Ebook Covers for $150

My cover artist, Carl Graves, is having a fire sale on ebook covers.

Each one of these is only $150. It is one of a kind. You buy it, you own it. Just email Carl at his website, www.ExtendedImagery.com to confirm the cover is available, send him a Paypal and your information (book title, author name, a tagline) and the ebook cover is yours and yours alone.

If you need the cover altered slightly, you can discuss that with him, as that may cost extra. These bargain prices are as-is. The same goes if you need a back cover for a Createspace print version--he can do it, but it'll be a few more bucks.

As I've said a gazillion times, a professional cover boosts sales. When I began using Carl's covers over my old homemade ones my ebook sales tripled. If you're writing an ebook, or already have an ebook with a mediocre cover, I'd advise you to buy one of these, pronto. Because when they're gone, they're gone.

Carl is also available, schedule permitting, to work with authors to do custom covers, but those are more money. Contact him for info.

Here are the $150 covers currently available. Click on them to make them bigger. First come, first serve.

Crabbit's Tips 8: Authors Doing Events

The latest in my series of Crabbit's Tips for Writers aims to help authors doing events. If you'd like the downloadable, printable version, click here.


It follows my recent blog post aimed at event organisers. (By the way, I've had great feedback on that behind the scenes, from agents who are also sick of seeing their authors poorly treated or unpaid. And, for your info, the agent does not take

On publicity, publicists and doing it yourself

Nowadays, almost all authors have to do much of their own publicity. This is not necessarily a bad thing and, by and large, not something I particularly complain about, although a preferable option would be for me to lounge around being sent bottles of champagne by my grateful publishers and for readers to be queuing up outside every bookshop, desperate to buy my books even if I don't get out of

Viva la viva!

Posted by Shelina Visram

It’s official – I am now Dr. Shelina Visram. Not a doctor of medicine (which still upsets my grandparents) but a doctor of philosophy. You might think that means I’ve spent the last few years navel-gazing. Sadly not.

For two years I was entirely engrossed in conducting 116 in-depth interviews, as well as following people around, observing them and generally being nosy. Months were then devoted to analysing my data, and it took me almost a year to write it all up into something meaningful – my thesis.

Top tip: use cute stickers to distract yourself during the viva

My little beauty is 289 pages long and makes a good doorstop. As well as (hopefully) a good read. Phew, so that’s the hard work done. I handed it in, became Dr. Visram and went skipping off into the sunset. Right?

Wrong! That’s not how it goes at all. After years of hard work, the hardest part is yet to come.

The viva! A word that strikes terror in the hearts of all PhD students. Viva is short for viva voce, a Latin phrase usually translated as “by word of mouth”. The viva is the final oral examination of the doctorate process.

That’s the case in the UK at least. I’ve heard that students in Australia are assessed on their thesis alone. Which is another good reason to emigrate.

So what exactly does a viva involve? Well, two experts in your field are invited to act as examiners. The viva takes place a few months after thesis submission. During these months you occupy yourself with other things (like finding a job) and forget what your PhD was about. Or you read your thesis over and over again until the words start to lose all meaning. Then on the day of the viva, you turn up in your smartest outfit and prepare to defend your work.

To be honest, the rest is a bit of a blur. I know my viva lasted for almost two hours and that it was hard work. I know there were lots of questions on philosophy, methodology and the importance of my findings. It was helpful to have my supervisor there to keep notes and reassure me afterwards that not everything I said was gibberish. Once the ordeal was over, I was asked to wait outside whilst everyone conferred. Then I was invited back in to hear the verdict and be called Dr. Visram for the first time.

In hindsight, the viva was a great opportunity to discuss my thesis with two people who had actually read it. I got some helpful feedback and an invitation to spend some time with one of my examiners and her research team. I know some people have less positive experiences and I guess you have to prepare for the worst.

But as a friend is fond of saying, just relax and enjoy the process.

See one. Do one. Teach one.

Posted by Jean Adams

There was a time when finding a man who was having trouble urinating was my main preoccupation in life.

I was a final year medical student and "insert a male urinary catheter" was the final, unchecked, procedure in my log book.

In a dingy corner of the male elderly care ward, I found what I was looking for. A man with a full bladder in great pain. Unfortunately, the final tick in my log book was not to be that day. I admitted to the attending doctor that my only knowledge of catheterisation technique came from a textbook. 

All set up and no-one to catheterise

There is an old adage in medical education: see one, do one, teach one. The implication is supposed to be that you'd better be a quick learner, because you don't get much practice in medicine. For me, the implication was that I needed two men who couldn't pee - one to watch being catheterised by someone else, one to catheterise myself.

I think many medics escape to academia because they want a chance to slow down and think problems through, without a constant need to do something, quickly.

Perhaps there is more time to think, this side of the fence. But, ironically, when I'm in the classroom, I quite often feel that I have skipped the "do one" stage.

This week I was teaching our MSc students how to write a press release. I have read a number of press releases in my life; I have sat in how to write press releases workshops; I have even submitted model press releases for assignments; but I have never, ever written a real-life press release myself, let alone a successful one that is picked up by the media.

Delivering a newly devised teaching session for the first time is always a bit nervy. The seat of my pants gets a little frayed. This one had an extra edge of tension. I don't feel an expert in any of the things I teach, but I have come to the realisation that I, if nothing else, have generally thought and read more about the topic than the students. If I have done some actual, published research on it, that alway makes me feel a little more secure in my expertise.

This time, I had nothing but my status as 'lecturer' to carry me through. Early on, I fell back on the rather cruel technique of the trick question to make sure everyone was on their guard. I chose ridiculously bad examples of press releases from other universities to make the students laugh. I filled the time by getting them to do their own writing so that I didn't have to do any of my own. I quite often found myself wondering if what I was saying made any sense at all.

Now I am starting to wonder how many other things I teach without first doing; or do without first seeing. Luckily, my pant drawer is well stocked.

Listing Program Delphi Pertemuan 2

Output programnya:

Untuk listing program pertamuan kedua labTI:




unit Pertemuan2;

interface

uses
  Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms,
  Dialogs, StdCtrls;

type
  TForm1 = class(TForm)
    GroupBox1: TGroupBox;
    Label1: TLabel;
    Label2: TLabel;
    Edit1: TEdit;
    Edit2: TEdit;
    Button1: TButton;
    Button2: TButton;
    GroupBox2: TGroupBox;
    Label3: TLabel;
    Label4: TLabel;
    Edit3: TEdit;
    Edit4: TEdit;
    Button3: TButton;
    Edit5: TEdit;
    GroupBox3: TGroupBox;
    Label5: TLabel;
    Label6: TLabel;
    Label7: TLabel;
    GroupBox4: TGroupBox;
    Label8: TLabel;
    Label9: TLabel;
    Label10: TLabel;
    procedure Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
    procedure Button2Click(Sender: TObject);
    procedure Button3Click(Sender: TObject);
  private
    { Private declarations }
  public
    { Public declarations }
  end;

var
  Form1: TForm1;

implementation

{$R *.dfm}

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
A:string;
begin
  A:='Praktikum';
  if edit1.Text=A then
  showmessage('Praktikum')
end;

procedure TForm1.Button2Click(Sender: TObject);
var
nilai:integer;
begin
  if StrToInt (edit2.Text)<30 then
  showmessage ('Nilai E')
  else if StrToInt (edit2.Text)<=50 then
  showmessage ('Nilai D')
  else if StrToInt (edit2.Text)<=60 then
  showmessage ('Nilai C')
  else if StrToInt (edit2.Text)<=70 then
  showmessage ('Nilai B')
  else if StrToInt (edit2.Text)<=100 then
  showmessage ('Nilai A')
end;

procedure TForm1.Button3Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
  case StrToInt (edit3.Text) of
  1:edit5.Text:='Anda Pesan Bakso';
  2:edit5.Text:='Anda Pesan Mie Ayam';
  3:edit5.Text:='Anda Pesan Gado-gado';
end;
  case StrToInt (edit4.Text) of
  1:edit5.Text:=edit5.Text+' Minumnya Es Tawar';
  2:edit5.Text:=edit5.Text+' Minumnya Es Doger';
  3:edit5.Text:=edit5.Text+' Minumnya Cendol';
end;
end;
end.

Systematically unsystematic: confessions of a novice reviewer

Posted by Amy O'Donnell

Two years ago, I somehow found myself agreeing – nay proposing – that I should do a systematic review as part of my PhD.

For those unfamiliar with the term (*searches Wikipedia*) a systematic review involves a literature search focused on a clearly formulated question that aims to identify, appraise and synthesise all high quality research evidence relevant to that question.

As far as I was concerned, the findings would usefully inform the other elements of my research, the process would enable me to learn valuable new skills, and the material might even be publishable. What was not to like?

Well for starters there was finding out exactly how to do it (the starting point turns out to be a 281 page guide that drops vaguely menacing terms like ‘stochastic’, ‘bootstrapping’ and a whole bunch of ‘a priori’s). Then there were the hours of screen time trawling through journal abstracts, thousands of which were irrelevant to my research. Throughout, I was keenly aware that the path from conception to realisation was littered with the exhausted shells of well-intentioned PhD researchers.

Fast forward to today, and I am only now (almost) in a position to start writing that elusive final report. So I ask myself – as indeed my supervisors have asked on numerous occasions – just what went wrong?

Well aside from the dithering, the various displacement activities (another colour-coded spreadsheet anyone?) and a general lack of get-up-and-go, I think it all boils down to one major problem.

I didn’t really know what I was looking for.

Sorry, where am I supposed to be going?

Don’t get me wrong, I had a vague idea. But it turns out that a vague idea just won’t cut the mustard when it comes to navigating your way through the twenty-one million plus records available via PubMed. Without a clear question to be answered or hypothesis to be tested, you are looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. I didn’t know what literature to keep in, and what to throw out. I couldn’t articulate exactly what the review would contribute to my research. And I simply hadn’t thought carefully enough about how I would synthesise the results at the end of the whole process.

I confess it took the shame of failing my second year assessment to wake me up to this sorry state of affairs. But after several months of repeated trips back to the drawing board, and countless discussions with supervisors and other colleagues, I think I’ve finally got it. It’s not perfect, it’s going to be hellish to write up, and I’m annoyed with myself because I know I could have (should have) got here far more quickly and far less painfully. But it’s giving me some relevant and useable material, and I’ve learned a lot. Which I guess is the point.

As poet Edward Hodnett (sort of) wrote “If you do not ask the right questions, you don’t have a hope in hell of getting the right answers”.

On rejection

I've just come across a useful and wise post on why agents so rarely give a reason beyond "It's not for us." It is written by Steve Laube, and agent AND author, so he knows of what he speaks.


I would draw your attention to this hugely important point which so many people fail to understand: "... even a morsel of advice can take considerable time to compose so that it is genuinely helpful." Oh

Twittering, not skiving

Posted by Bronia Arnott

I work in an open-plan office. A quick saunter to the coffee room is all it takes to find out who’s working and who’s on Facebook. Sometimes I find myself furtively opening up Twitter and hoping that nobody thinks I’m skiving. Because it is work, really…

Ollie the Twitter bird

Twitter is my social networking tool of choice. I have my own personal account and I also tweet alongside colleagues on the Reflect project account. We also use it to connect with others, including relevant government departments and charities. We use Twitter to share new posts on our blog and update our followers on recent news including publications.

There is evidence that tweets can increase citations of research papers. It’s called Twimpact of course. Some of this effect is through other networks of academics who follow each other on Twitter. But I know that in my case I also have a number of friends and other ‘normal people’ who follow my account and read, favourite and re-tweet my work. In some cases I even think it is because they genuinely find what I have to say interesting or useful, and don’t just feel sorry for me and my boring job.

The benefit of Twitter for non-researchers is that you can keep up to date with recent research without reading hefty journal articles – let the academics on twitter do that for you. And because tweets are limited to 140 characters even normally verbose researchers are forced to focus on the message, not the caveats!

I think the true value of Twitter has yet to be mined, however. In our project we hope to use social networking sites to link participants to our study in the next few years. A great example of innovative use of Twitter is the TWeetAsyouGO project which links up people investigating transport habits through the use of a common hashtag (#TWAGO)

If you are already on Twitter, you can find a number of Fuse members active on the site. Fuse also has an official @fuse_online Twitter stream.

If you are not already on Twitter yourself why not give it ago? You might find out that we are not a bunch of twits.

Crabbit's Tips 7: The Non-fiction Proposal

I continue my irregular series of Crabbit's Tips with a list of advice about making a proposal for a non-fiction book to an agent or publisher. If you want to download a pretty version to pin above your desk or collect in a sparkly binder, then go here.

I also suggest you first read my Seven Steps to Publication, if you are a beginner at this game.

And for the rest of the Crabbit's Tips

A perineal what?

Posted by Peter Tennant

You're at a party, tucking into a sausage roll (OK, a pineapple stick, this being a public health blog), and then someone asks: "So what do you do then?"

It’s the question I dread most of all.

I used to have a nice prepared answer: "I'm a health researcher". But aside from being a tad patronising, this didn't really hold up once I started to meet people who were asking less out of politeness and more out of genuine interest. So for the last couple of years, I've just taken a deep breath and declared, "I'm a perinatal* epidemiologist".

"A perineal what?"

I've heard many guesses. Skin doctor? The study of epilepsy? Something to do with epidurals? Sometimes I start talking about the etymology. "Epi comes from the Greek for people. No wait, that's demos. What was epi again?" But, as well as my complete incompetence with Greek, I find etymology to be one of those words that seems to send people scurrying off for another sausage roll. So now I tell them, "think epidemic".

According to A Dictionary of Epidemiology, it's "the study of the occurrence and distribution of health-related states or events in specified populations, including the study of the determinants influencing such states, and the application of this knowledge to control the health problems."

It's a decent description, but not one that's easy to fit between sips of wine. So usually, I find it's best just to give examples.

You remember last week when they said that eating red meat raised your risk of cancer? Or last month when we found out that women with diabetes had a higher risk of their baby having problems such as congenital heart disease? Well, that's epidemiology.

Of course, this is fraught with its own problems, mainly because most of these stories tend to be slanted towards death and destruction, leaving you at serious risk of being branded one of those boring scaremongers.

But the problem remains that this still doesn't really explain what I do all day. Even after a lot of discussion, most people still go away imagining I spend my day prodding study 'participants' and taking blood. In fact, in four years I've never actually seen a study participant, let alone prodded one. This is probably a very good thing for the participants.

So what does my day involve? Well, it varies. Some days I'm trying to describe a year's work in a couple of paragraphs. Some days I'm filling in forms. Some days I'm just thinking. But the days when I most feel like an 'epidemiologist' are the ones where I'm sat at my computer, staring at bright green and yellow text on a black screen. The days when I'm playing statistics with my favourite statistics software. 


Stata - my favourite statistics software

 Unfortunately, nothing sends people scurrying off for another sausage roll faster than telling them you're a statistician.


*Perinatal, by the way, means 'around birth' – so I generally study things that happen in and around pregnancy. In fact, that paper about women with diabetes having a higher risk of babies with congenital anomalies is one of mine.

No magic tricks required - recruiting adolescents for research

Posted by Stephanie O'Neil

At a recent event, a speaker began to muse on the difficulty of recruiting adolescent boys into research.

Having spent most of the last decade avidly researching the mystical things we call ‘youth’ and ‘sociology’ whilst trying desperately to combine the two,* I have more experience than most when it comes to working with ‘young people’. So recruiting adolescent boys – right up my street.

Three years ago, I set out on my PhD journey to examine young people’s relationship with alcohol and how they framed their choices about drinking. I knew instinctively that, to some degree, I needed to conduct qualitative research (I also did a systematic review and a Q methodology study, but those are sagas for different posts). This ruled out working in schools, who couldn’t see what was wrong with handing out a survey to the masses. Instead, I wanted to speak to young people alone for up to an hour. And I wanted to do it without parental consent (a topic for yet another post). Absolutely no go in schools, I’m afraid.

So I set out far and wide for youth centres, youth offending teams, and youth and inter-generational projects. I hung out with the youth parliament, on ‘mobile youth buses’ and toured Eldon Green on Friday evenings with youth workers. I took part in air hockey competitions to ‘win’ an interview, made home-made jewellery and watched more Emmerdale and Eastenders than is healthy for your psyche. I became known to the young people of Newcastle as ‘that Mackem alcohol bird researcher’.

Young people in Newcastle

Sometimes, I had to spend several weeks attending a youth group before anyone would agree to be interviewed. Other times, young people would agree straightaway. Regardless, I ended up with fascinating, rich interviews, from an equal split of boys and girls. And all of this was achieved with no incentives. Each young person gave up their time freely and willingly.

I don’t believe that the ability to engage young people (and I do think this is a better term than 'recruit youth') in research rests on being young, female, or a native to the North East – although I am all of these things. What I do think it rests on is how you treat the people you interview.

Young people are not a group that should be considered ‘different’. In fact, thinking of ‘adolescent boys’ as a distinct group that might be hard to recruit is probably the reason why they become difficult to recruit. Like everyone, young people just wanted to be listened to and to know what they were contributing to by taking part in research .

That’s it folks. No other magic tricks required.


*Yes, I’m a sociologist working in a public health department. Please don’t judge me.

10,000 steps? Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy!

Posted by Jean Adams

I admit it. I am a health fascist.

Well, now I’ve read the Wikipedia entry on healthism, I think I am only a part-time health fascist. I’m strongly in favour of living a healthy lifestyle and of the government going out of its way to make this easier for everyone to achieve. I don’t necessarily think that “the problem of health and disease [is situated] at the level of the individual." In fact, I read a great article this week taking an evolutionary approach to socio-economic inequalities in health behaviours. The phrase that most sticks in my mind is: “if you want to change an organism’s behaviour, you need to change its environment”.

But, anyway. I’m all for the healthy lifestyle. As a public health insider, I try to set a good example without the need for environmental or motivational interventions. I don't buy any of that "these targets are unobtainable" stuff. I eat my five-a-day. I do my 5x30 minutes of physical activity per week. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I don’t have multiple partners (well, not in bed). OK, I admit it, I do drive marginally (a lot) faster than the speed limit on occasion (every day).

Surely I do enough running to make the grade? (photo: Martin White)

If totally motivated, no kids, decent salary, partner who definitely does almost 50% of the housework, me can’t meet the guidance, who can? 

So, it was with rather gay abandon that I took on a step-challenge competition with some colleagues. The idea is that we should be taking 10,000 steps per day. This is, apparently, equivalent to walking about 5 miles. At a brisk pace of 20 minutes per mile, that would be an hour and 40 minutes per day. So, quite a lot more than your 30 minutes, five times a week. Unfortunately, I didn’t stop to work all of this out until after agreeing to the challenge. 

The bottom line is that I thought it would be easy-peasy. My colleague reports he manages his 10,000 steps easily. Obviously super-healthy me is going to totally Whup. His. Ass. 

As health researchers, we know all about the problems of measurement error and the importance of comparing like with like. The competition will, therefore, involve standard issue pedometers – a step counting gadget that my colleague has taken the trouble to validate against more expensive gadgets. 

Yesterday was my first day on the pedometer. I had a fairly normal day that included a short bike commute and a six mile run. I only managed 9089 steps. 

Now come on! That’s not fair. How can a six mile run not be enough? This gadget is obviously useless. Everyone knows that a running step is longer than a walking step. And think of all the extra energy involved in running versus walking. My steps are clearly worth a lot more than other people’s steps. 

So you can take your 10,000 step challenge back. Your targets are totally unrealistic and unobtainable. I’m not playing anymore.

Would the real 'expert' please stand up

Posted by Amelia Lake

My advice to you is, be careful what you tweet. I discovered this to my cost as my eagle-eyed colleagues in Fuse spotted my frustration in 140 characters and persuaded me to write this post.

My tweet-anger or ‘twanger’, as I might coin for the urban dictionary, followed an interview on BBC Radio 4’s drive time news programme, PM. A ‘food’ author was being interviewed about the highly publicised Harvard study warning about the risks of red meat to health.



New research suggests red meat increases all-cause mortality



At the time, I was driving home from work and seriously considered pulling over on the motorway to tweet the PM programme right there and then.

I wanted to know why they did not have a Dietitian or a qualified nutritional expert on their programme, rather than an author who has just released a new book this month and appears to have no nutritional qualifications. A real expert might have at least provided a balanced view and reflected the current evidence around red meat and health. An author on the book tour trail appeared incapable.

Reader, I was very cross!

This was in contrast to the British Dietetic Association’s spokesperson on the BBC’s Today programme who gave an excellent summary of the study and made clear what the implications were for practice. Well done Ursula Arens.

The Department of Health recommends that people should limit their intake of red and processed meat to no more than 70 grams a day in cooked weight. The dietary advice to reduce red and processed meat in our diet is not new; this new study has re-enforced the message. For more information and practical suggestions see the World Cancer Research Fund web pages.

Please, please, please radio researchers (or researchers working in any media for that matter) when booking your ‘experts’ think carefully. As a Dietitian and Public Health Nutritionist I do not consider an individual who does not have any nutritional qualifications to be an adequate spokesperson on what constitutes a healthy diet.

Both the British Dietetic Association and The Nutrition Society have qualified nutritional experts who give up their time (without books to promote) to discuss new studies or diet related recommendations. Most media coverage on the study was by qualified experts, and this piece on PM really disappointed me.

I didn’t stop on the A19. I drove home safely (while muttering angrily to myself) and tweeted my frustrations to PM in the car outside my home. I was rallied by support from another Dietitian who’d also heard the piece. However, I’ve yet to get a response from PM!

What has Twitter ever done for you? (With a competition)

This post is to launch the NEW, updated version of Tweet Right. But wasn't the first one as perfect as a perfect thing? Well, of course. But then Twitter and Tweetdeck screens changed and suddenly there were bits in Tweet Right which no longer precisely applied. I'd wanted to be able to say, "You'll find that button to the top right of your screen" or, "It's the icon that looks like a red banana"

Trial by select committee

Posted by Jean Adams

Well, trial by select committee has been and gone. It was certainly interesting. But I’m not sure it will achieve anything in particular.

I have never been inside the Palace of Westminster before. I was surprised how National Trust it was. A lot of unfinished stone staircases and grand halls that are clearly impossible to heat, followed by corridors that are far too narrow for modern life. Using my special academic congregating powers, I bumped into my fellow ‘experts’ long before finding the room I was looking for. When we finally arrived at our destination, we were greeted by a rather under-capacity committee. The Rt Hon Stephen Dorrell was in the chair. Other members came and went during the session.

Surprisingly National Trust

Disappointingly, the only refreshments were House of Commons branded bottled water. The coffee and pastries clearly flow a lot freer in the West Wing.

The session itself was pretty informal. After we ‘experts’ introduced ourselves, the members of the committee just seemed to think out loud and bounce ideas of us. What a remarkably priviledged position to be in – hmmm well when I was told that I would live longer if I gave up smoking, it really motivated me to quit...I wonder if that would work for alcohol...it would be good if I could just ask some– oh, look, three professors of alcohol studies, I’ll ask them!

Aside from Stephen Dorrell, who was John Major’s Secretary of State for Health, the committee includes a number of doctors, as well as a range of other members. The questions ranged from very sensible (do you think the alcohol industry should be ask to help set policy?), to a bit bizarre (does gin makes you more depressed than vodka?). Talk of ‘evidence’, and what counts as ‘evidence’, varied and there were a couple of occasions when one of my fellow ‘experts’ stated, perhaps a little too emphatically, that whatever the honourable member might think, the scientific evidence very strongly suggests the opposite. One member was rather obsessed with the idea of ‘anecdotal’ evidence and used this term as equivalent to any other sort of ‘evidence’. I hope he didn’t notice me snigger when he launched into another long and winding anecdote...

So what next? Well, the government has promised to publish its new alcohol strategy within the next few weeks. This may or may not be evidence-based or based on expert input. The committee will then begin a formal inquiry into alcohol and hear evidence from a variety of experts. They will make recommendations to the government on how their strategy could be improved. But the government will be under no obligation to act on these recommendations.

So that’s it. No more gallivanting around the corridors of power in my glad rags for me. Time to get back into my jeans and do some real work.

Seven steps to publication

The other day I did a one and a half hour event, during which I gave as much information as I think anyone possibly could on how to become published. At the end, the final question came from a gentleman who asked (after telling us that I'd given a really good talk and that he'd written a really good book), "How can I get my book published?"

So, for anyone else who simply doesn't hear the words I

Presumed Inane

Scott Turow was interviewed in Salon.com a few days ago, explaining why we should fear Amazon.

Scott said: "The concern is that they are getting so large and they compete so ruthlessly that there’s a lot of fear for what the world with Amazon in charge is going to look like."

This is entirely understandable. I mean, when one company has the majority share of any particular market, they always abuse their power. For example, how about...

Um...

Well, what about that famous case of... uh...

There have to be plenty of examples of this happening, right? How people get screwed once some company winds up with the lion's share of the market?

Just because Scott didn't list any examples, and because I can't think of any, doesn't mean this isn't a huge problem that happens time and again in the US.

Lemme consult Google, see what I can find.

(please hum the theme to Jeopardy in your head, and then send the copyright holder royalties)

Okay, I'm back.

I couldn't find any examples of any US companies who dominate a marketplace and then start screwing customers.

Ironically, I used Google, and one could probably call Google a dominant company. It certainly is the most popular search engine in the world. But it doesn't seem to be screwing over customers. In fact, it keeps innovating and improving customer experience.

Ditto Twitter, and YouTube, each also dominant.

Hmm...

Scott said: "Look, if what they’re into is maximizing profits, then if they were to have a monopoly there’d be no rationale not to use the monopoly power to increase prices to consumers. That is historically what monopolies do. There is plenty of precedent for that. It’s only rational to fear what they’re going to do with this accumulation of power."

That's historically what monopolies do? Okay, so show me the precedent.

Microsoft has pretty much dominated the market with Windows. Has Windows become more expensive since it first launched because MS has a monopoly on operating systems?

It launched in 1985 for $99.00. In today's dollars that equals $212.00

The latest version of Windows is $179.00.

But Amazon must have a track record for doing this, right?

When the Kindle was released in 2007, it was $399. Now that is has an overwhelming market share, how much did Amazon jack up the price?

The Kindle Fire is $199. The bare-bones Kindle is $79.

Hmm...

I'm old enough to remember Ma Bell having a true monopoly on telephones. You had no choice. You couldn't even own your own phone--you had to rent from them.

Am I off base, or did prices seem to get higher once the Department of Justice broke them up?

Monsanto owns 98% of the US soybean market, and 79% of the corn market. Last I checked, both corn and soy were still pretty cheap.

Where is all this precedent? Can't Turow offer a single example? Just one to show the bad things that happen when a single company controls an industry?

Certainly OPEC is an example, but that's a cartel, not a single company. They all agree on the price of oil, and we've seen how crazy oil prices have become. We're hitting $4.00 for a gallon of gas in Chicago right now. All because they collude to fix prices.

I mean, four bucks for gas is outrageous. It's almost as bad as paying $14.99 for an ebook.

Hmm. That's sort of ironic, isn't it? Because the Big 6 also fit the definition of a cartel, and they're being investigated for collusion.

Seems like cartels want to keep prices high, when Amazon wants to lower them. That's the reason the Big 6 colluded, remember? Amazon was selling ebooks for less than the cartel wanted them to be sold for. So the Big 6 forced Amazon to take the agency deal, resulting in LESS MONEY FOR AUTHORS.

I put that in caps because Turow and the Authors Guild support the agency model, when authors make less money from the agency model. And the rationale behind it is so funny it hurts:

The Big 6 wanted to control ebook pricing so they could keep the prices high, because they were afraid of Amazon becoming a monopoly which might raise the price of ebooks.

How about Wal-Mart? They certainly have a commanding market share. And look how they're gouging their customers with large selections and low prices, and how they keep appearing in more and more areas so more consumers can benefit from them.

And yes, I know some people hate Wal-Mart. For a nice counterpoint to all the hate, watch the Penn & Teller episode of Bullshit where they talk about all the good Wal-Mart does. It's on season 5, and you can get it on Netflix.

Hey, there's an example! Netflix is close to being a monopoly. In fact, they are one of the most visited sites on the Internet (#22 in the US). And look how poorly they treat their customers by charging an outrageous $15.98 a month. Compare that to cable TV companies, who have plenty of competition. Yet for some reason I still pay over $50 a month for cable.

Hmm. Cable (which has competition) screws me, and their customer service is laughable, and Netflix (the monopoly) is a fraction of the price and gives me great service.

"Scott said: This was something that Amazon pioneered. They would sell you a [just-released] book on Day One, buy it back from you on Day Two, and then resell it to another customer on Day Three. This was legal, but certainly not what anybody ever intended.

So Amazon decides to go into competition with the publishers by reselling the book they just bought. The publisher gets paid nothing, and neither does the author. It’s a pure profit for Amazon."

So Amazon pioneered selling used merchandise alongside new merchandise?

Have you ever been to a car dealer, Scott? They've been doing that for decades. So has Gamestop. They buy used videogames, and sell both new and used games, systems, and equipment. Best Buy is doing this now as well.

Yet videogames still outgross Hollywood.

Record stores have been doing this forever. And I know plenty of indie bookstores who sell both new and used.

Apparently used sales don't hurt new sales as much as Scott would like us to believe. Or perhaps they do. Perhaps once Amazon began selling used books alongside new books, new book sales plummeted. I'm sure he's got reams of data that shows this was the case.

Funny he didn't share any of that data, or give a single example. As president of the Authors Guild (aka the Mouthpiece for Big Publishing) he certainly could contact some of the Big 6 and ask them how their new book sales on Amazon plummeted when Amazon began selling used books.

Used bookstores have been around for hundreds of years, yet the new book market has continued to survive, if not thrive.

I wonder what Scott and the Authors Guild think of libraries. They buy one book, and loan it out hundreds of times. Doesn't that hurt new book sales too?

Well, Random House thinks it does. They just increased their price of ebooks to libraries as much as 300%.

But Random House isn't a monopoly. It is part of a cartel.

Am I the only one getting the impression that calling Amazon a monopoly is just a tactic to scare authors, when authors should be fearing the disaster that is the Big 6 cartel? The Big 6 are the ones raising prices and giving authors poor royalties. Amazon is giving authors great royalties and lowering prices, which leads to more ebook sales.

BTW, see how I'm proving my points by linking to examples? Where are Scott's links?

Scott said: "One way that 25 percent of net became the standard royalty for e-books was because publishers said, “We all know they can’t go on selling e-books at a loss forever and sooner or later this pricing structure has got to change.” They told authors they couldn’t agree to a different royalty because everyone knew that Amazon wouldn’t be paying them $14 to $15 per title indefinitely."

Wow. This is such utter BS.

First of all, the 25% ebook royalty rate existed long before Amazon invented the Kindle. I've got book contracts to prove it.

Second of all, they couldn’t agree to a different royalty because everyone knew that Amazon wouldn’t be paying them $14 to $15 per title indefinitely--SERIOUSLY?!?! The Big 6 FORCED Amazon into the agency model. The Big 6 are the ones who cut author profits and guaranteed Amazon was no longer paying $14 to $15 per title.

So the Big 6 were worried Amazon would no longer pay them $15 per ebook, so they forced Amazon to take a deal where Amazon only paid them $7 an ebook.

In-fucking-credible. And of course, the author got screwed. And the Authors Guild endorsed this screwing.

Scott said: "Amazon responded by removing the buy buttons not just from all of Macmillan Publishing’s e-books — about which you can say, yeah, there’s a legitimate dispute — but from their print books, too. Paper, physical books! It was another demonstration of their ability to abuse their market power."

Actually, Amazon was the one being bullied here. Macmillan forced them to take the agency model. Amazon had deals in place with Macmillan, and Amazon was allowed to price their ebooks however they wanted to. That's how retail works. So Amazon decides they don't want to be bullied by a supplier, and they stop selling the supplier's ebooks, and that's an example of abusing power?

When someone smacks me in the mouth, and I smack them back, am I abusing my power too?

Scott said: "Barnes and Noble developed the nook because they really had no choice but to compete with Amazon. "

Amazon didn't force B&N to develop the Nook, Scott.

Readers did. Because readers decided they wanted ebooks. And smart companies try to pay attention to what readers want.

Unless, of course, they are part of a cartel and can control price. Like the Big 6 did for decades, releasing an overpriced $25 hardcover a year before the affordable $7.99 paperback. Why not release them both at the same time?

Oh yeah, because you can't gouge the consumer then. Funny how when a book is finally released in paperback, it pretty much always sells more copies than the hardcover. Perhaps because customers prefer paying less.

Historically, who charges customers less? Cartels like OPEC and the Big 6? Or so-called monopolies like Amazon and Netflix?

How about Apple? Apple is now the biggest music retailer in the world. And did they abuse this monopoly power by raising prices and becoming hostile to their customers? Or have they lowered prices and stopped using DRM, which customers hate?

(A quick aside here--the music business blames piracy for their woes, because their revenue decline coincides with the rise of mp3s. I have a different theory. Customers didn't want to pay $15 for a CD when they only wanted one song. When Apple started selling mp3s individually, consumers only bought the song they wanted, not the whole CD. Hence the sales decline. It wasn't piracy. It was the music business no longer able to bully consumers into buying full CDs. For a hilarious look at how industries inflate numbers, watch author Rob Reid explain Copyright Math.)

Scott said: "Again, my concern is for the sake of literary diversity. If the rewards to authors go down, simple economics says there will be fewer authors. It’s not that people won’t burn with the passion to write. The number of people wanting to be novelists is probably not going to decline — but certainly the number of people who are going to be able to make a living as authors is going to dramatically decrease."

Because there can be no literary diversity without publishers and brick and mortar bookstores, right Scott?

What a silly thing to say. Almost as silly as saying there will be fewer authors.

Actually, Scott, there are now more authors than ever, thanks to Amazon. There are over 100,000 self-pubbed titles in the Kindle Owner's Lending Library, and many more in KDP. And the majority of these authors are making more money than they were in legacy publishing.

Some of these books went out of print. Some were rejected. Some were never even submitted to the Big 6. Some, like me, will never submit again. Now these authors are earning 70% royalties through Amazon, while the Big 6 still only offer 17.5%.

Why don't you mention those authors, Scott? Some are Guild members.

Please, Scott, explain why you are defending the group that screws authors and demonizing the group doing good things for authors?

Is Amazon perfect? Of course not. No company is. But the things you accused them of doing are justifiable, and there is no evidence or precedent for the things you fear they'll do someday in the hypothetical future. At the same time, there is ample evidence that the Big 6 harms authors and disregards readers.

It seems to me that you, and the Authors Guild, are fighting for the wrong team.

After writing this fisk, I asked Barry Eisler if he had anything to add. He came up with these excellent points.

Barry: Joe, that was epic. It was almost painful to see someone so thoroughly demolished for his total failure to mention even *one* supporting example, and for his failure to address all the real-world examples that contradict the theories on which he relies.

Remember, this is not some high school freshman who's learning persuasive writing and argument for the first time. This is a graduate of Harvard Law School, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, a practicing attorney, and the author of two works of nonfiction. His failure to provide any real-world evidence at all in support of his claims and theories is stunning. So is his failure to respond to this post or the one you and I did over the weekend. No one with any intellectual honesty, or even just dignity, could refrain from defending his arguments after they've been so publicly and thoroughly dismantled.

Just a few additional thoughts:

Look at Counselor Turow's opening argument again: "The concern is that they [Amazon] are getting so large and they compete so ruthlessly that there’s a lot of fear for what the world with Amazon in charge is going to look like."

There's so much dishonesty in that one little sentence.

First, "the concern is" and "there's a lot of fear" construction. Anytime someone uses the passive voice, or otherwise constructs his sentences to obscure the actors, my bullshit detector starts to tingle. Who is Scott talking about here? Himself, presumably, but no one's going to particularly care about the fears and concerns of just one person, so he can't name himself. And legacy publishers, presumably, but if he were to say, "The concern among legacy publishers is…", people would discount that fear as illegitimate and self-interested. So instead, he twists his syntax to make readers feel like he's talking about the whole world, or at least about all of decent society, without ever having to take an actual position about just who is so concerned and afraid, and why -- a position that he might have to actually defend .

Remember, again, this is a guy who's written countless legal briefs. A professional, who chooses his words with exceptional care. So it's fair to assume his linguistic dodges are not accidental, but are instead done deliberately.

But okay, regardless of who is supposedly so concerned and afraid, what does Scott claim they're concerned and afraid of? "Amazon in charge."

Amazon in charge of what? Book retailing? Book publishing? My health care? The country? The world? What does it mean for a company to be "in charge" of something?

Well, that's just it -- you're not supposed to really know. Your imagination is supposed to just fill in a vague feeling of disquiet at the notion of a corporation being "in charge." So at best, the phrase is hyperbolic. The non-overheated way to phrase it would be something like, "Amazon having too much power in the book business." But that doesn't sound *scary* enough. So Turow deliberately resorts to hyperbole to achieve the scares he seeks.

Now, in fiction, this is fine. But from the President of the Authors Guild, in a letter posted on the Authors Guild blog?

That's just disingenuous.

Why is Turow creating these straw men? The same reason anyone does. Because he knows he can't make or counter real arguments. If he could, he wouldn't have to make shit up instead.

Here's another nugget.

"Barnes and Noble developed the nook because they really had no choice but to compete with Amazon."

Think about that for a moment. Turow makes it sound like mean old Amazon cruelly forced B&N into such a dire situation that B&N had to, like, *compete*, man. And that is so unfair!

Really? Amazon's innovations forced other companies to innovate, too? And Turow doesn't like that? He wishes it weren't so? Turow thinks that's *bad?*

This is what happens when you can't argue with logic and evidence -- when, as Orwell, said, "there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims." The truth starts to bleed through the bullshit. And the truth is, Turow doesn't like innovation. He doesn't like competition. He likes the cozy, moribund world of establishment publishing that has been good to him, the one with which he identifies and of which he is part. He doesn't want that world to change, and he resents players who are intent on changing it.

Now, for all the Twitterers and commenters who are going to jump in now and say, "Hey Barry, you and Joe are biased, too! You guys are both Amazon authors and have made, and stand to make, a lot of money with Amazon!," let me say this.

Bias is only suggestive of unsound thinking. It is never dispositive. Logic, evidence, and argument are dispositive. So the urge to focus exclusively on what's at best merely suggestive while ignoring what's dispositive is as strange as it is unproductive.

But let's assume the bias-mongers are right. Let's assume Joe and I are biased (and that Scott Turow, bless his disinterested heart, isn't). Let's assume the Amazon model of low prices, high royalties, and high volume works for us, and that we like it the same way Pete Sampras likes carbon racquets -- because they favor our style of play.

Now that that's out of the way, can we address the *merits* of our arguments? Is what Joe and and I have argued here logical? Is it backed with solid evidence? Can it be refuted with solid evidence? And regardless of how one system or another might favor Scott Turow or how it might favor Joe and me, which system, on the merits, is likely to deliver more benefits to more authors and readers overall?

Those are the questions that matter, no matter who is biased in an argument, or how, or why. And anyone who really gives a damn about books and publishing should be trying to answer those questions, not trying to avoid them.

Joe: Thanks for chiming in, Barry. I want to add a bit about proving arguments. I have very little knowledge of monopolies. So when someone tells me something is a monopoly, they need to prove it to me and not assume I can automatically come up with ten examples. I found a few examples of monopolies on the Internet, but it's not my job to study every company in the history of the US looking for monopolies to disprove Scott's ideas. It's his job to prove them and support them, because he is the one claiming that monopolies increase prices, and that there is plenty of precedent for that.

He has to show the precedent, and show how it applies to Amazon, if he wants people to believe him.

If someone claims there is a gremlin in their house, it is not up to me to prove gremlins don't exist. The one who claims experience has to prove it.

I stated quite openly that I don't know of any past monopolies that increased prices once they wiped out competition. I'm saying that the dominant companies I've looked at (Amazon, Netflix, Google) seem to treat consumers better than cartels treat customers. I've provided evidence to support my ideas.

If you disagree with me, go point by point, using logic and evidence to show I'm wrong.