Spontaneous ∂erivation

Interesting. The Gift of Fear is now a Kindle exclusive book. I don’t mind that, seeing as a Kindle book can be read on multiple platforms (PC, Mac, iPhone, the Kindle readers of course, and who knows what else, though at this point perhaps never a Nook or Sony Reader). And the paper version has been available for quite some time, and has been for a while. I have one under the bed, for specific kinds of emotional emergencies, like intense, paralyzing paranoia.

I strongly recommend this book, not exactly because it covers coping with the after-effects of abuse in particular, as much as explaining why fear should not be… ah… feared or shameful. Abject fear can be a killer’s greatest weapon against you, not to mention a long-term abuser’s; but you can also use fear to your advantage, letting it be a warning but not freezing you when you most urgently need to act.

And yes, it’s a horrible fact that this book has this large of an audience, this large of a sucking need in the world, but it’s neither a hoax nor an over-dramatization, and it’s definitely not one of those get-rich-quick schemes that only wants to take advantage of the fearful. I’m saying this bit because people who’ve never been in these situations tend to scoff at the book, which I suppose is the privilege of people who’ve never had to be afraid for their lives.

As for the Kindle-exclusive strategy: this kind of strategy may not work for other authors, but it will likely work to de Becker’s advantage, because he’s a top-tier author and this is a rather famous book in a lot of circles, and thus his platform and audience and marketing is more or less already there—which is not necessarily the case for others. And as mentioned previously, a Kindle book can be read on multiple platforms now, so the audience is certainly not limited to those who only have Kindle readers.

A lot of you won’t know what I’m talking about, although people who play either the Legend of the Five Rings CCG or RPG will probably know.

So, an explanation, as opposed to something I would have just tweeted on Twitter:

• The fantasy world of Legend of the Five Rings (L5R for short) is based on East Asian cultures. There are many of these, but two of the oldest are (1) the Crane, and (2) the Scorpion.

• The Crane are your typical honor-bound samurai from Japanese history (except this isn’t Japan). They love art and have bleached white hair. They hold honor above all else, including sometimes reason. They are wonderful at politics, usually, and have a flair that they usually advertise as straightforward, but really, apart from the Doji Innocents, they are as twisted as corkscrews. But beautiful corkscrews.

• The Scorpion are your typical non-honor-bound ninja and spies from Japanese history (except this isn’t Japan). They always wear masks, which should tell you something about their approach to the whole honesty thing. They hold devotion above all else, including, typically, honor. They are wonderful at politics, usually, and more or less advertise themselves as being twisted as corkscrews up front. That doesn’t seem to hinder them.

• Both the Crane and the Scorpion work to further the interests of the Empire, more or less, but also need to keep their lands, more or less, so internal strife and war is a fact of life. And while both do have enemies they hate more than each other, they still hate each other.

• Recently the L5R storyline centers around a plague that is destroying villages, and the various clans are trying to figure out how to cure it. And also kill the zombies it’s creating. This requires, at the moment, finding the infected villages and quarantining them or investigating them.

• Now, let’s introduce a third group. Call them the Spider. Think of them as the Scorpion with all the brakes off, and also with psychotics in the ranks. Politics? Well, sure. That’s a relatively new game to them, however, and most of the rank and file would still prefer to set fire to the entire Empire, bind half the population’s souls to demons, and then dine on the other half’s faces with some good sake. Just so you know.

• A Spider ronin infiltrated a Scorpion group of ninjas a while ago. These ninjas were trying to find and isolate/etc the infected villages. But because they’re the Scorpion, they’re doing this all under cloak and dagger, and no one else knows what the hell they’re doing.

• Spiders ambushed the Scorpion ninjas a while back, and killed them all. Then they burned the bodies, leaving behind enough evidence, on Crane lands.

• Another group of Scorpion ninjas wandered out to try to find the first group. Whom they found on Crane lands. Just as a Crane patrol comes across them. Accusations fly, shortly followed by blood, and probably shortly followed by the Xth Crane-Scorpion war.

• The Spider, meanwhile, are Getting Things Done vis-a-vis figuring out the plague, which affects them also, so coincidentally the desires of both the Empire and the Spider are aligned, however briefly.

Now, let’s flash back to real life.

In real life, players of the L5R CCG and RPG all play specific factions (i.e., playing Crane or playing Scorpion or playing Spider). They all have their favorite factions, for whatever reason. They love their factions. Alderac, who makes the L5R gaming material, sometimes holds official tournaments where whichever faction wins will get some plot or character advantage in the official L5R storyline. Among CCGs, this is a very unique and strong bonding of theme and story to game. Among RPGs, this is an unusually continuous and organized official storyline.

This breeds a lot of loyalty on about ten different sides (up to fourteen at one time in the past).

So whenever an L5R fiction is published by Alderac, their story forums tend to run hot with arguments between different faction supporters about who’s at fault, who should be doing what, how dare that faction do this, your faction sucks, my faction is doing the right thing, your faction is evil, my faction is doing the right thing even though you regard us as honorless dogs, that’s an insult to honorless dogs and your faction was bloody stupid for trespassing on our lands without telling us what the hell you were doing, well your faction wouldn’t have let us if we did, flamewar, flamewar, flamewar.

And the wonderful part is that, whatever the facts may actually be, and whatever perspective there might be had that would be calmer, there is just this strong belief on both sides that they are in the right goddammit and obviously the Heavens know they are. The next few story tournaments probably will end up with players escalating the war. In this case, the Crane and the Scorpion are fighting for … gods, I don’t know anymore … and the Spider are quietly sniggering on the side.

Even better: though the players of the Crane and the Scorpion have knowledge that the fictional characters don’t (i.e., the Spiders are the ones really responsible), it still doesn’t matter.

I’m amazed that both sides think that their side has the most people on it, actually.

Oh… I wasn’t talking about the Crane versus Scorpion back there.

Truly, from a certain perspective, the burning flames are quite lovely.

John Scalzi puts it better than I can.

I’m going to stay off the Twitter, though. I really can’t stand two halves of my Twitter stream violently disagreeing with one another. It makes me want to shoot myself in the head.

P.S.: It’s Macmillan, not any other spelling or capitalization.

Update: It’s Over. However, Calibre is still awesome cool, and so is Feedbooks.

Hello there.

I admire a lot of you. On the other hand, I have a Kindle. And so do others. Without access to the Kindle store, the question of how to reach Kindle readers may be thought about.

What I’m saying is that this can be done outside of Amazon Kindle distribution. You don’t get the nice “buy directly” capability, but on the other hand, your readers who love you can still read you.

Disclaimer: ebook rights are still something owned by your publisher, though. So you mayn’t be able to sell files, probably in most cases. I don’t know what you should do in that case; likely your agent or editor knows, or knows someone who will know. Maybe some negotiating can be done. I have no idea.

Perhaps this little article is useful for Macmillan imprints too. I don’t know. Or maybe Lulu (it would be so neat to see Lulu and Feedbooks work together, I think).

Here are some tips.

Tip #1: The Kindle reads Mobipocket books. Mobipocket is a format that is offered by Fictionwise and Webscriptions and Books On Board and many other places, as it’s a format that has existed for quite some time. You just need a Mobipocket offering somewhere—but without DRM. ‘Cause DRM for Fictionwise is incompatible with a Kindle, but they offer an open version as well.¹

Tip #2: Use Feedbooks if you aren’t hip on creating a Mobipocket yourself, and/or don’t like Fictionwise’s Mobipocket conversion (which leaves a hell of a lot to be desired). Their interface is nice, and will give you multiple formats, in fact, to download, all with a linkable table of contents. You don’t have to make your book openly accessible on their site either (they don’t sell books), so you can just have them automatically create files to sell. All for free.

Tip #3: More for readers. But you can email your files to your Kindle (which incurs a cost, though, base of $0.15 these days, increasing if your file happens to be over 3MB), if you don’t want to use the old USB-to-computer-and-copy method. Webscriptions and Fictionwise even, I think, have a way for purchases to be automatically sent to your Kindle in this manner.

Tip #4: EPUB books without DRM can be easily converted to Mobipocket books. The Mobipocket free commandline utility, mobigen, does this. Here are some instructions I wrote. I can also convert EPUB books on a one-by-one basis if people would like this; even if you tell me I gotta buy the book before I convert it for you.

End of tips. Back to authors:

You can also just give the finger to those with Kindle devices, but that’s only possible if you use DRM or refuse to use both Mobipocket and HTML formats, which will screw over a much larger audience than Kindle owners. Though business is business, or something.

Personally I keep using my Kindle, because of my eyes (sorry, can’t help my eyes, they hurt horribly from LCD screens too long, which is why I couldn’t use an iPad anyways) and because I like its interface and its screen better than the Sony Reader or the Nook (respectively). And, well, a lot of publishers and authors still want DRM.

Anyways, the Kindle itself is not that closed. (Neither is the Nook, for that matter, although the Nook is based on EPUB, not Mobipocket.) Could it be closed off? Well, it hasn’t been yet, so I figure one might as well try to make money from all possible avenues. If it does become that closed, then this article is of no more use.

But remember that a lot of people still use Mobipocket reader on other devices, like cellphones.

1. Yes, I know there are ways to crack this, but most readers will not do that. [↩]

Ever since I got my Kindle, I rarely print stuff anymore.

I’ve had computers and laptops for over 10 years now, and still I printed.

When I find reference material on the web (like Arkham Horror rulings), I have discovered that my iPhone, while in color and ultra-connected and shiny, is just too small.

With my Kindle, I can send the HTML to it. Actually I often do a little formatting of my own and usually email full-fledged mobipocket files direct to my Kindle.

And the Kindle is somehow the right size and the right look for the next eight hours so. With Kindle 2 there’s even the ability to search the individual “book” to, for instance, determine how Endless interacts with random Otherworld encounters.

So: I’m happy and trees are saved. As for Arkham Horror, the world was devoured by Azatolth.

Can’t win them all.

P.S.: Just sent a Word document with a new Return of the Heroes variant in it directly to my Kindle, and it came out nicely. Score.

I think I’ll keep my subscription to Wired Science, as it delivers interesting articles every week day (although apparently not so much on weekends).

Here are images of people’s brains shutting down when they receive “eXpert financial advice.”

I hadn’t noticed it before, but the Kindle renders a “heading” in a newspaper/blog for each article.

Thus you can see the humorous juxtaposition of the article “River Crests, and Fargo Averts Danger for Now” against… well…

Pushing this up the queue of Kindle Shots because, um, wow:

Mind you, nothing has been confirmed. But I think this is why I still subscribe to the NYT Latest News Blog on my Kindle: so I can be boondoggled earlier.

While the individual blogs at seed media’s ScienceBlogs can be hit or miss (even on the Kindle), the ScienceBlogs: Select on the Kindle appears to be always frequently updated and amusing, and thus the best bang for your buck.

This is better dithered on the Kindle, but even here you can see one of Saturn’s tiny (relative to its size, anyways…) moons.

Things I want very much: Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog as a Kindle blog. Although considering that Discover Magazine’s holder is currently suing Amazon for creating a digital book reader that can download reading materials from the net, that’s probably not going to happen.