Together, let’s break the Amazon monopoly on Kindles!

January 31st 2010 at 7:13 pm

From Amazon’s statement, I try to rewrite it to demonstrate weirdness:

Dear Customers readers:
Macmillan Amazon, one of the “big six dominant/largest/elephant in the market” publishers, online booksellers has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our my viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of [...]

Amazon’s response

January 31st 2010 at 6:21 pm

The Amazon Kindle team writes:
“We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles.”
Well, by definition, every business ever made has a monopoly over its own products.
I mean:
“Ultimately, Tobias has a monopoly over his own produced books.”
Well yeah, because [...]

Now for something completely different

January 31st 2010 at 4:01 am

I don’t know why this is so frigging funny to me, but ever since Emily showed it to me I crack up.

Why my books are no longer for sale via Amazon

January 31st 2010 at 3:06 am

This is long.
Like, really long.
And talks about the intimate details of publishing in long and meandering manner.
I tried to make it shorter, I really did, but as Mark Twain once said, I didn’t have the time. So I wrote this instead.
So as of right now, you can’t buy my books via Amazon, as they have [...]

Is Amazon refusing to sell Kindle versions of Macmillan books as a strong arm tactic?

January 30th 2010 at 12:35 am

A few hours ago John Scalzi pointed out on his twitter feed and blog that his books were unavailable for Kindle download, and that other books seemed affected. I logged onto Amazon to check this out, and found out my novels were also affected, and no longer for sale.
Like John I saw no need to [...]

Lack of sticktoitiveness

January 26th 2010 at 4:31 pm

I’m playing a scrabble clone on my iPhone, occasionally with random partners. It’s fun. I’m particularly enjoying playing against my mom, who’s always been extremely hard to play against (been losing to her by hundreds of points ever since I could first push letters together).
The game has the ability to resign. I’ve noticed a large [...]

The to read pile

January 25th 2010 at 4:39 pm

I got a signed copy of The God Engines this weekend. Since John posted the first chapter I’ve been looking forward to reading the rest.
Prince of Storms by Kay Kenyon is the *4th* book in Kay Kenyon’s Quadrilogy. After reading book 3 I emailed editor Lou Anders (it ended weirdly, what an odd ending for [...]

Scalzi/Kowal running for SFWA president/VP

January 25th 2010 at 1:49 pm

John Scalzi is running for president of the Science Fiction Writers of America.
Mary Robinette Kowal is running for VP.
I wish them and the rest of their slate the best of luck!

Cars!

January 25th 2010 at 4:30 am

China just officially overtook the US in car making.
More interestingly, they’re very close to overtaking the US in car buying. Chinese internal auto purchasing was 10.33 million cars compared to 10.43 million new cars purchased in the US.

Pumzi

January 22nd 2010 at 4:25 pm

Wired has this piece about a Kenyan post water-wars eco collapse Sci Fi short movie called Pumzi. Sounds interesting, I’d really like to see it, but alas, can’t be at Sundance. I hope it finds distribution, I’d really like to watch this.