When I was in Baltimore the other week I got picked up at the train station and as we were driving away… well.

We stopped at a light and a woman in an SUV looked over and leaned out of her window.

“Excuse me?” she asked.

Vince, my partner in crime and the driver, leaned a bit into me and asked her what was up. She got out of her car and walked over to us, to the passenger side. This was, in a word, strange. To me at least.

Leaning into our car and looking at me she said “I think you need this, to be saved in Christ,” and then handed me some papers. I took them, in slight shock.

Vince put his hand on my shoulder and said “Don’t.” I think he was afraid I would tell her off or hit the crazy woman. But no I sat there dumbly. She got back into her car and the light changed. We drove off.

I looked at what she had handed me and laughed long and hard. I took a picture of it and well…

Yes. That’s right. Web Spinning Stigmata Jesus Spider-Man is in the hizz-ouse! Jesus loves you so much he spins webs of stigmata blood to stop criminals! With great, God-like powers come great God-like responsibility I guess. Or something.

Still, it is the funniest Jesus image I’ve seen in years. I’m so glad I took that woman’s papers. I ain’t so saved in Christ but at least now I know he wears spandex.

One final word on the already discussed Mitt Romney dog episode.

A friend found these. They existed before this news, which makes it even better but here you go:

(click to purchase - $21.99)
That’s just fucking fantastic. I have nothing to do with these, again - they existed previous to this last news cycle and all. But now, they’re simply choice.

This morning I posted about a thing the Boston Globe ran about Romney. Well it gets better!

Time.com’s Ana Marie Cox wrote:

Not that we can lock him up. It’s not a cut and dried case, according to animal welfare officer I spoke to, and it looks like the statute of limitations has passed on the incident (15 years).

But she also got a quote from Ingrid Newkirk, President of PETA (full quote at the Time.com link):

In the case of the dog on the roof of the car, if this is true, quite remarkably it obviously wasn’t for show as only his own children were watching, a lesson in cruelty that was also wrong for them to witness. There was also the obviousness of the situation. Thinking of the wind, the weather, the speed, the vulnerability, the isolation on the roof, it is commonsense that any dog who’s under extreme stress might show that stress by losing control of his bowels: that alone should have been sufficient indication that the dog was, basically, being tortured.

Now, yeah PETA people can be nutso too, but they are right about this one.

But remember I said it got better?

Well the Boston Globe doesn’t seem to like the fact that managed to throw Romney under a bus in trying to push him as a candidate. So they post links to the Time.com thing and try to brush it off by throwing Bill Frist under some wheels as well. Not that it’s hard, mind you. But here you go:

But Romney’s treatment of Seamus is no match for what Bill Frist, the former Senate majority leader and one-time presidential candidate, did to cats. When Frist was in medical training in Boston in the 1970s, he used to go around to animal shelters, adopt cats, and promise to care for them as pets. Then he killed them in experiments.

“It was a heinous and dishonest thing to do,” Frist wrote in an autobiography. “I was going a little crazy.”

Come on and watch Boston Globe’s website freak out under pressure. Scott Helman, the “political reporter” at Boston.com is an amazing man, I feel. He understands that in order to distract people you just have to keep making other people look worse. I’m sure that’ll get him far.

Really.

I can’t’ wait for tomorrow when Scott Helman tries to shift this even further. Soon he’ll be reduced to “And hey if you think that’s bad, God killed almost fucking well everyone with a flood once!”

I. Can’t. Wait.

So, the Boston Globe ran this article about Romney that wanted to boast about how great he is. How cool under fire he is. How he plans!

The white Chevy station wagon with the wood paneling was overstuffed with suitcases, supplies, and sons when Mitt Romney climbed behind the wheel to begin the annual 12-hour family trek from Boston to Ontario.

As with most ventures in his life, he had left little to chance, mapping out the route and planning each stop.

See what I mean? Come on now, “As with most ventures in his life, he had left little to chance”. So you can see what a great fucking hero he is.

Except then you keep reading.

Well, but first you have to hear what a hero he is.

If anything, 36-year-old Mitt, who had just been tapped to lead a new venture capital firm, was on track to achieve more at a younger age than his famously overachieving father.

His father had known poverty as a child, Mitt only privilege. His father had succeeded without a college degree while Mitt was launched with the finest educational pedigree. Given all his advantages, Mitt seemed restless to make his mark sooner.

Got that? He’s a hero and an amazing man because he wasn’t poor!

But then the TRUE HORROR begins.

Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family’s hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon’s roof rack. He’d built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.

Woa! What? Hold on! He strapped a dog, in a carrier, to the roof of his fucking car? He made a “windshield”—and note we’re never told out of what or how so it could be a piece of fucking cardboard here—so the dog would like it more? Like being strapped to the top of a car in a plastic fucking box and driven hurtling down the road for 12 hours?

Does that seem humane to you? Does it seem like someone who actually cares? Better yet does that seem like smart forward thinking or does it, just maybe, smack of a ruthless idiot who doesn’t really think about much except the people who can talk back directly to him?

And now, the point of the story:

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ”Dad!” he yelled. ”Gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

Got that? EMOTION FREE CRISIS MANAGEMENT. He straps his dog to the roof of a car, in a plastic box, for hours and when the dog shits and pisses all over itself, the carrier and the car, Romney gets out a hose and blasts the dog clean. Giving the dog the exact same thought and consideration he gives the carrier and the windshield of the car.

Is that “emotion-free crisis management”? Or, now stay with me here, is it possibly “sociopathic”, “cruel”, “heartless”, “insane” and maybe just “bugfuck nuts”? Pick your favorite.

How the hell can they sell this story as a good thing? “Look, voters! This candidate tortured an animal for hours, see how that makes him a good choice to lead the country!” Uhm. No, not really…

Given how he treated this dog, consider how he would treat people he doesn’t even know or like. I can’t imagine it would be good.

From the always strange Dei, I bring you oodles of far too cute:

So, D.J. Kirkbride is at it again. Making images of me. Last time it was Flashdance. This time he decided on The Breakfast Club. Long story. Anyway. I decided to write some of the script of D.J.s version of the film. But first, his poster:

Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday without going to the bar for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you’re fucking crazy to make an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us… In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a bastard, a bastard, a bastard, a ballerina and a bastard. Does that answer your question?… Sincerely yours, the APK Club.
—————-
APK: Screws fall out all the time, the world is an imperfect place.
Richard Vernon: You’re not fooling anyone APK. The next screw that falls out will be you.
APK: Go fuck a unicorn.
Richard Vernon: What was that?
APK: Go… Fuck… A… Unicorn.
Richard Vernon: You just bought yourself another drinkless Saturday.
APK: Ooh I’m crushed.
Richard Vernon: You just bought one more.
APK: Well I don’t wanna drink the Saturday after that. Beyond that, I’m going to have to check my calendar.
Richard Vernon: Good, cause it’s going to be filled. We’ll keep going. You want another one? Just say the word say it. Instead of going to the bar you’ll come here. Are you through?
APK: No.
—————-
APK (2): You don’t have any good plot ideas.
APK (1): Oh but I do.
APK (2): Yeah?
APK (1): I wanna write just like you. I figure all I need, is a lobotomy and some tights.
APK (3): You wear tights? When you write?
APK (2): No I don’t wear tights. I write in the required uniform.
APK (3): Tights.
APK (2): Shut up.

So let’s talk about Print on Demand (POD). POD printing could very well change everything about how we deal with books, in ways that the consistent promises of eBooks haven’t even truly started to.

Well how? That’s a long ride. But let’s see how far this gets for now.

First, some info:

Print on Demand (POD) - Technology that lets you print an item for a standard price, regardless of the size of the print run. The price per unit will always be higher, even at volume, than the price per unit of something printed via Offset Printing. However, in return for that price difference you gain the ability to do limited, or even single, runs of an item, which is not feasible through Offset Printing.

Offset Printing - The most common high volume printing technique in use today, offset features extremely consistent high quality, longevity of the printing plates themselves, and high volume output that gets cheaper with every major increase in run size. At smaller runs offset can be stupidly expensive. Generating the plates and running the machine costs the same regardless of run size. The price of materials used, however, go down with bulk. So while small print runs are not feasible, large print runs can see amazing price drops.

Espresso Book Machine - A POD printing machine owned and sold by On Demand Books (www.ondemandbooks.com). Espresso Book Machines are now being sold to libraries and retail stores in order to print books on demand for customers.

Lightning Source - The current leader of commercial POD. Lightning Source (www.lightningsource.com) is owned by Ingram Industries, Inc which is one of the major book distributors (Ingram Book Group, a subsidiary of Ingram Industries, Inc.).

So now, thus armed, to the thinkin’!

Well shit in practical terms what does this all mean? I need to break this down but everything will run into each other so forgive it.

Well “out of print” takes on a whole new lack of meaning doesn’t it? See, I wondered about that. In a world where… let me back up.

A POD printing machine can cost a lot. The books it produces are vastly more expensive per unit than offset printing. So why would I, and I will, leap to an idea that a major publisher will move to exclusively POD printing eventually? Well. Yes the cost per unit rises, and the initial outlay is large. But right now with offset you have to print a huge print run and then store them. So storage fees go away completely. Also shipping fees from your offset printer to your warehouses, those go away. And those aren’t going to be small amounts. Plus, lets say you put your POD machine next door to your book distributor of choice. I mean why wouldn’t you? you just removed 90% of the shipping fees to get your books to the distributors office.

At the minimum the costs will balance. So why not move to POD?

Once you do we’re back to the “out of print” issue. When is a book out of print if it is POD? There is never any stock to judge it by, after all. The old metrics fall away. And the first level is a “so what” but then you figure authors have contracts. Those contracts specify when the author can take a book to another publisher. See, if Book A does ok, and then a few years later is does pretty badly due to natural life cycle things the publisher might take it out of print. The contract deals with that and the rights revert to the author. At which point publisher B steps in and decides that they want to bring out a special memorial edition of Book A, throw some money behind it and get it rolling again. Well cool. The author makes more money, selling the book again, more people read it and everyone is basically happy.

Except you need a new way to define out of print.

I figured we would go to a system of virtual benchmarks: numbers of copies sold per year, and the like. I mailed Cory Doctorow, since he is both smart, well published, and has strange contracts (he has to, seriously) and asked him if this was something that was already being taken care of or still brand new.

He was good enough to get back to me very quickly and make it clear that I am far from alone in seeing this and many contracts already deal in this sort of new benchmark making a mad science of copies sold per year and ad dollars spent and so on.

So the issue is known and being dealt with. Cool beans, yo.

But it draws my eyes in other directions as well. The New York Public Library (NYPL, because some days I like acronyming things) recently purchased, installed and demonstrated its new Espresso Book Machine at the Science, Industry and Business Library.

I take here three different paragraphs from the press release:

Library users will have the opportunity to print free copies of such public domain classics as “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain, “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville, “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens and “Songs of Innocence” by William Blake, as well as appropriately themed in-copyright titles as Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail” and Jason Epstein’s own “Book Business.” The public domain titles were provided by the Open Content Alliance (“OCA”), a non-profit organization with a database of over 200,000 titles. The OCA and ODB are working closely to offer this digital content free of charge to libraries across the country. Both organizations have received partial funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

If Gutenberg (not Steve) could see us now. This was, I feel, his dream. Think about it. You can go into this library and get a printed, bound edition of these books. All yours. Just because you want one. Fairly close to instantly. That’s amazing and cool as fucking hell. Let’s be honest here. It makes disposable books, in a lot of ways. And while that can sound bad I argue it is great. A lot of people don’t have the space to store books. But knowing you can get a public domain title to read that is yours to keep or not as you need—that could be interesting. Still, overall, cool.

The direct-to-consumer model of the EBM eliminates shipping and warehousing costs for books (thereby also eliminating returns and pulping of unsold books) and allows simultaneous global availability of millions of new and backlist titles in all categories and languages. These savings permit potentially lower prices to consumers and libraries, and greater royalties and profits to authors and publishers.

Well sure it increases profit per unit for the publishers and authors. Their numbers don’t change much. With less warehousing and shelving and return issues bookstores can cut their margin to the bone and so could publishers.

But come on, do you think that will happen at all? Book prices would suddenly drop? Seriously? Look at the CD market. It could have dropped. It was proven that the prices are criminal in their overcharging. A $17 dollar CD costs pennies to make. The $16.90 extra … well how much of that goes to warehousing, store mark-up and the rest of the channel? I don’t know but given the bulk of units moved it can’t be close to bone-cutting. Prices don’t tend to drop. If you’ll buy a book for 8 dollars now then you will buy it for 8 dollars tomorrow. Regardless of if it costs the store 6 dollars, 5 dollars or 1 dollar to stock. You will pay the same amount. So I don’t see these great savings passed on to the consumer.

I see the opposite. I see book prices going up. “Use this new machine! Get the book you want FAST and a copy printed JUST FOR YOU! Only $14.99!” Except the book costs 8 if you buy it off the shelf. Ahhh but the new fancy machine makes it sparkle and so it costs more. And once they only use the machine, well the $14.99 will be normal by then.

Cynical? Maybe. Truthful and based in history and fact? You betcha!

Additional EBM’s will be installed this fall at the New Orleans Public Library, the University of Alberta (Canada) campus bookstore, the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont, and at the Open Content Alliance in San Francisco. Beta versions of the EBM are already in operation at the World Bank Infoshop in Washington, DC and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (The Library of Alexandria, Egypt). National book retailers and hotel chains are among the companies in talks with ODB about ordering EBM’s in quantity.

It’s spreading. It’s … alive!

Seriously though what will this to do back catalogs and libraries and retail stores? What will it honestly do? Because they talk of how it will increase access to the back catalog. And yet I have reasons to doubt that some.

Access to, strictly speaking, will increase.

Practical access to / information about / knowledge of the back catalog will not. As the machines grow more popular, bookshelf space will be used, chances are, less and less. Why pay for a huge retail space when you can offer 17 times as many books out of half the space? You wouldn’t.

So what do you do with that bookshelf space? you put the best sellers on it. You put the big name items, because those you will sell off-hand far more often. Those are the things people will walk in and pick up and walk back off with. They are what you want to be seen with.

Now the back catalog, that’s all there. Anyone can decide they want those books. But how do they know about them? How do they know what’s there? This is already a problem where there are so many books fighting for shelf space that books and authors are being lost in the shuffle faster and faster every day. If they don’t even have spine space to wave hello from how much attention do you think they’ll ever get? How will someone hear about a book to know to go look for it? It runs the risk of marginalizing far more books overall, while making an amazing amount available.

And at that it may be worth it.

Perhaps reviews become even more crucial. The only way you know about a new book is through a review you see. And with POD added to the mix you could read a review click a link and have the book on its way to you. Maybe that instant purchase effect will just speed up. So that could be good.

And maybe authors become more and more responsible for promoting their own work. Not that they shouldn’t be already. Maybe Cory Doctorow is right (numbers seem to prove him right so far, as far as I know) that offering your books online for free increases physical sales. Perhaps Miranda July is onto something special when she makes sure the webpage about her new book is so memorable I don’t remember her name. I remember the books name, and the website. And that’s what matters because it gets the word out and people looking. I don’t know.

Maybe the more things change the more they stay the same and none of this will matter at all in the long run. That one I doubt but I have to be open to it. I don’t know. That much I am certain of.

I don’t know where we go from here. Not in big broad steps or tiny defined ones. I know I keep writing. I know I keep an eye on all of this because it interests me and is important to me. I know those things.

But what the future holds: I do not know.
———————————————

Added bonus section!

Maybe you do know what the future holds for publishing. Maybe you have insight that is better than mine. Maybe you want to share that. Please, do. By comments here or by email to adampknave @ gmail.com I would love to hear where you think this all goes and why and how and, shit, all of it.

Here. Watch a grown man decide he is going to push himself into a gigantic, inflated balloon. Without quite thinking it fully through.