And November begins with . . . a random dispatch!

I've decided against renting. I looked at a couple of places, and they were fine as far as they went, but OMFG I had completely forgotten what landlords are like to deal with. Many thanks to them for calling me first thing on a Saturday morning, as well as selling my telephone number to marketers who also enjoy calling me at the crack of dawn! It appears that it's not just a regional thing--landlords across the country are retarded douchebags. (And before you start muttering, I've never had a problem with paying rent. I do, however, have a problem with people who confuse the right to rental payments with droit du seigneur.)

Anyway, renting close to my sister would be more expeditious than waiting for a suitable house to come to the market. But the prospect of inviting some stupid asshole to break into my apartment while I am taking a shower because the shower was not, in fact, waterproof (happened) has reconciled me to the virtues of patience.

What else? Well, as I mentioned, in July Amazon rejiggered its science fiction categories, and at this point I think I have enough data to say that being on the free Science Fiction: First Contact list really blows. I'm keeping my ranking and my front-page status, but I'm giving away far fewer copies of Trang and selling far fewer copies of Trust than when I was on the front page of the free Science Fiction: Series list. The fact that I'm in roughly the same position as far as rankings are concerned just reinforces to me that this list has far less appeal to people than the other list.

So, it's a problem worthy of a science-fiction writer: When I finally get back to work on Trials and finally finish it and finally publish it, I will have to push to get on the general science fiction list (or on whatever more-promising list exists at that date in the faraway future).

Another random dispatch

So, I've pretty much decided that I am going to move--not to Dallas, but about 20 minutes away from where I live now to be closer to my sister and her kids (and not incidentally, to get the hell out of my ghetto-ass neighborhood). I'm going to look at a rental tomorrow, and if I like it, I'm gone. I know a move is going to be a huge time suck, but it has to happen sooner or later, so why not now when I'm being unproductive anyway?

Wow! It's just like a Kris Rusch post!

You know how Kris Rusch has, like, a thousand horror stories about publishers deliberately killing the sales of a book because the author is out of favor or because they want an excuse to fire a particular editor? And of course you might think that wouldn't happen, because it's in the publisher's best interest to sell as many books as possible, but the fact of the matter is that short-term considerations and politics often take the fore, in publishing as in other businesses.

Fascinating reading, of course, but pretty much not my problem, what with my being indie and all. Sure, sometimes Amazon glitches up, but I never thought I'd actually witness this kind of thing happening myself.

Except that, you know how I run that Block B Web site? I have a page that lists where you can buy their music. They just released a new album (under their new management company), so I was updating the site and thought I'd make sure that the retail links are all up to date.

Guess what? Their last album, which sold quite well when it was released under their old label last year (you know, the label they sued and quit), is not nearly as available as it used to be. Indeed, it looks like pretty soon you'll only be able to find it among the Amazon resellers and maybe on eBay.

Interesting, isn't that? I mean, it would seem a no-brainer to have their last album out and available for purchase, since a new release typically stirs up a lot of interest in whatever you call a musician's backlist, and backlist is so profitable.

Given their label's track record, I'd say it's a coin toss between incompetence and spite. And it's just more evidence that, in any industry, handing over all the business power to someone who isn't you is probably a mistake.

If you won't sell it to me, I can't buy it from you

It's fall, which is apparently the time when Korean groups release music (whereas an American artist might release an album with 20-odd songs once every two years, Korean groups tend to release smaller "mini-albums" more frequently).

Anyway, at this point I'm familiar with a lot of these groups and have favorites, which means that I'm coping once again with the frustration of having music released--complete with videos and all kinds of expensive marketing--that I cannot buy, even though I want to.

Why not? Well, digital music is really big in the United States, but it's less big (or regarded simpy as a form of piracy) in Asia. In addition, Korea really exists in an alternate universe when it comes to the Internet--I assume because the market is small and wasn't really a priority for the big Silicon Valley firms, different companies have established themselves in Korea as the default Web sites. Koreans don't Google things, they Naver them. They don't socialize on Facebook, they socialize on CyWorld. Making things even more insular, in some cases you can't access entire Facebook-like categories of sites unless you register with your...Korean Social Security number! Which of course you have, because there are no non-Koreans anywhere on the planet!

So, yeah, you can rock marketing and selling to a Korean audience and be completely pathetic at marketing and selling to everyone else. You know, kind of like authors can rock at reaching other writers and suck at reaching readers--it's those "affinity group" blinders.

In addition, there's what looks an awful lot like "windowing" going on--the practice of not selling music (or books) in all formats right away on the theory that doing so will cannibalize sales.

Bullshit. Like I said before, if it ain't digital, I don't listen to it. I'm certainly not going to buy it, especially not at the prices they charge for import CDs.

As a result, there's been album releases that I really wanted to buy the moment they came out. (coughcoughZionT'sRedLightcoughcough) I'm sure other people did, too, and that might have led to some nice chart-topping visibility of the kind Jay Park recently experienced.

But nooooo. I had to wait months to buy Red Light, and of course I didn't know when it came out digitally, so I bought it when I found it (and it's lucky that I remembered to buy it at all). There goes your surge of buyers and your bestseller-list visibility.

And I'm sure this is a self-reinforcing thing. Zion T's label (the musically very fine Amoeba Culture) is going to look at his digital sales and say, "Well, that's not worth pursuing." And they'll never realize that the problem is that they're not doing it right.

Who is doing it right? You can imagine how much it pleases me to say that not only is Block B back, but they're doing it right! (Whoo!)

What are they doing? Well, they've pre-released a song off their upcoming mini-album, and they did it like this:

1. They offered it as a sponsored free download.

2. It's on sale at iTunes.

3. It will be on iTunes again, I'm sure, once the mini-album is released.

So if someone grabs the free download and then buys the mini-album, or they buy the single now and the mini-album later (since there's usually a discount on an entire album), Block B gets paid twice for the same song.

Do you think they read Joe Konrath's blog? Because this looks familiar. And the added bonus is that they're maximizing revenue in a way that does not make fans feel like they're getting ripped off--it's a free song! What's not to like?

POV, editing, and family fun

I mentioned a while back that my sister wrote a Sherlock fanfic. It was good, but it was a script, so Fanfiction.net pulled it (it turns out that they don't take scripts).

She liked the feedback of that site and wanted to keep her work there, so she decided to take her script and turn it into a narrative story.

I liked the script very much, but the story she first gave me was just unreadable. It was a kind of half-script/half-narration, where the writer took:

SHERLOCK: Where's my violin?

MOLLY: Where you left it!

And turned it into:

Sherlock looked around. The urge was upon him--he needed his violin. Was it there? No. There? No! What was there was just stupid, stupid Molly, oblivious to his need.

"Where's my violin?" he asked her.

She looked up, annoyed by his brusque tone. He always treated her like a servant--like it was her fault he was so disorganized. "Where you left it!" she snapped.

I'm making that up, but that's what it was like--at every freaking line of dialogue, the point-of-view shifted. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was unreadable: I gave up a couple of pages in.

Then I was in a pretty pickle, wasn't I? She's my sister, people, and I love her very much. In addition, we really count on each other--I don't take our harmony lightly.

On the other hand--she asked for an edit, didn't she? In addition, she's a good writer. The script she produced was very good (so, you know, good plot, good dialogue, properly-motivated characters), she's written good stories before, and she clearly was willing to put in the work to extensively revise it. Given all that, would I be doing her any favors if I told her, "This is fine!" when it wasn't?

She knows how I feel about editing, so I very carefully gave it to her straight--this was great, now it's bad, here's why and what you can do to fix it. Please don't hate me.

Later on, she gave me a revised version, but I was just in no hurry to read it. What if it still sucked? Finally, last night I read it--and it's great!

Of course I am proud of my sister--it's not easy to take a harsh edit, and I'm impressed by how she went from not appearing to understand point-of-view at all to really wielding it quite handily.

But I'm even more impressed by how much consciously choosing a point-of-view improves a story. This thing went from just unreadable to a proper story, which is already a big leap. In addition, in some ways the story is better than the script, because by using point-of-view, my sister was able to give the reader insight into the inner lives of characters in a way you really can't with a script.

I should note that one of the keys to her using point-of-view was to let go of some of the dialogue. Think about it: When you're Sherlock, do you even listen to what anyone else says? Half the time, it's just a kind of yapping....

Cutting self slack

If you look on my home page, I've just deleted the dates on the third and fourth novels of the Trang series. I'm still planning on writing them (in fact, I had some great ideas for Trials today during my walk), but having deadlines was freaking me out. Grief is proving to be a hard emotion for me to work with; attaining the level of focus I need to do novel-length writing is tough. Yes, I can crank out blog posts, but kicking out 800 words for a stand-alone piece is an order of magnitude easier than kicking out 800 words as part of a 100,000-word novel.

Another value in free

This is interesting (via PV): Netflix looks at piracy sites to figure out what shows are popular and worth carrying.

Yeah, I love it--I've never BitTorrented anything because it's a hassle. Not shockingly, I subscribe to Netflix. As with Amazon and iTunes, the main value of Netflix is convenience, and I'm happy to pay for that. It's not like BitTorrent doesn't have costs--costs in your time, costs in risks to your computer. If people are downloading from there, they're motivated to get over that hump--they want the work.

And I can completely see doing something similar with books--do a couple of freebie short stories/novellas in different genres or series, and see what catches on before deciding which one to pursue.

My Other Blog

I've decided to start a blog that's just going to be completely self-indulgent--it's called My Other Blog. Partly, this was because I want to have a place to post about things that I can't manage to force into this blog (surprise, surprise, today's post is about Korean rappers). And partly it's because I feel like I have less to say about self-publishing--you know, do it, don't get ripped off, is there anything else? I'll still post about what I'm doing, of course.

Uh, that's work, too

A few days ago I read an oldish article on b-boying (that's breakdancing to ancients like me) in Korea, and it really stuck in my craw, so I thought I'd vent.

This is what bothers me (emphasis added):

At events or clubs in Seoul, Chon regularly spots unknown b-boys taking out experienced pros. “What happens is they practice on the lowdown until they’re up at a level where they can actually come out and shock somebody,” he says. “They practice in the shadow.”

Cho “C4″ Chung-woon of Rivers says through a translator, “We’ve been praised for our technical skills, but that’s because we would practice head spinning all day long. That’s what sets us apart.”

Still, the old “Asian work ethic” explanation is just part of the story. When Koreans first emerged, Americans praised them for their power moves — the highflying crowd-pleasing spins, freezes and gymnastics moves — but criticized the Seoul b-boys for lacking soul. They were thought to be mechanical, unable to rock with the beat, and lacking in “foundation skills,” such as the top-rock and footwork moves that form the historical roots of the dance.

“What the Americans said really influenced them,” says Charlie Shin, Chon’s business partner and a Korean b-boy advocate. “They went back in the lab. It changed them.”

They mastered routines, the choreographed ensemble moves that are essential parts of a showdown. They immersed themselves in the music and the rhythms. They studied the history of b-boying and hip-hop culture. Three members of the Rivers crew — Born, C4 and Red Foot — are now affiliates of Mighty Zulu Kings, a crew whose lineage can be traced back to hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa’s Bronx River Project dances in the early 1970s. Even their crew name, Rivers, was chosen to capture an aspect of the hip-hop aesthetic.

“You know how rivers flow? Rivers flow swiftly, and that’s also how we move and how we think,” C4 says. “B-boys in other countries do it as a hobby, but to the Korean b-boys, our life is b-boying.”

Yeah, wow! It sure sounds like they abandoned that pesky work ethic there!

What really annoys me about this article (even more than the implication that a work ethic is some kind of racial attribute) is the underlying assumption that creative work is not hard work--that talent cannot be learned or improved upon.

I mean, look at what that story says: The b-boys were able to able to become gymnasts by dint of hard labor. But their b-boying lacked soul--that artistic element that separates real dancers from mere athletes.

How did they get soul? Did they and the Americans all drop groovy acid together until the Koreans' consciousness was expanded and soul could enter? Did they sit around and wait for the Muse of Soul to descend?

Um, no. They worked at it. There's not really any difference between what took these b-boys to the level of acrobats and what took them to the level of world-champion dancers.

The fact that the article can say It Wasn't a Work Ethic! while at the same time pointing out how these guys worked day and night to quite successfully obtain soul just demonstrates how deeply ingrained this whole belief is that the Muse just kind of grants higher-level artistic skills upon this or that lucky individual.

That's bullshit. Do you know why I analyze humor? Because I want my books to be funny. Why do I pick apart dialog? Because I want my books to have good dialog.

Why do I re-work and re-work the openings of my book? Why do I go to the trouble of dumping a third of my copy? Why?

Because I want my books to be good. I want them to operate at a high level. I'm not interested in being a hack.

The article is deeply wrong on another level as well: Without good foundation in acrobatics, the Korean b-boys never would have become good dancers. NEVER. What makes b-boying a distinctive form of dance is its heavy reliance on gymnastics--you can't just wave your arms around prettily and become a champion. Likewise, you can't just ignore the "technicalities" of spelling and grammar, because you think your "higher" literary skills are so fucking awesome.

Good writing, like good dancing, gives the audience an impression of effortlessness. It makes it seem like the story was there all along, simply waiting to be told. But if you're the one doing the writing, it takes a hell of a lot of work.

Good limits, bad limits

After thoughtful consideration yesterday, I decided that the best way to deal with my story problems was to have a raging bout of insomnia that would leave me unable to so much as read a book. (Although, granted, my current book is John McPhee's Annals of the Former World. Guys, this may be the lack of sleep talking, or it may be because The New Yorker has so thoroughly adopted his prose style that I feel like I could finish his every sentence, but I am getting to be of the opinion that McPhee is overrated as a writer. At one point he lists a bunch of different geological ages because he thinks the names are kind of cool. I'm looking forward to the page where he just starts listing names out of the phone book--you know, because they're kind of cool. And his stories just never seem to climax. I get the feeling he was probably a pretty boring person.)

Anyway, today I read Kris Rusch's post on how nowadays she can write what she wants, YEAH! Screw publishers and their schedules and their little minds!

And on the one hand, I am delighted that e-books mean that short stories and novellas and little genres can flourish once again, and Rusch certainly brings up some examples of publishers being really arbitrary about stuff.

On the other hand--well, I also read this today. It's about a Web site I happen to enjoy called Eat Your Kimchi, which is by two Canadians living in Korea. Initially they started making videos about life in Korea so that their families could see what was going on with them, but then they started getting traffic from people who were curious about Korea.

And then they started getting traffic from really oversensitive Koreans who HATED them and wanted them deported! Things got extremely unpleasant, especially when they would criticize K-Pop groups, because Korean pop fans are notoriously insane.

The thing is, as awful as it got and as unfair as it certainly was, I've watched a lot of the old videos, and I have to say that their newer ones are much better. Why? It's not the production values (although those have improved), it's the fact that they no longer offer up knee-jerk negative reactions to things that they don't know anything about ("ERMAHGERD, this food has TENTACLES in it!"--uh, you've never had calamari?).

You could say that they've become more careful, but I would argue that they've become more thoughtful--and that's a good thing. It prevents them from falling into the whole Ugly American (Ugly Canadian?) rut, where they just run around shrieking, "ERMAHGERD! Why are things DIFFERENT here? It's like we're in some kind of foreign country or something!"

In addition, when they do get critical (which they still do), they are either very thoughtful about it (like this) or they come up with something hilariously funny. Remember those crazy K-Pop fans? Instead of just bitching about these lunatics who desperately need to get a life, they came up with the immortal character of Fangurilla.

The line between being true to your vision and just being self-indulgent is a fine one, and I think it's harder to draw a lot of times because 1. criticism is never pleasant, and 2. sometimes it is delivered in an entirely malicious and dishonest fashion. But even the worst form of criticism can have some value--at least if you take the right lesson from it.

Sorting out a Web audience

So BlockB.com has been chugging along, which has been interesting for me. I've been a firm believer in half-assing my own online marketing, but while this blog serves multiple purposes (and marketing myself isn't really one of them), that Web site was created for the sole purpose of marketing. So stuff like checking Web stats, which is just an amusing diversion on this site, is actually important there.

Originally, when I made the Web site, I had a certain audience in mind: Myself, when I first discovered the group. There were a lot of Web sites catering to obsessed fans, but I wanted to serve people like me: American native-English speakers who didn't know much about Block B and wanted to find out more.

Well, one of the first things I realized was that, duh, the people who go looking for a Web site called BlockB.com already know quite a bit about Block B. What got me hits was adding to the free mixtape songs available on the Music page. It can be kind of a pain to find those songs, so the more of them I put in one place, the more helpful the site was. (And I probably should keep adding songs, but OMFG THERE ARE SO MANY that editing that page is a major hassle.)

The other thing that I've noticed is that I get hits from people all around the world--Asia, Europe, you name it. That's been the cause of some reflection: If I'm writing for native English speakers, I should feel free to use more-sophisticated language (especially because I don't want to reflect poorly on Block B by sounding like an idiot). But if I'm writing for people who speak or read only a little English as a second language, well, then, I should make things easy on them, right?

I haven't changed the language, but what I have done is to list fan sites that translate the group's Korean Tweets into any other language, not just into English. I didn't do that before, because how the hell would I know if someone is doing a good job translating Korean into Chinese or Arabic or Hungarian or whatever? But given who is coming to the Web site and the response to that particular expansion, clearly it's needed.

Some of the cultural stuff isn't going to change--you'll notice that there is absolutely no mention of how handsome/cute/attractive the guys are (except for Jaehyo, because he was pretty much Miss Korea for a while there, and that's a lot to leave off a resume). This is very uncommon when people talk about Korean music, because looks are considered extremely important in that industry. But 1. I'm 43 years old, for Christ's sake, and 2. as the above statement implies, I'm American, and I know that to Americans it's a huge turn-off when people start talking about how musicians look instead of how they sound. "He's soooo cuuuute!" is basically taken to mean, "I'm 14 years old, horny, stupid, or otherwise entirely without critical judgement!" The American market is really big and really worth aiming for, so I'm not going to cater to the teeny-boppers (who have eyes and can decide that a particular young man is soooo dreamy!!! all on their own) because that will alienate everyone else.

Goat humor

The other night, I watched Tere Bin Laden, a Bollywood comedy about Osama Bin Laden (it came out before he was killed) and the war on terror. It was quite funny in the ways I expected--a lot of dark, absurdist political humor--but it was also funny in a way I didn't expect: namely, there was a lot of goat humor.

What do I mean by goat humor? Well, in that movie there's a TV news report on a peace agreement between the Afghan warlords and the American military. The peace is formalized when a delighted Afghan warlord VERY proudly puts a goat he is carrying into the arms of a somewhat-baffled American general.

The movie is full of this sort of thing--one of the major characters is a chicken farmer who has a genuinely touching emotional connection to his prize rooster. It's a riff on modernization--sure, we Bollywood South Asians fly around the world and are modern media junkies, but we're not too far removed from being dirt farmers whose main source of pride is their livestock.

You see something similar in Stephen Chow's movies--he's from Hong Kong, which is an expensive big city and can seem like a very glamorous place. But Chow's characters are almost always comically poor: In one movie he lives in a literal dump; in another, he lives in a stairwell; in a third, his bed is a piece of cheap lawn furniture (and yes, he does wind up having to romance the girl of his dreams there). There's always that idea that if you scratch a sophisticated and urbane Hong Konger, you'll find someone who used to live in a closet with eight other people and knows full well how to kill a chicken. 

It's interesting to me because it's a type of humor that is largely absent from American comedy nowadays--but that didn't used to be the case. Shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, characters like Ma and Pa Kettle, all of that rube humor dates from a time when urbanization and modernization weren't simply big words but actual experiences in many American lives. Now we're so past it that we think of rural poverty as a Serious Social Problem rather than as the way we used to live--and the way our grandparents, embarrassingly, pretty much still do.

I guess the modern American equivalent are comedies about celebrities and slacker comedies: We might seem glamorous and perfect, but really all we do is sit around on our couches, smoking weed and eating Doritos.

I think I'm getting a migraine....

It must be from the way I've been banging my head against my desk.

OK. Let's back up. Remember how I said that I was switching from listing books directly with Kobo to going through Smashwords, since apparently Kobo can't manage to pay people? (And I did shortly thereafter.)

You might think that I'm a tad oversensitive on this topic, but it is a policy for me: I do not do business with those who make a habit of screwing others over, because I am certain that they will eventually get around to doing the same to me. That's why I pulled out of Google Books back when that was a thing. As I've said before, I regard this policy as major reason I was able to survive as a freelance writer for so many years.

Backing up once again: Remember how Block B was totally screwed by its label? Well, they managed to buy their freedom and are planning to release new music soon. (Yay!)

And what is the guy who ran their old label doing? Giving interviews explaining how he doesn't regret a thing and how everything bad (including the lengthy and no doubt expensive court battle Block B just had with the label he owns) just kind of happened. It just happened. Like the weather. He certainly had nothing to do with it.

Why is this guy giving these kinds of interviews? He's put together a new group. A bunch of people looked at everything that was happening to Block B--not getting paid, having money stolen from their families--and said, "I want that to happen to me!" (And for the record, this guy doesn't run some HUGE company that you simply must sign with. He's had one successful group, and they just ran away as fast as their little feet could carry them!)

Yes, Virginia, apparently a sucker is born every minute.

You don't always get to pick your priorities

It sure felt nice to set a goal and decide that Priority #1 was going to be the novel!

Well, man plans, God laughs. The problem is that Priority #1 has to be the family, and everything's not quite mopped up from the crisis earlier this year. The lasting suckage of the last two family deaths is that Team Responsible Adults is now permanently down two members. My fingers are crossed that the situation can stabilize without radical, time-sucking solutions (like a cross-country move on my part), but who knows? Anyway, it's requiring some added attention now, but hopefully will settle down soon.

Varieties of inertia

Random Life Crap has come up again, but hopefully tomorrow will be better (and the bathroom is almost finished). In the meantime, Kris Rusch has a good post comparing publishing to the music industry. There's an interesting bit about how off-putting it is to consumers when producers refuse to be flexible or adapt. I've whined about how much it annoys me, but none other than Kanye West has provided the data to prove that it can hurt sales:

For his latest album, he did almost no appearances (very important in music), and had no advance streaming [i.e. free samples] or preorders. As a result, his first-week sales were at a career low for West, and went down 80% in the second week.

Meanwhile, Jay Park told me on Facebook yesterday that he's going to release a free single tomorrow. Just saying.

What else is happening? Well, I realized that I never updated my covers on my Facebook page. Then I thought, "I never do anything with that page! It just sits there. I should take it down!" And then I realized that it doesn't matter that I never do anything with that page, it costs me nothing to have it up, and even if only one person uses it to get updates, well, then having it is doing more good than not having it. Which is kind of my entire social-media strategy, such as it is--just have it, but don't drive yourself crazy with it. Even doing it poorly is better than not doing it at all, and takes about the same amount of effort. So I'll just update the graphics later today.