Blame the Triple Breasted Whore

Last weekend I went to see the live theatre production of the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show, an ambitious performance that attempts to draw inspiration from all five books of Douglas Adams' famous trilogy.  To be fair, most of the production covered the original subject matter from the original radio series, but by carefully excising some significant parts of that story the cast were able to shoehorn some less familiar parts of the H2G2 story.  I may have missed it, but one omission appeared to be the triple breasted whore of Erotica.

It seems I'm not the only person to have missed references to erotica.  A British national newspaper pointed out, or exposed in the parlance of the industry, that WH Smith, a stalwart bookseller of the British high street and the internet was selling erotica on its website.  It answered a question I asked myself in passing some time ago but never bothered to research.

You see, Smashwords, the eBook aggregator that supplies self published books to Apple, Sony, Kobo (and by inference WH Smith as they have tapped into Kobo's catalogue) and Barnes& Noble, to name a few, has forged a home for erotica books alongside many other genres.  Now I don't write or read erotica, but I don't judge those who choose to either.  It's just not my bag.  My guess is that if Smashwords hadn't become the distributer of eBooks that it has then it would have faded into insignificance as a niche seller of erotica books by now.  What Kobo may or may not have realised and WH Smith clearly didn't was that once the authors of the erotica market had achieved the formatting standards required by Smashwords their books were eligible to be shipped to all of the above eBook sellers unless they excluded them themselves.  Apple realised this about a year ago and started to vet the content of the eBooks they took from Smashwords.  This was a very public happening that Kobo and WH Smith should have been aware of but clearly didn't think it worthy of following, possibly because it requires effort and therefore costs money.

Now WH Smith have been outed by the newspaper they have taken their eBook store down completely, Kobo have removed a lot of eBooks, possibly everything they have received via Smashwords.  I haven't carried out a lot of research (spotting a pattern here?), but I can confirm that my books, which do not contain erotica, have disappeared from Kobo.  My guess is that once W H Smith have identified all of the self published books, regardless of content, then they'll restore their eBookstore.  Which means that they'll resume selling 50 shades (originally a self published book) and of course the Hitch Hikers Guide, along with its harmless references to the triple breasted whore.  They will stop lots of erotica being available, and that's fine, but many other good books are going to be blocked from the public.

Smashwords owner, Mark Coker, is understandably outraged by the reaction.  I'm actually surprised it has taken this long to come to a head.  The self published phenomenon has trundled along unregulated for quite a while.  It has challenged the established publishing industry and caused it to take stock.  That is healthy, the old way of working wasn't moving literature forward as well as it could and the prices were, and to some degree remain, too expensive.  But one price has been the lack of control over self published books.  Apple have taken some control over this matter; it's time the other eBook sellers do so too. 

Taking all the books off sale should be, at most, a short term solution.  While  I agree that under the current paradigm, like the one it left behind, good, well written books may or may not be successful but in general badly written books of any genre should fail.  The issues around the subject matter of some books being objectionable to people need to be addressed - the young and the vulnerable especially should be protected from inadvertent exposure and WH Smith is right to want to remove them from their catalogue, but it's really important that a sense of perspective is maintained.   Smashwords is looking at a voluntary metadata process where authors declare if their book is unlikely to be suitable for Apple or Kobo.  I think this is pie in the sky - some authors may play ball, but some, perhaps many, might ignore it.  Also, I suspect that Sony and B&N may go down this route sometime soon.

What I suspect Smashwords needs to do is what Apple have been doing - adding a vetting process to all books before they accept them in their premium catalogue.  I'm sure most of this could be automated with perhaps a process for the public to alert them to books that have slipped through.  Then they can earmark any books that contain offensive (to some) subject matter - we're talking about incest, rape and other unpleasant subjects here.  They can then alert any resellers who want to limit their exposure to corporate risk who want to avoid these books.  They could also dispense of the prude filter they put on their website and just keep such books corralled in a subsection that potential readers have to overtly access.  That way, trust in the self published book industry would be restored and newspapers would be free to move on to something else to disrupt.

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Happy Birthday Douglas Adams

Google celebrated the late, great Douglas Adams' birthdate - he would have been 61 today had he lived - with an interactive front screen.  A less interactive version is provided here:

I've been a fan of Douglas's work since the early eighties - one of the guys who lived in the barrack block when I was based in Cyprus brought the cassette tape version of 'The Hitch Hikers' Guide To The Galaxy' and a group of us spent many a fun evening tanking up on Keo beer and rewinding the tape back to our personal favourite place.

I've lauded Douglas a few times on this blog, so it shouldn't be a surprise to regular visitors - I think Google, Wikipedia and Apple all owe Douglas a vote of thanks and, dare I say it, a chunk of royalties.  Anyway, for those who haven't caught up with my earlier blog entries about Douglas, here's a few links:

Google Was Invented By Douglas Adams - potentially a libellous statement, but I'm  sure the Google founders will forgive me.

The Chicken or the Egg?  My musings on why Steve Jobs and Apple owe Douglas a big thank you.  Obviously, because Douglas was a fervent aethiest, Steve can't thank him on the other side.

Are Tablets the Future or Just a Signpost? - a reflection on tablet computing with a reverential nod to Douglas.

If you've never read Douglas' work then there are the multifarious H2G2 books to get your teeth into and I can also recommend the Dirk Gently Holistic Detective Agency series too.  If you use a bit of Zen navigation to your favourite eBook store you should be able to find these books.

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I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

Why not take a look at my books and read up on my Biog here

Want to see what B L O'Feld is up to?  Take a look at his website here

Worried/Interested in the secretive world of DLFs?  Take a look at this website dedicated to DLFs here, if you dare!

Are Tablets the Future or Just a Signpost?

There's no doubt that tablets are coming into their own.  Compared to comparable technologies from the past their adoption has been nothing short of phenomenal.

Apple, of course, kicked it off with the iPad.  Well, if you ignore the tablet devices that were used on Star Trek, which I understand inspired the Kindle family that are now adding to the tablet expansion.  And definitely if you ignore the 1981 radio/book/TV and eventually cinematic phenomenon, the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.  I think Douglas Adams should really get some credit for inventing the genre, but hey, that's life, I guess.

So have we finished with the old forms of computing?  Well I suspect the bottom has fallen out of the desktop market to a significant degree.  Of course there's a lot of roles for computing that don't require portable devices and some would suggest that office equipment have their advantages for not being portable.  Plus, I think it's fair to say that although tablet screens can be fast, sharp and very intuitive with their capacitive stretch and slide they're also too small for some applications.

Now I'm a moderate computer user - in my day job I use Word, Excel, Outlook plus some proprietary programs.  As a preference I extend my desktop screen from my laptop computer to increase the real estate I can use as I often have multiple Word, Excel and Outlook windows open.  I could double the size on both screens and still want more.  Tablet screens are great if you're able to do just one task on a screen at a time, but true multi-tasking is currently a challenge for the genre.

I think that tablets will increase in functionality over the next year and we may start to see iPad+ sized screens arriving - the Microsoft Surface pushes the size boundaries slightly but loses something with its unusual screen format.  However, who knows what Surface 2 will look like? There will inevitably be a bleed across the technologies, and again the Surface has nodded towards this.  I don't think Microsoft have got it right, but I'm sure we're going to see a lot of innovation in the near future.

What would work for me would be a tablet computer I can take out to business meetings, capable of running   MS Office applications, connectable to a projector and able to run proprietary software.  Back at the office it would be able to hook up to a full keyboard and mouse plus a full size screen that is also a capacitative screen.  As a minimum it would be possible to use the extended screen setup in the same way I use my current setup, but able to drag windows across to other parts of the screen, stretch images to get a better detailed view and generally have an enhanced experience that brings the benefits of both paradigms.

Can Apple or Google deliver this level of functionality coupled with the security required of a business level computing system?  Of course, all it takes is cash and time.  Can they beat Microsoft to the table?  Unless they are working towards this standard already, and are quite a long way down the development route, probably not.  Will Microsoft regain its market position if it is the only company pursuing this route? Probably not fully and I expect that one or both of Apple and Google will be barking at Microsoft's shirt tails pretty soon anyway.

So tablets aren't the end-game, in my opinion, although I fully believe they are pointing towards the future. We're in for an exciting time ahead in the next two years and I think that all tablet makers should prepare their customers for the ride.  Taking a leaf out of Douglas Adams I would support all tablets sold from now on having the words 'Don't Panic' emblazoned across the front screen.  It might just help.

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I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

Why not take a look at my books and read up on my Biog here

Want to see what B L O'Feld is up to?  Take a look at his website here

Worried/Interested in the secretive world of DLFs?  Take a look at this website dedicated to DLFs here, if you dare!

The Chicken or the Egg?

I've read previously that the can opener was invented twenty-odd years before the can.  Quite a feat and very prescient.  It sounds unlikely, but the story has a certain persistence about it that makes it crop up time and again.  If true, someone was very good at predicting future developments.  Either that or there was this device and a surplus of fruit kicking around that didn't have a purpose so someone decided to create something that could use them both.

There's been a couple of reports floating around the web this week regarding the late, great Steve Jobs that also seem to precede events, like the invention of the can.  One relates to a cassette recording of an interview with Jobs, circa 1983 before he got the heave ho from Apple for not having the same vision as the rest of the board.  In the interview Jobs talks about a future where people would carry computers around like books, connected by wireless to larger databases.  He also rabbited on about music being stored on computers and the demise of bricks and mortar music shops.  All nonsense, of course, and  it should now be clear why the Apple board wanted shot of the man.  He was clearly loopy!

Another report is about a more recent alleged musing by Jobs, from just before he died (so far I haven't seen any reports of Jobs musing after he died, but don't hold your breath).  It's well known that  he was dismissive of a smaller sized iPad as he apparently believed it would be unusable.  I've found that position to be a bit strange in the past, given that he didn't stop the release of the iPod Touch which is essentially a very small iPad.  Anyway, with the imminent release of the iPad mini - I'm not going to forecast a date this time, it's very obvious that Apple are monitoring my predictions and changing the dates just to make me look less than efficient - Apple have released copies of emails that suggest Steve was coming around to the idea.  The email I saw wasn't actually from Steve, or to him either as far as I could tell, but was between two people who weren't and aren't Steve Jobs.  Anyway, the one writing the email says Steve had seemed to be more supportive of the idea than previously.  Actually it's possible that the opinion is absolutely correct while allowing Jobs to still be firmly against the whole concept as he really didn't like the idea initially, so any move away from wholesale denial could be seen as being more supportive. In fact I may send an email to someone I know - anyone I know - suggesting Steve didn't actually like the idea and release that on the net, just to prove a point.

But the significant parts of these alleged musings are the back stories.  The second one is so obvious, it makes me cringe.  Apple are about to launch the iPad mini (or nano possibly) and there is this statement by Jobs a couple of years ago saying that a 7 inch iPad isn't a good idea.  Since then there's been a raft of 7 inch tablets released that are eating into the Apple market, most notably the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Google Nexus 7.  Apple are left launching a device that Steve Jobs didn't think they should launch.  So they are releasing emails between themselves that indicate that Jobs was warming to the idea - if only he'd lived a bit longer he could have joined in the email trail and lent a bit of love.  Anyway, it doesn't matter, an iPad mini, if priced correctly, will sell like hot cakes for the very good reason that Steve was wrong.  Apple were wrong to ignore him in the eighties, but they don't need to keep on beating themselves up for that.  Launch the bloody device, why don't they?

But he was a prophet, surely?  Well I think it fair to say he had vision.  I was around and using computers in 1983 (well, by computers I'm talking about the Sinclair/Timex ZX81 and Spectrum machines) but I had the benefit of a similar exposure to glimpsing the future as Steve would have.  Because two years earlier a BBC production released a radio show that became a cult  book, a TV series and many years later, a film.  I suspect Steve Jobs would have been aware of the book if not the radio series.  For the two of you still furrowing your brows I'm talking about 'The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy'.  You know the one, written by the genius Douglas Adams who, like Steve Jobs, died way too young.  In the Hitchhikers - Douglas shortened it to H2G2 - it featured an electronic book that contained all the information anyone hitch-hiking their way around the galaxy needed.  Crucially the guide wasn't always accurate, in fact it was often downright inaccurate but that was seen as one of its redeeming features and is very reflective of the internet today.  If Steve Jobs hadn't clocked H2G2 then I'd be very surprised.  But I'm not being critical here - I was aware of H2G2, like tens of thousands of others, and I didn't start a journey that would ultimately result in an iPad.  Jobs did.

So, the can opener came before the can, H2G2 came before the iPad and the iPad mini almost certainly will have arrived before Steve Jobs became more supportive of the idea (although that one is going to be harder to prove, so I won't bother).  It's just the one about chickens and eggs that remains to be solved.  Any takers?

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Why not take a look at my books and read up on my Biog here

Want to see what B L O'Feld is up to?  Take a look at his website here

Worried/Interested in the secretive world of DLFs?  Take a look at this website dedicated to DLFs here, if you dare!

Createspace Progress for DLF

There's certain blog subjects that get more interest than others, in my limited experience.  Whenever I have flagged a bargain in the eReader department, for example, I seem to get rather a lot of hits.  I guess I'm not the only 'careful' person when it comes to eReaders and judging by the countries that pounce on those blog entries, it doesn't seem to matter if I state in the title that the deal relates just to the UK or not.  In fact the early readers of those blog entries seem to be mainly in the US - but Eastern Europe does roll its sleeves up quickly, too - and the target audience strolls along a day or so afterwards in the main.

The Project: Evil episodes seem to be attracting a reasonable amount of consistent traffic too, very satisfying that you guys are coming back for more and a little worrying as I've just got the little problem of finishing the book to crack on with.

And it seems that an awful lot of you are interested in data security judging by the amount of hits I got (and continue to get) for my blog entry What Does Your Data Say About You?

But many of the blog entries receive very little interest, compared to the rest - The Douglas Adams Invented Google piece sank without trace initially, although I've noticed it being picked up piecemeal on a daily basis.  And I'm not going to worry too much about my explanation of how Value Added Tax works - it's really meant as a piece of background for the very occasional person needing to understand that subject over time.  If it had been read a lot, I'd have started worrying about who was hitting the blog!

However, when I blogged about my intention to self publish DLF as a print option the other day I was quietly surprised to see it being picked up on almost as soon as I posted the blog.  Somehow I don't think it is all about an untapped interest in the book - I'd have to double check the numbers but I suspect there were more hits on the blog than I've had interest in the book itself on Amazon and Smashwords combined since I self published the eBook version on the day of the Royal wedding last year.

So I suspect that the interest is really more focused on the Createspace process itself.  I'm guessing that many of the readers of that blog were authors thinking about the process themselves - let's face it, there's a lot of us crowding out Amazon and Smashwords right now with our novels and I'm guessing that I'm not the only author a little confused by the Createspace instructions, which as I said in that blog are not that clear.

Since then I've dabbled a little with the submission and finally entered the data Createspace need to send me money in the (unlikely) event of my selling enough books to generate a royalty cheque.  The one piece I haven't done yet is submit for the US tax withholding - I used to do that every year for an American company I used to work for and know that although it isn't the hardest piece of admin around, it is a tad tiresome and needs to be done anew every year.  If I've understood the blurb correctly, Createspace will only think about sending me a cheque once I've accumulated more than $100 in royalties, which they'll charge me $8 for and, if I haven't filled in the tax forms by that point in time, less about another $30 which will be sent to the US taxman to help out with the deficit.  As I'm not actually expecting to sell many books, it could be a long time before that tax form is needed, so I'll just monitor the sales and submit it if and when I think I may need it.  In the unlikely event that my book is a runaway success in print I'll either take the tax bill on the chin or hire an accountant.  If you are an accountant, by all means lodge your details with me, but don't expect a call back real soon.

So, book uploaded, cover designed using their tools, postal address provided for the rare royalty cheque and all that seems left is the pricing.  This bit is made very easy - they tell you the minimum cost of the book based on the amount of pages and you decide how much it is going to be sold for.  Once you choose a price the software tells you how much you will earn per sale - you get more if a book is sold directly by Createspace estore, less if sold by Amazon.  You can set any price you like, as long as it is at least the minimum amount they have advised.  I've plumped for $8 - it seems like a reasonable amount, but it doesn't put me in too much danger of settling the US deficit single-handedly either.

For those of you thinking about using Createspace the critical information you're waiting for is the base price and how it relates to your own work of art.  Well, DLF  is about 70,000 words long and the base price come in at $5.69, so just scale up or down for your own book.

I'm now waiting for Createspace to advise me that I've done all the paperwork correctly - I'm writing this in the UK on a Sunday night and don't really expect there to be that many people in Createspace's offices to be working right now - and once I get the green light I can order my proof copy.  I'm expecting the postage to be a significant part of the costs, but will report when I know for certain how it stacks up.  I'll update in a future blog post on how efficient the process is, how long it takes for a book to turn up, what it looks like when held in my grubby little hands and whether I'm likely to need to fill that  tax form in.

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I can be followed on Twitter - @RayASullivan or email me on raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com

Visit my books on Amazon (for Kindle owners) and Smashwords (for access to all other formats and access to Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Sony and many other good ebookstores).

For quick access to the various Kindle, Kobo, WH Smith and Smashword links please use the table below to view my books

To View My books In....

Kindle US Store

Kindle UK Store

Kindle DE Store

Kindle FR Store

Kindle IT Store

Kindle ES Store

Smashwords

WH Smith

Kobo

Google Was Invented By Douglas Adams

It's taken a while to work it out, but Google have let the cat out of the bag.  They've launched a new project to solve potentially any problem, using radical thinking to address 'big' questions that need unusual solutions.  Such solutions may involve the development of radical new technology.

You can see why Google are keen on the concept - they've been pretty upfront about developing solutions to problems we didn't even know we had for some time now, at their own expense and often gifting the results to the planet - well, sort of gifting, anyway.

The Google Maps project was one such gift; the ability to see your own house without stepping outside is a solution to an unknown problem that we've all enjoyed - come on, of course you've looked up your own house, probably while sat in your own front room.  In the process you've probably also enjoyed the solution to the previously unknown problem of how you got from work/pub/shops to your house, again from your favourite seat.

And of course there are a few tertiary problems that Google maps have been used for - getting a gander at the hotel you're visiting for the first time so that you recognise it as you sail past at fifty miles an hour - at least you now know you've passed it; without knowing what it looked like, we all drove on for tens of miles previously.  The saving in fossil fuel since this was rolled out must be equivelant to the net worth of the Facebook IPO at least!

And of course as Google will know who you are looking at, and know where you are, they can develop cross selling intelligence for sale.

Then they invested in developing a driverless car - as science fiction-y as you could imagine.  I'm guessing here, but I reckon some of the drive (no pun intended) of the Google maps project was always inteded for the driverless car.  It's not as mature as their other projects yet, but I reckon a lot of car manufacturers are either talking to Google or trying to work out how they can do the same thing without having to pay too many licence fees to the giant.  When the cars become mainstream you won't need to do the virtual journey from the pub to home; your car can do it for you.

But the new project is aimed a bit higher than that - it's attempting to solve those problems that have previously been considered impossible - the moonshot problems as Google calls them.  Presumably the first item on their list will link all the way back to the Google Maps project I mentioned at the top of the blog - am I the only person to notice that all the Google Maps street views have black bin bags awaiting collection?  We only collect every other week in the UK, so that implies their drivers followed the bin wagons or something went statistically very wrong on the project.

So what has all this got to do with the late, lamented Douglas Adams?  Well, I hope most of you don't need reminding that Douglas was the author of The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, which featured a book that provided information on pretty much anything in the universe.  It didn't claim to be 100% accurate and as far as I know it didn't bother overmuch if its citations were a little tardy.  Which is why I prefer to think of your basic Google as the front-runner for the Hitch-Hikers Guide Earth-bound variant instead of the seemingly more obvious Wikipedia.

However the new project by Google, fantastic as it may sound, is actually a bit 'been there, done that', and again it's thanks to Douglas Adam's initiative.  Because he was doing this several years before he died an untimely death.  You can see what I mean here.

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I can be followed on Twitter - @RayASullivan or email me on raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com

Visit my books on Amazon (for Kindle owners) and Smashwords (for access to all other formats and access to Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Sony and many other good ebookstores).

For quick access to the various Kindle, Kobo, WH Smith and Smashword links please use the table below to view my books

To View My books In....

Kindle US Store

Kindle UK Store

Kindle DE Store

Kindle FR Store

Kindle IT Store

Kindle ES Store

Smashwords

WH Smith

Kobo