Origami Unicorn

Halloween is Grinch Night

Winner of the 1977 Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program

A History of Chapters

The New Yorker takes a look at where the concept comes from and how it works to shape our reading.

[T]he chapter has become a way of looking at the world, a way of dividing time and, therefore, of dividing experience. Its origins date back to long before the printing press or even the bound codex, back to the emergence of prose in antiquity as both an expressive and an informational medium.

Andrew Wylie and Amazon

He doesn't like it, but that's no surprise. Still, his arguments are interesting. Publishers Weekly reports.

Wylie suggested it was a mistake for publishers to have ever agreed to give Amazon--which he accused of having “taken the business and distorted it radically,” --30% of digital profits as the music industry had given Apple.

And also:

As long as publishers “don’t blink” at this crucial time, Wylie said, "...Amazon, is going to be buried and in which plot of sand they will be stuck, [publishers] will be able to raise the author’s digital royalty to 40% or 50%,” he said. “Writers will begin to make enough money to live.”

Amazon the Monopoly? Hard to Prove

Publishers Weekly considers The Seattle Times' article on why it would be hard to prove that Amazon is a monopoly.

While Amazon’s critics reflexively call the retailer a monopoly, Green notes that a company which commands overwhelming market share—Amazon is estimated to sell 60% of all e-books, and 40% of all print books—is not necessarily a monopoly. He writes that despite the company's dominance, "proving Amazon is a monopoly, let alone an abusive one, wouldn’t be easy. In legal terms, the word monopoly relates to a company’s ability to control a defined market because of a lack of competition. While there’s not a specific market-share number that defines a monopoly, the threshold is typically quite high."

And, also, this:

U.S. antitrust law focuses on harm to consumers, not to producers or suppliers. Amazon may well be squeezing publishers to get lower prices. But the damage to publishers, or the authors whose works they publish, isn’t likely to hold much sway with courts, said Eleanor Fox, a New York University Law School antitrust-law professor."

Consider the Future: Amazon

The Bookseller has a look at a future where Amazon can exert enormous pressure, not just on its suppliers, but directly on authors.

The mechanisms for the AMZN squeeze are in place," Tamblyn wrote, "agreements allow it. Self-pub inclusion in Select, Unlimited, KOLL are early examples. Amazon can and will, as a business, do what it needs to do to _all_ suppliers in time to improve profitability and grow share...The litmus test for an indie author: could your income survive a conflict with Amazon? If not, it's worth thinking about how you could.

Wyrd Sisters

Pink Plasma

Brain Lapse

The Life and Death of Tommy Chaos and Stacey Danger

Amazon, S&S: Who Gave What to Whom?

Well, now that is has been confirmed there is a deal, the speculation begins. Publishers Weekly talks about it.

Some insiders--all who spoke off the record, and with the caveat that they had no inside knowledge of the specifics--speculated that S&S may have agreed to give Amazon more coop money.