Tag: amazon

Keywords: Jeff Bezos, Amazon, Washington Post, circulation, problems.

Sorry about the title, but I want to make sure that Jeff Bezos – more accurately, his research team – sees this post. Mind you, I’m assuming that Bezos plans to introduce the Amazon customer service paradigm to the Washington Post, but surely this is not an unreasonable assumption, hey?

Anyway, on to the purpose for this post. The Washington Post is doing it again – and by ‘doing it again’ I mean ‘trying to recreate its macaca high from 200[6] by trying to incite another controversy about a Republican.’ Ed Driscoll has the details:

“The Washington Post Has a Fever, and the Only Cure is More Ted Cruz Birtherism,” Ace writes at the Breitbart.com group blog. “It’s breathtaking,” he notes, and really, you do have to see the post to believe it, since it features screen shots of over a dozen Ted Cruz birther-related stories, which if I’m looking at the date stamps correctly, all ran over the course of only one or two days at the Post.

Continue reading Keywords: Jeff Bezos, Amazon, Washington Post, circulation, problems.

Because of your patronage, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos now has…

…Apollo 11 rocket engines:

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos rescued sunken treasure in the Atlantic this year: components of two F-1 rocket engines. Now he says he has verified that they are engines from Apollo 11, the first mission that took U.S. astronauts to the moon.

The timing, as Bezos is aware, is appropriate. Saturday is the anniversary of the 1969 moon landing.

“44 years ago tomorrow Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, and now we have recovered a critical technological marvel that made it all possible,” Bezos wrote on his blog.

[pause]

I can’t say that I’m upset about that, honestly. Just remember, Jeff: those belong in a museum.

More on Apple and the Mighty Anti-Trust Hammer of Maximum Fun.

The entire post by BeldarBlog analyzing the law decision behind Apple’s antitrust spanking is well worth perusing in full, so do so. But here’s a taste.

[Apple CEO Steve] Jobs was bragging in public about the price-fixing conspiracy that his company had organized and executed to fix ebook prices. The reason the publishers were threatening to withhold their books from Amazon altogether was because that was the key term in the conspiracy that Apple was proposing. Unless Amazon agreed to knuckle under to the “agency pricing” model that Apple wanted (because it would eliminate retail price competition in ebooks, to Apple’s benefit, and let Apple compete with Amazon on the basis of hardware, never price) — Amazon wouldn’t be able to sell ebooks at any price.

———–

This whole fact pattern would never make a good exam question in an antitrust course in law school. It’s way too easy. There’s an arsenal of smoking guns. It’s like no one at Apple ever heard of the Sherman Act.

Continue reading More on Apple and the Mighty Anti-Trust Hammer of Maximum Fun.

Time to bore you with another computer post…

…with any luck it’ll be the last time. Amazon is just going to replace the whole dang thing, with no shipping charges*, the new computer will be here tomorrow, hopefully this one won’t have a defective motherboard.

Gotta say: there’s something to be said for economies of scale.  Now I just gotta figure out how to save all my bookmarks, then wipe all the passwords, cookies, yadda yadda.

Moe Lane

*Amazon has a somewhat hardcore attitude about customer service, it seems.  We’ll send you a new one now; just get the old one back to us within a week. Yes, free shipping.  Yes, we’re wonderful.  Mind you, if I didn’t send back the old unit they’d probably just charge my credit card or something, so there’s that.

So if you’re thinking of signing up for Amazon Prime’s Instant Video service…

…ANYWAY, well, here’s a handy link to do that: Amazon Instant Video.  I’m not saying that you have to, or even that it’s smart for you do it (although I like Amazon Prima a lot and it saves us a good bit of money over the year); just that, if you were thinking of doing it, going through that link will toss a little something extra in my pocket… and at no cost to you.

Moe Lane Continue reading So if you’re thinking of signing up for Amazon Prime’s Instant Video service…

Scenes from the e-book wars: McArdle/Scalzi, not that they’re really arguing *with* each other.

[UPDATE: One of my readers made an observation that made me think of a question: if John Scalzi doesn’t like getting paid for fanfic, why did he write Redshirts? – Great book, by the way.]

Situation:

Get ready for Kindle Worlds, a place for you to publish fan fiction inspired by popular books, shows, movies, comics, music, and games. With Kindle Worlds, you can write new stories based on featured Worlds, engage an audience of readers, and earn royalties. Amazon Publishing has secured licenses from Warner Bros. Television Group’s Alloy Entertainment for Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries, with licenses for more Worlds on the way.

Point (Megan McArdle):

It’s a brilliant and even fair solution.  Some writers are better world-builders than others; why not let them profit off of their imaginations, while also compensating the folks who can do interesting things within that world?  Of course, some fan fiction purists may be disappointed in the control that this will give the world-builders over what is done with their work.  Amazon will not, for example, publish pornographic or highly explicit fiction.  Under those rules, 50 Shades of Grey would never have been published; it started out as slash fiction set in the Twilight universe.

Still, as a writer I’m always glad to see more ways to compensate writers.  And as a business writer, I’m excited to see how much innovation is taking place in this new market.

Counter-point (John Scalzi):

…I suspect this is yet another attempt in a series of long-term attempts to fundamentally change the landscape for purchasing and controlling the work of writers in such a manner that ultimately limits how writers are compensated for their work, which ultimately is not to the benefit of the writer. This will have far-reaching consequences that none of us really understand yet.

The thing that can be said for it is that it’s a better deal than you would otherwise get for writing fan fiction, i.e., no deal at all and possibly having to deal with a cranky rightsholder angry that you kids are playing in their yard. Is that enough for you? That’s on you to decide.

Continue reading Scenes from the e-book wars: McArdle/Scalzi, not that they’re really arguing *with* each other.

Some free tactical advice for hostile Amazon reviewers.

If you want to seriously hurt a book’s reputation with a negative review on Amazon.com, a few good ground rules.

  1. Learn to spell.
  2. Learn to write.
  3. Make doubly sure that the title of your review shows that you’ve mastered 1. & 2.
  4. Don’t tell people that your review is based on other reader reviews of the book that you didn’t read.
  5. Don’t tell people that your review is based on what a bunch of critics said about the book that you didn’t read.
  6. Don’t tell people that your review is based on a totally cool lecture made by the author of the book that you didn’t read.
  7. Don’t tell people that your review is based on a flip-through at the bookstore of the book that you didn’t read.
  8. In fact – and I don’t believe that I have to write this – don’t tell people that you haven’t read the book.
  9. Read the book.
  10. Lastly, remember: the only thing a political writer values more than a good review of his book is a badly-spelled, badly-written, moderately incoherent negative review written by somebody who clearly felt stung by the mere existence of the author’s book in the local space-time continuum.  Honestly, people: spluttering oppositional froth = more sales.

Just wanted to get that out.

Moe Lane

A public service announcement for my lurkers and personal trackers.

No, I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have ’em: I write for a major conservative weblog and I am a gleefully-annoying, startlingly-relevant, revolving son-of-a-bitch on wheels on my own hook.  False modesty is nice, but counter-productive in this case.

Anyway… those lurkers/trackers have a problem.  It’s the day before the New Year, and this year’s Amazon take is noticeably below par for the Christmas season.  While this may not be exactly surprising, given that retail sales this Christmas sucked, that will not really help the Left when I start writing needle-vicious posts about how genuinely awful Barack Obama is at generating retail sales* – to say nothing of the rest of the Democratic party, of course.  It’ll be fun… but, alas for me: if it turns out that I generated more referral fees this December after all then there’s not that all-important personal anecdotal evidence that the best pundits use to justify their partisan wrangling.

So.  Here you go, ye lurkers and personal trackers: Amazon.com.  The Cause DEMANDS that you let loose your inner faux-Keynes and spend some of your personal cash in a fashion that profits me.  If you don’t, then whatever happens next is your fault and your responsibility.  Sp start that spending!  – And, remember, this is what happens when you self-objectify yourself; you end up getting used by people with actual self-respect.  Weird how that works out, huh?

Moe Lane

PS: No, I have no intention of telling you what your target number is.  Best to spend as much as possible, yesno?

*Or, indeed, at anything besides getting Barack Obama re-elected dirty.