More Amazon Hijinks

A friend set me this link and I'm not happy. What is it with Amazon that they just can't come out and say what they mean? They always wait until an issue turns into a PR nightmare and they are exposed as the 800lb bully in the playground.

Yeah, I think I'll be shaking loose of my Kindle and switching to a new team.

http://www.geardiary.com/2009/06/19/kindles-drm-rears-its-ugly-head-and-it-is-ugly/

Email, Email and even MORE email

Do you ever feel like Microsoft Outlook owns your soul? Do you hear that little 'ding' of arriving mail then close your eyes while animal-like whimpering souls escape from your mouth?

Yeah, me too.

I spent all of yesterday answering email. No writing, no promotion, no nothing - just email. About ten hours worth. It was truly staggering. Of course, one of the reasons why I had a ton o' email was because I have a nasty tendency to put things off when I'm writing. I don't want to take the time to answer it because work must be done. Then I get cranky when I have to take an entire day to do all the email I'd neglected.

When I was in high school my home ec teacher - what the heck was her name? - said to avoid spending your Saturday cleaning you should take ten minutes a day to straighten up. I think I need to use that strategy to keep my email in line.

Then again, I probably won't. :)

Check out...

my thoughts on Romancelandia.

OW!

You know its going to be a rough day when you have a fat lip before 8am.

Stopped at my neighbors on the way to the grocery store. I went to pet the dog and Butch (said dog) jumped up and hit me full force in the mouth. Busted my lip open, blood everywhere. Mark (owner of said dog) had to haul me in his house and doctor me.

My lip is So Big...

(this is where you say, "how big is it?")

I have to watch walking through doorways so it doesn't get caught in the door.

OW

Hmm...

I'm watching the final show of The Biggest Loser and eating a Twinkie. Is that wrong?

Reinventing Jane Porter

You know it's going to be one of those days...

Messy!

In my never-ending quest for a neat house, I threw myself into cleaning the garage yesterday. My method of cleaning is this - I put everything where I want it then I end up with this weird pile o' crap that I'm never quite sure what to do with. My solution has been to throw it in a box and toss it in the garage for the moment.

Now, years later, my garage is a mess. Surprise - bet you didn't see that coming.

Amvets is coming next Tuesday so I'm in a mad scramble to empty the garage and make a huge donation to charity. Literally, I have an entire kitchen stored out there somewhere and I'm sure someone can use it.

So in my frenzy I came across a box of stuff from past boyfriends and other people that I consider(ed) important in my life. I went through the box and spent my time shaking my head and trying to remember if I'd had a head injury when I dumped all that stuff in there. Why did I keep all of it?

My immediate answer is that it hurt too much to look at it so I threw it into a box to deal with when I wasn't so pissed off. The funny thing was I dumped him for screwing around on me which begs the question a second time - why did I keep this stuff again?

I sifted through the box and either tossed it or put it in the charity box. I did fish out a beautiful set of gold pens he'd given me - hey, I'm not stupid! Quality pens cost mucho dollars, but that was it. My garage would be much cleaner if I'd done that with everything else instead of letting it pile up.

Do you keep the remnants of past relationships hanging around in your house??

Belly Button Lint...

I have been so frustrated lately. I have contracts to fulfill - books to write - and everything I've tried to put on paper is absolute crap. Yeah - in general writers believe everything is crap until we hit the end of the book. Once we write The End we're pretty sure we've written the Next Great American Novel.

Until then - the writing process just sucks. :)

I have some really fun projects on deck:
Rites of Spring, the sequel to Winter's Daughter
Tactical _____, the next SWAT story
Santo's story from the Jane Porter series...
A cool Urban Fantasy with no title...
But I'm having a hell of a time writing them. I've started Rites - the Prologue is is done and I've written three chapters...but let me clarify - I've written the first chapter three times...and thrown them all out.

I keep telling myself that it just needs more time to percolate. I've found that some books just flow from my brain - the Jane Porter books - and others need to be wrenched from my soul (Winter's Daughter). I guess this one will need to extracted with force.

Now where did I put the aspirin... :)

Snicker...

WLW: I'm a slacker...

Whee! I've been in a rough spot lately. I had to have a root canal last week and it was ugly now. I've had a root canal before and it was no big deal - but this one was the gift that kept on giving. With the first one I didn't have hardly any pain after 24 hours - I can't say the same for this one. I had to eat soft food (ICE CREAM, BABY!) for about 3 days and now the pain is finally slacking off.

I gained a few pounds but I do consider this extenuating circumstances. It was ice cream...or DIE. LOL.

But I'm back on my 'program' and I hope to shed my little gain by Monday and be back at my 45lb loss.

How did you do this week?

Hee!

Say WHAT?

If you were watching CNN this morning then you heard about the new 'rule' United Airlines is instituting. http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1529524,CST-NWS-united16.article

Yes, you read that correctly. United Airlines (the bad guys) have instituted a policy in which overweight passengers may be forced to purchase two airline tickets in order to fly with them.

Wow, what next? Smelly people will have to charter their own planes? Skinny people will have to sit two per seat? Better yet, the skinny people plane can have double the seats added...

Their rationale is they received 700 complaints...out of 63 million flyers who used United Airlines. Now that is really messed up. They are going to piss off roughly 40% of their passengers (and that's a kind statistic if you go by the obesity rate in America) so that less than one one-hundreth of a percent of their passengers won't be annoyed? And I thought Amazon was a corporate bully for pulling their sales rankings - United Airlines makes them look like altar boys.

One thing I've learned in spades is some people will never, ever be happy. You can never do enough, say enough or give them enough to make them pleasant to be around. In short, bitterness is more than a fashion-statement - its a lifestyle. I would hazard a guess that these odious types comprise the majority of the 700 whiners.

Other mere mortals, like you and I, have a little-acknowledge facet of our personalities called...compassion. (Shhh, don't let that get around or everyone will want it) When we see someone in an uncomfortable situation we feel for them and we try to lend a smile when we can. We are the 63 million...

This is why United Airlines is the unlucky recipient of the J.C. Wilder...You SUCK award...

Amazon in the Naughty Chair...

Remember the show Hee Haw? There was a skit that started out with the intro song:

Despair and agony on me...whoa!
Depression excessive misery...whoa!
If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all...whoat!

That is Amazon's new theme song because if pissing off your customer base was an Olympic sport - Amazon would win the gold by a Big Margin.

So what are they doing now? In a nutshell, when you do a search on Amazon the back end uses the sales ranking to determine which titles are returned in the search results. So in order to find an author's books, they need to have a sales ranking on their book pages.

Amazon (aka, the Evil Empire) has decided to start sectioning off 'adult' content for the protection of our delicate sensibilities. When a publisher sets up a book, they select terms that would apply to the book such as, erotic, erotic romance, sex, love, mystery, violence - you get the picture - this is called Metadata. At Amazon, customers can also select tags for each book so if your book is tagged as erotic - well you end up on the naughty list. Consequently, if the book you are looking for is tagged as erotic, then it won't show up on the search results.

So what have they removed? Erotic romances for one. Go search for Dominique Adair and should have at least 10 books...only one comes up. Heaven forbid if you're looking for GLBT titles because you'll be out of luck. JL Langley's My Fair Captain will only come up if you search for the complete title and there are thousands of others who've had their sales ranking stripped including Maya Banks, Jaci Burton.

But you can still search for sex toys...

According to Publisher's Lunch, Amazon has reported that this is an 'error' on their end and it will be fixed shortly. Uh...right.

Want to sound off? Amazon Customer Service: ecr@amazon.com or via phone: 1-800-201-7575 and there is a petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy

Ye Olde Closets....

Remember my closet cleaning odyssey? (http://jcwilder.blogspot.com/2009/01/closet-update.html) Well I finally have my closets all nice and clean and everything is organized to within an inch of its life.

To catch up - the master bedroom is now my library and my bedroom is the smallest room of them all. It's a little tedious - you walk in the door and you can just throw yourself on the bed - but I don't spend enough time in the bedroom to warrant staying in the big room. Since I spend so much time working, I converted over the master bedroom for the library. Tada! I have space to put in comfy chairs and bring some of my beloved books in from the garage. WOOT!

This is my first collection that went to Amvets - everything goes to help the Veterans - and I'm working on my second collection and it promises to be twice as much stuff. My house feels slimmer already - LOL!

WLW: Progress is measured...

in inches, literally. :) I gained...I'm losing again - almost back to my 45 pound loss. It just amazes me how quickly I can get derailed. My knee has been acting up because my schedule is crazy and I haven't been going to the pool. Big No No for me. So I've been sitting with my leg up and the ice packs and the bandages...and breathing puts pounds on me.
So I've been watching what I eat and forcing myself to move around no matter how much it hurts. I've reclaimed 3 of my lost pounds and 1.6 more gets me back to my 45.
Ugh, haven't I been here before?

The Price of eBooks

There's been a lot of talk lately about the cost of ebooks versus their print prices. To most of us, it only makes sense that the ebook should cost less, quite a bit less than the print counterpart.

Why?

1) Lack of printing costs
2) Lack of warehousing fees
3) Lack of distribution fees (mailing, shipping etc)

This is quite a big chunk of change when you look at the price of an individual title. Ingram (the biggest book distributor in the US) demands 55% of the cover price up front. Currently they aren't in the digital market but they're working on it and I'm sure they'll suck up 55% of that too...though for what I'm not entirely sure.

Anywho - there are some costs associated with ebooks that don't come into play with the print versions.

1) DRM - gotta pay for that technology...which hackers can break faster than the legit guys can dream it up
2) Delivery - there has to be a delivery back-end needed to deliver the ebooks to the buyer

The print version's costs versus the ebook's cost...it doesn't add up. Here is the reality of ebooks - once the file is edited and sent off to the printer you are only one step away from an ebook. All that is left is to format it to the specs required by .pdf, .epub, .prc designers and toss in the DRM and voila - you have an ebook ready to be sold.

Yes, that is a bit of a simplification but the basic information is there. In order to create the four 'standard' formats...it takes less than 20 minutes apiece and you end up with a product that could conceivably be available for sale until the end of time.

So let's look at a Kindle title, No Rest For The Wicked by Kresley Cole. On Amazon the paperback price is...7.99. Guess what the Kindle price is...7.99. What are they thinking? Where is the enticement to buy the ebook?

There isn't one.

I already have the a Prime account that I pay 79.00 a year for so I have free shipping on whatever I buy (yes, I place that many orders!) it would make no sense for me to buy the ebook. Why?

1) no discount for the fact that the overhead is less than half for the ebook as it is the print
2) I have nothing to show for it. eBooks can't be resold but if I buy the print one, I can get a few dollars out of it at the used bookstore.
3) I already paid 359.00 (no shipping though! ) for the Kindle so there's no way I would pay full price for the paperback - a discount should be automatic if you want me to buy your hardware...which you're making money off of anyway. Make a decision, make money off the device or the book but not both - unkewl.
4) I can buy the same 7.99 for roughly 6.00 at my local Target, WalMart etc.

The Cole title came out in 2006 while J.R. Ward's Lover Eternal (also 7.99) came out in 2006 and the Kindle price is...6.39. Not great in my opinion but more managable.

And the best one of all...Jim Butcher's Small Favor is a 9.99 paperback...and the Kindle version was 11.99 (it has been repriced to 7.99). No one will ever be able to make a rational explanation to me as to why this should be okay.

My response? Buy ebooks from the smaller presses - the prices are better and if you buy from a good-quality, reputable press - the books are excellent too.

10 Greatest Rock & Roll Frontmen Ever

13 - Steven Perry - Journey is underrated in my opinion. Because they were pop-rock most of the R&R mainstream snubbed them for being 'girly'. They can say what they want but Perry's amazing vocal range is undeniable.


12 - Bret Michaels - not a fan of Poison and after watching one of his 'reality' shows where he proves he's a sexiest child (Hey Bret - women are more than their bust size) - you can't deny his vocal range. That gruff, sexy voice is pretty damned hot.

11 - Ronnie James Dio - Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Dio - When it comes to the classic heavy metal voice - this man is it. Don't believe me? Go find a copy of his 1983 (Dio) Holy Diver and listen to Rainbow in the Dark - nuff said.

10 - Ozzy Osbourne - Black Sabbath wasn't the same without him.


9 - Axl Rose - Okay, he is a self-centered egotistical butt-wipe, but his voice was memorable. But JC, he's not dead... No he isn't but he might as well be. Chinese Democracy? Puhleeze...


8 - Tom Petty - I'm a huge fan of Petty even though he sounds like three miles of bad road. He's also a brilliant songwriter.


7 - Chester Bennington (Linkin Park) - excellent voice and amazing stage presence.


6 - James Hetfield - Metallica, what more can I say?


5 - Elvis Presley - I'm not an Elvis fan but you can't deny his vocal talents. Overlook the rock and roll he did and take a listen to the gospel songs. Utterly fabulous.


4 - Steven Tyler - That man is STILL hot and his vocal range is impressive. Any man who can hit those notes and not have to cut off his balls to achieve it - he's aces in my book.

3 - Robert Plant - Led Zeppelin need I say more? Stairway to Heaven wouldn't be the same without his voice.

2 - Rob Zombie - The voice is meh...but his stage presence is worth the cost of a ticket.

1 - Chad Kroeger (Nickleback) - Probably one of the best voices out there today.

Who else should be on (or off) the list?

What the hell?

Just a few things that threaten to spin my head off my shoulders...

A woman in Ohio receives food stamps and she owns a 300k home (fully paid off), has 80k in her savings account and drives a Mercedes...but because she has no income, she is 'eligible'. Hmm...selfish much?

I use a wireless keyboard and mouse, both bought at the same time in the same package from one company. Why in the hell do they use two different types of batteries?

Laura Ingraham - This woman makes other women look bad. Megan McCain (John McCain's daughter) is a blogger and she commented upon Ann "I dress like a hooker" Coulter's politics saying that she was radical and dangerous. This Laura woman (who is she again?) called Megan an overweight valley girl...

Huh? Is that all you've got? My father always told me that if I couldn't express myself eloquently then I just needed to keep my mouth shut. Too bad Ingraham's father didn't tell her the same.

Who is she again?

The age-old conundrum - why do hotdogs come in packs of ten while buns come in packs of eight? I'll never understand that one...

BWAH....

I must have one. Thanks to Dave Navarro for the heads up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-sN8gL-v9w

Since when does Blogger not allow YouTube videos? Another reason to leave blogger behind...