I've gotten beyond the free release days). The first of these collected volumes, "Collection 1: Tiberius," will contain

parts one through five. As an added bonus, I will also be including Bryan Pedas' story "Like An Axe Through Bone" because so many people have requested that I make it available other than in the physical book. [Each of the other collected editions will have a different story from a different author.] Collection 1 will be released on Monday, August 19 (along with "Part Twenty-eight: The Shadow Place").

2. In relation to the additional stories, I need a couple more. If you're interested in submitting an Imagination Room (from The House on the Corner) themed story to be included as a backup story at the end of one of these, please let me know. I'd really like to feature some other independent author at the back of each of these volumes.

3. Here's where you can help! And, really, I mean that. I'm not keen on asking for this kind of help, because it actually involves me asking you to spend money in a way beyond the general, "hey, buy my book," which is, actually, what I'm doing, but with a purpose. See, I'm going to lose all of my reviews on the individual parts of Spinner as I transition to the collected parts. [Yes, I've tried talking to Amazon about this, and, maybe, I'll explain in more detail later, but it would be too long to add to this post. Let's just say it's another thing I learned.] What I really need is for those of you that have already read and reviewed any of the first five parts (and any of you who have been thinking about doing it) to

• On Monday, August 19, buy Collection 1 of Shadow Spinner.
• Leave a review some time during the week of the 19th. [For those of you who have previously left a review, this should be an easy process. For those of you who have not, the first five chapters are really not all that long.]

Because "The Tunnel" has been out for so long, I think it's really important to make up as much ground as possible during the switch to the collection, so I would really appreciate your help.

Also, you know, you could post about the release. If you really wanted to. That, also, always helps.

4. I will be moving from a biweekly release schedule on the remaining parts to a weekly schedule. The new releases of the individual parts will still be free as will as many of the other individual parts as possible each week. However, the collections will not be free. The feedback for the later collections will not be as critical as replacing the feedback on this first collection, so, you know, pick up the later parts for free while they're available that way. But, please, buy Collection 1 and leave a review on Amazon and, even, a rating on goodreads. I can't tell you how much this will help me out. Thanks!

The Religion of Writing: Part Two -- The Hierarchy

Disclaimer: The following example is a paraphrase of the events, so to speak. It's just a general idea of how things happened and how they work and not meant to be exact fact.

Way back in the way back, God had relationships with men on an individual basis. There was God and Adam, God and Methuselah, God and Noah. Then there was God and Abraham, and God and Jacob, and God and Moses. By the time we get to God and Moses, the Hebrews were getting a bit tired of the whole "indie God" scene and wanted a more traditional pub...um, I mean, god, so, to deal with the issue, God gave them some basic guidelines to live by. There weren't too many, because God didn't want to bog everyone down with a bunch of rules, and, really, those rules boiled down to two things: 1. Love God and 2. Be excellent to each other.

But you know people, and they couldn't deal with things being so straightforward, so the agents, I mean priests, got together and made lots of rules. Lots and lots of rules. LOTS and LOTS of rules. So many rules, we've lost track of them all. And you couldn't just join the "Hebrew club" anymore, either. There were lots and lots of rules and tests and all sorts of things you had to do to get on the inside with God. According to the Pharisees, at any rate.

After a while, God got tired of all of that, so He sent his Son down to deal with the people. His son, Jesus, said, "Dudes, no more rules. Just love God and be excellent to each other." Of course, we all know how that turned out. But the apostles understood the message and started spreading the love. Except, almost right away, people started making new rules or re-imposing the old ones and, eventually, along came the Romans and made it all Catholic and stuff, and, pretty soon, there were even more rules than before and, again, no one could just decide to follow God; they all had to jump through special hoops and get rid of all their adverbs and stuff before they were let into the "Catholic club."

After another while, this other dude, Martin Luther, came along and said, "Dudes! Jesus came to get rid of all of these rules. And, oh yeah, the agents, too. We don't need those guys!" Things didn't go well for Martin, either, but a bunch of new small publishers sprang up that, initially, did away with agents (I mean priests), but it wasn't long before they put new agents in place and made all sorts of new rules (like you can't go to Heaven unless you speak in tongues, and dancing will send you straight to Hell).

I'm sure you get the idea.

So let's look at something else.

Way back in the not quite as way back there was a dude that wrote a book. He paid to have some copies printed, then he tried to sell them. Other guys did the same thing. That worked out for some of those guys and not for some of the others. Some guys had more money than others, so they could print more books, and things tended to work out better for them than for the guys that couldn't afford to print very many. There was no such thing as "best seller" back in those days, but some of those books are still around.

Eventually, some poor author (because almost all of them were poor (are poor)) had the bright idea to hire a printer to be his publisher. Since he couldn't pay the guy that owned the printing press in advance, he offered to pay the printer, now his publisher, from the profits from the book. The printer saw the opportunity to make more money than if the writer just paid for the number of copies he could afford and, thus, was born the modern traditional publishing model.

However, I want to point out that when all of this started, the author was in charge. The author communicated directly with his readers, often selling his books to them by hand or taking them to small stores to sell (because there were not, yet, bookstores). The printer/publisher worked for the author, not the other way around. As the idea of being paid from the book profits took hold, the whole process became an invest for the printer/publishers, but, at first, the author was still in control. But the balance of power shifted to the money guys as more and more authors sought out the same publishers. And then came rules. And agents. And more rules. Until the author was at the bottom. No longer communicating directly with... anyone. Except the agentpriest.

And all the people began to worship the traditional publishing house and abide by its rules and jump through its hoops to get inside. Agents really are the priests of the traditional publishers, testing people to see if they're worthy, but, just like it was with the Pharisees (charging for sacrifices and requiring that people only use special "temple money") and the Catholics (selling Indulgences to have your sins forgiven) and the televangelists, it's all about the money.

And, now, we have self-publishing, which is kind of like the Protestant Reformation. And, just like the Catholic church condemned Luther, we have the big traditional publishing houses condemning Amazon and other self publishing outlets and calling people that do self-publish all kinds of bad things.

And we have people clinging to the old model. To the church of Traditional Publishing.

And I have to wonder about what sorts of rules we're going to develop for self-publishing and what kinds of hoops we'll eventually have to jump through for that. Because, well, we humans seem to love our rules and our hierarchies. I guess, that way, we know who's "winning." Charlie Sheen, right? Or is he still winning? I don't know.

I'm not much of one for outdated traditions. Or any traditions that aren't relevant. All of this post has been to say that we ought to really look at what the people "in charge" are telling us and figure what part of it is useful. Because, as far as I can tell, unless you are just in desperate need for the validation that comes from being traditionally published, those guys aren't doing anyone any good. Not anymore. And, hey, really, if you are looking for that pat on the back, I'm sure there are better places to get it.

"The Ohnegott"

And now it's time for another of my infamous book reviews...

I learned something new about goodreads today: If someone deletes his account, you lose any mail you may have exchanged with that person. What the heck? Seriously, why is my email deleted because someone else deletes his account?

So... back around Christmas, I received an email from Charles Timm asking me if I would review his "book," "The Ohnegott;" I say "book" because it's barely longer than a short story, but he's treating it as if it's a full length novel. I explained to him that I was busy with several projects and had other reviews I needed to do, so it would take a while (as you can see, it's now May (and the only reason I stuck it into the list, even now, is because of how short it is)); he said that was fine. I also explained as explicitly as I could that any review I would give would be completely objective--there would be no automatic positive review. I told him he should check out some of my reviews so that he would know what he was getting into. I don't know if he ever did that, but he said he understood and wanted the review no matter how it turned out. And, see, that was the part I wanted to save, because it's good to have it in print when someone tells you to be harsh.

At the time of the request, "The Ohnegott" had no reviews. It does, now, mostly negative ones, and he deleted his account, so I have to wonder if those things are related. And the email that I saved is gone. Oh, well...

The first thing I looked at when Timm gave me a copy of his story was the length. I don't have an exact word count, but it can't be more than 10,000 words or so, but he's charging $2.99 for it. My immediate response to that back in December was to tell him that he's charging too much for a story of that length. He agreed with me, yet the price is still $2.99. That seems unfortunate to me, because I would actually be angry if I paid $2.99 for this. I'd probably shrug off $0.99, because Amazon doesn't let you charge less than that, $3 is the author taking advantage of me both because it's not long enough to warrant that kind of price, unless it was exquisite, and, because, this "book" is the opposite of exquisite.
[As a complete aside, the next Charter Shorts is just about ready for release, and, if "The Ohnegott" had been a submission from one of my middle schoolers, it would not have made it into Charter Shorts, Too. Seriously. And it was written by a guy, supposedly, with a degree in English.]

Let's start with grammar and punctuation because that's oh so much fun, right? I have no kind way of saying this: He needed to get some. The story is littered with inappropriately used semi-colons and commas. Semi-colons used as commas. Anywhere he could put a punctuation mark, he did. Sometimes just stuck between words for no apparent reason. Frequently, there were long strings of sentence fragments strung together with said commas and semi-colons so that, in the end, the string of fragments didn't actually say anything. To cut to the chase: a degree in English does not mean one knows how to use punctuation correctly, and Timm is in desperate need of an editor just to deal with the punctuation. Not to mention that his verb tenses didn't always match and not all of the words he used meant what he thought they did.

And that part, the part about using the incorrect word in a sentence brings me to the next bit. I think he was trying to write in "lofty" language. To elevate the story by his word choices. But it just reminded me of my dad and how he used to use "big words" to sound more intelligent except that he'd use the wrong word and just sound... well, I'll just say that when I was teenager I was often left embarrassed whenever my dad would open his mouth to talk. "The Ohnegott" felt just like that to me, like Timm was trying too hard to sound grand and bigger than life but left it looking like a bunch  of five-year-olds playing dress up. Only, it's cute when five-year-olds do it.

Sometimes, though, the worst grammar problems can be overlooked if the story is good enough, but this one wasn't that. In fact, it was more along the lines of one of those five-year-olds wishing he could be good enough to cause his birth to magically have been a royal one and find out that his dad is really the king and he's really a prince. Frederick's desire to work hard enough and become worthy enough to have been born a royal makes absolutely no sense, but let's forget about that for the moment. Let's go to the incestuous attraction that Frederick and his foster-sister, Carina, have for each other. But they're not really brother and sister, you say? Well, it's completely unclear that they know this. From the presentation, it appears that they believe they are brother and sister and each has a secret love for the other, which, in the end, turns out to be okay, because, surprise!, they're not really related (except not a surprise, because the reader knows they're not related; it's just a surprise to them making their long secret love for each other okay).

Beyond all of that, the story is illogical and inconsistent. The king has had all of the churches burned down for no apparent reason, and, evidently, no one knows where the king's castle even is. But I'll give you an example right from chapter one where we are introduced to... well, I can't tell you that, because the character has no name. Let me let you catch up:
Right at the beginning, our brother and sister meet a monk in the woods. Only he turns out to not be a monk, he just likes to wear the robes because they're comfy. Probably because he's fat. Monks have to be fat, you know (Timm tells us this later in the story, the thing about monks being fat). [Remember the part about how the king has burned down all of the churches? Evidently, he kills monks, too, but this guy is waltzing around in monk's robes. (Yes, we are told in the first paragraph that churches are outlawed.)] As soon as the "monk" reveals he's not a monk, the siblings realize he's just a kid. What the heck? Suddenly, he looked younger than the mature man he'd looked only moments before! I'm going to just assume he's a teenager, because Timm is never clear on just how old the kid is. When it comes time to exchange names, we find out the not-monk has no name.

Let me take a logic break here. This kid, teenager?, has no name. Not even anything he calls himself. Nothing anyone else has ever called him. He's homeless, see, but he did live with a string of women at some point (a whore's kid, then?), but, evidently, not a single one of them ever had anything she called him. He doesn't even make up a name; he's just all sad about how he doesn't have a name. Oh, wait, more logic break. He's homeless! At this point, he's living mostly in the woods scrounging for food (and we get his thoughts about how good it will be to actually get to eat), but he's fat. And he knows how to read, although he's never had a family or anyone take care of him, and he's very knowledgeable about medicine.

Which takes us to the next thing, they decide to take this nameless not-monk (although the sister promises to get him a name) back to their house to attempt a cure on  their sick father. I'm thinking, at this point, that we have the set up for the story. But, no, because that whole thing never happens. They just take the not-monk back and feed him and the whole thing about him healing the father never comes up again. In fact, the not-monk's presence in  the story is rather questionable except to fit the "fat monk" archetype. Which he doesn't do.

After that, other things that make no sense happen. The only saving grace the story had was that it was short. If it had been any longer, I would have backed out of reviewing it. Which, after reading the first chapter, I wanted to do, anyway, but, then, I couldn't email Mr. Timm to tell him that (because of the closed account), so I sighed and finished the read. I'm going to have to start turning these requests down. I have too many things I want to read on my list to take time out to read something like this, even if it didn't take very long.

How To Be... a Translator

I was listening to NPR the other day; they were talking about this dude that worked as a translator for the State Department and, later, CNN on recommendation from the State Department. They even played some clips of him translating during a CNN interview. It's what gave me my idea for "T."

Of course, it was all wrong. Which I knew but was forgetting during the moment of listening to the report on NPR about this "translator." But, see, he's not a translator. He's an interpreter. A translator is someone that works with documents. As wikipedia puts it:

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature.

[The bold print is mine.]
It was surprising to me that NPR made such a fundamental mistake, but, then, I'm sure most people would never even think about thinking that it could be wrong, because we, culturally, use the idea of translation incorrectly all the time. And that's where it gets even more complicated, because many languages don't make a distinction between the two: it is all "translation." But, here in the USA, we do make a distinction, and it's for rather important reasons, which I will get to in a moment. One other note, when interpreting, it is always "interpreting" or "interpreter;" it is never "interpretation," because that means something entirely different and is more related to translating, which we'll also get to in a moment.

I do have one friend who became an interpreter. She was fascinated with Japan and had decided by our senior year that she wanted to be an interpreter. She went on to get a degree in Japanese cultural studies (or something like that) and graduated from college with a (very) high paying job for some corporation in Japan.

I mention that because my impression is that people think that interpreting is difficult while translating is fairly easy and straightforward. That anyone who knows two languages well enough can sit down and translate, but acting as an interpreter requires much more command of both languages. And, while it's true that interpreting is no easy job, especially high level interpreting (especially high level interpreting like for the UN or the State Department), most of what I found leans toward interpreting as being the easier of the two because it doesn't involve so much interpretation. [See, I told you these word distinctions are important. Okay, so I didn't explicitly say that, but I implied it.]

But why interpretation? Because languages don't always translate directly. There may not be an equivalent words between two languages. Or, as is the case with "interpreting" and "translating," one language may make a distinction in meaning when using a particular word. Or there may be phrases that mean a particular thing, but the individual words, if translated, won't add up to the meaning of the phrase. OR... Or it may be an artistic work, like a poem or a work of fiction, and the translator becomes tasked with evoking  more than just the meaning of the individual words. (S)he must make an interpretation of the work as (s)he translates.

Yes, it's all very complicated.

So, then, how do you become a translator?

Well, to start, you have to have a more than competent grasp of both languages you're working with but an even greater grasp of the language you are translating into. But it doesn't stop with knowing the languages; you also have to be versed in both cultures. Remember that I mentioned phrases that mean something other  than the individual words mean? And, then, there's slang, which is often difficult to keep up with within your own language. [When my brother was still in high school (he's six years younger than me), he used to love to use whatever the latest slang was on me, because I never knew what he was talking about. Seriously, it was weeks before I knew what "Baby's got back" meant.] Translating just the words in those circumstances will lead to a bad translation even though the words are technically correct. This is called knowing the difference between when to "metaphrase" (translating the words literally) and "paraphrase" (translating the meaning of the phrase, creating an interpretation of what the author meant). [In other words, "she has a big butt," which I found offensive just on general principal once I knew what my brother was saying.]

You should also be familiar with the subject matter, so translating, say, The Three Musketeers by Dumas, would require you to know both about Alexandre Dumas and 19th century France and 17th century France, which is when the story is set.

All of that aside, the role of the translator is actually growing, right now, as the Internet reaches more and more of the world. Computer translation devices can do no more than translate the individual words, which can lead to a very many misunderstandings, so the demand for people who can translate web pages is on the rise. It probably doesn't require quite as much dedication as manuscript translation does and could also provide good experience for anyone wanting to get into manuscript translation.

And, now, I'm wondering how my books must read in other languages when translated solely by Amazon's computer translators...

How To Be... an Incredible Hulk (and an Indie Life post)

Okay, so this entry may seem like an odd choice (my wife totally disapproves of it), BUT, if you follow along to the very end, it will all make sense. Probably. I think it will. It does in my mind, anyway. Besides, in a comment back on this post, Rusty said that growing up to be the Incredible Hulk

was his childhood dream, and I felt like that deserved some recognition. I wanted to dig up old bones; he wanted to "turn into an enormous green rage monster."

But how would one really go about doing that?

Well, my first bit of advice is to be the age of a middle schooler. They have the whole flying into a rage monster thing down. Most of us grow out of that, though, so what other way would one have of becoming a Hulk?

Well, in pretty much every version of the Hulk out there, the first thing you need to have is some pretty serious anger issues, ideally that you're suppressing. For some reason, gamma radiation will release this suppressed anger while also turning you green. Unless you become the a red hulk.

But, then, I'm not actually sure they used gamma radiation on those, so let's just stick to green. Which takes us back to gamma radiation, which is the second necessary ingredient to Hulkify yourself.

Originally, this gamma radiation was delivered via a gamma nuke, but I don't suggest this as your option. Also, it turned him grey

which isn't as impressive in that he looks more gorilla-ish, but he does dress better. Sometimes. But I digress...

More recent iterations of the Hulk have included such things as genetics research and bioengineering, and, honestly, those things put the idea of something Hulk-like into the realm of possibility. We are already working on programs to produce results like this. Okay, maybe now quite like busting out of your clothes and turning colors, but still...

At any rate, if you really want to be the Hulk or Hulk-like, I would bet there are plenty of programs that you could volunteer to join for "testing." I'm sure there will be a lot of paperwork to fill out. Mostly paperwork involving non-disclosure agreements and, um, whatever those things are called where you don't hold the other people responsible when you burst into a green rage monster.
There may also be private individuals who would not need you to sign all of that messy paperwork.

The point is that, if this is something you really wanted to achieve, it's not out of the realm of possibility anymore.

This is also an Indie Life day.

People seem to always want something for nothing, and I get that. I do. Free is good, right? But that's not really what I'm talking about, because free implies that the giver is making a gesture. It's his choice. No, what I'm talking about is when people work the system to take advantage of a situation to get something for nothing.

For a while, Amazon allowed, through it's affiliate program, people to get something for nothing. Just by listing the daily free Kindle listings on their site, an affiliate could earn money from downloads that Amazon wasn't making any money off of. It went on for quite a while before Amazon put a stop to it. The thing that gets me about this is that these people that were taking advantage of what was basically an oversight on the part of Amazon began complaining as soon as Amazon said it would no longer pay affiliates for free downloads. Basically, if we don't make any money from it, you don't make any money from it. I don't see anything wrong with that.

A lot of these people that run these sites advertising free books have been yelling very loudly, though, not that it's doing them any good. Personally, I just don't understand how anyone can feel justified in complaining about not getting something anymore that they were, in effect, stealing to begin with, but they are.

To make up for this lack of income, many of these sites want to, now, charge the author for these services, services that many authors didn't know they were receiving in the first place. On the surface, there's nothing wrong with this; my issue is the way some of these sites are going about it. They want you to have a free offering (to pull in clicks) and a paid option which will earn them affiliate money from Amazon. In effect, they want to be paid from both sides at once. And, maybe, that's okay, it's the way some of these sites are going about it that bothers me along with the fees they want to charge the authors for the service.

Which is how this applies to Indie Life. It's important, as an independently published author, to not get roped into paying more for a service than you're going to get back from using it, and most of these kind of sites are going to do just that, charge you more for the service than you will make from it. Sometimes much more. So what I'm saying here is "be careful." Before you spend any money to promote your book, make sure you do a full evaluation of the service. What kind of traffic do they get? What kind of experience have other authors had? Are they upfront with you and will they answer your questions?

I've gotten pretty used to seeing authors posting about how they spent $50-60 to promote on one of these types of sites for a day and how they only made $10 from it. There's no way to cut that so that it's good for you as the author. Don't be roped in by promises of increasing your visibility or broadening your reader base if your just feeding someone else's thirst for free money. At that point, you may as well be working with a vanity press.

Remember, the money should flow to the author, not from the author.

Visual Evidence

For those of you that wanted visual evidence of yesterday's post, here you go:

That's really all I have for today.
Come back tomorrow where you'll hear me talk about how I want to be an amusement park.

For One Brief Moment...

Last Monday was the release of "Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light" in my Shadow Spinner serialization.

Maybe some of you picked it up? I think you must have, because it was the best release day I've had for any of the parts so far. But not only that, I had the biggest download day I've ever had. By far.

"Part Two: The Kitchen Table" lead the downloads and peaked at #14 on Amazon's list of free downloads on the science fiction, fantasy, and magic list (unless it went higher at some point that I didn't notice). I had 6 of the top 20 spots. But...
That's not the best part!
See, it wasn't just my best day for free downloads, it was my best day for paid downloads. By far. I mean, I got months' worth of paid downloads last week, and something happened that I would never have suspected.

"Part Six: The Man with No Eyes"

which was not free last week, kept climbing the charts. The paid charts. My stuff spikes up into the top 100,000 fairly frequently, but I'm more used to them hovering in the 500,000 range. At any rate, I noticed when it was in the top 100,000, but I didn't think much of it. It stayed that way for a long time, too, because Amazon didn't update their stats in a timely manner, last week. Generally, it's every hour or so, but, last Monday, it took them 6-8 hours to do an update. I was watching the downloads climb, but, still, I hadn't given any thought to the ranking. Until it finally updated, that is, and it shot onto the paid sci-fi, fantasy, and magic chart at #96. I was in the top 3000 on the sales chart. And the downloads kept happening. And, then, I was in the top 2000 and, later, just over 1000. I landed at #72 on the paid s/f/m list. That was pretty cool!

But, see, right above me on  the chart, at #69, was The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I just sort of blinked. Because, well, see, I was right there on the chart with him. What? It was pretty unbelievable.

And that's how I left it when I went to bed.

But that's not the best part!

Because, when I got up on Tuesday morning, I found that there had been more downloads, and "The Man with No Eyes" was sitting at #68 on the list, just above The Graveyard Book, which was still at #69. That! THAT was unbelievable. Surreal. I wanted a screen shot of it, but, see, I'd tried that when I was below Gaiman on the list, and I couldn't get it to work. Well, the computer was saying it was happening, but, when I tried to open the screen shots, I just got a page with the Amazon logo at the top; the rest was blank, so I knew that wasn't going to happen.

When I told my wife about the list, she said, "Take a screen shot!" And I told her I couldn't get it to work. I'm blaming Windows 8. My wife, though, was able to do some kind of screen capture from work and sent it to me... but my computer won't open it. Of course.

However! She did print it out, so, next to me here at my computer, I have the printed page of where, for one brief moment, I was higher on the chart than Neil Gaiman.

Yeah, I still don't believe it, either.

Softball and Food

It's softball season again. For my daughter, that is. Well, for all of us by extension. The fact that she had her first practice this past Saturday was all she talked about last week. About the fact that it was coming up, not that she'd been to her future practice and was talking about it, although that would have been pretty cool, because, then, she could have gone to practice twice, and she would have loved that. Practices this year are at the most inconvenient times possible for us, which has meant, for starters, rearranging her accordion lessons.

Practice is also much more organized this year due to her leveling up. Or, maybe, it's upgrades? No, I'm sure it's "Level Up!" She's a "10 and under" this year instead of an "8 and under." Her team name, though, took a hit, and she's gone from being one of the "Dragonflies" to being one of the "Ducks." I don't know about you, but I can't, in my head, associate ducks with softball. It's probably because of those movies, but I just can't do it. Although... maybe there was a Donald Duck cartoon with him playing softball? I can't remember. Maybe, I'm just thinking about the wrong kinds of ducks...

Like I said, her first practice was this past Saturday. I wasn't there for the whole thing (because I had to make a coffee run (9am softball practice requires coffee for adults (just sayin'))), but, from what I saw, she's easily one of the best (if not the best) catchers on  the team. Keep in mind that she hasn't picked up a softball since a few weeks after the season ended last year. That's, probably, my bad. I intended to facilitate her keeping up with her skillz during the off season, but, man, it's tough to hold that in my head with all the other stuff that's in my head, especially when it's not something that's happening RIGHT NOW, like it is now.

Opening day is about a month away. I don't watch sports, but I am looking forward to her games starting back up. I'm sure there will be progress reports.

The kids are also out of school this week. Well, two of them are. It's just their school, though, so this week promises to be one of ambivalence for me. On the one hand, I don't have to the school routine for the younger two, but I will still have to be up at 5:30am for the oldest one two of those days, because he does have school. And, since it's just their school, all of my daughter's neighborhood friends will be at school, so she'll have no one to play with, which means she'll be in the house all day bugging me or fighting with her brother neither of which is happy making for the writing. Or anything else. But, you know, no school routine. If I quit posting after this week, you'll know it's because my head exploded.

In other news, today is "Part Fifteen: Food of the Garden"!

Tib gets hungry, and he's in a garden! But, well, there are... issues.
It's FREE! today, Monday, February 18 and tomorrow, Tuesday, February 19 for the Kindle or Kindle App. Make sure you stop by and pick up your copy. I'd say to click the little "like" button, but those seem to have gone missing from Amazon; I'm wondering if it has to do with the lawsuit against facebook over their "like" buttons, but I haven't seen anything about it anywhere.

Also, FREE! on Monday:
"Part Fourteen: Anger and Laughter"
"Part Thirteen: The Clearing"
"Part Twelve: The Gash in the Floor"
"Part Eight: The Cold and the Dark"
"Part Seven: The Moth and the Shadow"
"Part Six: The Man with No Eyes"
"Part Two: The Kitchen Table"
"Part One: The Tunnel"
"The Evil That Men Do"

Charter Shorts