Munsey’s Technosnarl

To make books work with the Kindle Fire, had to pretty much revamp my entire workflow. Then it takes me just a little while to get used to all the changes. Anyway, Merry Christmas, Internet.

Have to work out some kinks for auto-generating covers (needed for Kindle Fire… and iPad too, of course

Rerunning batch script on 35k ebooks takes a bit of time…

Making a fix to 35k+ books for Kindle Fire weirdness. Have processed 27k+ now, so… soon

Err, you know, laptop, boat, etc.

Were we missing quotes from pdfs lately? Looks like it’s a problem on FoxIt, but maybe not in Acrobat or something… anyway, reran the last couple hundred pdfs today, which I think are all I’ve done on this PC, so… that’s… better.

I’d in the past switched via macro from Unicode (8212) to ill-advised html entities (147-148), because, well, those… worked… in various and sundry reading devices. But can switch again…

Both stories about a guy who becomes a chauffeur. One, the Heyward, he’s fleeing a job at Cal-something. The other, from N.R. de Mexico, guy’s washed out on general aviation. Sort of a warning, the N.R. de Mexico guy is semi-famous for having written (along with Henry Miller, Anais Nin and others) pr0n at $1 a day for an Oklahoma oil millionaire, who had certain needs. de Mexico also wrote Marijuana Girl for the same “Intimate Novels” gang, and even with the 1dollarscan guys helping me out, their texts are a major pain to proofread. Not a lot of smut in this one, it was the ’50s, but clearly the author’s aiming for a market beyond straight noir.

Anyway, I’m on a cruise, currently stopped at Space Coast, FL, so not gonna sort out what’s going on with adding descriptions, save to place ‘em here. They were too long anyway. Enjoy, and more pulps soon as I get back, there were several I just got a notice about.

Trapped:

Dear Reader:
I’m thirty-four. I’m a college professor. I was fired because a girl was found in my room. Honest, she was only taking a shower. She had a million dollars and she waved them under my nose — all this and the lady, too. But I wouldn’t be bought, so I got out pronto.
I found a job as bodyguard to a rich old refugee who was in deadly fear of being murdered.
His young wife was a gal who would never let a man’s blood cool. Then his adopted daughter decided I was her meat, too.
What a spot for one guy to be in. Envy me? Don’t.
When the old man did get bumped off, who was the fall guy they tried to pin it on? Me, of course.
What could I do? What would you have done? Let me know, won’t you?

and Private Chauffeur:

HUSBAND!
WHY stop at meeting the man in a hotel, Dolores Carter asked herself. Why not bring him home as your chauffeur?
It was easy enough to make the arrangements. Her money let her do as she pleased. It had destroyed her husband’s medical career—Forced upon him an unwilling mistress—turned him into a man who inflicted pain for the joy of it—made of his daughter a love-hungry adventuress. But this was the last straw, the final act of emasculation Dolores had contrived for him….
On these pages are laid bare, as by a keen, cold scalpel, the minds of people caught up in an emotional tornado. Tearing, away the masks by which they conceal their dark deeds even from themselves, the author exposes the subtle ties which bind innocence to guilt, good to evil… and three unhappy women.
N.R. de Mexico’s last novel, Marijuana Girl, probed the strange passions which make for drug addiction. Here he creates an even more profound and stirring book, relentlessly coming to grips with inadvertent vice and creeping evil!

I’m of the opinion, shared by some of my fellow independent publishers, that Amazon will only become a company you can deal with again after their stock price corrects. Talking a 60-70% drop from its peak, a la Netflix. Betting against Amazon’s stock has been a fool’s errand for well over a year now, with the shares soaring even as the company repeatedly and routinely missed earnings targets, but this time, as they say, might just be different. The problems at Amazon are now too big to ignore.

The way to understand Amazon’s business is to look at its cash. And its cash position has not been healthy for a very long time. Its supposed main ebook competitors (apple and google*), have enormous cash hoards, which those firms add to each and every quarter. Apple, for example, just increased its cash holdings to over $80 billion, Google’s at $40 bil., Amazon is now at $6 billion, down from $10 at the start of the year.

Gets even worse, Amazon’s Accounts Payable (the money they owe somebody but haven’t come through with yet), at $6.5 bil., is up $1.7 bil. from a year ago. Their net cash is less than their Accounts Payable for the first time in a very long time. Google’s Accounts Payable stands at around $500 bil., Apple–I don’t know what they owe, but I’m pretty sure they’re good for it.

Some of Amazon’s cash issues might be attributable to the Zappos acquisition. If so, that was a very stupid acquisition. But to list Amazon’s errors over the past couple years would fill a business text.

If this company doesn’t execute flawlessly with Kindle Fire and in general over the next three months, there will be layoffs at Amazon. I’d recommend they start with the folks who think driving customers to third-party sellers via censorship is a good idea. Cut those employees, Mmm’kay?

Disclaimer: we at Disruptive Publishing used to be highly dependent on Amazon for our revenues. Didn’t really have a choice, actually. Since the censorship began, and especially since this summer, when I pulled out all my titles from CreateSpace Enterprise (formerly Booksurge), that has ceased to be the case. At this point, Amazon, while still a significant source of funds for me, is just one revenue stream among many. And after all, pr0n drives distribution. Given Amazon’s 2% profit margins, compared to the 20+% margins enjoyed by Apple and Google, the Seattle-based retailer is just not as monolithic as you’d think, especially as Apple and Google continue to slowly, steadily, profitably, improve their ebook offerings.

*Yes, I’m leaving out B&N as an ebook competitor to Amazon. But Kindle Fire will kill the NookColor, if it hasn’t already. And, really, given that B&N first aggressively courted my titles, then decided to eliminate me, while still owing me money, my only interaction with them at this point is to teach my daughter to laugh like Louie dePalma, so that the pair of us can properly celebrate when our local B&Ns go the way of Borders in a year or two.

**Look, I’m, rooting for Kobo, OK. They seem very nice.

Guten Tag. Actually, though folks in the States think I might be German, I stand out here as ‘Merican. All the store clerks say hello. I experienced this repeatedly, searching for an adapter for laptops.

Apologies. Gone now. #hacked

Able to restore everything from yesterday’s backup. Relevant server logs have been forwarded to the useful places. I do apologize, the lovely review of Nightmare Town was lost, but nothing else is missing.

Apologies, my baseball team plays meaningful games in September once every 15 years or so, and it gets a little exciting. Should have another pulp scan next week, Trapped by Richard Heyward, before I head off to Frankfurt.