All right, question time.

In Canada there is no paper money below a fiver. Everything lower is change: Loonies and toonies and so on.

So what do Canadians do in strip clubs?

I mean a wad of singles, here in the US is considered “stripper money”. That’s what such a wad is for. Folding and sticking in various elastic bands of various flimsy articles of clothing.

So do Canadians only reward strippers with fives and up? They can’t be shoving coins into waistbands, that would only end in issues. Do they pelt the stripper with coins? Like a stoning?

I need to know how this works!

Optimus Prime - Optimus. Optimistic. “Hey, I might get laid!”

Ultra Magnus - Trojan makes both an Ultra and a Magnum condom. Ultra Magnus is clearly the quick realization that you better be truly prepared for the sex. The moment to brace yourself.

Rodimus Prime - Rodimus? Really? Well, obviously he is the cock. The sex. the goal. The ultimate stuff of dreams.

It just turned out to be the worst, most fumbling teenage sex of your life. The kind of sex that contains not only the exchange “Is it in yet?” “It’s been in.” but also “Oh man, I’m gonna have s… give me fifteen minutes and I can try again.” Rodimus Prime was the kinda sex that chafes. The hand job that gives you an Indian burn. The cunnilingus that feels like a Saint Bernard given pot has been going at it.

Plus, you thought having sex while “You have the touch! You have the power!” played was somehow hot. You were very wrong.

Of course we all loved it and swore it was the best sex ever, at the time.

Just had a conversation about a new column name (you’ll find out soon enough), and the old joke came back: Moose Bukkake. I have been threatening to call a column Moose Bukkake for a few years now. I just never really want to do it because the column would never live up to the name. Anyway. I suggest it again and I get the following reply:

“It doesn’t roll off the tongue.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you D.J. Kirkbride! Yeah, D.J. (or as he is known this week, Gravy) didn’t mean anything by it. He didn’t even realize what he was saying. Hells. Yes.

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I have, in my bedroom, a portable A/C. It has a hose that goes into the pimped out custom screen (for seriously, the screen is all covered in duct tape and has a hole cut into it and the hose is mounted and reinforced and shit) and the unit itself just sits on the floor.

Now this unit sucks water out of the air like a cheap whore and stores it in a bin down below. Up on top there are lights and displays and dials. I do like me some lights and displays and dials.

And last night the red light went on. The red light means that the water bin is full and the A/C refuses to C the A until it is emptied some. Which is fine, except it has never done that before and it was late and I had no clue where the instructions were. So I shook the unit, to get a judge of things and mostly, to be fair, in frustration. I didn’t wrassle it. I shoved it. Like a toddler. I shoved it like I shove toddlers.

And GOOSH its water broke. I was all “Just breathe you’ll be fine!” but then I remembered it was an A/C and not a pregnant pygmy woman covered in white plastic. So I got some paper towels, about 3/4 of a roll, and cleaned up after the thing. It spilled enough water all over the floor, at least, that the A started to be all C’d again.

So now, this is how I plan on emptying it in the future. Shoving. I am the Shover Human, I am here to protect you. Spill your water down the stairs.

To the Americans: Happy 4th.

To most of the work force: Enjoy the day off.

To the freelancers, creatives and everyone else who fits: Enjoy the day, though we’re working anyway.

Back to the mines.

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.
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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.

So I realized, the other day, I don’t write what I love.

Let me explain.

I adore big long sweeping novels. I love late SF from the 60s and 70s: Dhalgren, Illuminatus! and the like. Huge sprawling experimental novels that just take up as much space as they need to get the job done.

I love SF all across the board. I grew up with it and it has a homey feel that appeals to me and makes me smile most days.

I swoon over good old fashioned American noir: Spillane, Chandler, Jim Thompson, Hammet. It is so incredibly clean and precise. It’s full of dark harsh lives that flash brightly but briefly.

I love this shit, man. I tell you, I dig on it like you wouldn’t believe.

So, when I write fiction, I don’t write it. I don’t write the novels I would love to read, really. I write stories I want to tell and I work in genres I don’t spend too much time in. I like it that way.

See, when I work in the box of toys I love the most I get too careful. I over think and I worry and I try to make it different because I can quote, chapter and verse, everyone who has done something close before. And that kills off a story. It kills it good.

So instead I stay clear of my loves and write in the margins of spaces that I don’t read often. I’m free to play, there. I’m free to make my own rules and put my own spin on things and roam a little, inventing my own spaces.

Which is, for me, part of the point. It’s just interesting to realize, or it was for me, that while I will always write stories I care about, I will never write a book that would rank up in my own personal top ten.

Spent some time this weekend rethinking how I write. It’s a strange process. Not writing itself, although yeah that’s a strange one too, but the act of deconstructing what you are doing when you create is an odd one.

I write and I just let my mind do what it does. But with time and experience comes the need to refine the machine so you can use it to build new types of output. Natural building might be a compact car but if I want to build an SUV I have to work out how to adapt the parts and make the machinery work and flow right.

Thankfully I have friends I can talk it out with.

Anyway, that’s neither really here nor there, I suppose.

No, it’s Monday and I’m busy as hell and I want a few more hours of sleep.

I won’t get it.

Oh well.

Warner has released, through a string of fun, an actual picture of the Joker from the next Batman film. (go to http://www.ibelieveinharveydent.com/ and then http://www.ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com/ give the later a chance before it changes into the pic)

Recently purchased: Payback - the director’s cut, Tap, Chorus Line, Scrubs season 5, War Stories by Joe Haldeman. (none of these have arrived yet, mind you)

Recently desired but not purchased: The ebay auction for an Atari 2600 with 100 games and multiple controllers of every type there was.

Recently desired but possibly to be purchased soon: Treo 755 (the 650 is getting old on me)

Currently reading: The Einstein Intersection by Samuel Delany

Any other questions?

There is no mountain so high that you can not climb it. I firmly believe that. What I’ve seen, though, is that while a lot of people seem to believe it they also have some assumptions about it that are flatly wrong.

You don’t get there for free. The trip isn’t always fun. It’s almost never easy. Some days you have to fight for the single inch higher you’ll get. Some weeks you go backwards, no matter how hard you try to dig in. There are no magic pills to make you fly there. You have to want it, every day, no matter how close it seems or how far, no matter how easy a day is or how hard. See, there is always another hard day ahead, even during the great times. There’s also another easy day coming but you can not sit and wait for it to happen, because that tends to put it off further. Work during the hard days for the easy ones. Work harder during the easy ones to take advantage of them. A small amount of basking is allowable, lord knows sometimes you have to just sit and enjoy where you are, but that will cost you later so at least know that one going in.

On the other hand?

The climb is fun, even on the bad days. It’s a climb. Even when you’re going backwards it means you get to redo a small section better than the last time. Yeah you might be hellishly tired the second time, because the last time it was easier, but so what? You want to get up there you’ll get up there. Enjoy the scenery. Have fun with every plateau you hit, so long as you know it isn’t the last one and accept that. As much as you’ve heard it said it is still true - it builds character. Experience isn’t a bad thing to have and you won’t get it watching other people climb. Every goal you climb towards will help you, in some way, with the next goal.

Of course eventually you’ll get to the top of the mountain you chose and realize it isn’t the top.

Mountains, theoretical goal based ones, not real stone ones, don’t have tops. They just keep going up. You could be the best ice skater in the world and there will still be room to be better. Doesn’t mean you want to be better. Maybe you only want to be the best in the city, state, country, who knows. But set your sights, see the price and the work involved and commit.

If you don’t commit to it with everything you have then chances are you won’t want to pay part of the price further up. You’ll balk at something. So set your sights realistically - for you.

Just realize that “realistically” doesn’t mean “at a level you can do now” it means “at a level you can truly push yourself to if you fucking well try with everything you are.”

Wanting something is fine and good in life. Wanting something and not moving to get it is all right, just called daydreaming, generally. Wanting something, refusing to move and pay the price for it and then blaming others for your lack, well that’s downright criminal.

So look around. Pick your spot. Aim for the stars. Then go and do it.

End of the day, that’s the point, as near as I can see.