Welch's Rarebits (cont.)

The Battle of $9.99: How Apple, Amazon, and the Big Six Publishers Changed the E-Book Business Overnight (Kindle Single) by Andrew Richard Albanese | LibraryThing:

I suppose everyone who follows the book business now has made some kind of judgment about the tug-of-wat between Apple, Amazon, and the legacy publishers.  (Full disclosure:  I got $145 in the ebook settlement, which was used immediately to get more ebooks through Amazon.)   Some people seem to adore Apple who can do no wrong, others (while reading and typing on their computers) refuse to ever read off a screen, and still others (me included) love ebooks and Amazon, which started the ebook revolution.

Admittedly, I’m an early adopter and read off my Palm and later even purchased a Rocket Book ereader (it still works but has been superseded.)  I remain puzzled by what may be a uniquely American trait that is to begin to denigrate and fear success:  big business,  Walmart, B&N and Borders (until they tanked), agribusiness, big farms (be they family or otherwise) , MIcrosoft, K-Mart,  Sears and Montgomery Ward (until they tanked); the list goes on. Personally, I love Amazon. They are successful because they do things well. When they cease to perform, or someone does it better,  I’ll abandon them.

Just before the iPad was released, a high-ranking Apple executive was charged with the task of creating an ebook bookstore. Despite Steve Jobs’ earlier predictions that no one would ever read an ebook, Amazon had released the Kindle and it had become wildly successful. Others had had similar opportunities, but only Jeff Bezos had the foresight to link the Kindle to an online store with wireless (and free) access to a huge selection of books. And, he priced bestsellers at $9.99, a brilliant strategy similar to what other retailers have always done, a form of loss-leader. Jobs wanted to copy that success with the iPad as the device of choice. But he wanted to collect more money.  In a move that brought down the wrath of anti-trust regulators, the Apple folks corralled all the major publishers (except Random House) and persuaded them to adopt the “agency” model even though the publishers would get less money. (Under the Amazon model, Amazon purchased the ebooks from the publishers at whatever discount the publisher offered, as with print books, and then sold the ebooks for whatever price they wanted, also as with print books, as all bookstores did.



 Apple was very smart in recognizing what the legacy publishers feared - rightly or not - that pricing the books at $9.99 might devalue their profitable hardcover distribution system, so they invented the agency mechanism. Under this system, Apple (and they argued Amazon) would have to sell the ebooks at the price determined by the publisher and act as distributor only rather than reseller.

 <i>Walsh’s message underscored the degree to which the publishing community at large had grown to fear Amazon’s pricing. Under the agency model, most authors stood to lose money, as their royalties would now be paid as a percentage of the publishers’ smaller agency cut. In records cited by the government, Macmillan concluded that “the royalty payment for each sale of an e-book with the corresponding hardcover list price of $26.99 fell from $4.04 under wholesale to $2.28 under agency,” for example. And for a $14.99 trade paperback, “the decline was from $2.25 to $1.75.” The math looked like this for the agency model: For a hardcover priced at $30, publishers would set the consumer price at the top tier, $14.99. Minus Apple’s 30% commission, publishers would net about $10.50. Under the wholesale model with Amazon, with a 50% discount, they netted $15.</i>

<i>“Jobs [had] insisted that Apple e-books be priced lower than physical books and “competitively with other e-book retailers.” Unlike Amazon, Apple would not tolerate losing money on any e-book sale, a philosophy consistent with its existing digital content business. Each e-book sale would have to generate a “single-digit net profit” for Apple.” </i>  Ironically, Walmart and some other box stores were selling the Steve Jobs hardcover biography  for less than the Amazon ebook price.

 It’s no spoiler to reveal that this joint move by Apple and the legacy publishers that forced Amazon to adopt the agency model was ruled illegal and a violation of antitrust through monopolistic price manipulation result in substantial settlements to consumers.  Apple didn’t settle preferring to go it alone in court, but they have lost all the court decisions to date.  Their ebook store has never had close to the success of Amazon’s despite their refusal to permit in-app purchases for all of the ebook apps (including Kobo, Nook, and Kindle)  used on Apple devices.  Apple’s case was not helped by several comments he made in public and in emails regarding the pricing battle, comments the general counsel for Simon & Schuster called, “incredibly stupid.”

But Apple’s persuasive powers were incredible. “With that, Apple had pulled off a remarkable feat. [Their] business proposal was simply too extraordinary. Not only did it involve a business model foreign to publishing, it included price protections for Apple and less revenue per e-book sale for the publisher. Although Random House remained unsigned, Apple had successfully negotiated identical retail agreements with five of the six largest U.S. trade publishers in less than two weeks. Strikingly, at the time they signed their deals, none of the publishers had yet to even see an iPad or an Apple e-books app. In fact, Apple developers hadn’t even begun working on the Apple e-bookstore until mid-December. “  The iPad wasn’t released until  January.  No one had even seen it.

The myopia of the Authors Guild and some legacy authors never ceased to amaze me.  Rather than attacking ebooks, as they did early on, they should have been going after the used book market and libraries which bring them zero revenue.  Ebooks can’t be resold and never go out-of-print, and had the potential to bring them much   more revenue assuming they could work out reasonable contract with their publisher (not an easy thing as many have discovered.)  But the need of the legacy publishers to support an existing infrastructure by doing things the way they always had, won over early on. (The substantial revenue they are now getting from ebooks has greatly tempered their fear.)  And to support the publishers in the fight over agency made no sense for the authors it represented since they were guaranteed *less* under the agency model.



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The Bunker by James P. O'Donnell | LibraryThing:









By this time, Hitler was just a shell of his former presence, sick and suffering what might have been Parkinson’s given the tremor in his left hand which he hid; or it could have been damage from the several assassination attempts or even the foul air in the bunker complex which had walls sixteen feet thick and was buried under thirty feet of earth.  (Speer claims he attempted to assassinate Hitler himself by spreading poison gas into the ventilation ducts, but was foiled by his inability to get the right material.) <i> “Hardbitten front-line veterans like Generals Heinrici, Krukenberg, Weidling, and Reimann, summoned to the bunker, regarded it as a madhouse being run by the inmates. On one occasion, General Helmuth Weidling arrived in trepidation. It was April 25, and he had been told that Hitler had just ordered that he be taken out and shot.”</i>

I can’t resist recounting the story of General Fegelein.  Married to Eva Braun’s sister, Gretl, (if only his name had been Hansel, it would have been perfect) who, by this time, was close to delivering their child, he was a womanizer and wasn’t stupid enough to hang around the bunker for the Red Army. (He wasn’t  *that* bright as we’ll soon see.)  He dabbled with escaping and at one point even made it to Himmler’s bunker some ninety miles north of Berlin where Himmler, much to Hitler’s anger, was attempting to negotiate a peace with the allies through the Swedes.



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Death Benefits (Rachel Gold Mystery) by Michael A. Kahn | LibraryThing:

Excellent story. I am becoming a big fan of Michael Kahn and Rachel Gold. In this second of the series, Rachel is again hired by her old firm to represent one of their clients since they have a potential conflict of interest. The firm's St. Louis managing partner, Stoddard Anderson,  committed suicide, his body having been found in a hotel near the airport following a four day period when he was completely missing.

There is a quirk in Missouri law that prevents an insurance company from not paying out a life insurance claim in case of suicide, but the insurance company need not pay an accidental death rider if the deceased was sane at the time of his death.  If he was ruled insane, or not in his right mind,  then the death could be ruled accidental so Rachel has the difficult task of deciding for the widow, her client, if Anderson was insane at the time when he slit his wrists.  His firm certainly does not want the possibility that their managing partner was insane raised in the press.  That might not go well with clients.  The insurance policy had a triple indemnity rider in case of accidental death. “If he was insane at the time he committed suicide, then his death would be deemed an accident under Missouri law, and the carrier would have to pay an additional one-point-four million dollars in death benefits.”   The case gets even more bizarre when Rachel discovers that Stoddard might have been instrumental in smuggling  an ancient Mexican artifact worth millions.

I love Kahn’s cynical view of the law.  Here’s his take on insurance law: “There are trial lawyers out there—thousands—who make their living litigating the meaning of terms in insurance policies. One of the mysteries of the law is the way that basic words—words as hard and precise as cut diamonds—become warm saltwater taffy when inserted at critical points in insurance policies. Because millions of dollars can hinge on a court's explication of one of the Four Horsemen of the Insuring Clause—“sudden,” “unexpected,” “occurrence,” and “loss”—entire law firms have been built on the legal fees paid by insurance companies, to say nothing of the cottage industry of legal publishers and law school professors that have been feasting at the insurance trough for years.”

Benny is a great character who adds a nice scatological and humorous touch, and Rachel has a wonderful no-nonsense view of things.  The way she handles  two guys in a Porsche who hit on her is priceless.

Interestingly, in each of the Rachel Gold books I have read so far, there is a code that Rachel must solve to get to the bottom of the mystery.  My only complaint, and it’s a small one, is that there is more mystery than legal drama, but I quibble.  Good series.



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Morning Frost by James Henry | LibraryThing:


The title is, of course, a pun.



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The Long Drunk by Eric Coyote | LibraryThing:

I decided to review this at the request of the author who sent me a free copy. My first impression was that the cover is awful. [Checking recently, I noticed it had been changed.] The book’s description seems to pander to a particular audience segment, “Set in the gutters, bars, and alleys of Venice, California, this darkly comic crime/detective saga is filled with sex, violence, booze, and plenty of foul street talk,” a segment  that wouldn't necessarily exclude me, but it’s not a description that would make the book leap on to my TBR list either.

OK, now putting aside all that crap.  I  liked this book.  The premise is that Murphy, a homeless drunk (“I’m not stupid, just a drunk,”) former NFL player with a Super Bowl ring suffering from multiple concussions and numerous injuries, is swept up in a police raid to discover if any of the homeless in Venice, CA, might have seen something of use to them in their investigation of a car shooting. Murphy is forced to leave his companion Rottweiler, Betty Bonaparte (because she can take bones apart,) while he’s in jail. After his release  he searches frantically for Betty  Just as he sees her across a highway, the dog runs to him and is hit by a lady in an SUV (talking on a cell phone, of course) who runs the light.  Gathering up Betty into a shopping cart, Murphy runs four miles to the nearest vet hospital he knows of where he learns that Betty might survive but will need hip surgery. She also has lymphoma that will require chemotherapy, all to the tune of $15,000.  (The scene with the compassionate vet and Murphy is very well done.)  Learning that a $25,000 reward has been posted for the killer in the drive-by, Murphy figures he has to solve the crime to earn the reward so he can pay for his dog’s surgery.

Coyote uses Murphy's homelessness to poke not so gentle fun at the foibles of the rich that surround him. Using Raymond Chandler's books as a guide, he detects by asking questions. It was interesting to read some of the negative reviews on Amazon, which focused on the rather sad aspects of Skid Row  and “the depths to which people can sink.”  Ironically, it’s the “bums” and unfortunates that have more character than those in the book who haven’t had to resort to living off society’s detritus. How realistic the portrayal might be I don’t know.






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Superbia 2 (Book 2 of the Superbia Series) by Bernard Schaffer | LibraryThing:




On the other hand, if you want a  fun, driving, read, however, this series is a good choice.



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Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate by Rose George | LibraryThing:















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Hit Me (A John Keller novel) by Lawrence Block | LibraryThing:

The Keller hitman series lends itself well to a short story format and that is what we have here, a collection of episodes or stories connected by a character.  Often this means that the reader suffers through some repetition of background details.  And stamps.  And then more stamps.

Keller now lives in New Orleans and where he has a successful business remodeling and flipping homes after Katrina.  He’s married to Julia and has a child, Jennie, whom he loves and dotes on.  Then Dot, his old “hit” contact, calls and offers him a job,  The business having slacked off a little because of the subprime crisis, and wanting to add some rare and exotic stamps to his collection, Keller, with full knowledge of his wife (who gets “hot” when told of his exploits -- something I found truly abhorrent), heads off to other cities to fulfill the contract (and buy stamps.)  Each case is unique and brings its own challenges.  I liked the one at sea the best.

I like the series and in the past eagerly read all of Block, but Keller’s nonchalance about killing has begun to grate, not to mention Julia’s complicity in its rationalization.  Keller’s greatest moral challenge is now which stamp to buy.  The book does have some of the classic repartee between Dot and Keller that continues to make the book fun and interesting.

Of course, if you don’t like stamp collecting you won’t like Keller.



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Pattern of Wounds (A Roland March Mystery) by J. Mark Bertrand | LibraryThing:






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Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of The Vulgar Boatman:

I’ve read many of Tapply’s books and regret his passing.  I’ll continue until I’ve read all of them.  This happens to be one of the early ones I had missed.  (They needn’t be read in order.)

Tom Baron has a problem.  He's running for governor when his son's girlfriend is found dead with cocaine in her body and his son has disappeared, obviously a person of interest for the cops.  So he calls his lawyer, Brady Coyne, who very reluctantly agrees to help look for the son. Never one to bend the rules Brady happens on a trail that may very well test his friendship with Tom and throw the gubernatorial race into turmoil.  Reluctant to participate in what’s normally better done by the police, Brady is dragged into researching some things he’d rather not know about.

I only wish there had been more legal shenanigans.

The more exciting moments are leavened by Tapply’s prosaic view of the law: ;“I spent the next hour or so on the phone, doing the things that make the legal profession exciting. I set up two luncheon meetings with attorneys for the next week, I declined an invitation to serve on an ad hoc committee for the Bar Association. I checked back with the Coast Guard, which had not found Frank Paradise’s boat. I reconfirmed my golf date with Charlie McDevitt. I called a travel agent about a junket to the Madison River in Montana. I touched base with a few clients. A thrill a minute. Real Perry Mason stuff. 



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Another excellent Jesse Stone written by Michael Brandman. Paradise is being overrun by a Los Angeles film company and Jesse witnesses an accident caused by a rich teenager who was texting and ran a stop sign. Leading off with the classic, "Do you know who I am?" arrogance, she's the daughter of a wealthy contributor to the DA's election campaign so the charges Jesse files don't stick very well, and he makes it his mission to make her life a bit miserable. (All in the guise of doing what’s best for the poor little troubled girl so misunderstood by her parents -- a theme I found beyond fanciful.)



I’ve listened to all of these post-Parker Jesse Stone novels and the reader is very good. They’re all pure fantasy, however, not to be confused in any way with real life.  But that’s OK.

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Nicely read by James Naughton.



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