Amazon, Macmillan, E-Books and Lube

You can’t possibly have missed it. It’s had twitters all a-twitter, readers and writers alike chiming in with their two cents. A regular literary Battle Royale.

Basically, Amazon won’t be asking Macmillan to prom this year. In fact, Macmillan will be lucky if Amazon wants to feel them up in the back seat.

Fifteen dollars for an e-book. Really? No…really?

I’m asking because surely I heard wrong. Surely a company like Macmillan wouldn’t ask me to pay fifteen bucks for a book that isn’t even mine after I buy it-- that I can’t transfer from one reader to another.

I’m not, generally speaking, interested in being screwed by the man. Or any man, but that’s another issue. The Man in question here is a sweaty-fisted, red-faced tyrant trying to push people around. Wait, let me bend over the coffee table for you and make your job easier, man.

Perhaps you'd be so kind to lube up before sticking it to me?

Whatever happened to not negotiating with terrorists? Amazon’s big American ‘A’ just went a bit flaccid.

Fifteen bucks for an e-book. Seriously?

Macmillan, here’s a Haiku for U:

mushroom cloud of threat
bully cartel on e-lit
surrender to greed

I’m a writer, so from that perspective, if I had e-books out there, you’d think I’d be all for the higher price. Not so, gentle reader, and that is because I know I wouldn’t buy an e-book for that price, so I’m guessing lots of other people will be turned off as well.

But, hey, if that’s the case, it might have a positive effect. The e-book fad will go the way of the pet rock and Rubix Cube and the publishing world can be taken off their collective Xanax suppositories.

One can dream…

Manifesto

Here's another one of our past filmmaking endeavors, this one a 'message movie'--basically a way for the writer in me to take a swipe at The Bush Administration at the time.

We had a boom mic malfunction on this one day shoot (it wasn't turned on!) so we had to cut way more than I'd have liked out of this piece.

The kids were all students at Ferris State University, and the best bunch of folks I could ask for to work with.

They've all moved on and are doing lots exciting things; one became a teacher, and another just recently got accepted into the acting program at Columbia. (the guy with me in the picture below, in fact--Keith 'Keebler' Horvath--we're discussing a scene)



Actor Jerry Morse with his GUNSHOT wound:



I compressed the HD footage and here's the final result. Not as clear as the original movie, but it was too many gigs to upload the whole thing in a less-compressed file.