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  • 5 May, 2009

    Little Brother Deluxe Edition by Voyager Books

    posted by Pablo Defendini at 7:40 pm permalink

    Voyager Books' Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow

    I usually go on and on about ebooks, and I do most of my reading on my iPhone these days, but I also love me some finely-crafted codices.

    I learned of this British deluxe edition of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother by accident, almost—Voyager Books advertises on Tor.com, and I was mangling some newsletter copy related to a giveaway they’re having, which happened to mention the publication of this edition. Anyway, long story short: it looks beautiful, with a simple and elegant slipcase—I love the ’security-cam-as-gun-to-the-head’ stamp—it features illustrations by Richard Wilkinson, and I want it very badly. Wilkinson’s modern linework combined with older-looking colours and textures echo the essence of the book: a modern take on Orwell.

    Richard Wilkinson cover to Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow

  • 15 April, 2009

    Cultura en NYC

    posted by Pablo Defendini at 10:18 am permalink

    I saw one of my favourite bands, Cultura Profética, play last night at S.O.B.’s. Cultura is a puertorrican reggae band who’ve been around for years, and are old friends who I hadn’t seen in some years as well (they don’t play out in NYC too often, unfortunately, although they keep a rather busy touring schedule throughout Latin America). They are consummate musicians, and truly thrive on live performances—in the ten years I’ve been seeing them play live, I’ve never seen the same show twice: always new arrangements, always good improvisation jams. The show was quite good, although hardly as good as other shows I’ve seen them play. This may or may not have had a lot to do with S.O.B.’s atrocious sound system. It seems that they’re also working on a new album—they played two or three works-in-progress, which is always nice to hear. It was great to see many familiar faces again, and enjoy a nice night out with some good music.

    Here they are, doing a cover of Bob’s “Is This Love”, from their annual Bob Marley tribute show in PR. Enjoy.

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    Filed under: music
  • 14 April, 2009

    AmazonFail part three, and I’m done

    posted by Pablo Defendini at 11:31 am permalink

    From Publishers Weekly:

    More than two days after it first began experiencing problems with the ranking feature on an array of titles–mostly books with gay and lesbian themes–Amazon said last night that the problem was due to an ”an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error.” The mistake involved 57,310 books in what Amazon said was a broad number of categories including health, mind & body, reproductive & sexual medicine, and erotica. The problem affected not just the sales rank but also removed books from Amazon’s main product search, the company acknowledged. The e-tailer said many books have now been fixed, adding that “we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.”

    That’s really not good enough, I don’t think. That’s a statement that Drew Herdener gave to the Seattle Post-Examiner yesterday afternoon, when pressed by a reporter (at least that’s as far back as I’ve been able to track it—could be wrong). It’s since been elevated to the status of official communication, in the face of a lack of additional outreach from Amazon. What Amazon should have done, in my opinion, is issue a public, formal apology (ideally directly from Bezos) to the GLBT community. But apparently that’s not gonna happen.

    Even if the cause for the delisting was an innocent mistake, much of the consumer frustration and misinformation going around is directly Amazon’s fault, for not reacting immediately in an open, transparent, and forthcoming way to this PR disaster. Corporatespeak and talking at your customers just doesn’t fly anymore, and companies that resort to it, without engaging directly with their customers in an open, human way pay a big price. If Amazon had posted something on its front page (say, where their big honkin’ Kindle2 ad is) as soon as they realized what was going on (Sunday afternoon, at least, or Monday morning), this would have barely been a blip on the radar. As it stands, their silence allowed people to speculate, circulate false info, come up with half-assed theories, and even take credit for hacking Amazon (which, in turn, fed the F.U.D.).

    It’s not what happened (which, while still incredibly egregious—see last post—was apparently an honest mistake), so much as how it was handled, that has people in an uproar. It’s a classic case of how not to do PR, and everyone would be well served to take some lessons in how not to handle a situation like this.

    Additionally, AmazonFail has brought into stark relief (at least in my mind) the fact that Amazon.com is the 800 lb. gorilla in publishing (even though selling books really isn’t even its main business anymore), and some of its practices run counter to the industry’s best interests. If you’re, say, a small press that specializes in erotic romance, and Amazon decides to de-list your books (or worse yet, decides that it won’t sell them anymore, period, as is their right), you’re well and truly fucked. Or, say, if you’re a large publisher, and Amazon decides to sell your ebooks at $9.99, thereby taking a loss on those in order to sell Kindles, the publisher gets the pushback from the consumer when they have no choice but to price their books regularly elsewhere in order to make a profit. Now, I work for a large publisher, so take all this with a grain of salt, if you so wish, but I’ve never been an apologist for big corporations—quite the opposite. Amazon is behaving in a very old-school, big-bad-corporation way. Considering the amount of power Amazon wields in the publishing industry, Amazon behaving like  WalMart is a very scary thought.

  • 13 April, 2009

    Amazonfail redux

    posted by Pablo Defendini at 1:09 pm permalink

    Well, it’s Monday morning, it’s around 10am on the left coast, and still nary a word from Amazon regarding AmazonFail. In the meantime, PNH has a characteristically evenhanded analisys of the situation on Making Light (which, while I’m inclined to agree with it, the situation still boils my blood), and Mur Lafferty explains why this is a really, really big deal.

  • 12 April, 2009

    AmazonFail, or how I learned to yadda yadda Google Bomb.

    posted by Pablo Defendini at 7:29 pm permalink

    Smart Bitches, Trashy Books has the skinny:

    In short: someone in Amazon has utter shit for brains.

    Authors such as Jaci Burton, Maya Banks, Larissa Ione and Stephanie Tyler have reported that since being stripped of their sales rankings, their titles are no longer found in searches on Amazon.com. MetaWriter is also compiling a list of titles that have been stripped of their sales rank.

    When pressed for a reason, Amazon.com’s customer service department told YA author Mark Probst:

    In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

    What, I ask, the fucking fuckhell? Many an Amazon customer is infuriated, and the #amazonfail hashtag on Twitter has pretty much become the only thing worth following. What to do, what to do?

    Well, if you’re the Smart Bitches, you set up the Amazon Rank Google Bomb. That’s why they call ‘em Smart, see? Seriously, thoguh. Amazon? What the fuck are you thinking? De-listing sales rankings for GLBT and erotic romance books, thus excluding them from search? Bad move. Having search results that look like this? Even worse.

  • 31 March, 2009

    R. Crumb to Publish a Satire of the Bible

    posted by Pablo Defendini at 8:28 am permalink

    From the Guardian.uk:

    The famously subversive US cartoonist Robert Crumb has announced the completion of his long-awaited take on the Book of Genesis.

    The acclaimed satirist revealed on his personal website that he had finished the project, which is out this autumn, and which his UK publisher is predicting will “provoke the religious right”. Four years in the making, Crumb worked from the King James Bible and Robert Alter’s translation to reinterpret the Book of Genesis, from the Creation via Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to Noah boarding his ark.

    This sounds like fun. Must keep it in mind.

  • 24 March, 2009

    NEWW weekend.

    posted by Pablo Defendini at 4:55 pm permalink

    This past weekend I got to go to the first ever New England Webcomics Weekend. I packed a change of clothes and Adriano in a rental car on Friday morning and drive up to Northampton, Mass:

    The main attraction of NEWW was, of course, the creators themselves, and many were in attendance, signing books and sketching for their fans. Among them were Steven Cloud (and beard) of Boy on a Stick and Slither; Emily Horne and Joey Comeau (who is hilarious in person) of A Softer World; Danielle Corsetto of Girls With Slingshots; the ever-effusive Spike of Templar, AZ; Chris Hastings of Dr. McNinja; Jeph Jaques of Questionable Content; Scott Kurtz of PvP; David Malki! of Wondermark; Kris Wilson of Cyanide and Happiness; and a surprise appearance by Randall Munroe of xkcd. Honourable mention goes to Anders Loves Maria’s Rene Engström, who made it out all the way from Sweden (yes, I had a fanboy moment, so sue me). To a person, all these creators were extremely gracious and funny, and certainly imbued the con with an intimate and friendly atmosphere.

    More at Tor.com: New England Webcomics Weekend 2009.

  • 18 March, 2009

    In the papers (as it were)

    posted by Pablo Defendini at 8:56 am permalink

    More talking to the press. This time, Publishers Weekly on Bringing Comics to the Amazon Kindle:

    Defendini said that publishers need to “figure out how technology changes what a book is and how the reader can interact with it on a fundamentally different level, not just as passive engagement.”

  • 14 March, 2009

    Debaptism.

    posted by Pablo Defendini at 11:37 am permalink

  • 13 March, 2009

    Just a quick note…

    posted by Pablo Defendini at 1:32 pm permalink

    …to say that when I grow up, I would like to be at least half as much of a badass as John Scalzi is.

    That is all.

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    Filed under: life-blog