Improvisations on Reality

In AlterNet. Also, the incident with the cat.

Let me say this again: this does not happen in a void.

We’ve always know that the Republican rhetoric was violent. Gabrielle Giffords had a bullet pass through her brain as a result of said rhetoric. Now this? A Bible verse specifically aimed to wish a President his death, and killing the family pet of an opposing political party’s campaign manager?

Enough. Seriously, enough.

Let me drop some crim-J knowledge on you. Mens rea is just as relevant as actus reus. For those of you who don’t speak Latin or legalese, it means that thoughts and mindset matter. Court cases all over the US, as well as the entire spectrum of punishments for incitement, enticement, and conspiracy to commit a crime, will show you: influence matters. And violent influence definitely plays a part in committing a violent act, specifically continuous exposure thereto.

Look, going back to Gabby Giffords – her shooter had been listening to violent rhetoric for so long that it’s pretty solidly ingrained in his brainpan. You cannot deny that it had played an influence in his ultimate decision to shoot Rep. Giffords. And you know, I can’t think of any way that the incident with the cat is in any way different. Violent rhetoric breeds violent action, and this has been proven, time and again, all over the world.

How many more incidents like that with the cat will it take to see that the Republican rhetoric is a showcase of violence?

Seriously. Is discourse that dead?

When will we return to a point where we can debate different points with a certain modicum of logic and respect?

And for those of you who may be thinking that the cat was an unrelated incident – oh, spare me. I would have thought about believing it if the poor cat didn’t belong to a Democratic campaign manager. For those saying that the left wing does the same thing – really? When? When did a Democrat kill a Republican’s pet? When did a Democrat threaten a President with death through a Bible verse? I’d like some specific incidents as proof here, because it seems to me that the violent rhetoric is pretty damn one-sided, and it’s inciting some people to act on it.

Maybe I’m an old soul, but do I ever wish that politics could actually be…I don’t know…civil again. I don’t remember any of this crap happening when it was Bill Clinton vs. Bob Dole for the presidency, and the debates back then didn’t make my head hurt. Granted, I was a kid back then, but if there was anything that struck me as good about those debates, it was that both Clinton and Dole were respectful of each other, even if they opposed.

Now, it’s just violent rhetoric and the inability of certain people to accept that a black man is in the White House.

K.G.

Story at USA Today.

Now, while some people may view it as a mass overreach by the government, especially in light of the ongoing battle against SOPA (another post on that later on), but…there’s something to be said about copyright infringement.

First of all, what you may not know is that Swizz Beats is involved with that site. There are some articles to contrary, but I have my reservations. This guy had multiple musicians endorse that site, most of whom are now in very hot water with their labels. But one thing is for sure: if a musician has been running a shareware site, this effectively shoots his own industry in the foot.

But this just got me nice and pissed. Not because of the government shutting down a website, but because people are very quick to forget what’s what with copyright of creative product.

In the early days of shareware, I’m sure you have ventured to Kazaa for a quick download of that song you heard on the radio. You’d borrow a CD and rip it to your computer. You probably thought nothing of it.

Sorry, but that’s theft. Copyright infringement, if you have to be exact, which breaks down to theft if you look at how money plays into this.

You may say, “Hey, I bought this, and this means I do whatever I want with it!” – No. Let me get one little thing straight per the US Copyright Act: you bought your right to use it, but not the actual master copyright. So think about how you distributing something that you “own” affect other people. You own the right to use it, but if you give it away, you’re devaluing it. That CD that you have no problem passing on to a friend is now half its value because two people have the product. The artist never sees a whit of income from your friend ripping the CD. If your friend is using his/her computer as an upload source with that CD, that CD loses in value with more and more people downloading its contents via shareware. What does the artist get for these extra people listening to his material? ZILCH.

Let’s do some cashflow analysis here. Suppose that you buy a CD for $20.

Of that $20, the distribution medium takes its cut. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, it’s $5.

$15 remains. Money goes to the label next for overhead costs, which include publicity, representation, etc. $10 will be their sample cut. You now have $5.

And of that, guess who also needs to take a cut: the press. You know, the guys who actually make the physical CD.

Using this example, the artist sees $2.50 from the sale of that one CD, if and only if they hadn’t made enough to offset the label’s advance, which was given to them to compose the music for said CD to begin with.

In other words, there’s a solid chance that the artist won’t be seeing money from this CD for quite a long time.

Think about that for a second. And you think, “So what if someone borrows my CD and makes a copy of it?” Less money to the artist. Less money for future production. Less money for the label, which will drop the artist because of said lack of revenue but still continue to make its profits off the existing sales until the advance is recouped, which will take much more time, and until then, the artist will not see a drop of royalty money.

It’s pretty similar to traditional publishing, wherein you won’t see a penny of royalties until you recoup the advance.

And if you’re bootlegging an indie artist who doesn’t have label backing, that artist may see more money faster, but again, it’s all going against the out-of-pocket costs incurred in creating the CD.

Still think that CD or venture to Kazaa is no big deal?

If you like the artist, great. Want to keep listening to the artist’s future music? Awesome. Now, let me ask you this: if the artist doesn’t make enough money off that CD, do you think that artist will put out another one? If you say yes, or, “They will if they love music”, then you need a wake-up call. The love of the music only goes so far, it doesn’t pay the bills, and doesn’t put food on the table. Money does. If you want to get  a quick song, then please, iTunes or Amazon mp3 has the right to distribute, and the cost to you is a whopping dollar. Of that dollar, the artist will be lucky to see 30c, by the by, but there’s benefit to quick access and volume. There are other distributors who will let you download songs for a fee. Know where that fee goes? To pay the artist.

An argument that I heard is that the government had interfered with the way people share their things. Okay, fabulous, but make sure it’s actually yours first! Because guess what: when you buy that CD, or that mp3, you are buying your right to consume the product, and nothing more! You’re listening to the music, that is your consumption. But you are not the master copyright owner. That’s either the artist or the label, and they dictate their product’s distribution and how it’s heard. Therefore, that music you’re enjoying? You bought your right to enjoy it. You never actually bought the ownership of it. The masters are owned by either the artist or the label.

And please don’t start about MegaUpload being used to share family pictures, etc. That usage is in the very, very tiny minority for shareware site usage. The majority use is to disseminate copyrighted material, first and foremost. I mean, come on: Kazaa was NOT used for family pictures. It was, however, the go-to one-stop shop for media.

Oh, and also, for family pictures, make a private album on Photobucket or Flickr. They’re legit sites that protect your photo copyright. You can also use Dropbox, which is free up to 2gb (expanded with heavy use; mine is 4gb I think) and ad-free, and works with literally every operating system.

I won’t deny that the current distribution system for music leaves much to be desired, but until people actually recognize what copyright infringement does for the industry overall, then the industry will stay as it is for a while. I don’t like it, and my musicians don’t like it either.

Oh, and as far as Swizz Beats? What utterly annoys me is that a musician is involved with a shareware site. The disputes on who to best distribute music aside, of all the people in the world who would be involved with a shareware site, I did not expect a musician. That is the one person who would have a major problem with copyright infringement as opposed to facilitating it.

Look: the majority of musicians are not wealthy. Those who are and who are of the current generation – mid-twenties – are probably so because of clever marketing, performances, and endorsements. Not because of sales. If it’s not a popular genre, then the artist is just plain screwed, because they’re never going to know exactly where their music had ended up.

Also, there are better ways to share. You see artists on YouTube putting up segments of their songs as promo – but again, segments. Promotional material; enough of the song to pique an interest, not enough to where someone can attempt to de-embed the music from the video and then share the rest. And YouTube, just FYI, links to where this song can be bought in full – iTunes or Amazon. There are ways to harness the digital sharing realm without said sharing infringing on copyright, but few people see that and instead focus on their right to do something that is,  for all statutory intents and purposes, illegal. You may have that right to share things, but the people whose material you’re sharing without their consent or permission have the right to not like it and do something about it.

And look…I’m an independent author. I have my book uploaded in e-form to several mediums. And yes, it’s probably being bootlegged here and there. On one hand, it’s flattering that I’m being bootlegged, but I would much rather have my potential readers respect the work that had gone into the book and pay the whopping three bucks to have it legitimately.

K.G.

Now on NetworkedBlogs!

Apologies to anyone who had attempted to go to any of my CreateSpace book links. CS seems to be down at the moment.

Kindly proceed to the Amazon links to order in paperback…until CS restores its DNS servers.

K.G.

Some time ago, my awesome editor, Gayle F. Moffet, had interviewed me in the anticipation of the release of my third book. This is me returning the favor.

Warning: enough of a wall of text to make a house (her words)

« Read the rest of this entry »

There’s another post of the Writers Beware blog, this one on Blogger, and complete with commentary.

One of the main assertions within the commentary is that Book Country is not a scam. Just to pull out my crim-J degree and dust it off, a scam is not necessarily illegal. Unethical, yes, but not illegal, unless it flies right in the face of laws affiliated with the activity. Book Country is not running a Ponzi scheme, if that’s what is implied, but they’re certainly not straightforward about their practices. It isn’t illegal to charge money for being a distribution engine. However, in an industry where money should be flowing to the author, it’s definitely questionable. Add to that the fact that Penguin owns this company, and you have a direct conflict of interest.

Riddle me this, people: why would a traditional publishing house get directly involved with its competition, if not for profit? Look, let me say this outright, and I may be a cold bitch when it comes down to it, but it’s not about writing, or contracts, or prestige, or whatnot: it’s all about money. It’s just a different way of making it, and I certainly disagree with it, and I do consider it to be unethical on Penguin’s end – but illegal? No.

Another person in the comments had compared it to PublishAmerica and how many people like PublishAmerica. There’s an entire subforum at AbsoluteWrite devoted to the fact that P.A. is a scam. And it is an outright scam; P.A. has a long history of charging authors for their own promo copies, not distributing to stores, not even attempting to vet its content, and holding rights hostage.  People try to get out of the PA contracts. How is that a good comparison?

What got me, though, was the line that self-published authors are dividing into a “hierarchy”, between those who don’t use the “middle man” , and those who do. What the hell? First of all, there is no hierarchy in self-publishing, except for talent, content, and persistence in marketing. Second, the term is misused in the argument, because a middle man is something that you go through en route to publication that brings your total costs up. Self-pubs do hire people to help them out: cover artists, editors, formatters. But that’s a business arrangement. Not a middle man.

Merriam-Webster definition: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/middleman

This has been cut out in self-publishing. There is no middle man in uploading a book through KDP, Smashwords, CreateSpace, PubIt! or whatnot.

If you’re paying money for self-publication, you’ve not done any research. Else you would have known it’s possible for free.

The other implication is that the stigmas attached to self-publishing are coming from within the self-pub community itself. Again, not the case. Not for nothing, but I have yet to get any sort of flak from fellow self-pubs. Just, personally. We’re all in the same boat, we went against the grain in the publication gamut, and are supporting each other as we go.  The only thing that we are doing as far as the entire brouhaha with Book Country is concerned is what Writers Beware had failed to do in this post: warning people to stay away from a bad deal.

If you don’t believe me, or any of the people whom I have linked to in my prior post, go to http://kdp.amazon.com and go through their publishing route. It is not difficult. And it’s free.

Same with CreateSpace: poke around on the site and see if it’s easy to understand.

And not for nothing, but self-pubs get help with their stuff on a constant basis. Editors? Reviewers? Manuscript swaps? Formatting? Cover art? Few people ever do that all on their own.

Oh, and to point something out? The KDP rights agreement is for distribution. Which is what KDP does, nothing more, and the percentage of royalties it retains is pretty standard for a distributor. Moreover, since the bulk of my sales had taken place through Amazon.com, I have yet to see what I’m losing on this, also considering that I retained the rights to my work. Which one would not have with Publish America, traditional publishing, and vanity presses who have it embedded in the fine print.

The author of that particular post, Victoria Strauss, is geared primarily towards the trad-pub community, who doesn’t require the services of something like Book Country in any case. Either she had not spent enough time exploring the self-publication world to properly understand why the self-pubs are lambasting this option up one side and down another, or she is of the school of thought that self-publishers are missing out by not going trad. To assume that we’re overreacting, when we’re doing exactly what Writers Beware is supposed to do – that is to say, safeguard fellow writers from making a bad deal – is honestly callous and misinformed. And, again, also as I said in the post below, there is a clear difference between vanity and self-pub. Self doesn’t charge you money up front and gets you to the market with intact copyright, vanity definitely charges you money and you may never see sales or rights to your work.

After all, PublishAmerica had taken enough people for a fun ride, and there’s legal action on legal action to get copyright back. What, precisely, does Book Country involve for its contracts? Similar?

Really, Ms. Strauss, I thought you knew better.

K.G.

To those who have walked away from their families, because they were singled out and became their victims,

to those who are away serving overseas, and are unable to be with those whom they love,

to those whose family is looked down upon as being different,

to those whose loved ones are no longer with them,

to those who are not conventional,

to those who are not celebrating with people around them,

a happy Thanksgiving from me to you. You’re not alone, even if you feel as though you are.

All the love in the world,

K.G.