Book Eater

The Publishing Perspectives website is running a book “consumption” survey. Right, so they think we are eating the books…

Seriously though, there’s not enough information on how reading habits have shifted in the first half of 2012. Please pass this link around, and ask your friends to pass it around too. The more people who take part in the survey, the more accurate it will be.

Regards,

Wayne Borean

Wednesday May 9, 2012

A while back I volunteered to run a Twitter newsletter, using the Paper.li web software. I thought it was easy to set up, but the other person involved couldn’t make it work, so I did. I ended up volunteering to run several other community newsletters, all of them about writing.

Recently I noticed some weird stuff. I was getting the same article as the number one article day after day. After a week, I got annoyed, so I blocked that Twitter user.

Then it popped up again, different Twitter user, same article. So I blocked the article.

Then it popped up again. Different Twitter user, different article… Seriously. It just doesn’t stop.

I don’t have all off the old information. I didn’t realize what was happening at first, and didn’t keep it. Several people, who either work for Scrivener, for a Scrivener reseller, or for an affiliate, are spamming Twitter with Scrivener links. This has been going on for at least several weeks now. It may have gone on far longer. I don’t know.

I do know that I’m damned annoyed. So annoyed that I’ve stopped using Scrivener, which had been my favorite tool for writing. Let’s take a look at what happened.

The Daily Writers Compendium – first pass today – here’s where I noticed the same article, appearing again. So I blocked the person who’d tweeted the article from appearing, and looked at the paper again.

The Daily Writers Compendium – second pass today – Much to my surprise the article was still there. This time around I decided to block the site.

The Daily Writers Compendium – third pass today – Oh joy – another Scrivener advertisement. Block this one too.

The Daily Writers Compendium – fourth pass today – Finally it’s gone.

I decided to look at some other newsletters. I found the same thing, involving the same websites.

The Writer Daily

The Write Now Daily

The Publishing Weekly

The Michelle Birbeck Weekly

The Digital Writer

Res Aliens Spec Fic Daily

Last but not least, here are the two websites which are being used:

Scrivener Discount Coupon Codes – 20% Discount Off Scrivener

Love Letter to my favorite writing tool – Scrivener

There’s nothing wrong with writing about what you like. There’s nothing wrong tweeting about what you’ve written.

When you are still tweeting about a blog post four months later, you are spamming.

Too bad that Scrivener’s reputation is going to take a hit because of these jerks.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Saturday May 5, 2012

FilKONtario, Ontario’s Filk Music Convention is only two weeks away. This year the con is April 20 – 22, 2012.

There are still some rooms available in the convention room block as of today, but not many. For more information on the convention, please visit the website.

Filk is the music of science fiction and fantasy, but also includes songs about cats, computers, and um, other things. One definition of filk is that it is what Filkers do. Instruments are usually portable. It is hard to lug a grand piano onto an airplane …

Come on out, and have some fun.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Thursday April 5, 2012

Or with the wrong candidate, it could be the beginning of the end. I never did meet Jack Layton, but I knew several people who did, including a couple of people who lived in his riding. Everyone described him as a really nice guy.

In the 2011 Federal Election the Nice Guy finished second.

Canadians are different. We like nice guys. A lot of New Democratic Party candidates managed to gain office with minimal campaign spending because of Jack Layton. None of the other three major party leaders can make that claim. Michael Ignatieff and Gilles Duceppe couldn’t even hold their own seats, a major embarrassment for the two, who ended up departing their posts.

The subsequent death of Jack Layton only months after the election shock up the country. There were a lot of questions raised as to whether the NDP could function without him at the helm. Jack was an experienced politician, having first served at the municipal level in 1982. He was a known factor.

When Jack asked Nycole Turmel to become interim leader when he needed to take time off to fight cancer, the response from most of us was Nycole who? Charlie Angus I know about. I’m involved in the music industry, and Charlie is a professional musician. If you watched the convention you may have seen him perform a rap on stage. I have relatives who live near Charlie. So I know about Charlie. Nycole? I have relatives who live in her riding, and they’d never heard of her.

News coverage was similar. Now one knew the woman. Of course this was summer, and nothing happens in Canadian Federal politics during the summer (a holdover from the days when most politicians were farmers).

Then Jack died, and in A letter to Canadians from the Honourable Jack Layton asked that Nycole be interim leader until new leader could be selected in the new year. A lot of us thought that this was an even worse mistake.

1. Who was Nycole Turmel, and was she capable of running the NDP until the election?
2. Why wait till spring? That would give the Conservatives six months to work without effective opposition in the House of Commons.

Much to everyone’s surprise Nycole performed well. She wasn’t a Jack Layton or an Ed Broadbent, but she was Nycole Turmel. She managed to run a party with a huge number of rookie members, and keep them on track, with the help of the core of experience politicians.

She got them to today’s leadership convention without any major problems, which means that they’ve probably learned the ropes by now. Sure, there was one defection. That will probably be taken care of in the next election. The electorate tends to take a dim view of politicians who cross the floor.

I’m watching the NDP leadership convention, even though I am not an NDP supporter – I’m a political junkie. I want to see how this plays out. The numbers for the second ballot have just been announced and Peggy Nash is out, leaving Cullen, Topp, and Mulcair.

Because this convention could be really important. I’m a Futurist. I roll dice with the future. Let’s look at a bunch of factors.

• An aging (and dying population)
• Lower voter turnout
• Dramatic Liberal support drop in 2011
• Dramatic NDP support gain in 2011
• Minor Conservative support gain in 2011
• Increased interest in politics among youth
• A secularization of the population
• A more educated population
• A more connected population

When you toss all of this into the pot you end up with some interesting inferences, and even more interesting questions.

• Did the gain for the Conservatives result from a belief in Conservative Party principles, or a distaste for Michael Ignatieff and the Liberals?
• Can the NDP prove that they deserved the gain in support, and possibly even grow it further to gain a majority?
• Can the Liberals regain the confidence of the electorate, i.e. be considered at least as the second place party instead of the NDP (or Conservatives) in the next election?
• Will the higher level of connectivity result in a higher level of voter turnout, i.e. will the Facebook Generation truly become activist?
• Will Youth, who are concerned with jobs, eduction, and where the country is going, actually take action at the voting booth, and who will manage to give them what they want?

The answers to those questions will drive voting patterns in Election 2015, and the future of the New Democratic Party.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Saturday March 24, 2012

Party Politics

Federal Party Politics in Canada is an exciting and dangerous sport. Ask the ex-leaders of the major parties, many who left with figurative knives planted in their backs by their supposed friends.

The aim of political parties is to represent different viewpoints among the electorate. Whether or not the system does this well is open to debate. There are groups which claim it does not. Other groups claim it does. One thing that nearly all groups in Canada agree upon is that the Canadian system is far superior to the American system.

Currently in Canada there are five parties represented in the House of Commons, with one independent MP sitting. This is a majority Parliament, meaning that one party holds more than half the seats in the House of Commons. This gives that party effective control over the legislative agenda.

The other four parties have to rely on public pressure to have any impact. This to a certain extent one of the parties has been able to do. The other three parties have been relatively ineffective so far. There are many reasons for this, which this article will not cover.

The Breakdown of the Parties

Most discussions of the parties use the terms Left and Right to describe Canadian political parties. These terms might once of have been accurate, but currently they make little if any sense. Curiously Canada has no left-wing party, unless you want to count the Bloc Quebecois. It doesn’t even have a centrist party, since the New Democrats have moved so far to the Right fiscally.

The parties in the House of Commons presently are:

• Conservatives – 165 seats (plus 1 Independent)
• New Democrats – 102 seats
• Liberals – 35 seats
• Bloc Québécois – 4 seats
• Green – 1 seat

Conservatives

The Conservatives are usually described as Right-Wing, however they do not match the usual definitions associated with right-wing. A perusal of bills passed by the current Conservative party shows that they have a distinct big government/corporate bias, i.e. that the bills support corporations at the expense of the electorate. Consider Bill C-11, which will divert large amounts of tax money to build prisons, despite a falling crime rate, and the Conservative claim that they wish to control spending.

The Conservatives have shifted position over the years. Socially they are now far to the left of where they were at one time. Fiscally they have shifted sideways. Militarily they have shifted to the right. Environmentally they have shifted to the FAIL category.

They may use the name Conservative, however they fail under the truth in advertising laws. There’s nothing Conservative about this party.

New Democrats

The current New Democrats are usually portrayed in the media as a Left-Wing party. Again, the party doesn’t match the usual definitions. In fact they are so close to the Conservatives and the Liberals in policies, that often it comes down to personalities when making your choice on who to vote for.

The New Democrats have shifted position over the years. Fiscally they’ve shifted so far to the right that they are where the Conservatives once were. Socially they’ve shifted to where the Liberals once were. What was once a party that was the great champion of Labor, is now a muddled mess.

They may use the name New Democrat, but they fail under the truth in advertising laws. The party was founded in 1961, and is older than most of its membership. The only “New” thing about it is that it is now the Official Opposition for the first time.

Liberals

The Liberals, the third largest party, are generally called a Centrist party in the mainstream media, but do not match the usual definitions. They may have ended up being the third largest party because their policies were almost indistinguishable from Conservative policies. My Conservative and Liberal friends will disagree furiously with me on this point, but to the average Canadian, the differences really aren’t noticeable.

The Liberals have shifted position over the years. They used to be where the New Democrats are on most issues. Currently they are almost indistinguishable from the Conservatives. Unless they develop an identity of their own, they may not survive the next election. A lot will depend on how well the New Democrats do in House of Commons, the Liberals themselves have not shown up at all well so far.

Another party that fails the truth in advertising laws, the only Liberal thing about them is the party name.

Bloc Quebecois

The Bloc Quebecois is a Quebec only party. The party made a huge mistake in not expanding outside of Quebec as a Provincial Rights party, and paid the price in the last election when the New Democrats offered voters what they needed to switch, costing the Bloc nearly all of its seats in House of Commons.

The party has shifted position over the years. The Bloc was originally an off-shoot of the Progressive Conservative Party, a predecessor to the current Conservatives. In response to their constituents, candidates took increasingly left-wing positions, until the 2011 election, when the New Democrats took most of their seats. Whether or not the Bloc will be able to make a comeback is unknown at this time. A lot will depend on how well the New Democrats do in the House of Commons.

Greens

The Green Party is a new entrant into Parliament, winning its first seat in the last election. The party has some really good ideas, but hasn’t managed to gain traction with voters yet. This is really disappointing, as pollution is becoming a bigger issue. The runoff from the tar sands is one example of a problem that the Greens saw coming, and everyone else ignored.

The original Green Party was heavily left-wing. They recently shifted a lot of their fiscal policies to the right. This may have helped them to win the one seat that they did get. Unfortunately they are getting no news coverage in the National media, so the electorate doesn’t even know that they are an option. It appears that their one sitting MP, the party leader, Elizabeth May, would have to do something obscene or criminal in the House of Commons to get any notice.

The Voters

Voters breakdown into a range of classes. These are some of the more common ones that you’ll hear about. The opinions are my own.

Yes, I do try to mention politicians that I like when I can. There are some damned good politicians in Ottawa from all parties, and they deserve our support. There are also some I dislike intensely. If I don’t like the politician, you can probably tell from my comments.

Emergency Industry Professionals

Police, Fire, and Paramedics are all concerned about agency funding, and pay rates. They want to have the equipment and training to do their jobs, do them safely, and well. And yes, they want to get paid to do them.

They tended to be conservative about women in uniform at first, but they’ve mostly gotten over that now (and the ones who haven’t should be retired – quick).

The Conservatives have Julian Fantino, however he is a two-edged sword. During his career he was involved in security for the G8/G20 Twin Summits, so while he may draw votes from law enforcement professionals, he will likely cost them votes from those interested in civil liberties. He was also involved in several policing operations prior to that which aroused controversy including one in which a Toronto Police Service Board Member’s conversations were caught on a wiretap.

As to Paramedics and Fire, to the best of my knowledge neither profession has any representation in the current Parliament.

Farmers

Family farms used to be the largest employers in the country. Now they are a dying, but still powerful voting block in certain areas. Farmers used to be heavily represented in the House of Commons. Since most farms didn’t operate at full capacity during the winter, farmers were able to take the time to serve the country in Ottawa.

Farmers have specific interests:

• Stable fuel, fertilizer, and transport prices
• Stable sale prices for their products

The move by the Conservatives to loosen the control of the Canadian Wheat Board over grain prices has hurt them with farmers as this blog post makes clear. The author of that post is of the opinion that the legislation in question was designed to help the corporate farms, and would hurt the family farmer.

Exactly how this will play out in the next election is unknown, but I expect it to be a major issue in rural areas, even those where grains aren’t grown.

Finance Industry Professionals

The Canadian banking industry is heavily regulated. There were rumors that deregulation was planned right before the Wall Street meltdown. Deregulation didn’t happen, and Canada’s banking sector was relatively unaffected.

Deregulation at the present time would probably be political suicide, no matter how profitable it might be for the financial sector.

The threat of extra regulation wouldn’t make them happy, and the New Democrats old reputation means that they aren’t likely to get any support from this sector.

Legal Industry Professionals

The Legal Industry is well represented in Parliament. Tony Clement is an excellent example of a long time legal industry professional who is also a long time politician. Tony served at the Provincial level before moving to the Federal level.

A lot of people dislike Tony, but the man could be earning a lot more money in private practice than he is in Ottawa, and doing a lot less work. In private practice he wouldn’t be out knocking on constituent’s doors in January – of a non-election year…

None of the parties have a lock on the legal profession.

Manufacturing Workers

Like the folks from Electromotive. They are concerned about their jobs. They don’t like it when a company that was given taxpayer money ups stakes and moves, taking Canadian developed technology with it.

That one hurt the Conservatives, and they’d better make a move to repair their reputation. You can bet that the other parties will be reminding everyone about it come the next election.

The Great Recession as the Americans are calling it didn’t hit Canada really hard, but it did hit us. When the next election comes around the jobs question is one that is going to be really important.

Medical Industry Professionals

Medical Industry Professionals have interests in the strength of the Health Care System. While they might be able to make more money under some circumstances in a private system, most of them have seen the horrid working conditions in the United States, and wouldn’t want to deal with them. Stable Funding is the key to making the system work, and that is their main concern. Pharmacare might be a nice addition, after all the Brits made it work.

The Liberals have one doctor, Carolyn Bennett, which may draw practitioners of traditional medicine.

The Conservatives have a chiropractor, James Lunney, which may draw practitioners of alternative medicine. Of course this may also turn off practitioners of traditional medicine. There is a lot of controversy about the practice, ask Simon Singh.

Update: Thanks to Tony Clement for pointing out that Kellie Leitch (Conservative) and Kirsty Duncan (Liberal) are also doctors, giving the Liberals a two to one edge in the medical field.

Oddly all the doctors serving in the House of Commons are from Ontario. Is there some regional difference which drives doctors into politics?

Mining Industry Professionals

The mining industry is one of Canada’s strengths. We have a huge amount of the world’s resources, and only a small amount of the world’s population. Extracting these resources can provide good, high paying jobs. At least when commodity prices are good.

What the industry wants are:

• High commodity prices
• No pollution laws
• Minimal safety standards
• Low labor costs

Most Canadians would have no problems with the first item. The other three are different matter. Everyone probably has heard of the Chilean Mine Disaster, or the Coal Mine Disaster in West Virginia.

Mining is a dangerous industry. It used to be a really low paying industry. Listen to the original version of Sixteen Tons by Merle Travis, and really listen to his explanation of how the “Company Store” worked.

Most Canadians forget the Bienfait Rebellion. Unionization improved pay and working conditions, but it is still a dirty, dangerous job, and as proved by what happened in Chile and in West Virginia, there are companies which can’t be trusted to do the right thing without regulators watching them 24/7.

And then there’s the proof from the tar sands. You toss garbage into the ecosystem, and it has an impact. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but maybe twenty years from now.

I know a bunch of people who lived in an area that Ontario Hydro sprayed routinely with Agent Orange back in the Sixties. There are cancer cases, non-hodgkin’s lymphoma, lupus, asthma, and a variety of other ailments. Is it connected? I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. I do know that people who lived five miles further away don’t seem to have the same incidence of illnesses.

Canadians like our wilderness. We don’t mind mining and forestry companies coming in. We just want them to put it back the way it was.

Music Industry Professionals

Creative Music Industry professionals have specific interests. These are:

• Reaching fans
• Making money
• Better Copyright Protection

Under better Copyright Protection, there’s a discussion going on in a Facebook Group about this. The only suggestion we have that has meet any success so far is to make Copyright non-transferable except by inheritance.

Whoever manages to address these issues will get votes. Currently the New Democrats have an edge since Charlie Angus is a well respected professional musician.

Religious Center

Concerns are hard to define. The “Religious Center” itself is hard to define. Some people consider the Catholic Church to be part of the Religious Center, but if you listen to Pope Benedict’s speeches it would be either part of the Religious Right or the Religious Left depending upon which of his policies you considered more important.

The Religious Center used to back the Liberals. Today they probably back the New Democrats, since the New Democrats are closest to where the Liberals once were.

Religious Left

Concerns are usually stated as:

• Income Support for all
• Health Care including Pharmacare and Dental
• Human Rights including Gay Marriage
• Globalization
• Environmentalism

The Religious Right wants to prevent anyone from celebrating Gay Marriage. The Religious Left wants to celebrate Gay Marriage. This is one of the minor things that gets left out of a lot of the reporting from the United States. I wonder why…

This group has generally supported the New Democrats in the past. Currently they are less than happy with the shift in party policies, however they are unlikely to jump ship, instead they are more likely to try to influence candidate selection to move the party toward the direction they would like. After all, they’ve done this before.

Religious Right

Concerns are usually stated as:

• making abortion illegal
• making pornography illegal
• limiting marriage to a man and woman only
• making contraception illegal
• stopping sex education in schools

Believes the Religious Left is doomed to Hell for supporting Gay Marriage. At least the part of it that is aware that any churches support gay marriage does. Most of the rank and file is blissfully unaware of this, and kept that way so that they don’t question the leadership.

This group has generally supported the Conservatives in the past. Their dissatisfaction with the party leadership has reached high levels in 2012 over several issues, including the Government’s support for Gay Rights. It is possible that they may jump ship to one of the smaller parties, like the Christian Heritage Party. This could cost the Conservatives seats in some ridings where races are tight.

Retirees

The vast majority of Retirees have been Conservative and Liberal supporters for all their lives. This has been shown in the House, where the New Democrats have traditionally held only a small number of seats, the greatest being 43 out of 295 seats during the 1988 election.

Retirees are a small, but significant voter base. Typically they are more likely to vote than any other age group. This gives them a huge weight in any election, and makes their concerns of paramount importance to all parties.

Typically their concerns include:

• Pensions
• Health Care
• Home Care and Assisted Living
• Inheritance Laws

These all tend to be expensive. Currently the party which seems to offer the most to retirees is the one they are least likely to vote for, the New Democrats.

It is possible that the Liberals only maintained the number of seats that they did in the 2011 Election because of the retiree vote. In the four years between elections a certain number of retirees will die. One of my aunts who was in her nineties died on Saturday. How will this impact the Liberals?

For that matter how will it impact the Conservatives? There was a number of ridings where there was a three way horse race between the Liberal, Conservative, and New Democratic candidates. With a shift in demographics over the next four years, would the New Democrat have the votes to win?

Teaching

The teaching profession tends to be strongly New Democrat, a holdover from the days that the New Democrats were the party of the labor movement. Those days may be gone, but teachers like Niki Ashton are still New Democrat standard bearers.

Teachers tend to be really nervous around the Conservatives. They aren’t really sure about Liberals, even though Michael Ignatieff is a teacher of a sorts. Poor Ignatieff. He can’t make either the teachers or the writers happy…

Writers

Writers have the same interests as Music Industry Professionals, the problem is that none of the parties have a professional writer in Parliament to the best of my knowledge, which means we have no representation. If Michael Ignatieff had won his seat we would have had a part-time writer in Parliament. I don’t know if that would have satisfied professional Canadian writers that they were represented. Of course Ignatieff didn’t win.

Here’s the interests, modified so they make sense for writers:

• Reaching readers
• Making money
• Better Copyright Protection

Under better Copyright Protection, there’s a discussion going on in a Facebook Group about this. The only suggestion we have that has meet any success so far is to make Copyright non-transferable except by inheritance.

Youth Voters

If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain – Falsely attributed to Sir Winston Churchill

Demographics is so much fun. In four years how many more young people will be eligible to vote? A fair number. My youngest is twenty now, and was delighted to be able to vote in her first Federal Election last year. We made it a family outing, Mommy, Daddy, two boys in their twenties, and a nineteen year old girl.

Since I have kids in that age range, and they have lots of friends, I hear things. And the things that I hear politically is that eight out of ten of the under thirty crowd leans towards the New Democrats.

But will they vote? Voter turnout in Canada is notoriously low. Add in the Robocalls issue which appears to have been an attempt to stop people from voting.

Old fogies like me who have been going to the same poll for years, would be damned suspicious of a call saying our polling location had changed. A first time voter? They’d probably accept it, and when they couldn’t find the polling station, just give up, and go for a beer.

Of course now that everyone knows about Robocalls, anyone who can’t find a polling station is likely to pull out their smartphone and look up the polling station location. Or call a friend and ask them to look it up.

That’s assuming they get out to vote in the first place. When you go into a polling station, most of the people you see have grey hair, or a touch of Miss Clairol.

Get the youth vote out, and it changes the game. For that matter, get the 30-40 demographic out and it changes the game. Lots of them would vote Conservative or Liberal, the problem is that they just don’t vote. They don’t think it will make any difference.

Youth vote concerns are:

• Open Access
• Freedom of Speech
• Privacy from the Government (especially on the Internet)
• Freedom to Share
• Freedom to Create

The kids really do think differently. Most of them have grown up in a totally connected world. In the seventeen years since the World Wide Web became practical we’ve had it in our house full time.

Our oldest was seven when we got full time “high speed” instead of dial up. He still kind of remembers having to use a modem to access the good old Toronto FreeNet using a Slip account. Kind of.

The kids just reaching voting age mostly don’t remember what it was like before the web existed. To them being connected 24/7 is natural. Now if we could just make voting natural…

What Does The Future Hold

That’s a good question. We have approximately three years until the next election, at which time the House of Commons will go from 308 to 338 seats. There are currently eighteen registered political parties in Canada, thirteen of which do not have seats in the House.

Some of these parties, like the Communists, and the Marxists-Leninists have been around for a long time. The Rhinos exist just for laughs, and are a welcome relief every election with their promises to employ all of their relatives in Ottawa if they get elected.

Then there’s the new kid on the block, the Pirate Party. They could shake things up, because they could pull a huge chunk of the youth vote, assuming it ever stops playing World of Warcraft…

And the First Nation Peoples Party has a chance to take a seat or two if they can land a couple of strong candidates. There are some seats which are heavily First Nations, and the right candidate could make a difference. One seat may not sound like a lot, but Canada has a long history of Minority Parliaments, and they are often the most productive Parliaments. In a Minority Parliament, even a party with just a single seat can make a difference.

The 2015 Election for the 42nd Parliament promises to be exciting.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Friday March 23, 2012

American Patent law is a mess. When a small section of law ends up being appealed to the United States Supreme Court so often, it is an indication that:

1. The law is badly written
2. Powerful interest groups are trying to bend the law
3. There is a lot of money at stake

This is the seventeenth patent case the court has ruled on since 2005. The Supreme Court has broad powers to choose which cases that it takes. It selects cases that it believes will have a significant impact on the law in the United States. That it has taken so many patent cases implies that the Supreme Court sees problems with the Patent System.

The Case

The case involved Patent 6,355,623, which was owned by Prometheus. The patent involved a method of determining the correct dosage of medicine to use in treatment.

In the decision (which can be downloaded here – PDF warning), the court invalidated the patent on the grounds that it was an attempt to patent a natural law. From the decision:

Those cases warn us against interpreting patent statutes in ways that make patent eligibility “depend simply on the draftsman’s art” without reference to the “principles underlying the prohibition against patents for [natural laws].” Flook, supra, at 593.

Technically the patent did not directly patent the natural law. What it patented was a process whereby a physician would dose the patient, take measurements, dose the patient, and take further measurements, to determine how efficient the drug was in the patient’s system.

From the patent:

We claim:

1. A method of optimizing therapeutic efficacy for treatment of an immune-mediated gastrointestinal disorder, comprising:

(a) administering a drug providing 6-thioguanine to a subject having said immune-mediated gastrointestinal disorder; and

(b) determining the level of 6-thioguanine in said subject having said immune-mediated gastrointestinal disorder,

wherein the level of 6-thioguanine less than about 230 pmol per 8.times.10.sup.8 red blood cells indicates a need to increase the amount of said drug subsequently administered to said subject and

wherein the level of 6-thioguanine greater than about 400 pmol per 8.times.10.sup.8 red blood cells indicates a need to decrease the amount of said drug subsequently administered to said subject.

The Court decided that this was a natural law in action, and therefore not patentable.

Impact

This is where it gets interesting. U. S. Patent Law is as I said in the opening sentence a mess. You cannot patent a Natural Law but you can patent any step beyond that.

How do you determine what is a step beyond Natural Law? For that matter how did this patent pass the bar for obviousness? It looks like a simple system which would be obvious to any physician who is skilled in the art.

Let’s take a step back. How about Patent 5,960,411, Amazon’s infamous One-Click patent?

A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the item and including an order button. The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In response to the selection of the order button, the client system sends to the server system a request to purchase the identified item. The server system receives the request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client identifier of the client system to generate an order to purchase the item in accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button.

I have a backup of software which was written in 1983 which did the same thing, with two minor differences. It used a dial-up connection instead of the internet, and it used ANSI instead of HTML. For someone who was skilled in the art, those differences would have been minor.

In fact Amazon lists a wide range of prior art, much of which is almost indistinguishable from their patent (and some of which is  their own earlier patents – I strongly suggest that you read through them if you have the time). Again it comes back to the skilled in the art designation. The differences between the patents are so minor, that it is almost impossible to see how the Patent Office could have issued them.

Until you realize that the Patent Office is funded by patents. The Patent Office has a fascinating fee schedule. Anything which would interfere with the number of patents being filed, such as a tightening of patent issuance criteria would have a severe impact in the bureaucracy. Therefore the Patent Office will fight Congress and the Courts if they attempt to limit patentability.

In the United States there are a wide range of Stakeholders, i.e. interested parties where Intellectual Property, or in this case specifically Patents are concerned:

1. Patent Lawyers
2. Manufacturing Companies
3. Non-Practicing Entity
4. Individual Inventors
5. Employed Inventors
6. The General Public
7. The U.S. Patent Office

Each of these stakeholders has a vested interest in the system. Patent Lawyers want a robust system, without one they have no employment.

Manufacturing Companies want to be able to manufacture their product without interference, meaning they want to be able to block competition with patents, but not be blocked by patents.

Non-Practicing Entities want to collect a toll from all goods produced.

Individual Inventors want to make money from their inventions. Some of them will become Manufacturing Companies in the future.

Employed Inventors are often paid a bonus for each patent filed in their name. This can lead to contests to see who can file the silliest patent, and rather large bonuses for patents of dubious usefulness.

The General Public want to be able to buy useful products at a reasonable price.

Last but not least, the U. S. Patent Office wants lots of patents to be filed, and for that to happen they’ve got to make sure that lots of patents get issued. They also have to convince everyone that patents are valuable.

Are Patents Valuable?

That’s the $64,000.00 question, isn’t it? Let’s look at the U.S. Patent Office Stats. Or let’s look at it another way.

Note that I’m assuming that the patent will payoff in the year of issuance to simplify the chart. Moving the payoff date to five years later has very little effect. Copies of the spreadsheet are available for download at the end of the article. Try it yourself.

In 19902 there were 99077 patents issued. The Gross National Product of the United States was $5.705 Trillion (taken from this document). That means that each patent issued that year produced only $57,581.48 worth of value, assuming that none of the patents issued in earlier years produced anything of value, and that patents were the only means of producing wealth.

I’m sure that the RIAA and the MPAA would freak out at that concept. They think that Copyright is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and the main driver of the American economy. Oh wait, that means that those patents produced less wealth. How much did they produce then?

That’s a good question. If you include the patents from earlier years which were still in force, copyrights, ideas which are now in the public domain due to the copyrights and/or patents having lapsed, and ideas which are not copyrightable or patentable, it is likely that the total amount that patents contribute to the American economy is less than 10%, or  $5,758.15.

Since patents are valid for seventeen years, if all fees are paid, and we know that the number of patents filed increased over time, let us further assume that the number of patents filed in 1990 was equal to 10% of the patents in force, and that they were therefore worth a grand total of $575.82 each.

Not all patents are created equal. U. S. Patent 5,443,036, Method of Exercising a Cat isn’t likely to bring the inventor a big payoff. However it likely brought a payoff to a patent attorney (assuming that the inventor wasn’t a patent attorney having fun).

My sometime sparring partner Gene Quinn has written about this case. Gene is upset. I think that Gene has missed the point, because he’s too close to the forest to see the trees.

Do Patents actually benefit the United States? The numbers seem to indicate that they don’t. It seems that patents are probably a drag on the economy, and that the United States would be better off closing the Patent Office.

Kind of makes you wonder why there’s such a big push on ACTA and the TPP, doesn’t it? If I can run the numbers, the U.S. Trade Office should be able to do so as well. The money just isn’t there.

Feel free to download copies of my spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel XLS Format and Opendocument Format.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Wednesday March 21, 2012

Unlike with Amazon, it's easy to understand what Kleo wants...

Amazon isn’t evil. Amazon isn’t good. Amazon is a company, and morality isn’t something that a company can partake of. The individuals who work for the company, yes. The company itself, no.

This article is aimed at Small Press publishers, and Self Published writers, but the general terms will fit any industry where there is one dominant company.

The newest fuss about Amazon concerns a contract squabble they are having with the Independent Publishers Group. IPG represent independent, i.e. small press publishers to the trade.

For print books in the pre-computer era, this was a very powerful marketing niche. IPG provided a service for a fee, giving small publishers extra leverage. The reader got access to books that they otherwise would never have seen. A true win-win situation.

Currently IPG is acting as in intermediary between these small publishers and Amazon, collecting a fee. In the reporting that I’ve read on the situation to date, which is here, here, and here, no one sees anything wrong with this. Am I the only one who sees a company that has outgrown it’s usefulness, and is trying to hang onto a market that no longer needs it?

As to Amazon, it is acting as a lot of people have predicted. Amazon is working on thin margins. It’s profits in the last fiscal year were anemic, putting pressure on the company to seek out either enhanced efficiencies, or better deals with its suppliers.

Amazon is recognized as having one of the most efficient supply chains on the planet, next to Apple. There are not likely any efficiencies to be found, or at least not enough.

That leaves suppliers. Hello IPG, here’s your new contract, sign on the dotted line please…

I’ve warned independent writers that Amazon could decide to cut the current 70% royalty rate. I’ve heard variations of:

1. Disbelief – Amazon would never do that
2. Resignation – There’s nothing we could do anyway, 99% of my sales are from Amazon
3. Lack of Thought – But Amazon is a GOOD company!

Taking them one at a time

Disbelief

Hey, they just did it to Independent Publishers Group. I may think that IPG is no longer needed, that the publishers using IPG could handle the interaction with Amazon directly, but IPG currently has 58,845 books in their catalog. That’s a lot of books, representing a lot of writers, many of them names that I recognize. I’ve read Jennie Wurts books. I have their Robert E. Howard Conan reprint (I’m a big fan of Robert E. Howard’s original Conan stories, not the trash that came after).

Let’s look at it another way. How many readers did Amazon just hurt? Here’s a subject list for the books you can’t get on the Kindle anymore.

• Antiques & Collectibles (119)
• Architecture (496)
• Art (1,206)
• Bibles (17)
• Biography & Autobiography (6,345)
• Body, Mind & Spirit (1,501)
• Business & Economics (1,809)
• Comics & Graphic Novels (413)
• Computers (742)
• Cooking (1,295)
• Crafts & Hobbies (1,094)
• Design (182)
• Drama (89)
• Education (955)
• Family & Relationships (1,574)
• Fiction (8,670)
• Foreign Language Study (200)
• Games (517)
• Gardening (374)
• Health & Fitness (1,643)
• History (6,689)
• House & Home (207)
• Humor (1,194)
• Juvenile Fiction (4,683)
• Juvenile Nonfiction (2,836)
• Language Arts & Disciplines (539)
• Law (306)
• Literary Collections (487)
• Literary Criticism (688)
• Mathematics (49)
• Medical (838)
• Music (1,448)
• Nature (1,061)
• Non-classifiable (11)
• Performing Arts (1,135)
• Pets (817)
• Philosophy (373)
• Photography (1,837)
• Poetry (1,822)
• Political Science (1,622)
• Psychology (487)
• Reference (1,401)
• Religion (1,867)
• Science (674)
• Self-help (1,210)
• Social Science (2,889)
• Sports & Recreation (4,645)
• Study Aids (157)
• Technology & Engineering (526)
• Transportation (865)
• Travel (3,413)
• True Crime (703)

The numbers in brackets are the number of titles in that subject. You’ll notice that the total is 76,720, not 58,845. Don’t forget that some books fit under more than one subject.

There are now a huge number of books that Kindle readers are now cut off from. Unless they buy a Nook, or an iPad. These days, who can afford a second eReader?

The point being that Amazon was willing to go to the wall over a change in contract terms with IPG. We don’t know the exact details of the changes, only that IPG says it would have reduced their margins.

If Amazon is willing to do it to IPG, there’s nothing to stop them from doing it to you.

Resignation

99.99% of my sales are from Amazon…

I hear this one all the time. Contrary to popular opinion, Amazon was not the first online eBook supplier, and it might not be the biggest. Project Gutenberg (1971) predates Amazon and Archive.org (1996) was formed a year later. Both are non-commercial, both are damned big. The great Bibliobytes was the first commercial eBook site, is sadly missed.

Change is natural. Amazon may currently be the best sales source you have. Tomorrow? You don’t know. We live in a time of massive Disruptive Technological Change, and the change cycles seem to be coming faster and faster.

No doubt Amazon will be disrupted some day. You should be considering an exit strategy. There isn’t any rush. It won’t happen tomorrow. But you need to think ahead. What can you do if Amazon fails, or changes the rules so that you are making less money. You could announce to your readers that your next book is going to be a Nook exclusive, and why. They would understand.

Lack of Thought

People just don’t think things through. A company can’t be good or evil, it isn’t alive, it doesn’t have a conscience. A company can seem to act in a moral and ethical manner, because it has people running it, who act that way. Replace the people, and the company acts differently.

It’s the same way with countries. Place a strong leader with no morals in charge of a country, and you have a recipe for trouble, even if there is a system of checks and balances.

Amazon isn’t good or evil. It is a company. It exists to make money for the shareholders, not to pamper its suppliers.

If Amazon isn’t making enough money for the shareholders, the suppliers are going to get hurt. It is easier to do that, than to raise prices.

So I Shouldn’t Use Amazon?

No, you should use Amazon. You just have to be aware that Amazon is like a sword. You don’t want to pick it up by the blade.

So far none of the Independents have been hurt by Amazon changing the rules. It hasn’t been in Amazon’s interest to change the rules for the small players, because we are currently such a small portion of their business. This is changing as more writers decide to cut the ties with Traditional Publishing, and as eBooks gain market share.

At what point will Independents become a large enough share of Amazon’s sales for a royalty change to have a significant impact on profitability? We don’t know.

I’ve read Amazon’s SEC report for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2011. The numbers for Independents are not broken out, which is to be expected. Amazon is required by the SEC to disclose information to shareholders, not to competitors and suppliers. Unfortunately that also makes it impossible to determine how much of an impact independents are having on Amazon.

The problem for Independents as suppliers is that there are so many of them that they have little individual leverage. If Amazon decided to change the royalties paid independents, they would have to organize. At that thought the term “herding cats” comes to mind.

In other words, use Amazon. Don’t let them use you.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Thursday February 23, 2012

Me and my junior editor, Kleopatra

I have a confession to make. Kleo and I own an iPad.

I bought it because I could do things with it. It truly is useful. When I leave the house I rarely carry the laptop now, I usually email whatever I’m writing to the iPad, and using Apple’s Pages word processing software, continue working. I use it for appointments, note taking, and general organizational purposes.

If I don’t have time to work, I can read. Today I finished reading Elizabeth Moon’s new book, Echo’s of Betrayal. If I can’t concentrate on reading, I play Solitaire.

There’s some fantastically neat applications available for the iPad. Exoplanet is the ultimate app for Science Fiction fans. Laser Kitten will keep your cat amused. iTunes U has some neat courses. I.S.P. Survivor is my favorite time waster (game). The National Film Board of Canada has its own application. I have an iRig, can plug my electric guitar into it, and using the Amplitube software make some really neat sounds.

So why am I calling the article iPad Failures?

MacLean’s Magazine

I was reading an article on the MacLean’s Magazine website using my iPad. It mentioned downloading the article in their custom iPad application. When I checked it in the App Store, it had a customer rating of 2 Stars.

1. 170 people gave it 1 Star
2. 19 people gave it 2 Stars
3. 18 people gave it 3 Stars
4. 12 people gave it 4 Stars
5. 27 people gave it 5 Stars

It is hard to get people to rate applications, books, etc. A common complaint I hear from writers and software architects is that no one ever writes a review of their work. Look at the thousands of books on Amazon that don’t have a single review!

If you have 170 people so upset at you that they felt compelled to give you a 1 Star rating on a version available only since December 18, 2011, just over two months, you’ve got a serious problem.

Even worse, 116 of those people felt compelled to write a review. The first 21 reviews I read were 1 Star reviews. I like MacLean’s. It has good coverage of current events, and their regular website actually works. Their iPad efforts? Going by the ratings and reviews, MacLean’s didn’t do very well, and even worse, hasn’t addressed the issue.

NHL Gamecenter 2011-2012 Premium

I like hockey. It’s the sport I grew up playing, the sport I watch. I’m a true blue Toronto Maple Leafs fan, which probably proves something about me and futility. I have half a dozen sports apps on my iPad to keep track of the hockey season.

One of the ones I looked at was NHL Gamecenter 2011-2012 Premium. The customer ratings and reviews convinced me to skip it. Last updated November 19, 2011, the current version has a customer rating of 2 Stars:

1. 13 people gave it 1 Star
2. 4 people gave it 2 Stars
3. 1 person gave it 3 Stars
4. 1 person gave it 4 Stars
5. 5 people gave it 5 Stars

There are sixteen reviews. One of them, the person who gave it 4 Stars rates it “Not Bad” but then complains that they can’t get any live games. The description of the application says “Follow the game with the official app from the National Hockey League, the only app that offers live games and video highlights!” Note the underlined text.

Not as many people are upset about the NHL Gamecenter 2011-2012 Premium application. The free application has a far better score, and if the screen shots are accurate, the Premium app is based on the free app. So why did the NHL get the one right, and the other wrong in the eyes of most users? I don’t know, but I know that they’ve had three months to fix the problems, and haven’t.

Fixing Applications

I’ve worked as a programmer. I’m not going to claim elite skills at it, at best I was a plodder. I got things done by being twice as stubborn as anyone else.

While I was never the greatest programmer, I understand the procedures. One of the biggest issues is what is called in the industry Alpha and Beta testing.

For those who aren’t programmers, they are two stages of testing what you’ve built. You need to make sure that it works. The first stage of testing is done in-house, and is often automated as much as possible. The second stage is open to a wider community. Problems are supposed to be reported, and fixed before you start selling the software.

It is very unusual to see consumer ratings of 2 Stars. When you do, you know that something went wrong in the testing process.

So why aren’t they doing anything about the problems? I don’t know. If I was in charge, and I knew I had an application with serious problems, I’d pull it from the App Store until it was fixed. You have to think about your corporate reputation first.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Wednesday February 22, 2012

Dean Wesley Smith

Dean Wesley Smith has been writing an excellent series of articles titled The New World of Publishing. I highly recommend them. The only problem is that Dean knows his subject so well, that sometimes his presentation isn’t clear. I came at this from Sales, and while I was consider lousy at presentations, I think I can do a little something to make his one article, which consists of a horde of numbers, a bit easier to understand. Let’s look at The New World of Publishing: The Big Hurry in a different way.

First, I mostly agree with Dean’s numbers. Where I disagree, well, it’s because I know humans. Humans evolved as hunter-gathers. We think linearly, because that is how grain grows, and that is how our prey runs.

We don’t handle non-linear math at all well. Sales of the sort Dean is talking about involve non-linear math. When the time comes I’ll include a graph showing where Dean’s numbers might be a bit weird.

The numbers are estimates though. So they might be correct. There are other factors to take into account, which I will also try to cover.

Dean reduced an exceptionally complex idea into a simple explanation, and did one heck of a good job. I’m not criticizing what he did, I’m trying to build on it. Hopefully someone else will take what I’ve done, and add some more value.

Dean’s Assumptions

Dean made five assumptions. Keep them in mind as you read on. All of them are important:

There are a number of pretty major assumptions I am going to make in the following calculations.

#1 Assumption: I am going to assume that the writer is fairly smart and doesn’t go crazy self-promoting their first novel past normal Twitter, Facebook, and web site.

#2 Assumption: I am going to assume the writer just keeps writing and can finish a novel in six months. If you are faster, you can do the math.

#3 Assumption: I am going to assume the first novel is just a first novel and following books get better with practice. And the books are genre books, meaning if they sold in science fiction or mystery or romance, they would make about $5,000.00 advance.

#4 Assumption: I am going to assume sales are very low to start off on the indie side. And I count AROUND THE WORLD sales from ALL SITES, not just Kindle.

#5 Assumption: Even though I suggest writers do both indie and traditional in the real world, for the purpose of this article, the author either goes one way or the other. Not both.

Make sure you remember Number 5 above all.

Dean assumed that the writer would be able to finish one novel for publication every six months. This is a reasonable writing pace, even for someone who is working full-time. A lot of course will depend upon outside factors, but you can do it. It all depends upon planning (i.e. make sure that you work your writing time into your day).

So you have your first book ready to go on January 1, 2012.

January 1, 2012 - Book 1 Finished

It’s a start. Unless you are Snooki, or your father owns a publishing company, you aren’t going to make an immediate sale to traditional publishing. Ask J. K. Rowling, or Stephen King. Six months later Book 2 is finished.

July 1, 2012 - Second Book Finished

Well, look at that. You aren’t getting rich, but you’ve got enough money to buy beer for the Canada Day weekend! You could buy those writing books that you’ve wanted to invest in. If you live in the United States one of the new, cheaper Kindles might be a good investment, or a Kobo if you live in Canada. If you want one of the more expensive ones, why not just wait a couple of months? And the new book is better than the first one. You know it.

If you went the traditional route, keep on writing. You’ll hit the jackpot sooner or later.

January 1, 2013 - Third Book Finished

If you went Independent, you’ve made another $420.00 in the last six months. This isn’t enough to buy a Rolls Royce, but it is enough to buy your boyfriend/girlfriend/wife/husband a little something extra for Christmas. They’ll probably tell you that you could probably make more money by working some extra overtime at the factory, and they’d be right. For now. But you are getting better at writing.

If you went traditional, well, all you can tell your friends and family is that lots of name writers endured years of rejections. You aren’t any different.

July 1, 2013 - Book Four Completed

If you went Independent, and you’ve been REALLY disciplined, and haven’t spent a cent since Christmas, you decide to celebrate Canada Day in style. You walk into the house carrying a brand new MacBook Air that your bought with $1,575.00 that you made in the first six months of 2013, and you’ve got money left over. Your significant other proceeds to have a heart attack on the spot. You point out that all the practice is paying off, and that your newest book is the best yet.

If you went traditional, you are considering getting Doug Wilson from Trading Spaces to redecorate your bedroom in Rejection Letters.

At this point the chart is getting to large, so I’m going to have to cut it off at the left. Sorry folks.

January 1, 2014 - Book 5 Completed

If you went Indie, in the second half of 2013 you made $2,520.00. Your total sales for the year are $4,095.00. At this point your family is probably starting to look differently at you. Sure, you’ll never make a living out of $4,000,00 per year, but you are making more money all the time.

Your total sales since starting to write are $4,620.00, which while it won’t set the world on fire, is making a difference to your lifestyle. More money means less stress.

Less stress probably will improve your writing. I know people who claim that they only write well when everything is crashing down around them. Somehow I just don’t believe that. I find that I write best when I can concentrate, which for me means when I have my writing partner (my beagle hound) cuddled up beside me, telling me how much she loves me.

Your new book is probably better than anything you’ve written before, with the amount of practice you’ve gotten over the years. Yes, it has been years.

The traditional writer has made a sale for $5,000.00! The only problem is that the check hasn’t arrived yet. Well, not the only problem. The payout is in three parts, and there is a contract provision giving the publisher right of first refusal on the next book…

July 1, 2014 - Book 6 Completed for Indie

This is where paths start to diverge. The Traditional writer has been on hold while waiting for the publisher to do their part. A check has finally arrived, for the sum of $1,666.00, assuming the writer didn’t have an agent. If the writer had an agent, they would have lost 15% to the agent.

It is possible that the Traditional writer has been writing, but they can’t do anything, until the publisher has had their right of first refusal. Publishers have laid off staff, so even if the publisher does want to move quickly, they may not have the staff to do so.

The Indie writer would have continued to make sales. In the first six months of 2014 they would have made an additional $3,675.00, or nearly as much as they made in all of 2013! Canada Day is looking pretty good.

Oh, and your writing is getting even better.

January 1, 2015 - Book 7 Completed for Indie

At the end of 2014 the Indie writer has earned more than double what they earned on 2013. Again, it isn’t enough to live on, but it is the difference between comfortable living, and just scraping by. $8,715.00 is a nice bit of pocket change.

Total career earnings of $13,335.00 aren’t to shabby either. Oh, and book seven is now finished. All that practice has paid off with a book that is better written than anything you’ve done before. It may not win the Nobel Prize for Literature, but people will buy it, enjoy it, and recommend it to their friends.

The Traditional path writer has gotten their second check for $1,666.00, bring total earnings to $3,332.00, assuming the writer doesn’t have an agent. The publisher still may not have exercised their right of refusal. At this point the writer may decide to start writing under another name, in another genre. Of course the result will be more rejection letters…

Dean’s Numbers

The spreadsheet is available for download. There are a couple of points. As I mentioned at the start, humans think linearly. We are designed that way, and it causes problems when we run into non-linear systems.

Remember the change over from VHS tapes to Digital Video Discs? In less than a year VHS went from holding a majority of the shelf space in rental shops, to being relegated to the bargain bin. Linear thinking says that a change that quick is impossible.

Let’s take a look at Dean’s raw numbers.

Dean's Raw Numbers

Look at the per month figures. From Column D to Column E sales double. From Column E to Column F sales increase by 2.5 times. From Column F to Column G sales increase by 1.2 times. That’s a huge drop in momentum. It is masked by the jump in the number of titles being sold from three to four books, a 33.33% increase. This pushes the total books sold up, even though sales are tailing off, which they should not if the writer’s abilities are increasing.

I noticed that the numbers looked odd when I first read Dean’s article, but couldn’t put my finger on it at the time. It wasn’t until I feed the numbers into the spreadsheet that I could see how they played out.

Overall Dean’s numbers are close enough for horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons. He’s made his point, without overdoing it. In my opinion, the Indie writer, if willing to work hard, would probably do somewhat better than Dean has forecast, assuming Linear Sales.

Ah, But I Did Say Things Aren’t Linear…

This is where things get really fun. One hat I wear is Futurist. I’ve predicted that eBooks will outsell print books by October 2012. I could easily be wrong. A publishing industry pro has predicted October 2013.

Point is that eBook sales are rising. Fast. Dean’s numbers make sense if you assume a static eBook market. If you assume a growing eBook market, they are low.

How low? I don’t know. Nobody knows. Anyone who tells you that they do know is lying.

The print book system has so many inefficiencies built into it, that it was unable to deliver the right books to the reader a good part of the time. A constant complaint I hear from people is that they are unable to find books.

eBooks which are always available, are delivered within seconds, weigh nothing, take up no space, etc. have huge advantages. I know a lot of people who swore they’d never, ever, switch to eBooks. I was one of them. Now I buy nothing but eBooks.

While eBooks are more efficient, the reader has only a limited amount of money to spend. The Big Six Publishers are pricing their eBooks for close to the same price as their print books in most cases (Baen being a happy exception). Independent writers usually price their books lower, since Amazon and Smashwords offer a 70% royalty rate on books in certain price ranges. 70% of a $5.00 eBook is $3.50, which is far more than the writer would earn through from the same book sold to a Traditional Publisher, and the writer is likely to sell more copies.

So we end up with a system where the total dollar value spent on books might not increase, but the total number of books sold could increase drastically. Another option would be for readers to divert money from purchase of other leisure materials (Digital Video Discs, Computer Games, MP3s) towards more eBooks, in which case the total book market would expand.

My personal feeling is that the market will expand, that more people will become readers, and that more money will be spent. At the same time more Independents will be releasing eBooks, and since the largest market is Amazon, they will be working within Amazon’s pricing constraints, which means the highest price they can feasibly charge is $9.99 (the royalty rate drops dramatically above this price).

What does all of this have to do with Dean’s numbers? Dean originally started off with sales doubling between July 2012 and January 2013. This is a reasonable assumption, as sales of five books per month are very low. He then jumped sales by 2.5 times for July 2013, and then dropped the rate of increase.

But what if we assumed that the sales doubled every month through the entire time period?

Dean's Raw Numbers

Sales Doubling Every Month

Read across the top row, and compare it with the previous chart. July 2013 is at 20 books per month per title instead of 25, it is lower, and you lost 90 sales total. January 2014 is at 40 books per month per title instead of 35, it is higher, and your total book sales are at 960, which is a 240 book increase.

Continue out to January 2015. You are only selling 160 books per month, per title. That is not a lot of books. In fact it is NOTHING in the grand scheme of things. No Traditional Publisher would look at you. But run the numbers.

160 books per title * $3.50 royalty per book = $560.00 per book, per month

6 Titles * $560 royalties per month = $3,360.00

6 Months * $3,360.00 = $20,160.00

Let’s cross check the math.

$20,160.00/$3.50=5,760 books sold

None of this is Rocket Science. None of this requires Twitter Spamming. It just requires you to write, and to work hard to become the most professional writer that you can be.

Think about it. How hard is it to sell 160 books?

Spreadsheet with Doubling Variation Added

Wrong Assumptions

Both Dean and I made some assumptions that aren’t quite right. We assumed that the sales would be the same over a six month period. In books, this is usually not the case.

A new book will usually cause a sales blip in the month it comes out. So January and July should in theory be the highest performing months, with some hangover into February and August, for those like me who forget the exact date a book is due out!

Sales should also show an organic growth as new readers find the writer, which should push up sales in latter months of the half-year, i.e. sales in June and December should be higher. There is also the Christmas factor.

Another issue with our modeling is that later books should be more popular, because they are better written. Rather than get bogged down in math, we’ve averaged out sales across all books to simplify the explanation. There’s nothing stopping you from attempting to build a more complex model, however there also isn’t any real need for one. The simple model gives a solid explanation of how an Independent Writer can earn more money than a Traditional Writer, and how they can do so more quickly.

While there are Traditional Writers who will earn huge advances, those writers are the exception, the One Percenters. The Ninety Nine Percent will mostly never earn back their advance, and will never have control of their careers.

Independent writers will have full control of their careers, and have a wide range of options that we can’t even dream about now as the future unfolds.

Additional Complications – Series Writing

Dean didn’t address series, trilogies, and all those wonderful things. Let’s take “The Dresden Files” by Jim Butcher. The first book isn’t all that hot. It was originally printed as a paperback, but was later reprinted in hardcover when the series took off.

If you are writing a series, the later books will drive sales of the earlier books. Pat Hodgell’s excellent Kencyrath series is another example, the early books have been reprinted several times. Though it is hard to call what Pat is doing a series, since one book often picks up from where the other left off minutes later… It is more like one huge book written over thirty years.

Stand alone books just do not sell as well. If they have some sort of tie in with another book you’ve written, like the same setting a hundred years later, the book is likely to sell better. People like going to familiar places, and meeting familiar people. It is part of being human.

Genre Series books do really well. Think Star Trek, Star Wars, or A is for Alibi…

So if you have a follow-up idea, it might be worth writing about it. It could help sales of the first book as well. Just make sure that the second book refers to the first book so your readers know to buy it.

The Spreadsheet

As promised, here is the spreadsheet in both Open Office Format and Microsoft Excel Format. Feel free to play around with it. I divided it up into three sheets to keep things separate, I’d suggest that you work with a copy, not with the original. And think about those numbers. They really are quite conservative, even the scenario where I doubled the sales every six months.

Sales of 160 books per month, per title, is, well, tiny. There are writers like Joe Konrath, who are selling a heck of a lot more than that. Yes, Joe has become a bit of a name. Joe wrote a heck of a lot of books, and he has worked hard at it.

If you worked really hard at your writing, and sold 1,000 books per month, at $3.50 royalties per book, could you live on that? Think about it. That’s $3,500.00 before taxes and other expenses. Or $42,000.00 per year.

Or to break it down another way, six books selling 170 copies per month each…

Regards

Wayne Borean

Wednesday February 15, 2012

John says this is Free Culture's opinion of him

John Degen is terrified. He’s scared of the future. I can’t blame him. Change is scary. It has John ranting about all the people who want to steal from him, and not looking at all the people who want to buy…

Viewpoints

I’m writing this here, because John doesn’t like me any more. I disagree with him. I’m not terrified of the future. I don’t think that everyone is trying to rip me off. That makes me part of the enemy.

John seems able to only see two points of view. Either you agree with him, or you don’t. If you don’t agree with him, he stops approving your comments. Try posting anything critical to his blog. Very shortly your posts will stop appearing. Send him an email, he won’t respond.

John views things in blacks and whites.

Me? I look at shades of grey. Sure, there are people who will never, ever, pay for anything. But they are few and far between. Most people will happily pay you for something that is worthwhile to them.

Maybe part of John’s problem is a lack of confidence. He might not think that he can produce books that people want to buy. Part of what he writes are text books, which are mandated as part of a course…

The Future

When you’ve spent a good part of your entire career working one way, and another option opens up, it is hard to change. In the Twentieth Century we saw jobs like Keypunch Clerks, Telephone Switchboard Operators, Typesetters (for printing presses), and Letter Sorters disappear as newer technologies replaced them.

We’ve seen technologies virtually disappear. Take horse shoes. A friend of mine owns a horse farm. Her and her husband still use them. Almost no one else does. Those who were in the business of manufacturing horse shoes had to adapt.

The same thing happened to long play vinyl records, cassette tapes, player pianos, parchment, and thousands of other technologies. Now it is happening to books.

Sometime shortly, the sales of eBooks will exceed the sales of print books for the first time. My estimate is October 2012. Mike Shatzkin thinks October 2013.

It doesn’t matter which one of us is right to John Degen. John is going to have to change how he works. Because mark my words, one of us will be right. So John had better get creative, and invent a new way of doing things.

Happy Valentine’s Day John!

Regards

Wayne Borean

Tuesday February 14, 2012