No Strings Attached

Posted By Kathleen David on July 4, 2015

OK so Amazon has done a couple of things in the past couple of weeks that makes the lives of authors that much harder especially those who are self-publishing using the various means that Amazon allows for such activity.

The first has to do with a change that as of July 1st, Amazon will be paying its authors by pages read rather than the number of time the book was downloaded when the customer uses the Kindle Library feature. Amazon’s announcement only says that the new formula applies to Kindle Select books that are self-published and distributed through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program. One assumes that the deals they have in place with publishers still are in play.

Which is an interesting idea with the logic that one should be recompensed by the amount of entertainment that one provides rather than the number of times that their tome has been downloaded.

Show of hands, who has bought James Joyce’s Ulysses? OK. Now how many of you have actually read the thing? Hmmm, more than I was expecting.

There are physical books that everyone seems to buy, especially those considered the classics, but never seem to get around to actually reading. Coffee table books are a good example of this. I know I am guilty of that behavior with the magic words, I’ll get around to it.

So Amazon is listening to those people who took part of the pool of money that was split amongst the authors. Authors with longer books, much much longer books, were complaining that they were being compensated at the same rate as someone who took a blog entry and posted it as a book. So Amazon upped the ante and said OK we’ll pay when people actually read rather than just download.

And there was much consternation to be had.

I think it is an interesting idea and does put the pressure on the author to create something that people want to continue to read rather than convincing people to download their work.

The other change is something I think is a bad idea because of previous behavior of reviewers who have used their reviews to take out their personal issues on various authors.

Getting rid of a review that is very negative not because the reviewer read the book, but because they have an axe to grind is nigh impossible. Even when within the review they say that they haven’t read the book, which just baffles me.

So now if you, the reviewer, has any form of relationship with the author, you may not review their works. And apparently there is some algorithm being used to determine if the reviewer and author are in cahoots or knew each other in elementary school or whatever Amazon thinks is too close to the author.

They say it is to cut down on review padding, which, I will admit, has been a bit of the problem especially with the self-publishing group. Trying to boost the book’s public face by using those close to you is not a new thing on Amazon.

But it goes a bit too far where people can’t review books of people that they don’t know but whatever logic Amazon is using is says that they do know each other.

By the logic they are using, I can’t review any books of authors that I know. And considering my reading taste, that a lot of books that I can’t say anything about.

And for the most part I don’t review books of people that I know well. If I have been on a panel with them at a convention, I don’t count that as knowing someone.

I flat out don’t review Peter’s books publicly. He knows what I think of them because I read them and tell him.

But say I wanted to review Kevin J. Anderson’s latest tome. I know Kevin and have for some time now. But he knows that I will give my honest opinion on his writing because I have done so in the past. He doesn’t get five stars automatically and in fact I probably judge his work harder than I might a first time author because I know that he knows better.

According to Amazon, I can’t say boo because I know the author personally.

Where it really breaks down is when a review is taken down and the two parties don’t know each other at all other than one wrote the book that the other read. It is assumed knowledge rather than actually knowledge.

There is no appeals process for this one. The review vanishes never to be seen again.

But there is not much of an appeals process for negative reviews either.

So one can hate but not love?

How screwed up is that?

Amazon is using a very large hammer to get rid of a fly sized problem and in doing so is poking some rather large holes in their review credibility.

I am grateful for positive reviews be it from friends or strangers.

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Posted By Kathleen David on July 1, 2015

I just went through the calendar and unless something changes, 4th of July weekend is pretty much it for the three of us to be in the house at the same time for a weekend.

Not thinking of this as either a good thing or a bad thing but more of footnote.

Caroline received her student of the month award yesterday. It came with a gift card for frozen yogurt, which she is much happier about. She was concerned she was going to get yet another pencil of which she has quite the collection from elementary school.

Today is pretty much planned within an inch of its life. Peter has a meeting in the city so we have to get him to the train. Caroline and I have the food shopping to do and then we are onto some crafty projects that we want to get done.

Bob and Mike came over yesterday and we hammered out Mystery Trekkie Theater. No, I can’t say what episode or even which series but believe me when I say I am surprised we hadn’t done it before. A lot of laughs were had. It is always fun to gather with friends and have a go at a TV episode. And contrary to popular belief, there are episodes that are really bad but still don’t lend themselves to this sort of treatment.

I am working on a novel. Need to get the rest outline out of my head and on paper or whatever and send it onto an editor for commentary. I have done short story length and novella length stories. I think my only novel length was for some fanfic so this will be a challenge for me. I know I am lucky that I have some channels that most folks don’t and I am very thankful about it too.

Since I am working on a piece of longer fiction, I don’t know how much blogging I will be doing. It might be a lot since I tend to use these essays to clear my head for other things or it might be minimal. I guess we will both see together.

Mets pitching has been amazing but it is sad when the pitcher has to score some runs to make use that they win.

Welp, time to get it together and start the day.

I am grateful for encouragement for work I am producing.

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Posted By Kathleen David on June 29, 2015

And this is not about the hate tweets that caused a couple of actors to decide to leave twitter because they decided that enough was enough and they don’t have to deal with this. Good on them because what they did for their health ties into what I want to say.

I am putting it behind a cut for those who do not wish to read it. I will warn for talk about triggers, mental health, personal choice, strong language, and the off button.
(more…)

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Posted By Kathleen David on June 28, 2015

Caroline is off on an adventure of her own this weekend so Peter and I have the house to ourselves. I considering it a preview of what it will be like when Caroline goes off to college.

So what exciting things did we do? Caught up on some TV shows that aren’t really appropriate for Caroline like Orphan Black, which we are now half way through the season. Cleaned the living room. Pete worked on a novel and did some errands.

The cats were having some sort of disagreement and a pecking order match. Millie is still the old Alpha cat. Inky is starting to challenge Fig. Nothing serious just kitty politics.

I didn’t know about the new rule in baseball that games can be suspended rather than having to reply the whole game if the teams are tied by the bottom of the 5th inning, they just have to pick it up where they left off and finish the game. So the Mets and Reds are tied and finished the 6th inning and will resume play this afternoon then play the game they were scheduled to play.

The weather today is already looking better than the weather yesterday.

I do need to go out and pick up the branches that are all over the lawn. We had some heavy winds last night.

Today is laundry and puppet building. Fun combination.

I also have to put in my Dragon Con Art Show paperwork and do some transcription for a friend.

And somewhere in there Caroline will be coming home.

Busy day is busy.

Best get on with the first thing on my list and then go from there.

I am grateful for my home.

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Posted By Kathleen David on June 25, 2015

There is a show on CNN entitled “What would you do?” which puts actors creating scenarios and they film the unknowing people around to see what they would do in that situation.

Recently a friend of mine was touched very inappropriately at a convention. She also told a photographer off for trying to get what he called “a sexy shot” and she called “soft core pørņ”. The only reason she knew what was going on was that another friend was looking at what the camera was doing and gave her the hand signal that things were not kosher. She and her three friends made the photographer delete the photos from his camera.

I have noticed that a lot of cos-players especially the women have been traveling in groups. Which I think is a wise decision but I am sad that they feel that this is the only way they can protect themselves.

I know what I would do if I came across this sort of thing because I have done so on more than one occasion. It probably helps that I am 5’ 10” and have shoulders that a linebacker would be proud of. I can be intimidating if I need to be. I have gotten use to have slurs shouted at me as I walk away including that classic ‘f-n dÿkë’ which never gets old.

Most people just walk by. I have seen people just walk by when you can tell by looking at the people that this situation is not comfortable for someone. I have gone in and checking it with the person(s) to make sure they are fine. I also tend to give security a heads up so they can go take a look at the situation. Security can be your best friend in these situations for the most part.

I will say that I am very happy to see a change in attitude at conventions from the people running them. It went from ‘boys will be boys’ and ‘well he does that a lot but he is all talk and harmless’ to ‘that’s not right’.

Oh and ‘I paid for her time’ is NOT a good reason to take photos that have not been agreed on or coerce the model into doing something they are not comfortable with.

I am not even going to touch the morass that is ‘she is just cos-playing X but she really doesn’t care about the original material’. This fake-geek chic thing has got to go.

Basic Respect can go a long way to solving all the issues but a number of people have forgotten it or been desensitized to empathy.

So let’s be polite to each other and respect boundaries.

I will still be there stepping in where I think I am needed.

I am grateful for all the people at conventions who already followed the now extremely long list of rules before there was an extremely long list of rules.

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