Category Archives: capitalism.

neat stuff for excess currency disposal.

by Marko Kloos

I spent the day plugging away at a new short story, putting a bookshelf together for Robin, playing with the kids, and talking to my family in Germany over Skype. (This was my mom’s first experience with the Interskypes, and the first time she has seen the grandkids since we came over with Quinn seven years ago, so she was a little overwhelmed.) All in all, it was a pretty good way to spend the day.

As announced, I have a few plugs for you—neat stuff I found on these here informational megaparkways that I think are worth the money.

  • For writing music, I’m greatly enjoying my latest find of Kerry Muzzey’s body of work. My favorite album of his is Music for the Body in the Bathtub, which is a dark, dramatic, and atmospheric soundtrack that forms sort of a narrative arc. It’s fantastic from start to finish. There’s also Trailer Music and Trailer Music 2, for more orchestral epic arrangements that are a little more varied in mood.
  • My Viable Paradise pal and critique partner Steve Kopka has a new kid novel out. It’s called Comet Jack, and it’s a cute and well-written story.
  • Local writer Jo Knowles’ YA novel Jumping Off Swings is on sale for the Kindle at the moment. Jo is published by Candlewick Press. I met her a while ago at a Q&A, and she’s a sweetheart and a fine writer. (I borrowed her storybook trick for plotting out novels, and it has served me well for the urban fantasy mystery I’m writing right now.)
  • Intertubes pal Carteach0 is holding a fundraiser to benefit the Wounded Warrior project. I know I’ll be putting in a donation. I’d love to contribute something to the fundraiser as well, but I can’t for the life of me come up with something that has value enough for people to want to bid on it.
  • Michael Z. Williamson’s new novel Rogue is now available for your purchasination. If you like good military SF, you’ll like Mike’s stuff. I really liked his novel The Weapon, and it looks like Rogue is a sequel of sorts. He was selling copies at DragonCon, and I’m too late to point you his way for that particular event, but Amazon is open 24/7.

That concludes the commercial recommendations for this evening. I may actually hit the hay early tonight, because we have visitors coming tomorrow, which requires bright-eyedness and bushy-tailedness on my part. Good night, imaginary Intertubes pals.

salvaged from the shipwreck of the s.s.borders.

by Marko Kloos

I know I said I wouldn’t participate in picking the bones of the local Borders clean…but then I saw that the liquidation company even put the fixtures up for sale.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been using a standing desk setup for the last few months. Right now, that setup is just a coffee table on top of my regular desk. I’ve been shopping around for proper standing desks, but they’re a.) extremely hard to find, b.) ridiculously expensive, or c.) half-assed constructions that aren’t very sturdy. I briefly considered building my own, but with my level of craftiness and power tool mastery, the result would have been likely to look like something hastily thrown together by beavers.

Luckily, my wife, smart cookie that she is, walked into Borders and checked out the furniture. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this myself, but they have those service desks all over the place–you know, the kind where employees and customers can look up books online. And they’re all <insert angelic choir background music> standing height. 

So Robin bought one, and I went back a week later and got another one. I won’t be able to pick them up until the shop closes for good (sometime in mid-September), but my temporary setup will serve until then.

The nice thing about those desks is that they’re ridiculously well built–no plywood $99 Staples furniture here. They’ve been used daily for ten years or more, and I couldn’t find a thing wrong with them. The drawers and doors are mounted with industrial-strength hinges and tracks that still work like they’re on ball bearings. There’s some finish wear at the corners, but I can sand the desks down and refinish them. Considering their build quality, we got them for pennies on the dollar–they were cheaper than anything I could have picked up in the bargain corner of the furniture section at Staples.

This is the pair, each shot from two different angles. The second desk has a non-slip black work surface which is at the same height as the keyboard shelf of the first desk, so they’ll go side by side. I’ll use the computer desk for the Mac, and the desk with the black surface inlay for longhand and typewriter work.

So there you have it–dirt-cheap standing furniture, and a sort of durable souvenir from Borders. I told the furniture manager that I should have marked and tracked down my regular seat in the cafe, because we go way back. (I wrote a significant chunk of my word count since early 2008 in that Seattle’s Best Coffee.)

probably my last entry ever on borders books.

by Marko Kloos

This article on the decline and fall of Borders—and the management decisions that were the direct cause of them—is a very good read, and a glimpse into the corporate mindset I’ve come to loathe after working under it for a while as a tech monkey.

The money paragraph deals with Borders’ absolutely bone-headed decision to outsource their online business to their competitor Amazon.com:

In 2001, Borders would go on to partner with Amazon.com, allowing the online book retailer to handle their internet sales for them, if you can believe it. There’s a photo of Jeff Bezos and then-Borders president and CEO Greg Josefowicz shaking hands to celebrate the partnership. Josefowicz has weatherman hair and a broad smile, and he’s beaming past the camera with the cocksure giddiness of a guy who thinks he just got rid of all his problems because he sold his dumb old cow for a handful of really cool magic beans. But when you pull your eyes away from Josefowicz’s superheroic chin, you notice that Jeff Bezos is smiling directly into the camera with keen shark eyes. His smile is more relaxed, a little more candid than Josefowicz’s photo-op-ready grin. It’s the face of someone who’s thinking, I finally got you, you son of a bitch.

In the last year, I’ve split my new book purchases evenly between hardcopy from the local Borders, and online and ebook orders via Amazon.com and B&N.  Now that Borders is history, and there isn’t a major bookstore left within 75 miles of here, it will be more like 90% via ebooks on my Kindle, and 10% via impulse buys at the local indie book store in West Leb. (What can I say? Getting books I want in 60 seconds via 3G while watching the kids at the playground really appeals to my Instant Gratification gland, and the Kindle is a slick device that makes it easy to haul around a stack of books.)

ebooks and pricing.

by Marko Kloos

Here’s an interview with author Zoe Winters on ebook pricing.  She feels that the $0.99 ebook doesn’t make enough money for the author, and contributes to the “WalMartization” of literature.

The figures she quotes are interesting.  Amazon takes a huge cut of the book’s price at that price point–their royalties model encourages authors to price their books at the $2.99 threshold or above, beyond which the author gets 70%.  At $0.99, it’s just 30%.  If I were to put out, say, Terms of Enlistment as an ebook, I’d have a lot of incentive to price it at $2.99 a copy–even though I wouldn’t sell as many books, I’d probably earn more money than if I priced it at a buck a book.  My personal yardstick for “reasonable” is $2.99-$5.99 for a novel, and $0.99 for a novella or short story collection.  (That’s what I don’t mind paying, although I’ve purchased ebooks from proven and established authors at higher price points.)

What’s your opinion on ebook pricing?  What’s a price you don’t mind paying without thinking long and hard about it?

looking to hire: graphics wizzo.

by Marko Kloos

Robin needs a professionally designed logo and letterhead graphic for her business.  I know there are some graphics types out there among my readership, so I’m posting a job of sorts.  It’s just a one-time freelance gig, but it pays.  The person who gets the job will have to communicate with Robin via email regarding design ideas and changes.

If you’re interested, send an email to marko dot kloos at gmail dot com.  Please include your professional background, some samples if you have them, and your fee requirements.

pen pimpage.

by Marko Kloos

Latest in the series of “Let Me Help You Spend Your Money On Trinkets” posts comes a pointer to my favorite online pen dealer, JetPens.  They now have the Pilot 78G in stock, which is the best low-cost fountain pen I know.  It’s made in Japan, and has a very fine yet very smooth nib.  The 78G comes with a built-in converter that lets you fill it from a bottle, but it also takes Pilot-type ink cartridges. 

If you’ve been looking for something nicer than a $1.50 ballpoint from Staples, here’s a really good pen that writes great and won’t break the bank at $12 and change.  I’ve ordered from JetPens many times, and they’ve always had my stuff in my mailbox two days later, even though they’re a.) on the other coast, and b.) shipping their stuff First Class.  It’s magic, or something.  (I don’t get a cut or any freebies for mentioning them—I’m merely a happy customer.)

some minor ipad pimpage.

by Marko Kloos

Apple came out with the iPad 2 today, and to completely suck the oxygen from the room for all other tablet PC competitors, they’re blowing out the old iPad models with hefty discounts.

How hefty?  A hundred bucks off on the base 16GB WiFi iPad (now $399 on Apple’s Clearance page.)  If you want to go even cheaper, they also sell refurbished models of the same specification for $349.  The refurbs come with new outer shells and batteries, so they’re just as good as new models.

If you’ve been waiting to pull the trigger on one of them iPad thingies, but you didn’t want to drop half a grand on one, now might be a good time to get one.  Here at Castle Frostbite, we’ve all been enjoying the 32GB WiFi iPad we bought last year–it really is a terrific little device, tons of fun and surprisingly useful.  (I’ve even written a few novel chapters and short story bits on it.)

grabbing what you can, because you can.

by Marko Kloos

Verizon now carries the iPhone.  Unlike AT&T, they offer unlimited data plans, but there’s a bit of a catch.  If you’re among their top 5% of data users, they reserve the right to throttle your bandwidth for the rest of your billing period (presumably after you’ve reached a certain data download threshold.)

This is an interesting question for those who favor equal access at equal cost for services like healthcare.  If Customer A and Customer B both pay for the “unlimited” data plan, and Customer B uses ten times as much bandwidth as Customer A, is it fair to impose such a limitation on Customer B to make sure Customer A gets his share of the bandwidth?  Conversely, is it fair to Customer A to be paying exactly what Customer B is paying, while only using a tenth of the resources?  Whose interests have precedence here—Customer A’s right to get his fair share of the resources, or Customer B’s right to use the promised “unlimited” data as he sees fit?

Now, Verizon is a private business, and they can set whatever terms they want.  Customers have the choice to either purchase data plans from them, or go to the competition.  Think about your answers to the questions above.  What if it wasn’t a private company, but a public service, bankrolled by tax money?  Is your answer the same?

When you’re talking about stuff like universal health care, you have to sooner or later acknowledge the problem of unequal use of resources.  If we all pay into the tax pot to the same proportional degree, what is to be done about those 5% of users who use a hugely disproportionate slice of the services?  Some may need them, some may just use them because “I ‘m paying for it, and I want to get my money’s worth out of it.”  When you remove the financial penalty associated with frivolous excessive use of a public resource, then there’s no incentive to limit the use of that resource.

A public system of services doesn’t mean you magically have an unlimited supply of a commodity.  Public and private entities alike have to deal with excessive consumption.  In both systems, you have to ultimately put someone in charge to decide what’s excessive and what isn’t, and come up with disincentives for the “getting my money’s worth” customers.  What you’re doing in both cases is rationing the (limited) supply of bandwidth/MRIs/whatever. 

That’s the snag you hit when you look at a finite and limited resource like health care, and you want to put together a system that dispenses that resource equally and fairly.  I dislike the anecdote-driven arguments from the pro-universal health care folks who share stories of people dying because they couldn’t afford to go see a doctor, but who hardly ever acknowledge that yes, even with universal health care, you have to have a pencil pusher deciding who gets that MRI or cancer treatment first…or whether you need it at all.

my take on commercial success vs. critical acclaim.

by Marko Kloos

When I posted that question two days ago, there was a motivation behind it.

The movie I reviewed a few days back, Let Me In, was pretty much a bomb at the box office.  On its first weekend, it took in only $5 million, which isn’t good for a flick that opened on over 2,000 screens.  Analysts say the reason for the low number was threefold:

  1. The crucial young audience (17-25) wasn’t interested in a movie with tween protagonists.
  2. The Tween audience wasn’t able to see it because it’s rated R.
  3. The older audience (30+) doesn’t like seeing kids that young as protagonists in a movie with scary/violent subject matter.

So, it didn’t do so well, despite the fact that it’s a very, very good movie.  (I must not be alone in my assessment, because it currently holds a great 87% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and has been showered with almost universal critical acclaim.

Now, here’s the deal: I know it’s a better movie than the Twilight flicks.  It’s smart, well-acted, and offers a whole new and original take on an otherwise tired subgenre.  As a piece of storytelling, it’s in a whole different league.  Yet the Twilight films each made about twenty times what this one brought in, so the all-important wallet vote went to the formulaic, badly acted, corny drivel, for reasons that have very little to do with the artistic merit of the films in question.  By all my personal categories for good fiction and well-crafted storytelling, the flick that bombed is far superior to the one that rakes in the money.

Does that make me one of those snobby people who walk around wearing turtlenecks and huffing, “You peasants just don’t know how to appreciate art?”

I mean, commercial success is all well and good, and yes, I have heard (and used) the Heinlein quote that “the only criticism that counts has the words PAY TO THE ORDER OF written on it.”  I like currency, and without commercial success, art is little more than self-indulgent navel-gazing.  But I would have no pride in making a product that I personally consider inferior and generic, even if it makes me so much money that I can afford a different Bentley for every day of the year.

At the end of the day, I guess I’d rather be the guy who directed Let Me In than the guy who directed Twilight:Eclipse.  I guess that when push comes to shove, I’d choose the “Critical Acclaim” camp, if it’s the acclaim of the critic that matters most to me…the one between my ears. 

Snobby? Elitist? Idealistic? Stupid?

the rat will turn you upside down and shake out all your money.

by Marko Kloos

News from Orlando: Admittance to the Rat Kingdom will now be an arm, a leg, two years of indentured servitude, and half your first-born.

Holy cow, I did not realize how much it actually costs to go see Mickey for a weekend.  A family of four needs to come up with some serious scratch once you consider airfare, rental, meals, admission, souvenirs, snacks…

Financially, it would be much easier on our family treasury to see the family in Germany for three weeks than to go get mugged by Mickey and Goofy for a long weekend.  Hell, for that kind of cash, I could have a fun weekend in the Big Apple, drinking expensive hooch while snorting foot-long lines of primo Bolivian Marching Powder off a squad of high-dollar call girls.