June 14 2014: Where book publishing is concerned, we do—indeed—live in interesting times. But, they are also incredibly confusing. So, what to do? Well, a good start is to find a few people who seem to know their way around this exciting, but treacherous, world. They won’t know everything, or be right about everything, but even a few nuggets of accuracy beat ignorance.

The future of art will be a lot like the past: Having the freedom to do what you love, doing it with abandon, until you get so good at it that someone else loves what you do.

Hugh C. Howey

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THE PUB 2014

Photo is by my talented sister, Lucy Ayettey Lyons

I happen to like this world of ours a great deal—it is nothing if not entertaining—but I have to admit that it is damnably hard to find out the truth of things. By this, I don’t mean the absolute truth—I’m not that naive—but more a sufficient sense of things to avoid the more serious pitfalls.

This modest ambition is difficult because a great deal of what people tell you just isn’t true. This does not necessarily mean they are lying—although that’s a possibility you’d be wise not to exclude. It may simply mean that they, too, have been misinformed, and are just passing it on. Or it may just be that they are embarrassingly and woefully ignorant.

Whatever be the reality, it is a good idea not to call people liars—especially in a gun culture like the U.S.

In my experience, agents and traditional publishers certainly don’t tell the truth—the fact they market fiction seems to have rubbed off on them—though the good news is that they rarely wear guns. That said, you never know. But the bottom line is that I have no good advice—other than “watch your step” where traditional publishing is concerned.

As for indie publishers, they come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of integrity—so you might well strike it lucky there.

But if you are brave enough to strike out on your own—and you will certainly need courage—then here are a two names worth tracking who seem to be willing to speak truth to vested interests—and are well worth reading:

• DAVID GAUGHRAN
• HUGH HOWEY

 

 

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June 13 2014: If Communism was the bogeyman of the second half of the 20th Century, what is the overarching threat to the U.S. now? Terrorism? A Middle East caliphate? Russia gone rogue? China? In my opinion, something entirely different—the current American Business Model as practiced by the ultra rich.

Capitalism vs. Crony Capitalism

April 23, 2014

Many people who decry capitalism do so from a position of ignorance of what capitalism really is. They look at the market system that exists in the U.S. today and mistakenly call it capitalism. Our present economic system is not free market capitalism, it is crony capitalism.

Crony capitalism is a branch on the same central planning tree that includes socialism and fascism. In a true free market capitalist system, businesses wouldn’t be able to lobby government to pass laws that protect their position in the market and raise the costs on their present and future competitors, because government wouldn’t have the power to make these rules.

Under free market capitalism businesses are incentivized to first serve their fellow-man before they can profit in any way. They must produce a good or service that consumers will freely exchange a portion of their labor for. Under crony capitalism businesses are incentivized to protect their own self-interest at the expense of the consumers and tax payers who are usually the same people.

Austrianaddict.com

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We thriller writers need villains. The media had a field day speculating what we would do when the Cold War came to an end in the early Nineties. I confess I wasn’t remotely concerned. Regardless of ideology—in many cases, no more than a carapace of convenience—villainy and its perpetrators have never been in short supply. Human nature seems to produce an abundance of sociopaths. They naturally rise to positions of power and influence—and the rest is as predictable as day following night. Greed seems to be the dominant motivation—and since sociopaths lack scruples—let alone social concern—we are talking about unfettered greed.

Currently, it is destroying the United States. It is doing that at considerable speed.

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June 12 2014: Once upon a magic wood! Yet another of my sister Lucy’s evocative photos. She has a magical eye—and an eye for magic.

“Trees're always a relief, after people.”

David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

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i

I love trees. They are beautiful, mysterious, strong, vulnerable, nurturing, enigmatic, fascinating, unpredictable, reassuring., evocative, atmospheric, infinitely beguiling—and dangerous. They are most certainly moody. Life wouldn’t be worth living without them.

But surely you are writing about women?

Actually, I’m writing about trees—things with roots and bark and sap and wood and branches and leaves—but I take the point. I have never really thought of it before, but though trees and women are entirely dissimilar in some fundamental ways—they share many attributes.

As with so many things, I have my grandmother to thank for my love of trees. In her normal impractical way (especially given that her farm on the Wicklow coast was some miles from the nearest town) she never learned to drive—but she had an admirer, Mr. Byrnes, who was something senior in Ireland’s Forestry Commission. Accordingly, Mr. Byrnes would take us on trip to various forests which featured older growth and the more spectacular hardwoods—and I would be taken along to chaperone my grandmother and to learn to appreciate forestry.

I was a willing pupil and was positively awed by what I saw.

My grandmother would have been in her forties about that time—and wasn’t overtly sexual in any way, as best I can recall, but she was a handsome woman and did have admirers. But, she remaindered wedded to my grandfather’s memory. Theirs was a short marriage, but an exceedingly happy one.

And so I learned to love trees. It has been an entirely rewarding relationship.

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June 11 2014: The book business needs all the help it can get—yet Books-A-Million has just topped the list of America’s Worst Companies To Work For! Shame on them!

Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.

Drew Carey

O' how full of briers is this working-day world.

William Shakespeare

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The above is based upon 302 reviews. The CEO get a rating of 22% approval. The company employs 5.400 people. The survey was carried out by 24/7 Wall Street. This is what they say about how they did it—and found.

To identify America’s worst companies to work for, 24/7 Wall St. independently examined employee reviews on Glassdoor.com. To be considered, companies had to have a minimum of 300 reviews. Of the more than 500 companies with more than 300 reviews, 24/7 Wall St. identified the 11 publicly traded companies that received the worst scores — 2.4 or lower. Employee totals are from each company’s latest 10-K filing.

However, employees working in retail are not all unhappy. Scott Dobroski, associate director for corporate communication at Glassdoor.com, suggested that pay plays a big part. “We know that compensation is the number one factor job seekers consider when determining where to work.” Starbucks and Costco are examples of retail companies that offer benefits or pay above the industry average and that employees rate highly.

A significant share of employee grievances was directed at middle management. Workers at these companies were also highly likely to disapprove of their CEO. Chief executives at 10 of the 11 worst companies to work for received positive approval ratings from less than half of their employees. At six of these businesses, less than 30% of workers endorsed the CEO.

In the case of a number of these businesses, such as RadioShack and hhgregg, falling revenues, weak earnings and a sinking stock price may all contribute to lower employee morale and negative perceptions of executive performance.

However, negative employee opinions are not always a direct reflection of a company performance. Dillard’s has been a Wall Street darling. The company’s stock price has risen tenfold in the past five years.

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June 10 2014: The writer as dancer!

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

Sigmund Freud

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The notion that sitting for long periods is, in itself, destructive to one’s health and life shortening, has certainly hit home—and I’m having some success at re-structuring my writing methodology to be more mobile.

• I stand up and move around much more frequently.
• I keep stuff I use regularly away from my desk so I have to walk a short distance to get it.
• I’m taking more breaks to do chores which require some degree of physical effort.
• I’m doing more reading standing up.
• I have taken to pottering in the evening—essentially looking at files and pulling books and moving around and thinking. The idea here is to become much more familiar with my sources of information so that they become almost intuitive.
• I don’t currently drive (although I can). I walk everywhere.
• I don’t have a TV.

All of this seems to be working—insofar as I can tell—though it clearly isn’t enough (so I’m introducing other innovations). However, I do have to wonder why the physical is—even now—so divided from the mental. In fact, according to what I read and hear on the radio, time for exercise –recess, in most cases—is  even further being cut back in American schools.

My strong sense is that the physical and the mental should be integrated—and that sport should not be confused with exercise. To that end, could I write while doing Russian dancing? Could listening to audio—which I love—be combined with weight-lifting?

I may try and find out one of these days.

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June 9 2014: Battle of the Amazons (pun intended). Amazon versus Hachette (one of the Big Five traditional publishers).

“Publishing is a business. Writing may be art, but publishing, when all is said and done, comes down to dollars.”

Nicholas Sparks

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ALL POWER CORRUPTS. I’m a great believer in the Lord Acton’s observation that “All power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I’m a believer in it—not for ideological reasons—but because I see evidence to support its innate veracity on a daily basis.

DOES THE GOOD OUTWEIGH THE BAD? When either people or organizations become powerful, they invariably abuse their power—to a greater or lesser extent—and betray trust. If there are exceptions to this pattern, I don’t know of any. The only difference, where the powerful are concerned, relates to the degree of abuse—and whether the good outweighs the bad. The roots of such behavior lie, fairly obviously, in human nature—and I see no sign of that changing.

A STATIC CONSTITUTION IN A CHANGING WORLD. The Founding Fathers knew this—which is why the Constitution is set up on the basis of limiting the power of the various branches of government, implementing a system of checks and balances, and giving the individual rights so that he or she is not at the mercy of government.

Unfortunately, they failed to anticipate:

• That the Constitution would be treated as something of a sacred cow—and be left largely unchanged even as society changed around it.
• That corporations would evolve to become as powerful as they currently are.
• That the ultra rich and the corporations they control would learn to game the system—to use the Constitution for selfish reasons—to the degree to which they have—and that the net result would be an economy biased against the Middle Class and rigged to favor the ultra rich and their corporations.
• That the Supreme Court would adopt the legal fiction—on the basis of no legal arguments of significance that, from a legal point of view, corporations are people.
• That the Supreme Court would equate money with free speech—and thus allow the outcome of each and every election to be influenced, if not decided, by weight of money. 

BYE BYE DEMOCRACY. As a consequence of the above, the U.S. is no longer a representative democracy—as defined by the constitution—but a plutocracy (a political system controlled by the ultra rich—and those who serve them—for their own exclusive benefit). The ultra rich mostly operate through corporations. Their control is not absolute—yet. They can’t do exactly what they want. But they can do a great deal, block almost anything they don’t like—and their power is increasing by the day as they get richer and richer.

CORPORATE POWER. So what keeps corporate power in check? Right now, very little. Government has been neutralized to a very great extent, the unions have been largely defeated (especially in the private sector), worker rights are minimal by the standards of other developed countries, public indignation has been kept in check by the fact that the media are corporately owned—so really all that is left to check corporate power are other corporations and the basic functioning of the economy (a subject I’ll leave for another day).

For that reason, and because it’s about my world of words and books, I’m particularly interested in the Amazon versus Hachette fight. Let me quote a little from a recent Slate article.

Amazon is digging in for a lengthy fight with one of the Big Five publishers, Hachette, and flexing its extraordinary market muscle while the two companies negotiate a new contract. It’s understocking Hachette books so as to create shipping delays, cutting discounts, suggesting alternative titles to buyers, and even refusing to take pre-orders, foreclosing a major sales opportunity.

Neither side is officially discussing exactly what it is they are fighting about. But all indications and industry chatter suggest that Amazon and Hachette are revisiting the pricing and revenue split for e-books—the same contentious issue that prompted the 2012 price-fixing suit against the Big Five publishers, from which Amazon emerged more powerful than ever.

The publishing industry is cheering for Hachette to hold the line and has denounced Amazon’s anti-Hachette tactics almost unanimously.

But the publishing world that is speaking as one against Amazon is really made up of two principal factions: publishers and authors. Their interests are not identical, and authors should consider the possibility that the publishers have contributed to the difficult situation they now face.

The crux of the issue is that in recent years, e-books have been more profitable for publishers than print books, despite the substantially lower price tag. But they’re less profitable for authors of new releases. This is not a well-known fact, but one group to have noticed is literary agents, who are in the business of ensuring that authors (and they themselves) get their fair slice of the pie.

So when HarperCollins, another Big Five publisher, boasted about its digital profits in a presentation to investors last year, literary agent Brian DeFiore seized on Harper’s own PowerPoint slide to point out that authors of new releases get the short end of the deal. On the blog of the leading agents’ trade association, DeFiore published a post headlined “e-books and profitability—What we’ve always said and publishers have always denied.” He noted that Harper’s chart neatly demonstrated that for a given title, the e-book is more profitable than the hardcover edition precisely because the author makes less money on it.

“Look at Harper’s own numbers,” DeFiore wrote. “$27.99 hardcover generates $5.67 profit to publisher and $4.20 royalty to author. $14.99 agency priced e-book generates $7.87 profit to publisher and $2.62 royalty to author.”

Looks fishy, doesn’t it? And the same basic math holds throughout the industry, including at Hachette.

A prominent industry analyst, Mike Shatzkin, has been arguing for some time that publishers ought to raise e-book royalty rates. For him, the point is not that this would be the fair thing to do; he just thinks it would be the best move strategically. By leaving royalty rates where they are, publishers have left their nice digital margins hanging out there for everyone to see. And when Amazon sees someone else’s healthy profits, it’s like a dog smelling a steak. As Jeff Bezos has said, “Your margin is my opportunity.”

What I suspect is happening right now is that Amazon is telling Hachette that they want some of that margin. If Hachette had spread some of those digital profits to authors in the first place, it would not be vulnerable to this tactic. What’s more, if Hachette had been the first to raise author pay, it no doubt would have snagged some marquee writers.

AMAZON IS FAR FROM PERFECT—BUT… I am well aware that Amazon is now without its flaws. It is overly large, overly powerful, becoming close to monopolistic, excessively secretive, and doesn’t seem to treat some of its workers too well. On the other hand, it may well be a corporation where the good outweighs the bad. It does a superb job where it comes to online retailing—and  its innovations, where it comes to book production, publishing, and distribution have benefited writers enormously.

ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. As for Hachette, as the above figures indicate, “the more things change, the more more they remain the same.” In short, traditional publishers have been screwing authors for decades—probably since cavemen wrote on cave walls—and seem to be culturally incapable of changing. Well, actions have consequences—and so does behavior.

THE HOME TEAM. I shall watch the outcome of this fight with great interest. Amazon are, of course, Seattle based—so are the home team. I’m rooting for them.

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June 8 2014: Writing, food, and fasting (fasting for three days can regenerate your entire immune system)

Research has shown that even small amounts of processed food alter the chemical balance in our brain and cause negative mood swings along with noticeable dips ill energy.

Marilu Henner

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IT AIN’T NECESSARILY SO. A consistent theme of mine is that a great deal of what we are told in this life just isn’t true. That doesn’t mean everyone is a liar—many are just plain ignorant—but it does mean that, for whatever reason, we are being constantly led astray. Where political and commercial interests are concerned—and I’m not sure there is much of a difference between them any more—the lying is pervasive,  endemic and continuous. In effect, it constitutes birth to death 24/7 propaganda seeking to condition us to a way of life which complements corporate profitability—and best serves the interests of the ultra rich.

BIG FOOD DOES BAD THINGS. There is no finer example of such behavior than that emanating from BIG FOOD (and the food industry in general) which seeks to persuade us that their processed products are healthy, when the evidence is strongly and increasingly that most U.S. processed foods are overstuffed with fat, salt and sugar—together with a host of other additives—and are overpriced and extremely bad for us. To make matters worse, there is serious cause for concern about the quality of the raw materials that go into processed foods. Thanks to factory farming, monoculture, and excessive use of pesticides and herbicides, though the quantities of raw materials produced are up, their nutritional quality is down—massively down in some cases. Then we come to meat where animal diets tend to be dubious, and where the animals are fed antibiotics to offset the diseases generated by their appalling conditions. The net result of that is to undermine antibiotic effectiveness. We’re facing a horrendous medical crisis thanks to such corporate criminal irresponsibility.

On top of that, we are conditioned to eat vastly more often than we need—and we are steered away from foodstuffs that really are good for us. In terms of current national priorities, our health seems to be regarded as secondary to corporate profitability. 

THE SCALE OF THE PROBLEM. No, I’m not a nut about all this stuff. In fact, it took me longer than it should to appreciate the scale of the problem. However, you would need to be blind not to notice how palpably unfit many Americans are—and once I started digging (and I am a very good researcher) I was appalled at what I found.

Modern American industrialized food constitutes the same sort of threat  to our health as the tobacco industry in its heyday. So why doesn’t the government act? For much the same reasons why it fails to act in other areas—such a its failure to prosecute those guilty of financial malfeasance. Government has been suborned by the ultra rich and the corporations they own. Remember—and it’s worth repeating—Americans, despite spending nearly twice as much on healthcare, live sicker and died more than three years sooner than the citizens of other developed nations.  That makes the threat of terrorism pale into insignificance. Yet is there a national outcry? No.

RELEVANCE TO WRITING. Here is the thing where writing is concerned. To write at your best you need to be healthy and clear-headed—and you are not going to either achieve, or maintain, that state on American processed foods. The stuff plays havoc with your blood sugar, makes you feel lethargic, promotes obesity—and has untold other negative side effects.

To write as well as you can—if you accept the premise that mind and body are interrelated (which is self-evident apart from being scientifically proven) you need to eat as healthily as you can—and almost certainly less than you think your need. How to achieve that is a matter of personal choice, but you could do a lot worse than subscribe to mercola.com There, Dr. Mercola gives out a great deal of health advice which, I have to say, mostly resonates with me. He normally backs up what he says with a great deal of data.

WHO KNEW! And now for my piece de resistance. As stated previously, I have found great benefit from moving to one meal a day—despite all those who advocate a hearty breakfast. Well, carrying the fasting idea further, it now emerges that there are extraordinary benefits from fasting even longer. Let me quote from the UK’s Faily Telegraph of July 5 2014.

Fasting for three days can regenerate entire immune system, study finds

A person's entire immune system can be rejuvenated by fasting for as little as three days as it triggers the body to start producing new white blood cells, a study suggests

Fasting for as little as three days can regenerate the entire immune system, even in the elderly, scientists have found in a breakthrough described as "remarkable".

Although fasting diets have been criticized by nutritionists for being unhealthy, new research suggests starving the body kick-starts stem cells into producing new white blood cells, which fight off infection.

Scientists at the University of Southern California say the discovery could be particularly beneficial for people suffering from damaged immune systems, such as cancer patients on chemotherapy.

It could also help the elderly whose immune system becomes less effective as they age, making it harder for them to fight off even common diseases.

The researchers say fasting "flips a regenerative switch" which prompts stem cells to create brand new white blood cells, essentially regenerating the entire immune system.

"It gives the 'OK' for stem cells to go ahead and begin proliferating and rebuild the entire system," said Prof Valter Longo, Professor of Gerontology and the Biological Sciences at the University of California.

"And the good news is that the body got rid of the parts of the system that might be damaged or old, the inefficient parts, during the fasting.

“Now, if you start with a system heavily damaged by chemotherapy or ageing, fasting cycles can generate, literally, a new immune system."

Prolonged fasting forces the body to use stores of glucose and fat but also breaks down a significant portion of white blood cells.

During each cycle of fasting, this depletion of white blood cells induces changes that trigger stem cell-based regeneration of new immune system cells.

In trials humans were asked to regularly fast for between two and four days over a six-month period.

Scientists found that prolonged fasting also reduced the enzyme PKA, which is linked to ageing and a hormone which increases cancer risk and tumor growth.

"We could not predict that prolonged fasting would have such a remarkable effect in promoting stem cell-based regeneration of the hematopoietic system," added Prof Longo.

"When you starve, the system tries to save energy, and one of the things it can do to save energy is to recycle a lot of the immune cells that are not needed, especially those that may be damaged," Dr Longo said.

"What we started noticing in both our human work and animal work is that the white blood cell count goes down with prolonged fasting. Then when you re-feed, the blood cells come back. So we started thinking, well, where does it come from?"

Fasting for 72 hours also protected cancer patients against the toxic impact of chemotherapy.

"While chemotherapy saves lives, it causes significant collateral damage to the immune system. The results of this study suggest that fasting may mitigate some of the harmful effects of chemotherapy," said co-author Tanya Dorff, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Hospital.

"More clinical studies are needed, and any such dietary intervention should be undertaken only under the guidance of a physician.”

"We are investigating the possibility that these effects are applicable to many different systems and organs, not just the immune system," added Prof Longo.

However, some British experts were sceptical of the research.

Dr Graham Rook, emeritus professor of immunology at University College London, said the study sounded "improbable".

Chris Mason, Professor of Regenerative Medicine at UCL, said: “There is some interesting data here. It sees that fasting reduces the number and size of cells and then re-feeding at 72 hours saw a rebound.

“That could be potentially useful because that is not such a long time that it would be terribly harmful to someone with cancer.

“But I think the most sensible way forward would be to synthesize this effect with drugs. I am not sure fasting is the best idea. People are better eating on a regular basis.”

Dr Longo added: “There is no evidence at all that fasting would be dangerous while there is strong evidence that it is beneficial.

“I have received emails from hundreds of cancer patients who have combined chemo with fasting, many with the assistance of the oncologists.

“Thus far the great majority have reported doing very well and only a few have reported some side effects including fainting and a temporary increase in liver markers. Clearly we need to finish the clinical trials, but it looks very promising.”

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