Opinionated Thoughts from the White Board - April 15

Technically its tax day, and only two days from my sweetheart's birthday.  And its also Leonardo DaVinci's birthday today.  And Emma Watson's, best known for playing Hermione in the Harry Potter movies.  And Ray Croc opened his first McDonald's restaurant on this day.  Wow.  A lot happened today in history.

So maybe you can change the world by just flipping burgers, huh? / Source: Wikipedia.com

Now I'm going off on an op-ed piece here.  So bear with me.  It concerns something that is related to a portion of this blog's content.  Books.  The subject?  E-book price fixing.



I read the other day an article that said Apple and some other e-book distributors were "price fixing" (for a good basic definition of that term, see here), and that the feds were slapping them with a lawsuit over it.  The article I first read on the subject was somewhat sympathetic towards the e-book side of the issue.  Of course, that article was published by an entity that would be more inclined toward a tech's best interest, i.e.: PCWorld.com (here is that article, if I've piqued your interest).

Then when I got online today, I read another article from CNN.com that gave a different slant to the question of lowering prices on e-books (here is that article).  They point out that the reduction in prices will affect paper-bound books and lower profits.  The article's title is what caught my notice, as it makes it sound as though books are going away entirely.

Now that I've given you the two sides of the story as I see them, I'm weighing in myself.  As someone who does most of his reading in an alternate format (audiobooks for my part, though my wife uses her Amazon Kindle quite a bit - yes, I know this makes me biased toward their lower prices side of the equation, but I won't haggle over the semi-conflict of interest if you won't), I think that something ought to be said from the consumer's point of view.  Here goes: To Big Publishing Houses: If you haven't figured out that the world is changing, where have you been?

Is it a really thin hardcover?  No, it's a DUAL SCREEN e-reader.  Cool idea, dude! / Source: Gadget Venue.com

My opinion, for what it is worth, is that I use the resources at my disposal to learn new things and be enlightened.  I then pass on what I've learned on this internet-based forum (the one you are visiting right now, if you are reading this) for the benefit of those who would care to hear what I have to say.  All my life I wanted to be able to be heard in a broad spectrum, and the electronic age makes that possible.  In fact, as a kid, I dreamed of writing a book and being published.  This was even back in the day when I only read the last twenty pages of a book because I was lazy and that was where the best parts were (I'm talking age 11 or 12 here - I was not a studious child, I can tell you).

As a teenager, I once thought up the idea of writing a book and calling it "Wong's All the World's Warfare," based on the idea of the Jane's military analysis reference texts that I prized so highly (still do, to be honest).  That was when I was very much into military tech and things like that.  I've grown somewhat beyond that narrow perspective, but I can tell you that I still day-dream of writing something like that encyclopedic text that sparked my imagination at age 17.  As an adult, I still write about what interests me.  I only wish I had the time to write ALL of what does interest me, but life makes demands of the great and the small, and I'm much more in the latter group than the former.

I own a copy of this one, and it is among the few books I'd never sell unless the alternative was utter starvation and complete destitution / Source: Amazon.com

What does all this have to do with e-books and big publishing?  I go back to my opening statement on the matter.  The world is changing.  Maybe that isn't always a good thing, but history is replete with examples of instances when a group was enamored with a particular technology or idea and refused to adapt to something that was considered "new and hip."  Those groups often met with hard consequences when history left them behind.  The ones who adapted often survived, even if they had to come out of it looking quite different than when they went in.

To the people who are price-fixing and to the publishers who might lose profit if people actually do invest their hard-earned currency toward the best value and toward what they want (this being the prime motive here, the people's will) I say: Get with the times.  It isn't fair, and I do sympathize, since people will be out of work.  But what is the point of publishing?  Yes, to make money.  All business, no matter how benign, is in it for the money.  But if you lose sight of what you're providing, then you lose out in the long run anyway.

Long live e-books!, even if I find the idea slightly distasteful and will always appreciate a good old paper and glue book.  Long live audiobooks! (hey big publishing, you make good money off those, why not go back and release more titles in that format and line your pockets that way?), as they help me learn things I wouldn't be able to otherwise based on my time-constraints.  Gutenberg is not truly dead, in my opinion, as long as mass publishing methods that his press brought about are being used. But I think even he would be trying to figure out how to capitalize on the new thing and shaking his head at the guys who were stodgily holding to illuminated manuscripts as they fell farther and farther behind.  That stuff is valuable now-a-days since it is rare.  Can you imagine a day when a paperback copy of some Danielle Steel novel is really worth something?  I can.

A Gutenberg press.  Hard to believe a good portion of our modern world came out of these. / Source: zdnet.com.uk

Ok, enough editorializing.  Here's what you really came for:

God is subtle but he is not malicious. - Albert Einstein

If you want to be happy, set a goal that
commands your thoughts, liberates your
energy, and inspires your hopes. - Andrew Carnegie

I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it’s such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her. - Ellen DeGeneres

The parting comment:

Source: Bill Waterson / Universal Press Syndicate (and thank heavens for 'em)

This one speaks for itself.  Waterson's precocious little comic strip was (and still is, years after the fact) pure genius.  And not dead either, even after it went out of syndication.  Nothing good really dies, as long as there is someone around to care about it