While this blog entry might be considered self-serving (then again, what blog isn’t?) I need to tell you about an interesting Web site I found. It is interesting both for authors and for people who like the read. Those of you who cannot read probably aren’t reading this post anyway.

Harper Collins, one of the mega publishing houses with many imprints, has finally caved to the constant bitch-slapping it received about printing the same five books over and over again. They created a Web site which lets authors post some/all of their work for public review and comment. Book readers can communicate directly with the authors. If they like a book they can choose to “back” the book on the site. There is a convoluted formula to calculate ranking with. The site welcomes regular readers. Actually, it encourages the regular readers to join. It’s all free. Yes, the site has some technical problems, but those are mostly for authors trying to upload things.

What does HC get out of this? Well, periodically it takes the top N ranked books and forces their in-house editors to review them (along with the user feedback) for possible publishing contract. Of course, we have those who shouldn’t be writing out there trying to play ranking games to keep their book on the editor’s desk, but I could care less about that. I posted the promotional version of Infinite Exposure on the site mainly to get the feedback from readers. I’m not going to change anything in the book since I have it finalized for printing, but I will attempt to incorporate the comments into anything new I write.

http://www.authonomy.com/ViewBook.aspx?bookid=13804

So far the only major drawback I find with the site is that there is no manner of reading off-line. I don’t currently have a net-book (and until they get the battery life up to seven days instead of 70 minutes, I don’t want one). This means I have to read sitting at my desk, or lugging my laptop with power cable, into bed. This has become a regular occurrence for much of the business world it appears. Rather than fix the battery problem, the hard drive problem, and the software problem, a new product is created to make all of those problems more bearable.

http://www.brookstone.com/home-office-computer-accessories_e-pad-laptop-lap-desk.html?bkiid=categoryLandingPage_Home_Home_Office|C4CategoryProdList1FDT|6905345

Oh well. If you like being able to read books before they are published, and in many cases helping to shape their content or helping them to actually get published, you should check out http://www.authonomy.com.

Those of us who see the destruction and devastation all around us find it difficult to condone what others pursue as “a good business practice.” We have heard for years about stock market players (in particular mutual fund and hedge fund managers) pursuing short term gains to juice their overall portfolio. We have watched corporations which were once the model for the world sell their future down the drain in order to make a fast buck this quarter (think GM and its pension plan.) Hell, we the tax payer, have had to bail most of them out this year, yet their executives still demand multi-million dollar compensation packages.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it has finally hit agriculture in an end-of-the-industry way. I’ve watched it happening for the past couple of decades. I’m not talking about the huge corporate farms poisoning the world in order to make a fast buck. Eventually the excess population would be weeded off and the remaining people would simply quit buying stuff from supermarket chains. Perhaps China would claim jurisdiction over the corporate executives who poisoned so many. After all, in China they have public executions for people that poison consumable products.

What is happening now is a perfect storm which will leave the land unable to grow enough food and no trick of technology will help it. I’m not some alarmist tree hugger. I’m simply someone whose made a living over the past 20+ years being a problem solving analyst. I can find nothing which will solve this problem. But I can find historical evidence to back up my statements though.

The information is a bit hard to find on-line without buying DVDs, but the History Channel has run at least one show covering the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and how the continual irrigation to grow things in a desert lead to “salted earth.” You can even find textbooks covering the subject of irrigation failure. http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~GEL115/115CH17oldirrigation.html

Irrigation, however, is only a tiny portion of the problem. In fact, irrigation was the first warning sign we were headed down the path of short term gains destruction. Today, all the stops have been removed and we are running flat out towards world wide starvation, all for the sake of a fast buck.

As always, MBAs are at the root of this problem. After having trashed every industry they have touched, they moved into agriculture. First it was just the equipment manufacturers, then it was the packing plants, and then into livestock production. Since they couldn’t control enough that way, they bribed the politicians with lobbyist dollars to change the tax laws. Just about the only way to pass on a family farm to your heirs became the LLC-trust tool. If you didn’t use it, the government would take 75% of the estimated value of all assets in death taxes. The LLC-trust tool eventually puts all family farms under the control of a corporation, and guess who runs the corporations? Nice huh?

Most of you will have no idea this is going on. Most of you simply see the advertising on the product packaging showing a hard working family farmer, his picturesque little plot of land with a big red barn, and perhaps a small family. Wide open spaces, happy livestock, and a person who is one with the land. Subconsciously you buy into this because you want to believe it. The simple fact is, nothing could be further from the truth. Every year Willie Nelson and a bunch of others put on an event called Farm-Aid, but every year, fewer and fewer understand what is behind it. The simple truth is, they are trying to save the last few remaining family farms which actually live up to that picturesque marketing image. Most of them have “gone corporate” in some fashion. Sometimes they simply are forced into a contract to raise livestock in an un-healthy manner (watch the documentary Food, Inc. for some memorable images of this.) Other times the LLC-trusts they are forced to do business with force them into a raping of the land.

When the trusts first started out, they weren’t a purely evil thing like they are today. The entire focus and charter of the trust was the care and husbandry of the land. Back then the trust would partner with a farm family on a 50/50 or similar basis. Buildings and equipment on premises were maintained, and soil tests were regularly done on the land to ensure it was improving every year.

Today, the MBAs have put the industry in a death spiral. The entire focus is squeezing every risk free dollar possible out of this goose until it quits laying golden eggs. Massively high cash rents are requested, and bottom feeders pony up. There is no soil testing nor soil care plan. The bottom feeders over plant and provide the soil with no additional inputs. The soil is strip mined in the truest sense of the word, only this kind of strip mining doesn’t leave a gaping hole in the ground. You “see” this strip mining in the average yield movement or relative to fields around them.

Of course now, it is illegal for a realtor or anybody else to request the five year average yield report from the ASCS office. Only the owner can be given that. Why? Because once land has been had by a strip mine farming operation it is worthless. Nobody living locally will purchase it. The realtor has to sucker in an “investor” from far away promising the new owner the same continued high dollar cash rent which will pay for the land in no time. Most banks in or near a farming community will no longer issue a loan to anyone who says they expect the farming operation to pay for itself via cash rent. They’ve gone down that road before. Five years into the loan the land is ruined and absolutely worthless. The bank is left holding the bag in most cases. A bunch of money spent with lobbyists got the law changed so the buyer now has to take the realtor’s word for the yields when the current owner refuses to cough up the ASCS documentation.

I’ve been watching this happen a lot lately. In an effort to try and squeeze out every last nickel from the golden goose of LLC-trust land, the farm managers have ceased doing any and all maintenance on the property. They got the cash rent jacked up extra high because the farm came with on-site grain and equipment storage. A functioning grain dryer was also pointed out. Well, the grain bins have gone past their life expectancy and the dryer ceased functioning two years ago, but the rent hasn’t come down. The new trend now is to tell the tenant that they have to provide their own storage and drying facilities. The original farm family would roll over in their graves hearing this, but today it is considered “good business practice” by the MBAs and Farm Management Teams.

Perhaps it is easier for me to see living out in the farm area part time. I’ve watched one farm which, while not the best in the world, used to average 120-160 bushel per acre corn and 35-42 bushel per acre for soybeans. The farmer who had it died. Things changed hands a few times until it ended up in some kind of trust renting to a strip mine farming operation. The first few years they had the farm the auger cart made many trips across the fields hauling grain away from the combine. It was not uncommon to see the cart weighting for one of 4-6 semis to return from an elevator. Two years in, the auger cart was making far fewer trips and you got to see trucks waiting for hours to get filled. Just over a year ago I watched as the combine, the auger cart, and the first truck all left the bean field at the same time. Ah, but a big farming operation like that can play the insurance game filing claim after claim. The insurance companies don’t mandate inspections and proof of good farming practices. They simply cash the premium checks and hope for the best. In the mean time, everybody’s premiums go up around the country.

Once upon a time, these operations were an isolated case. Now they are common. In fact, the MBAs that run much of the Ag industry magazine business are starting to hold them up as shining examples of “best farmers” due to the size of their operations and the equipment leasing business they give the large equipment manufacturers.

What is overlooked in all of this is the fact the land cannot be magically healed once an operation like this is done with it. The land will have to lie fallow for three to five years getting treatments of manure and lime. That won’t get it back to healthy, but it will get it back to where some legitimate farming practices can begin to tend it.

The strip mining practice isn’t just an American problem. Most of the large operations have grabbed as many dollars as they can in this country and raced down to Brazil ( and a few other places) buying up cheap land and stripping it bare. The Ag magazines are always running stories about large farming operations which exist on multiple continents. Think about that. A farming operation existing on multiple continents. Obviously not that picturesque family farm you see on the packages in the supermarket, so how come they are legally allowed to use those images?

From time to time you will add various image files from somewhere on your system as background images. At some point in the future, you may want to understand how to get them out of that combo box list labeled “Picture:” below.

The poor man’s cheat is to simply rename the file from A.JPG to B.JPG and the entry will “appear” to be removed from the list. The truth is, the entry is still there, but only verifiable entries are displayed. The information which populates this particular combo box is squirreled away in the file plasma_disktop_appletsrc. Under Karmic Koala (9.10) KUbuntu it can be found under .kde/share/config. Please note that the leading “.” is actually part of the name and indicates a hidden directory. If you are going to search for this file from Dolphin you need to turn on the little checkbox which tells Dolphin to show hidden files.

Once you have opened the file in your favorite text editor, you need to search for userswallpapers. That is the variable which contains the full path and file name of every item which will show up in that combo box. Simply delete the entry or entries you wish to remove.

We all get these phone calls. Well, this week I got another one. Here’s how the phone call went:

Caller ID: (312)-646-7089

Caller: this is blah from blah-blah-blah. I see you have some Linux in your background and I’m looking for a good Linux person, do you have time to talk?

Me: I’m kind of busy now, but, what is it you are looking for?

Caller: Well I just wanted to spend a few minutes talking about your background and seeing if you were keeping yourself open for new opportunities.

Me: What is it you are looking for?

Caller: Well, as I stated, I’m looking for someone that is good with Linux and I saw you had some Linux in your background. Are you good with Linux?

Me: What do you mean by good?

Caller: You have a good day now. <click>

I expect these types of phone calls when it sounds like the person on the other end of the line has American English as their fourth or fifth language, not when the person sounds like they were born here. This guy obviously has about thirty two seconds of total IT experience and is trying to make a living with it. Anyone who actually understands the very first thing about IT knows just how absurd this guy sounds. They also know that this is the last person who should be recruiting geeks on the phone.

Since it appears that there are a lot of people working in HR for corporations, and as technical recruiters for consulting firms, let me add a few minutes to your education so you don’t sound like such a genetic misfit when you call a geek on the phone.

Linux is an Operating System. When it is actually running on a computer the combination of operating system and hardware are called a platform. “Good with Linux” is not a job title, it is a sub-requirement of an actual requirement. When you call up a geek and ask them if they are “good with Linux”, if they are even remotely qualified to fill the position you are trying to fill, they are going to ask you “what do you mean by good” or “what is it you’re looking for” or, they might choose to let you know just how far out your ass you are speaking by asking “what is it you are really looking for?”

Job Titles for geeks tend to include: Business Analyst, Technical Analyst, Technical Writer, Programmer, Programmer Analyst, Systems Analyst, Systems Administrator, Performance Analyst, Security Admin., etc. Each of these open requirements could have a sub-requirement of “good with Linux”, however, the definition of good is relevant to the skill set required for the actual job title. “Good with Linux” is a completely different set of skills when you are talking about a Programmer verses a Systems Analyst. A programmer needs to know about various tools, libraries, and languages for the development of software on the platform. The required set of tools + libraries + languages will be different for each and every shop looking for a programmer that is “good with Linux.” You cannot just drop a C++ Qt programmer into a Python Gtk shop.

Likewise, “good with Linux” has completely different definitions for Systems Administrators at a shop to shop level. It doesn’t matter if the “good with Linux” Systems Administrator you are talking with is a living god with the Tivoli tool set if the shop that put out the requirement doesn’t use Tivoli.

I didn’t publish the name of the person, or the company name, mainly because I didn’t bother to remember them. Caller ID helped out with the phone number though. Hopefully, the waste of oxygen who called me will read this, for it will exponentially increase their value in the universe.

I’m sure they eventually found someone that claimed to be “good with Linux.” I’m sure they presented that candidate with a glowing report. I’m also absolutely certain the time each client site manager spent reading that resume was nothing more than minutes of their life they will never get back.

I’ve actually been pondering this question for a while. I haven’t done any significant amount of numbers research, but it does look quite possible. I mean, Target should go after Amazon.com since Amazon has infringed on many of Target’s more profitable markets. Unlike most of the other brick and mortar chains in “blue collar to low end white collar” shopping world, Target has a reputation for having stores which are clean and bright and workers that actually feel a sense of pride about working there. Walmart, on the other hand, has states attempting to get legislation banning it from opening any more stores, not to mention documentaries put out about the horrors of the company, along with news stories about illegal alien cleaning crews…not going to be the type of chain anyone wants to see get bigger.

Kmart, what can one say about Kmart? For many of us, it was the place our parents had to shop. The chain was big in many areas which had been factory towns at a time when the factories were closing down due to jobs being sent overseas (sound familiar?) This was long before they had “Big K” and “Super Kmart” locations. It was a place you went for blue collar basic clothes, dress clothing which was mostly polyester, and cheap-enough-to-let-the-kids-play-with sporting goods supplies. Both JC Penny and Sears had better dress clothing, not good, but better. Along came a movie named “Rain Man” and Kmart became the definition of un-cool. It began to crumble financially, then somehow, Sears, a company which invented the catalog business then went bankrupt at it, had enough money to buy Kmart. Not too many weeks ago there was a story on the WBBM noon business wire about Sears being in financial trouble yet again. It’s kind of sad, because the addition of appliances and what could now actually be called a valid tool and automotive section has helped the larger Kmart locations at least look like they could be turning around.

In order to do something different, you have to have vision. It took a while for me to understand why Target got into the $9 hardcover book fight with Walmart. I’ve come to the conclusion that the retail analysts you hear interviewed on business radio and TV simply don’t have a clue. Target isn’t after Walmart because Walmart will implode on its own. There are too many lawsuits, too many news segments, too many documentaries, and too many governments passing “living wage” and “big box store” laws aimed directly at Walmart for Walmart to remain a viable company. Few companies in this world have a lower reputation for employee respect than Walmart. Quite simply, the days are numbered for that company. When the economy comes back all of the way Walmart will simply go away. It’s done the “dine and dive” on too many taxing bodies and retail site owners.

A visit to the Kmart web site doesn’t show any evidence that they have gotten into the $9 hardcover fight. I don’t expect they will. I firmly believe Walmart did it as some flash-in-the-pan marketing tactic, in part to take news cycles away from the Bruce Springsteen music CD backlash. Given Walmart’s reputation I cannot see a lot of independent author/publishers doing an exclusive deal with Walmart. They have a long history of shafting their vendors and you can even find articles about it in magazines like Kiplinger’s. A store with a good reputation, like Target, could make the entire thing work.

I’ve kind of covered the economics before, but you might not have understood. As an independent self-published author, I can get a 5.5 x 8.5 hard cover book with dust jacket of roughly 400 pages printed for around $4 per copy if and only if I have an ink print run of roughly 5,000 copies. Under the current author-publisher-distributor-bookstore model, I would front the entire print run for over eight months before I saw a dime from a book store. I would also be paying a lot of shipping charges for returns from chain store locations. The $20K for the print run would have an additional $8-12K in marketing expenses along with $2-4K in shipping. I would be financing that one way or another for at least eight months before I received payments from the book stores which may or may not cover the cost of the print run, let alone the other expenses. The list price on that book would be $24. The distributor would take a 55% discount which would mean $10.80 per copy (less withholding for potential future returns) would get sent to me. Anywhere from 5%-20% of that print run is going to come back “damaged” if it was stocked in an actual retail store. Trust me.

At the end of eight months on store shelves approximately 4,000 copies would be in sellable condition, the rest would have to be given away or pulped. So, I would take up to $36K out of pocket for eight months in the hopes of receiving $43K back and netting a whopping $7K. For the sake of argument, we will assume I had the cash on-hand and wasn’t financing part of this on a credit card at 20%. Publishers want a “run-away-best-seller” not just so they can make a fast buck, but because they want less than 5% coming back as returns.

Let us take a look at the $9 hardcover market. I still have the printing costs, but there are no returns. There is a one time freight shipping cost of less than $1000 to ship to a Target (or other chain) distribution center. Terms are net-30 or net-45 depending upon how negotiations went. I sell the books for $6/copy and get paid for all of them. $30K - $21K = $9K in under two months. Granted, I would be doing a lot less marketing. I would probably be willing to spend about $2K (what most major publishers actually spend marketing a new book by a new author) on getting reviews done, but the rest of the marketing would be up to the retail chain which has its own massive Web site and is creating sale flyers every week.

The downside for Target is they would have to hire 5-10 “readers” at the corporate level. These people would have to actually read at least a few chapters of every submitted book and decide what to stock on the shelves. I believe currently much of the stocking requirements are driven by automated reporting from book sales rating services much like the recording industry has/had for record sales.

Of course, Target (or the chain store that does it) could take it one final step. They could strike right where Amazon lives. The country has many printing firms which use actual ink and specialize in book print runs of less than 50,000. If target had the readers making choices, and the self-publishers had everything ready to go, Target could simply sign a contract with the self-publisher, pay $2.25/copy to the self-publisher for every copy they print, and contract directly with a printing house. They would probably need to contract with one near each distribution center, get them unified in equipment, and split the print runs across each location to minimize shipping costs. You know Target (or the chain which does this) is going to get a much better price than the self-publisher for printing. The printing will be done with actual ink so it won’t be a tacky and disgusting POD book like many being sold on Amazon today.

In truth, once Target finishes heading down this path, I see Kmart/Sears following suit. Anyone who has shopped those two chains knows that they are both used to having exclusive slices of overlapping markets. For those of you who don’t have to do your own shopping, let me spell it out: If I want Irish Spring scented Speed Stick, I have to get it at Kmart. The powered or talc scented stuff I have to get at Target, or the other way around. Both chains carry the product line, but each store appears to have certain scents you can only get there. As consumers, we are used to having to make more than one stop to get everything we need.

There are certainly more than enough self-publishers out there for both Kmart and Target to have a couple thousand titles which are only available in print form at their store. The really bad stories would be relegated to using POD and being sold on Amazon. The ground breaking works of fiction would most likely still sell via the traditional channels since there would be a much higher rate of return. Of course, we are only talking about general fiction and young adult book types here. Reference, research, professional, etc. would all still do best going through regular channels, since the margins are usually higher on those, I don’t see that changing. Fiction, however, is quickly becoming a commodity.

Oddly enough, the timing is just about right for Target/Kmart to make a play into the general reading market. There are a lot of print shops that would drool to get the business, and eBooks are poised to take the bottom end of the market out. The paperback novel is quickly heading the way of the buggy whip. Quite simply $9 hard cover and $4 or less ebook pricing will vaporize the $4 paperback market. (Out of politeness, I won’t say what it will do to the $10+ paperback market.)

One or both chains should have no trouble adding ebook sales to their Web site. I just received an announcement from what used to be ShortCovers. They have changed their name to Kobo and spun off from their parent company. I found this paragraph interesting in the announcement:

Through its new strategic partners, Kobo has distribution in the U.S., Canada, UK, European Union, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and other territories. Core to Kobo’s strategy is making eReading available through partners everywhere and as such, the company will be working to enable a broad range of retailers, device manufacturers, and operators who will benefit from our leading eReading service.

I don’t know what all of the ins and outs are with the deal. I do know that Borders is one of the investors, which struck me as odd given the above paragraph. Perhaps they have come to the conclusion that it’s better to take a small cut than try to lock the market? I don’t know. It definitely sounds like the new company is looking to add more retailers and views itself more as a bundled service they could offer than a competitor.

I do know that Amazon has had a ToolCrib site selling tools to customers. I also know they have some other site selling housewares since I was searching for a wall lamp on-line and that store came up. Everybody knows they have been into books, movies, and video games for a while. I haven’t dug to find what else they sell, but when they branched out to compete with other retailers in traditional markets, they basically offered up the challenge for those retailers to venture into Amazon’s market.

The real question I have right now is: Will Barnes & Noble create their own on-line video rental business to compete with Block Buster and Netflix, or will Target do that too? You see, most of us already have to go to Target and Kmart to buy things like pit stick, socks, and undies. We could drop off our rentals while picking other things up. There would only be outbound shipping charges for the rental service. These chains have a lot of 24hr locations now. For people like me in the boonies, returns might not be so easy, but being able to drop them off and midnight and know they were scanned into the system at the same time would be nice. I would think it would reduce the number of damaged DVDs as well.

Barnes & Noble has a different problem if they want to go into the rental business. The “drop off” feature won’t have the 24hr benefits. I would hazard a guess they would move towards more of the traditional video rental business, not because it would make money directly, but because it would keep customers in their stores longer. BN doesn’t stock milk, eggs, and undies. Not a lot of people read books today. Most people who buy movies from a retail store (instead of on-line) tend to buy them from a store they are already in.

Ah well. It will be interesting to see if Target takes the gloves off and tries to drive a stake through the heart of Amazon in 2010. The chain certainly has the financial muscle and marketing savy to take them out, especially if Kmart follows suit. Of course, the natural extension of exclusive titles is for each chain to have its own book club.