Bryce Zabel's FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH

Whither Newspapers?

L.A.-based entertainment journalist Kate O'Hare also blogs regularly on Hot Cuppa TV and The Accidental Futurist

As a journalist (that's the day job), every day I hear the question, "What is the future of newspapers?"

My answer is, "There isn't one, if you expect the industry to look like it does today."

One can wander far into the weeds of monetizing online content, micropayments, content cannibalization, etc., etc. Far cleverer folks than me, and those that have actually worked in a major-newspaper newsroom (I've always been either a freelancer or a wire-service staff writer), have tackled these questions and no doubt do a better job of discussing these topics than I can.

Some recent sources for views on the subject are linked at the bottom of this post. But, as a newspaper outsider who is also a journalistic insider -- and vested in the outcome of this debate -- I'll default to what I do best, ask questions.

I'll offer a couple of answers for each, but you may have a very different perspective, and I hope you'll share it with me. Here we go...

What is a newspaper?

Literally speaking, it's a pile of inky newsprint, a delivery system for information, advertising and photographs. But when people say "newspaper," they usually refer to what I call the newsgathering infrastructure, the people and technology that produce what winds up on the inky newsprint.

For the record -- not fond of inky newsprint. I went more than a decade without a newspaper subscription, because I just detest dealing with inky newsprint. I get a Sunday paper now...for the coupons. The inky newsprint generally gets tossed.

But, I consume vast quantities of news, both on screen and online, much of it newspaper and magazine content. That's partly because it's free but mostly because it's convenient. If I had to pay, I probably would, but hardly anybody asks me to. Which leads me to another question...

Why do people buy a newspaper?

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire?

Lee Goldberg writes regularly on A Writer's Life

My friend author Joe Konrath has done extraordinarily well selling some of his unpublished books on the Kindle, making $1250 in royalties this month alone. That's very impressive. And since its free and easy to upload your book to Amazon for sale on the Kindle, I'm sure that Joe's success is very exciting and encouraging news to a lot of aspiring writers out there. But I suspect Joe's success is the exception rather than the rule. That said, he is encouraging others to follow his lead. He writes:

The average advance for a first time novel is still $5000. If Kindle keeps growing in popularity, and the Sony Reader opens up to author submissions like it intends to, I think a motivated writer will be able to make $5000 a year on a well-written e-novel. Or more. All without ever being in print.

[...]Robert W. Walker, has written over forty novels. Most of them are out of print, and the rights have reverted back to him. If he digitized and uploaded his books, and priced them at $1.59 (which earns him 70 cents a download), and sold 500 copies of each per month (I sold 500 of Origin and 780 of The List in May), he'd be making $14,000 a month, or $168,000 a year, on books that Big NY Publishing doesn't want anymore.
Even if he made half, or a third, or a fifth of that, that's decent money on books that he's not doing anything else with. Now, all of us aren't Rob, and we don't have 40 novels on our hard drives, especially 40 novels that were good enough to have once been published in print. But how long do you think it will be before some unknown author has a Kindle bestseller?

Joe is making a lot of assumptions based on the admirable success of his own Kindle titles. It's a big, big, BIG leap to think, just because his book has done well, that Robert W. Walker (or any other mid-list author) will sell 500 copies...or even 50 copies...of his out-of-print books on the Kindle each month. 

Lee Goldberg writes regularly on A Writer's Life

My friend author Joe Konrath has done extraordinarily well selling some of his unpublished books on the Kindle, making $1250 in royalties this month alone. That's very impressive. And since its free and easy to upload your book to Amazon for sale on the Kindle, I'm sure that Joe's success is very exciting and encouraging news to a lot of aspiring writers out there. But I suspect Joe's success is the exception rather than the rule. That said, he is encouraging others to follow his lead. He writes:

The average advance for a first time novel is still $5000. If Kindle keeps growing in popularity, and the Sony Reader opens up to author submissions like it intends to, I think a motivated writer will be able to make $5000 a year on a well-written e-novel. Or more. All without ever being in print.

[...]Robert W. Walker, has written over forty novels. Most of them are out of print, and the rights have reverted back to him. If he digitized and uploaded his books, and priced them at $1.59 (which earns him 70 cents a download), and sold 500 copies of each per month (I sold 500 of Origin and 780 of The List in May), he'd be making $14,000 a month, or $168,000 a year, on books that Big NY Publishing doesn't want anymore.
Even if he made half, or a third, or a fifth of that, that's decent money on books that he's not doing anything else with. Now, all of us aren't Rob, and we don't have 40 novels on our hard drives, especially 40 novels that were good enough to have once been published in print. But how long do you think it will be before some unknown author has a Kindle bestseller?

Joe is making a lot of assumptions based on the admirable success of his own Kindle titles. It's a big, big, BIG leap to think, just because his book has done well, that Robert W. Walker (or any other mid-list author) will sell 500 copies...or even 50 copies...of his out-of-print books on the Kindle each month. 

"For What It's Worth" word cloud created by Wordle

'Round, 'Round, I'll Still Get Around

L.A.-based entertainment journalist Kate O'Hare also blogs regularly on Hot Cuppa TV and The Accidental Futurist

I'm sitting here watching the 1996 movie "Twister," as storm chasers zip around the backroads of the Midwest, dogging tornados and hashing out their romantic and professional differences.

One the one side are the good guys, driving a motley caravan composed of pickup trucks (including a red one that executes some fairly sweet maneuvers, including driving through a house) and a battered station wagon. On the other side are the "corporate kiss-butts," piloting a sleek convoy of big black SUVs.

It's car heaven. Can you imagine this movie shot with a Prius, two Smart cars and a vegetable-oil-fueled minivan that smells like a taco stand? But that's where we're headed. If you thought the teeny-car chase in "Demolition Man" was the greatest thing ever, this auto future's for you.

(By the way, if you've never seen "Demolition Man," get it. It's prophetic, only I suspect that in many ways, its future is now.)

The Reluctant Blogger Bites the Hand...

Lauren Kessler is an author, narrative journalist and director of the literary nonfiction graduate program at the University of Oregon. 

“My name is Lauren Kessler, and I am a blogger.”

“Hello, Lauren.” 

Had anyone told me a year ago that I’d be blogging, I would have cringed.  I am not a fan of blogs.  I find most to be self-indulgent drivel and fervently wish that the people who spend their time writing them didn’t have quite so much time.  I am sure there are important community service projects they could be doing.  Volunteering at the hospital.  Collecting soup can labels to fund music classes at their kid’s school.  Something.  

Yes, there are a few interesting political blogs, and a few interesting insider blogs, and occasionally a really smart person will start a really smart blog or an important and worthwhile idea will be blog-supported.  And then there are those obviously brilliant blogs that take note of my books.  But of the – gasp – approximately 113 million blogs out there, most are written by every day folks with less-than-fascinating lives about which they have less-than-noteworthy insights which they freely express in less-than-competent prose.  Hooray that people are writing!  Writing is good.  Hooray for citizen whatever.  It’s publishing the stuff I object to.  

I know the internet is infinitely expandable, but just because there’s space doesn’t mean it has to be occupied, does it?  Some of us out here in the west like wide open spaces.  Technorati, the site that tracks and rates blogs, claims that a new blog is created every 5.8 seconds. That means that in the time it took you to read this far, seven new blogs came into existence.  Wired magazine reports that 2.3 content updates are posted every second.  Is there really that much to say?  

For All You Technophobes Out There...

Here's an experiment for you. My neighbor works for SONY at, shall we say, the highest levels. He also has a really great sense of humor. So...

This latest video from THE ONION made me fall out of my chair laughing. I'm gonna play it for him. I'll let you know how he takes it.

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work

Writing on the Wall?

Fighting Words

The program I write most of my scripts on is "Screenwriter."  It's got a great look and feel.  They have a new program they're marketing now called "Streamline" which, without cheating, gives writers input and tools about changes they might make to shorten their scripts.  This is good news because most methods of making a script shorter also make it look crammed and unreadable and, the truth is, anyone who knows anything about scripts knows it's been cheated anyway, so what's the point?

I digress.  In the mailing today about this new product are some words that could strike fear in the halls of Microsoft.

"Streamline 1.0 is available for Macintosh only.  Streamline for Windows is in development, but no release date has been announced."

That's right.  The program is built for Macs first.  Windows is the afterthought.  Wow.  Maybe that says something about how screenwriters favor Macs, but it struck me as the thought for the day.  "Macintosh only."

Dear AT&T Yahoo: Why I Really Really Hate You

Last year we received word that our internet service provider SBC was going to take the name of AT&T Yahoo.  We were assured it was just a formality, that we'd keep our old email address and nothing would really change.

Oh yeah?

First we received instructions about how we had to change some of our settings, etc. which we wanted to do but they were difficult to understand.  So we wanted to talk to someone.  That was not fun.  It was almost impossible to get a live human being but, eventually, we did and, with this tech support person on the phone, we dutifully fulfilled all their demands.

Okay, we thought, that was a hassle but now we're good to go.  Not so fast!

Maybe four months ago, we received this email with the slugline, "Message from Yahoo!"

Insert Caption Here: Words & Pictures with Attitude

We get mail.  And some of you seem to really like the less-than-reverent way we treat the publicity stills that the studios put out to promote their films on our Movie Smackdown! sister site.

Armed only with an iMac, some Comic Life Magiq software, and a serious authority issue, we've been giving them the treatment for a few months now.

The idea is to take these common photos and spin the hell out of them so they make their own artistic statement independent of the reviews.  We want to present them in a way that you can't get anywhere else.  And we want to make movie stars and the characters they play say what we want them to say for a change, okay?

So now we've collected our first batch all in one place where you can look at them full-screen, download them or -- and this is the hot tip -- even play them as a slide-show (the button's right underneath the banner). Click on the photo to the left or the link below and see for yourself.  The actual Comix take a few seconds to load because they're high res (like we said, it's art, baby)... but it's worth it...

http://www.moviesmackdown.tv

Do You Know This Artist?

A few years ago, while I was trying to teach myself whatever the program that came with Windows XP was (Microsoft Paint?), I found some photos on the internet, played around with them in the program and forgot about them.

Some of them are so great, like this one, that I'd like to ask the artist if I can use them with his/her permission on this blog, for example. So, if you are the artist, or you know who the artist is, please add a comment to this post or write me.