Munsey’s Technosnarl

Apple, with its new “epub” export feature in word processing software Pages, just sent a shot across Amazon’s bow. Y’all may have heard, there’s a bit of a bottleneck for publishers getting their titles into the Ibookstore. I’m still in the 30s, with more “pending.”

Short version of why that’s happened is, well, Apple’s only had two months working with smaller presses. Things go wrong. Longer version ties into history: everybody who launches, Amazon on down, has problems integrating titles.

Of course, the fact that Apple was relying on a supposed standard (Epub), that… works in theory but not practice, even if valid, didn’t help matters. There are certain parallels with the history of Mobipocket, another firm that initially relied on “standard inputs” when it launched, before loosening up a bit and taking over the world.

With Pages, you’ve got Apple making its own tools for Epub export that I suspect will fly in the Ibookstore, alongside Apple making certain improvements in Producer (NDA), and would-be Apple publishers no longer dependent on half-assed Adobe software or 3rd-party integrators.

This will get interesting.

/If it matters, sales of my 30-odd books in the Apple store are already equal to sales of around 500 books in the Kindle store a year ago, and the growth is fast. Ya might call it unprecedented. Though of course, I don’t expect all, or even a third, of Olympia will be there.

//Hurray for a return to side-loading and DIY mobile interfaces.

Working on a bunch of books for Silk Pagoda and the fall festival season. Hope everyone’s doing well…

… and has power.

Had to look up Dr. Lynne Rosenthal, the lady who freaked out at Starbucks over bad grammar.

My first thought: non-tenure track, typical retail clerk earns more, turns out not to be the case. The woman in question, while not young, is out of adjunct hell, with a rank of “Associate Professor” at Bronx Mercy College… whatever that is.

So, she’s got lifetime employment, and she’s willing to take a few minutes out of her busy day to hold up all other customers while explaining what a $12-an-hour (with tips) barista is. doing. wrong.

And if you’re curious, yeah, she’s the one in charge of the lit magazine.

/*Note, if you’re hearing the unfounded rumors out there that Disruptive pays advances and want to get it in on it, I’d advise not to list publication in Lifelines as an achievement. Just seems to me like it wouldn’t work.

If you’ve seen L.A. Confidential, you’ll recognize a lot of the source material in Webb’s The Badge. I was going to do a post detailing it all, but, actually, Ellroy wrote the preface for a De Capo press reissue of this book.

It’s all there, including the Dahlia account and even Bloody Christmas.

Yeah, that really is Jack Webb who did the writing. In addition to being a major jazz fan, Webb wrote a ton of books, several of which are in the public domain.

Enjoy

Unlike 100,000 or so other lucky Pepco customers, we have our power back on, so Dusty can stay in her house again.

Fun.

stupid power outage… no electric since Sunday afternoon. May not have it ’til tomorrow.

Just downloaded Junky. Unlike a lot of ebooks from major publishers (cough, Macmillan, cough), the title is readable and free of errors. Also, the footnotes work. Not sure whether e-rights to a forward+notes attach to Junky, but… this is Wylie we’re talking about.

Clearly, they’ve been planning this move for a while. Glad to see they launched… on Amazon’s earnings day.

From Publisher’s Marketplace:

“We are disappointed by Mr. Wylie’s actions, which we dispute. Last night, we sent a letter to Amazon disputing their rights to legally sell these titles, which are subject to active Random House publishing agreements. Upon assessing our business options, we will be taking appropriate action.”

Yeah, legal action worked so well against Rosetta. I’m sure Wylie’s quaking.

But it’s interesting that Random House, which was the one company not to go all agency model, is most affected by Amazon’s new deal with Wylie.

Based on nothing, save a gut feeling–if you look at all the p.r. this quarter–much of it happening before the earnings release… you have to think, they blew q2. Maybe even a big miss.

My theory, foreign sales (half of Amazon’s biz is international, though very little of that is Kindle), were way below expectations.

Just a guess. This behavior is pretty strange, though.

/No position.

Wow, Wylie just went live with exclusive editions in the Kindle store–nobody special, Nabokov, Burroughs, Normal Mailer, Naipaul–dweebs like that.

Don’t worry, it’s only exclusive to Kindle for the first year or two.

Teh Gauntlet, she thrown down.