It has been 60 years since this book was first published in novel form in 1951. It has been 45 years since this series (the original Foundation Trilogy) won the Hugo award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966, beating Lord of the Rings. Whether Tolkien should have won is another story, but the fact that it's debatable should say something about the regard in which the series is held.
It has also been 25 years since I first read this book in 1986. It seemed like a good time for a re-read. I still have my original Del Rey copy from 1986.
Another of Asimov's books, The Stars, Like Dust, got me interested in reading science fiction. The Foundation series cemented that interest for the past 25 years. I was rather anxious to see if I felt it held up over time.
The novel is set far into the future, as a galactic-wide empire, which has ranged for 12,000 years is on the verge of collapse. Predicting both the fall of the galactic empire and to prevent a possible dark age lasting 30,000 years, psychohistorian Hari Seldon, created two Foundations on opposite sides of the galaxy. This book covers the next 155 years after their creation.
If you're looking for continuity of characters in this novel, you won't find it. In fact, it's not even really fair to call it a true novel. It's more like several short stories and novellas that occur in this same universe, arranged chronologically. Given that it was originally a series of shorts published during World War 2, this shouldn't be too surprising. The ideas are still very fascinating, though, despite the age. I remember being enthralled with the idea of psychohistory, using complex mathematical models to predict sociological change on a massive scale. Today with the prevalence of data mining in a number of fields, it's not looking so foreign. Companies like Amazon using statistical models to try and predict what's going to sell at what price points, and what you might like. Google mining you for data to try and find what ads would be the most appealing to you. And where would politics be without statisticians and pollsters trying to guess the vagaries of direction of public opinion politics at any given moment.
There are a few drawbacks, however. In describing some of the technologies, the series does show it's age. Also, Asimov's role of women was hopelessly stuck in the 40's. Something my 12 year old brain didn't really pick up on during my first reading.
Still, this was a classic book. I would consider it a must-read for anyone that considers themselves a true science fiction fan.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Book Review - Discovery of Witches
I wanted to like this book. I really did. Unfortunately slogging through this one was a chore. If it wasn't the book of the month for my book club, I wouldn't have bothered finishing. Where to begin?
What I liked about the book.
The author clearly knows her history.
The author is obviously well versed in scientific history and it shows through in her work.
The writing itself is well done.
The story and pacing started to pick up a lot at the end.
The parts that had nothing to do with the romance were at times extremely intriguing.
What I didn't like about the book.
Story
The parallels between this book and a certain other book were too similar. It seemed almost derivative because of those similarities.
Female lead: You're handsome
Male lead: Your scent drives me insane.
Female lead: I want to be with you.
Male lead: I'm dangerous. I could hurt you.
Female lead: But I love youEdward Matthew.
Male lead: I love you too. Now everyone must risk their lives and put everything in jeopardy because of our extra-special love.
Female lead: I might have the first vampire baby.
Honestly, although some of the plot devices differed, and the story was much better written, too much of it was similar for my tastes.
Oh, and did I forget to mention that every single historical figure in history was a supernatural "creature". Part of the allure of the great figures, is they were human, just like us. By removing their humanity, the author is saying that you aren't going to amount to a hill of beans, because obviously if you're great, you must be supernatural.
Characters
The two main characters,BellaDiana and EdwardMatthew were just awful. With Diana, I started out liking her in the beginning and by the end, I just couldn't bring myself to care. First of all, the characters are too perfect.
You have Diana, who obviously is going to be the most powerful witch in the universe. She's fit, she's athletic, she's a scholar. Everyone (including herself) keeps saying how brave and independent she is, and by the end of the book, she's just doing whatever Matthew says. For all the talk of feminism, all the decision making ends up being made by the men.
Matthew, the 1500 year old vampire is even worse. Naturally he has the body of Adonis. He's strong and brave and protective. He has multiple doctorates. In fact, he is a doctor, in the MD sense. He's a huge wine connoisseur, a great cook, has multiple estates all over the world. He's French. He's a fellow at Oxford (and honestly all the Oxford-worship got a little old as well). He runs a genetics lab. Has his own private jet. And helicopters. Everyone fears and worships him. He is The Most Interesting Man in the World. (with apologies to Dos Equis)
And of course, despite having an empire to run, science to research, etc., he has to devote all his time to giving Diana foot massages, taking her to yoga, and generally making sure she gets fed and tucked into bed. (No, I'm not kidding.)
I keep wondering if the author realizes that not only does an audience not relate to perfect characters, perfect characters are never well liked. Something high school should have taught her, as it did for the rest of us.
And of course one of my favorite quotes, "I've seen courage like yours before - from women, mostly... Men don't have it... It's merely bravado." Seriously? A man said that? And are we really taking gender relations back to the "I'm better than you" stage? This was one of the many places I had to put the book down and just step away. (Along with all the cringe-worthy Twilight similarities.)
Pacing
Pacing left a lot to be desired. At nearly 800 pages, I thought Justin Cronin could have trimmed a good 100-150 pages. At nearly 600 pages, I thought this book needed about 200 pages trimmed. The first 150 pages were just excruciating. It started out fine, and then 150 pages of rowing, what I'm wearing, what I'm eating, yoga, look at manuscripts that aren't pertaining to the story, "My, isn't Matthew dreamy?". Rinse and repeat. The book did finally pick up at the end though.
Despite my dislike of it, I'm sure that this book will sell a billion copies. It's really too bad. The plot devices of the witches and especially alchemy were really quite fascinating, and could have lent to a very original story, instead of just another (albeit well-written) me-too.
I'd give it a (very generous) 2 stars out of 5.
What I liked about the book.
The author clearly knows her history.
The author is obviously well versed in scientific history and it shows through in her work.
The writing itself is well done.
The story and pacing started to pick up a lot at the end.
The parts that had nothing to do with the romance were at times extremely intriguing.
What I didn't like about the book.
Story
The parallels between this book and a certain other book were too similar. It seemed almost derivative because of those similarities.
Female lead: You're handsome
Male lead: Your scent drives me insane.
Female lead: I want to be with you.
Male lead: I'm dangerous. I could hurt you.
Female lead: But I love you
Male lead: I love you too. Now everyone must risk their lives and put everything in jeopardy because of our extra-special love.
Female lead: I might have the first vampire baby.
Honestly, although some of the plot devices differed, and the story was much better written, too much of it was similar for my tastes.
Oh, and did I forget to mention that every single historical figure in history was a supernatural "creature". Part of the allure of the great figures, is they were human, just like us. By removing their humanity, the author is saying that you aren't going to amount to a hill of beans, because obviously if you're great, you must be supernatural.
Characters
The two main characters,
You have Diana, who obviously is going to be the most powerful witch in the universe. She's fit, she's athletic, she's a scholar. Everyone (including herself) keeps saying how brave and independent she is, and by the end of the book, she's just doing whatever Matthew says. For all the talk of feminism, all the decision making ends up being made by the men.
Matthew, the 1500 year old vampire is even worse. Naturally he has the body of Adonis. He's strong and brave and protective. He has multiple doctorates. In fact, he is a doctor, in the MD sense. He's a huge wine connoisseur, a great cook, has multiple estates all over the world. He's French. He's a fellow at Oxford (and honestly all the Oxford-worship got a little old as well). He runs a genetics lab. Has his own private jet. And helicopters. Everyone fears and worships him. He is The Most Interesting Man in the World. (with apologies to Dos Equis)
And of course, despite having an empire to run, science to research, etc., he has to devote all his time to giving Diana foot massages, taking her to yoga, and generally making sure she gets fed and tucked into bed. (No, I'm not kidding.)
I keep wondering if the author realizes that not only does an audience not relate to perfect characters, perfect characters are never well liked. Something high school should have taught her, as it did for the rest of us.
And of course one of my favorite quotes, "I've seen courage like yours before - from women, mostly... Men don't have it... It's merely bravado." Seriously? A man said that? And are we really taking gender relations back to the "I'm better than you" stage? This was one of the many places I had to put the book down and just step away. (Along with all the cringe-worthy Twilight similarities.)
Pacing
Pacing left a lot to be desired. At nearly 800 pages, I thought Justin Cronin could have trimmed a good 100-150 pages. At nearly 600 pages, I thought this book needed about 200 pages trimmed. The first 150 pages were just excruciating. It started out fine, and then 150 pages of rowing, what I'm wearing, what I'm eating, yoga, look at manuscripts that aren't pertaining to the story, "My, isn't Matthew dreamy?". Rinse and repeat. The book did finally pick up at the end though.
Despite my dislike of it, I'm sure that this book will sell a billion copies. It's really too bad. The plot devices of the witches and especially alchemy were really quite fascinating, and could have lent to a very original story, instead of just another (albeit well-written) me-too.
I'd give it a (very generous) 2 stars out of 5.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
The $0.99 and $2.99 ebook.
In my previous blog post I ran a little informal survey of the Amazon's top 100 kindle ebooks. One of the things I noted was that 41 of the books on the list were priced at $3.00 or less.
It also lines up with what I've been seeing with my own purchase history for my Nook. I do have a tendency to buy a lot of books priced at $2.99 or less.
A writer friend pointed me in the direction of JA Konrath's blog, where he goes into extraordinary detail about pricing and publishing and royalty rates etc. One of the points he makes is royalty rates. The average royalty ebook rate from a publisher is 25% of net. So on a $12.99 ebook, the retailer will take 30% or roughly $3.90, leaving a net of $9.09 to the publisher. The author then makes 25% of that or $2.27. The agent then takes a 15% cut from that, leaving just $1.93 for the author. (All numbers are from Konrath. Well except the retailer 30%, that's public knowledge on the whole agency model.) On Amazon, a self-published author makes 35% if the book is less than $2.99 or 70% if it's priced at $2.99 higher. On Barnes and Noble, an author makes slightly less, just 65% at the $2.99 price point up to $9.99, and 40% if it's higher or lower than that. So basically at a $2.99 price point, an author will net $2.09 from the sale.
Which brings us to the staggering conclusion, an author will make more from the sale of a self-published book priced at $2.99 than they will from a publishing house that prices an ebook at $12.99.
What does that mean for me as a reader? Not much. Most of my book recommendations come from book blogs, goodreads users, friends and family. I actually find the math interesting, but I mainly peruse Konrath's blog because there's a lot of self-published authors on there and it gives me ideas about new books.
I'm a 36 year old male. My shelves are mostly full of science books, science fiction, fantasy and urban fantasy books with a healthy dose of classics and the occasional literary fiction book club-type book. I do have a large amount of science fiction and fantasy books on my nook. In the $2.99 category, I do have B.V. Larson and Jon Merz. The interesting thing is, I also have 3 Amanda Hocking books, 2 JA Konrath books and 1 John Locke book. Why is that interesting? When I go to Barnes and Noble, I don't give a second glance to the young adult section, let alone young adult paranormal romances. I've also seen Konrath's print books and passed them by. I usually don't read too many thrillers either. (Sorry Joe if you ever read this).
So what makes the $2.99 price tag special? It's a complete impulse buy. It costs more in gas to go to the library to check out a book. It costs more to drive to the bookstore to browse. It costs the same amount to have Amazon ship a book to me. It's significantly less than the price of a value meal at your favorite fast food chain.
I've seen a lot about Amanda Hocking signing a seven figure deal with a major publisher. I've also read about Barry Eisler turning down a $500,000 deal to self publish. What does this mean to me as a reader? Will I be one of the people that goes out and buys Amanda Hocking's books in print at $10 or more? Nope. Will I buy her ebooks at $7.99, $9.99 or $12.99? Nope. She was never my primary genre to begin with. I will probably work my way through her backlist of self-published items at that magical prices of $0.99 and $2.99. I haven't read Konrath's yet (it's next on my TBR list). As long as I don't think he's awful, I'll probably work my way through his backlist of cheap titles as well.
So what does this mean for the rest of my book buying habits? Well I only have a finite amount of money to spend on books. If the ebook costs as much (or nearly as much) as print, it goes on my to-buy list from the bookstore or Amazon. The problem is, there's a lot of books on that list now. I'm more selective about what I buy in print. But, if I'm bored and browsing titles on my nook, and that $2.99 book catches my eye, it'll probably still get bought.
It also lines up with what I've been seeing with my own purchase history for my Nook. I do have a tendency to buy a lot of books priced at $2.99 or less.
A writer friend pointed me in the direction of JA Konrath's blog, where he goes into extraordinary detail about pricing and publishing and royalty rates etc. One of the points he makes is royalty rates. The average royalty ebook rate from a publisher is 25% of net. So on a $12.99 ebook, the retailer will take 30% or roughly $3.90, leaving a net of $9.09 to the publisher. The author then makes 25% of that or $2.27. The agent then takes a 15% cut from that, leaving just $1.93 for the author. (All numbers are from Konrath. Well except the retailer 30%, that's public knowledge on the whole agency model.) On Amazon, a self-published author makes 35% if the book is less than $2.99 or 70% if it's priced at $2.99 higher. On Barnes and Noble, an author makes slightly less, just 65% at the $2.99 price point up to $9.99, and 40% if it's higher or lower than that. So basically at a $2.99 price point, an author will net $2.09 from the sale.
Which brings us to the staggering conclusion, an author will make more from the sale of a self-published book priced at $2.99 than they will from a publishing house that prices an ebook at $12.99.
What does that mean for me as a reader? Not much. Most of my book recommendations come from book blogs, goodreads users, friends and family. I actually find the math interesting, but I mainly peruse Konrath's blog because there's a lot of self-published authors on there and it gives me ideas about new books.
I'm a 36 year old male. My shelves are mostly full of science books, science fiction, fantasy and urban fantasy books with a healthy dose of classics and the occasional literary fiction book club-type book. I do have a large amount of science fiction and fantasy books on my nook. In the $2.99 category, I do have B.V. Larson and Jon Merz. The interesting thing is, I also have 3 Amanda Hocking books, 2 JA Konrath books and 1 John Locke book. Why is that interesting? When I go to Barnes and Noble, I don't give a second glance to the young adult section, let alone young adult paranormal romances. I've also seen Konrath's print books and passed them by. I usually don't read too many thrillers either. (Sorry Joe if you ever read this).
So what makes the $2.99 price tag special? It's a complete impulse buy. It costs more in gas to go to the library to check out a book. It costs more to drive to the bookstore to browse. It costs the same amount to have Amazon ship a book to me. It's significantly less than the price of a value meal at your favorite fast food chain.
I've seen a lot about Amanda Hocking signing a seven figure deal with a major publisher. I've also read about Barry Eisler turning down a $500,000 deal to self publish. What does this mean to me as a reader? Will I be one of the people that goes out and buys Amanda Hocking's books in print at $10 or more? Nope. Will I buy her ebooks at $7.99, $9.99 or $12.99? Nope. She was never my primary genre to begin with. I will probably work my way through her backlist of self-published items at that magical prices of $0.99 and $2.99. I haven't read Konrath's yet (it's next on my TBR list). As long as I don't think he's awful, I'll probably work my way through his backlist of cheap titles as well.
So what does this mean for the rest of my book buying habits? Well I only have a finite amount of money to spend on books. If the ebook costs as much (or nearly as much) as print, it goes on my to-buy list from the bookstore or Amazon. The problem is, there's a lot of books on that list now. I'm more selective about what I buy in print. But, if I'm bored and browsing titles on my nook, and that $2.99 book catches my eye, it'll probably still get bought.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Thoughts on ebook pricing and an unscientific sampling of data.
After my recent post about boycotting some publishers regarding their ebook policies towards libraries, I ended up in a discussion with a friend about "Big Publishing", "Smaller company publishing" and "Self-publishing". I know that I now buy more self published and smaller publishing house books than I buy "Big Publishing" books. I never did this before I got my nook. This got me to thinking about what exactly do Kindle readers buy? I use Kindle information here, as Barnes and Noble separates out the "self-pubbed" authors from "normal" or what others like to call "legacy" publishers, and I was curious about the intermixing of the two. I was also curious to see what percentage the "Big 6" publishers sell, as there are 3 publishers I refuse to buy new books from.
So my unscientific survey:
Out of the top 100 ebooks sold on Amazon as of roughly 1230am MST 4/1:
So what are my hypotheses regarding this informal survey?
So my unscientific survey:
Out of the top 100 ebooks sold on Amazon as of roughly 1230am MST 4/1:
- 41 were $3.00 or less, 6 were $3.01 to 6.00, 9 were priced at $6.01 - 8.00, 11 were $8.01-10.00, 7 were $10.01 to 12.00 and 26 were priced greater than $12.00.
- 48 of the titles were from the Big 6 publishers or their imprints, 52 were not. (On the New York Times ebook best seller list, I counted only 8 fiction and 6 non-fiction books that weren't Big 6 out of the 70 titles listed.)
- 65 had their ebook pricing less than the lowest price of the available print copy on Amazon, 19 had no print copy available, 7 had the same pricing, whether ebook or print, and 9 had ebook pricing higher than print. Of those where ebooks were the same or higher than print, all 16 were from the Big 6.
So what are my hypotheses regarding this informal survey?
- If your ebook is priced higher than what Amazon or a big box store can sell a print copy for, you won't sell many copies of your ebooks.
- The Big 6 do not have near the market in ebooks that they have in print, right around 50% of the market by volume.
- The New York Times is hopelessly out of the loop regarding ebooks (or deliberately ignoring data).
- Despite Amazon making a fuss last year about a $9.99 maximum price for ebooks, there is a market for $12.99 ebooks, provided it's still cheaper than what the corresponding hardback sells for on Amazon.
- Although there is a market for $12.99 ebooks, it's not a very large market as fully two thirds were priced at 9.99 or less.
- There is something almost magical about the $0.99 or $2.99 ebook, which I think I'll save for another blog post.
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