Musing Monday...The Galactic Empire of Amazon

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 Monday is upon us once again, so let's look at the questions at Should Be Reading...

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Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…
• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it!
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

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OK, a book industry rant this week.
Did you read about it?
I saw it in Friday's Shelf Awareness Pro and I must say, as a reader, as a book purchaser, I found it a little concerning. Rather sad.

Amazon is buying the popular book-focused social networking site Goodreads, which was founded in 2007 and now has more than 16 million members. The acquisition is expected to close by July.

I am a member of Goodreads and have been for years. But to tell you the truth, I no longer use it very much, much preferring the set up at Library Thing. But don't worry, LT has already, at least partially, been gobbled up by Amazon as well. 

The move also adds to the sense that Amazon is slowly buying up much of the book world. Over some 15 years, the company has bought AbeBooks.com, Audible.com, Brilliance Audio, the Book Depository, Shelfari, BookFinder.com, Lexcycle, BookSurge, CreateSpace, Mobipocket.com and (through AbeBooks) 40% of Library Thing.

I knew about Shelfari but Audible and the Book Depository and AbeBooks and all those others as well? Wow.

I like Amazon. I use Amazon. I buy stuff from Amazon.
But...do I want them to become such a huge force in the book world? They sell books, a LOT of books, they publish books, they are by far the biggest review site. They do it all.
NO! I do not want any one company to take such an overwhelming role.

Look, we all know that you have to take the reviews on Amazon with a grain of salt. Authors, publishers, companies hired by authors and publishers, stack these reviews. We have talked about that before. But I thought I was able to trust, at least to a larger degree, what I read on a site like Goodreads. You had to be a member. I could check out your books and if you had only one, this one your were reviewing, OK, that would be a bad sign. Bottom line...

The question is how a site that was prized for its independence and noncommercial cred will fare as a part of the Amazon empire.

Is Amazon going to use Goodreads in a negative way somehow, peppered with Amazon ads, Amazon 'recommendations', everything funneling us to an Amazon site? Well, there is some reason they spent a great deal of money to buy it, and I can't see even one that will be beneficial to those who have been using the site.
I guess we will see what happens, if some bad signs start to pop up. Personally, I am closing my Goodreads account and will just stick with Library Thing for now. 40% is better than 100% and Library Thing is about the best site that I know about at this point. LT is very open about what they do, how things are run and I have seen no change in that way of doing business since the AbeBooks/Amazon buy out.

Oh my, are those Galactic Stormtroopers I see coming done the road?
Ok, maybe not just yet, but keep your eyes open..lol

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Tuesday Thinger, With Barely a Mention of Library Thing

Our Tuesday Thinger, this week, from Wendi at Wendi's Book Corner...

"Another off-topic (to Library Thing) week for us this week. I've recently become aware of a new program through Amazon (played with it over the past month or so) called the Amazon Vine. It is "Amazon Vine™. The Exclusive Club of Influential Amazon Voices." Questions: Have you had an opportunity to check out the new Amazon Vine program? Have you signed up? Is this program something that interests you? How do you feel about the reviews posted on Amazon in general (not counting the ones that have made the news)?"

Well, if by check out, you mean have I seen the reviews with the bright green "Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program" logo plaster across the top or reviews, yes, I have seen those because it is impossible to miss them. Especially since Amazon appears to put those reviews first in the listings. I don't know if that is something new, posting them first, but it is only recently that I have noticed it. And I am not thrilled with it really.

Have I checked it out as in have I been invited to join? No, I have not. Does it interest me? Hmmm....I am not sure that it does. First of all...and I really don't think it is a case of Sour Grapes because I have not been invited to join {{sob}}... but I am not sure that I like the self-described exclusive nature of it. A bit too much of the popular kids in high school in my mind maybe. Amazon itself describe the program this way, with my added italics..." a program that enables a select group of Amazon customers to post opinions about new and pre-release items to help their fellow customers make educated purchase decisions. Customers are invited to become Amazon Vine™ Voices based on the trust they have earned in the Amazon community for writing accurate and insightful reviews." Ok..select group, selected by TPTB (the powers that be) based on what?...well, based on the "trust they have earned" for accurate and insightful reviews....again determined by TPTB at the EVIL AMAZON Amazon.
That is real nice of them, but honestly, I would just as soon make the determination of which reviews I trust on my own.

But it also raises my general issues with the reviews at Amazon as a whole. To say the least, they are a very mixed bunch, ranging from the very good to the very bizarre. I find it useful when there are a large number of reviews to look to just get a general sense of the books ratings. But that has it's weakness. Take, as an example I like to beat like a dead horse (please, no PETA protest, it is just a saying ;-} ) The da Vinci Code. A very poorly, almost painfully badly written, very poorly researched book in my opinion, gets 3 1/2 stars and almost 4000 reviews. On the other hand, when there are just a few reviews, they are pretty useless. I have seen books with a handful of reviews, all raves, that sound like they were written by the author's friends, family and the people they owe large sums of money to. I have read a fair number of reviews that seem to be written by people that did not read the book, or read a totally different book which happen to have the same title.

Amazon book reviews share the same problem that is common to all online reviews. Yes, as much as I love Library Thing, and as I may have mentioned before, I do love LT, it is even true of the reviews there, although I think to a lesser degree. Anyone can write a review, they can even be anonymous. We have no way of knowing if they are honest, or what their motivation is to give a positive or negative review. There is no way of even being reasonably sure that they have read the book. In a way, I assume the Vine program is an attempt by Amazon to bypass some of those problems by pre-selecting people they feel can be "trusted". With some of the examples of controversies that have recently surrounded some Amazon reviews and reviewers, they may be looking for some way build more confidence in their reviews. But I think I may have mentioned before my concern about the POWER that the Mighty, Huge Amazon has over the entire book industry and this just strike me as another attempt to exert that control. I would prefer, perhaps, if Amazon would just leave that judgment up to each of us. All online reviews have to be taken with a grain of salt and the reader has to use some prudence. I'm not sure I want my hand held during the process.

Except with my reviews, of course, every word of which can be totally trusted. ;-)

As can that ever darling Bandit...oh Bandit, where are you, where is my cute little Bandit...oh, there you are...



oh Bandie, you are such a pleasure hound...

Get Your Hands Off My Book...and That Is Not a Book!!

Oh, is it time for another one of my anti-Kindle rants?
Oh sure...there is always room for an anti-Kindle rant. And Jello, if you are old enough to remember that commercial.
Now yes, I must say that I have not used a Kindle but for more than a few minutes. But I did have the chance while on vacation to read a significant part of a book on a Sony Reader, and I was not terribly impressed. I kept reaching up to turn the page. I couldn't break the habit of decades! But beyond that, I didn't really like the way the type looked, I didn't like the way you have to hold it...like I said, I was not really impressed.

But with the Kindle, there are much bigger issues as well. Like the fact, as people have recently discovered, that Kindle has the ability to 'reach' into your device and remove a 'book'. Now they said they mishandled that episode and apologized, and no doubt promised not to do it again, but doesn't it just concern you that they can do that. Is anyone worried that someone, the Evil Amazon, has ultimate control over your books, especially since Kindle books can not be played on any other piece of non-Amazon hardware? That you have to agree to a 'terms of service" just to buy books?

But most of my latest ammunition come from this interesting article by Nicholson Baker from this months New Yorker.
First, there is the whole look of "e-paper".

"The problem was not that the screen was in black-and-white; if it had really been black-and-white, that would have been fine. The problem was that the screen was gray. And it wasn’t just gray; it was a greenish, sickly gray. A postmortem gray. The resizable typeface, Monotype Caecilia, appeared as a darker gray. Dark gray on paler greenish gray was the palette of the Amazon Kindle.

This was what they were calling e-paper? This four-by-five window onto an overcast afternoon?"

Ok, that seems to be a major issue to me. He then compared some Kindle versions to real books. Missing beautiful illustrations, missing or unreadable maps, the color coding in text books gone. Not always an issue with every book you might read, true, but with a number of books I can think of it would be extremely important. Why would I want to but a 'book' that is incomplete? He tries a newspaper subscription on the Kindle. The Kindle version

"lacks most of the print edition’s superb photography—and its subheads and call-outs and teasers, its spinnakered typographical elegance and variety, its browsableness, its Web-site links, its listed names of contributing reporters, and almost all captioned pie charts, diagrams, weather maps, crossword puzzles, summary sports scores, financial data, and, of course, ads, for jewels, for swimsuits, for vacationlands, and for recently bailed-out investment firms. A century and a half of evolved beauty and informational expressiveness is all but entirely rinsed away in this digital reductio."

Ok, that sounds like a pretty rotten way to read a newspaper to me.

He goes to Freeport, Maine to meet a Kindle owner, the manager of a British import store across the street from L.L.Bean, who is part of the “See a Kindle in Your City” promotion. It is cute, she has made a nice, little cover for it. But when taking it to the neighboring bookstore, he is surprised by how many books are not available. At home, comparing it to his own books, he is surprised at how many books he has that are not available. Of course, I know that will change when the Evil Amazon pressures every publisher and author to sign on and make available more Kindle editions. Because certainly Amazon is huge enough to exert that sort of pressure.

However, I was even more upset to find out that I noticed neither the British import store or the book store next to it on my recent visit to Freeport. I was blinded by the beauty that is L.L.Bean I assume!

Bottom line, yes, I understand the convenience of being able to carry a bunch of 'books' in one little device, the convenience of being able to order and download a book in seconds, but there is a price to pay for that convenience. An aesthetic price, in some cases, a usability price. You can't loan out your books, or sell them...speaking of which, here is an amusing video about that very issue...


But my greatest concern is when you buy an e-book, most especially when you buy it from Amazon, with their proprietary software, what are you actually buying. Did you read the small print in the "terms of service"? Will you still have access to those books years from now or will you maybe have to 'upgrade' your hardware or software at an additional cost to continue to have access to the material? That is over the $350 you already paid for the privilege of buying Kindle 'books' at a small discount from the Evil Amazon. Wow, I could buy a lot of real books for $350 and then do what I want with them. Maybe even offer thrm to my readers inn a giveaway. As Mr. Baker puts it,

"Here’s what you buy when you buy a Kindle book. You buy the right to display a grouping of words in front of your eyes for your private use with the aid of an electronic display device approved by Amazon."

Hmmmm...I'll pass on that for now thanks.

Well, in honor of Freeport, Maine, where I did not test drive a Kindle or see that bookstore (although I found another on the edge of town and bought a book. Or two), a couple of pictures of the town from my trip.



Welcome To Freeport and Hello From the Giant Freeport Indian


One Store on the L.L.Bean campus and a Big L.L.Bean Shoe in the 4th of July Parade.

Twitter...oh Twitter...

Now, I know there are people reading this who are fans of Twitter. They love Twitter, they are on there, twittering or tweeting, or whatever the correct term is, day and night. I know that millions are now using Twitter...but I must confess...I just do not get it's appeal.

Now I can hear the cries, I can hear the shouts of disagreement. And I will admit, maybe it does have some use. Certainly, if you want to link to a post, or an article somewhere, or make a quick comment on some issue, or publicize something, it may be useful. Because there are those millions, all linked together in some loosely tied network of 'followers' to 'followers'. But as a form of conversation, I suggest there are far better ways online..does anyone remember IMing. Now, it is not public, but to me that is a plus. It is clear and easily followed. People are not reading some Tweet in the middle of a conversation wondering what the heck are they talking about. Oh, I can hear some saying, you need to download something like TweetDeck or TwitterFox. Well, why do I want an application that is so flawed that I need to download another application to make it really usable? And it is SUCH a draw on your time if you try to pay attention to it, a distraction to my already distracted mind. Then there is the supposedly growing issue of companies and vendors searching your tweets for keywords and then sending you spam after spam based on what you said. Well, it is ALL public there on Twitter, but I for one don't need anymore spam.

OK, maybe I am just not a social person. I admit I am an introvert. Maybe Twitter is just not for me. I could accept that happily. No Facebook, no Myspace, no Twitter.

But...something happen a couple of weeks ago that I just can't get out of my mind and it involves Twitter and what I suggest is possibly a real negative aspect that goes to the very heart of what Twitter is. It is fast. It is brief. It is, by it's very nature, superfical.

It was Easter Sunday. Somewhere, I think on cable news, they were discussing a Big Hoop-De-Doo controversy being 'discussed' on Twitter, starting on Saturday. It seems there was an issue with Amazon. Some authors, who happened to be gay, found that their books were no longer showing a ranking on Amazon. They had before...they did not now, making them also very difficult to search for. Amazon was out to somehow censor LGBT authors!
Now it was Sunday, and I am sure the headquarters of Amazon, as most businesses, were closed for the weekend, and the only representative of Amazon anyone seems to have talked to was a lowly customer service rep who gave an inadequate and poorly informed answer that just riled people up even more.

But no need to wait for evidence, no need to look into the suggestion that this was part of a large computer issue perhaps. No, the thousands and thousands and thousands of tweeters were decided. It was an Evil Conspiracy. Boycotts of Amazon were pledged and as the day wore on, it got more and more angry, more unreasonable, nastier and nastier. The few lone tweets that calls for pause, to wait for the facts, who pointed out it was perhaps illogical to think that Amazon, for some unknown reason, would want to alienate there LGBT readers, were ignored in the sea of angry tweets, all feeding off each other. It was a mob mentality of tweets. If Amazon was the Monster in the castle, the tweeters would have been storming the gate with pitchforks and burning torches.

But the problem was it was all based on almost no known facts. Call it the 24 Hour News mentality. All facts must be know instantly and all problems resolved by the next commercial. We are overwhelmed with material to process, and the more there is and the faster it comes at us, the poorer job we do with it. What actually happened to those rating is still being discussed. It seems it was far more widespread than just a number of LGBT books. Some claim it was the work of a hacker. Personally, I have no idea, but I really don't think that we need another medium that allows us to think even less, and consider issues even less carefully, and to not acquire the facts before we make a decision but instead just react emotionally, just as quickly as we possibly can. The damage is done. Consequences be damned!

Now, ok, it was not all Twitter's fault. It might have happened on another medium..but it didn't as far as I know. Twitter by it's very nature made it possible.
You know the really funny thing? One of the big investors in Twitter (and can someone explain to me how Twitter makes any money?) is none other than Amazon founder, Chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos. I guess he better not take weekends off anymore!

P.S. Of course, maybe it will all be moot at some point. I just read an article that says Twitter has low user loyalty. A lot of people sign up, maybe because of the famous people they hear on it, but "more than 60 percent of Twitter users have stopped using the micro-blogging service a month after joining, according to Nielsen Online research released on Tuesday."