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.
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.
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.
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 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.”
Abso-fucking-lutely. (via Warren Ellis)
…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.
I was a huge fan of Hulu on Boxee, and as a result of Hulu pulling out, I have really stopped seeing Hulu as a viable source of content for me, since I’d much rather watch programming on my large television screen than on my computer. Instead, I’ve been using services like iTunes on my Apple TV, completely sidestepping the content providers’ ad-revenues. I prefer the lack of ads and the better quality (and yes, quality on iTunes has gotten better, to the point that I now consider BitTorrenting these shows to be more of a hassle than using iTunes, a revision on my previous position, despite the fact that the shows are still DRM-infested. If I want to send something to a friend, I’ll then go through the trouble of firing up the ol’ BT client), but it does come at a monetary price. The ads on Hulu are a smaller price to pay—it’s a fair trade—but I do take a huge exception to Hulu telling me that I can’t use my TV for watching their content—that I HAVE to watch things on their terms, only on the device they want me to use.
As someone working in a similar industry, and facing similar problems, I understand the content providers’ hands being tied, in terms of their being dependent on the business model that things like Hulu potentially cannibalize, and I also understand that change at large corporations is not easy—it takes time and planning to turn a big ship around. But honestly, I can’t see how Hulu on Boxee hurts their bottom line: they’re still getting ad impressions, and in extreme cases like mine, where I don’t have a cable subscription at all to begin with, ad impressions via Hulu on Boxee are not cannibalizing ad impressions on the broadcast networks.
While my case is probably the exception for now, as less tech savvy people start to realize that things like Boxee are out there, and are very easy to use, that situation will change. It’s untenable for me to pay a cable company for a slew of channels I don’t want, when the specific content I do want is individually available for me online. As the economy gets worse, and people start cutting down on their expenses, alternatives like Hulu on Boxee may very well become the norm. Content providers would be well served to work with outfits like Boxee, instead of flat-out shutting them down. The long term benefits are evident, but the network execs need to start looking beyond this financial quarter—or this season’s ratings—to be able to see the forest for the trees.
Boxee has now implemented what amounts to a work-around to the absence of Hulu on their software, and I applaud them for it. Time will tell if the fight they’ve got coming will be one they win. I sure hope so.
Megan Messinger has posted a good piece on Tor.com outlining the recent minor shitstorm that George R. R. Martin has started by essentially telling his detractors to back the fuck off, and let him write his books in peace, and at his own damn pace. Since the rampant sense of entitlement so prevalent in today’s society—and in fan communities particularly—is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, I couldn’t help but chime in in the comments section.
Additionally—and I say this as a creative professional who generally pans the idea of the “creative genius” stereotype that is commonly ascribed to creative types—creativity is not a spigot that can be turned on or off at will. Some are better than others at channeling their thoughts into a cohesive work on a regular basis, others truly struggle with it (I’m very much in this last group, fwiw). Again, it’s the height of arrogance to sit there as a consumer and pass judgement on someone else’s inner world.
Go check out the rest of it at “Fed Up? So Are They“ on Tor.com.
They blow. FTA:
“You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.”
Yikes. Guess this will be the last post I repost onto Facebook. As for what’s already there: meh. I’ve long operated under the assumption that if you put it online, it’s not private.
UPDATE: Facebook has since gone back to their old ToS, and have apparently initiated a conversation with the community:
Our main goal at Facebook is to help make the world more open and transparent. We believe that if we want to lead the world in this direction, then we must set an example by running our service in this way.
We sat down to work on documents that could be the foundation of this and we came to an interesting realization—that the conventional business practices around a Terms of Use document are just too restrictive to achieve these goals. We decided we needed to do things differently and so we’re going to develop new policies that will govern our system from the ground up in an open and transparent way.
Let’s see what develops…